Discussion on: NewDoom Wad Reviews #2 (11.26.05)

[FATAL]

A nice load of reviews this week. Feel free to flame us reviewers to hell, tell us how incredibly awesome we are, or just blabber about this whole subject.

Ladies and gentlemen, here comes the discussion thread!

[PumpkinSmasher]

Well you got the date wrong. In all the other threads you put month.day.year and this one you put day.month.year . Plus its the 11th month not the 12th like you posted. You might want to fix this.

But its a good week with a good number of WADS. Yall are doing great.

[FATAL]

In all the other threads you put month.day.year and this one you put day.month.year .
Damn that danimetal. :p

[Danimetal]

Damn you, I was in a hurry and just got back from work now!.

I flame Fatal.

[PumpkinSmasher]

inter-reviewer fighting.

[Doom_Dude]

Hmmm I thought Spork's Simplicity would do better.... tho I haven't played it yet. Perhaps on HMP the end fights are more fair? I guess I'll find out tomorrow now that I'm psyched to check it out.

[AlysiumX]

Ultimate doom forever link is wrong. it leads too another wad. & can we get a link to these set of forums that permanently stays on the site? It says come tell us on the forums what you think, wouldn't it be better to have a quick link here ?

[Scuba Steve]

7.8 for a re-release of a 8 year old level, and 5 for Agent Spork's amazing Simplicity mapset? Hopefully nobody is paying any attention to Newdoom's reviews.

[Danimetal]

Hopefully nobody will be listening to you too, is that right?. Let´s see: we are giving orientative ratings according to our own criteria. If Fatal thought that Simplicity deserves a low rating you can as well ask him why or ignore him or read the review and find out why he thinks it deserves a five. If you think it deserves a higher score you could come here to say so and discuss about it with the rest of the community, no need to say "Hopefully nobody is paying any attention to Newdoom's reviews".

As for 7.8 for a re-release of a 8 year old level: I personally think that this re-working (not re-release) is worth that score. You can find out why in the complete review and you´re welcome to discuss it if, after playing the wad, you don´t think it´s accurate.

Edit: The "Edit" is ´cos before the editing this read "He thinks he deserves a five" instead of "it".

[FATAL]

7.8 for a re-release of a 8 year old level, and 5 for Agent Spork's amazing Simplicity mapset? Hopefully nobody is paying any attention to Newdoom's reviews.
Did you pay attention to read the actual review, or do you just scroll through the ratings?

I have clearly given reasons for the low score in my review.

[Doom_Dude]

Hopefully nobody is paying any attention to Newdoom's reviews. Thanks a lot. Sheeesh! Hopefully nobody is paying much attention to your dumb comment. You should know that not everybody is going to give any particular wad the same score or critique and Fatal gave a very good and thorough review of Sporks wad IMHO. Plus both of those reviews were done by two different reviewers.

[Scuba Steve]

I read his review and it was inconsistent. There is no criteria for what deducts point and what doesn't. The review says Simplicity is great then says the last couple levels were hard which they didn't like... 5. Did I just read that? A wad that is great with some gameplay flaws is a 5? What is your criteria for knocking 5 points off a wad? Is gameplay worth 5 points as an all or nothing element? You admitted the mapset is gorgeous, so visuals should be rated high, even by your standards.

So why a Five? You need to explain your rating system... is it something ridiculous like 5 points gameplay, 2 points visuals, 2 points for use with Legacy and 1 point for gut feeling? You give Doom Forever remake a 7.8. I'll buy that, but what is your criteria? Why is a simple facelift to a rather stale set of maps with, in my opinion, rather hideous lens flares and coloured lighting almost 3 points higher? Do you guys just spin the magic NewDoom wheel of numbers and give a wad that score?

If you had a set of criteria like the Outpost of Doom (http://www.webalice.it/sposito.lag/) and then averaged the different categories to arrive at a number that would make sense. But you don't, you arbitrarily chose a number on the keypad be it related to the quality of the pas or not.

[Vermil]

I haven't played Simplicity. So I can't say wheter I agree with Fatal's review or not.

But if I recall correctly, there were people on Doomworld who had the same view as Fatal.

The thread where Agent Spork anouced he had released Simplicity:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34369

Point being, not everybody enjoys the same type of wad/gameplay style.

[Aliotroph?]

Review scores are stupid. If you read the review you don't need the score and if you use the score without the review then you would have no basis on which to judge said score.

That said, I like seeing the scores in PC Gamer because if a game got something like 20% you know the article will be an entertaining read. :D

[FATAL]

is it something ridiculous like 5 points gameplay, 2 points visuals, 2 points for use with Legacy and 1 point for gut feeling?
and -5 for being a zdoom wad. Yup, you hit the nail.

[Doom_Dude]

Yes we also spin a dumb magic wheel for our scores. heh.

As much as I like Sporks maps, he does make some real hard traps, which can be annoying sometimes. He does have a great style of level design and uses the ZDoom engine very well. I like his tech bases and I do like many of his traps and monster closets... Anyhow I've played as far as map 04 in Simplicity and so far it's pretty fun. I can assume it gets much harder. I only stopped playing so I could work on some of my own editing stuff.

[Danimetal]

You give Doom Forever remake a 7.8. I'll buy that, but what is your criteria? Why is a simple facelift to a rather stale set of maps with, in my opinion, rather hideous lens flares and coloured lighting almost 3 points higher? Do you guys just spin the magic NewDoom wheel of numbers and give a wad that score?

The criteria I personally use (and I was hoping someone would ask me) is the fun I had. Honestly, I had a lot of fun playing this particular wad (as I had playing, say... Temple of the Beast or Ktulu) and when I came to the end I felt like as I played a complete game and got a very satisfactory feeling about it. Coloured lighting and flares are not precisely my cup of tea and some visuals (a lot of them, indeed) weren´t too so those were minus in my criteria. For me visuals are not the most important factor; it´s only about how fun the wad was for me.

As you can guess, there´s no magic wheel or anything. You play, you consider, you write, you think, you write and reconsider again and then, you rate the wad according to your own personal feelings. Let me state clear that no absolute criteria is used here: each of the reviewers uses his own. As said, for me, the more fun I had, the higher the score.

If you had a set of criteria like the Outpost of Doom (http://www.webalice.it/sposito.lag/) and then averaged the different categories to arrive at a number that would make sense. But you don't, you arbitrarily chose a number on the keypad be it related to the quality of the pas or not.

I find quite inaccurate your last sentence: we don´t arbitrarily choose any number but try to think about the score. Consider that if you have a different vision of that "number" that doesn´t mean that yours is the only or correct one. As for calculating, some reviewers do different cattegories, some don´t, it´s up to them. I personally don´t since I don´t like to. Sure, anyone could find a formula that suits his own balance of things, but I didn´t consider it neccesary.

I too played Simplicity and agree with Fatal´s vision. That only means that we didn´t like the quoted aspects of it. Some reviewers could even give a 10 to it and I´m sure nobody would complain.

To finish with, as Aliotroph, I think that the whole meat of the thing is not on the numbers, but on the text and, as always, each player is the ultimate and definitive judge of each wad. We only provide an orientative service of reviews: no bashing, no flaming, just give our vision on the thing and let people know and play. This thread is precisely for saying that you agree or disagree and discuss about that, but in no way to disrespect or disqualify anything.

That said, we can discuss about Simplicity, Ultimate Doom Forever or any other of the wads reviewed this week as long as we all stay on track.

[Scuba Steve]

Then I would suggest doing away with numbers completely if there is no real rubric to them. Grading doesn't do a lick of good if there's no foundation to it and it varies depending on a multitude of factors. The description of the wad was fine, it's the "score" that's the problem, so I would reccommend that until/when a system is devised you just steer clear of a number based review system and stick with the description review.

Much like Doomworld's /newstuff reviews which also carry no score (usually) and happen to be just a verbal assessment of the wad, much like the Newdoom Wad Review. The only time Newstuff ever has a score system is when I do it... but I added the "number system" as a complete joke since there are like 8 different objects for grading and all are interchangable... being a joke on score based reviews themselves.

[Aliotroph?]

I was thinking about the scores and it occurred to me that they gain relevence as the number of reviews written by a given reviewer increases. While they don't work as an objective thing, they give an indication of how much that reviewer liked what he was reviewing. If you're familiar with the reviewer you have an idea if he likes the same thing as you so a score given by him can work as an indication of whether you want to check out his review in detail. I do this with a movie reviewer whose page I often read.

[Danimetal]

As we said in the first issue and somewhere else "The scores on each wad are given according to the judging of the reviewer who did the map. They don´t intend to be anything but orientative" so I fully support Aliotroph´s point above. It´s all a question of getting familiar with the criteria used by each of the reviewers and also to how strict and mean they are. For example, I´m not to give 8 to a lot of wads but move between 0 and 7+ as I´m quite demanding when it comes to play. My 7 may be your 10 or someone else´s 9, but sure you get the idea.

Serious, I don´t see a reason for getting rid of the score but since Scuba Steve did a suggestion I can make sure that it gets to all members of the team where they can decide whether they want to keep the system or not with internal discussions.

Now this is a suggestion I make: a section about the reviewers where they can say what do they appreciate in wads and how do they rate them.

Both suggestions will be mailed inmediatly and then I´ll go to work again.

[Illdo]

Four last screenschots (in The Ultimate Doom Forever) are missing.

But I like the alternate texts (the <ALT> tags).

[Danimetal]

Thanks for pointing that out Illdo... Let´s see what can we do about that later :).

[Illdo]

It also appears that <ALT> tags are missing in screenshots for the first few wads.

[FATAL]

Some reviewers prefer not to have captions on their screenshots.

[Danimetal]

Yeah, that´s it. Reviewers are completely free to choose what to say, how and what screens to post and what to say there :). The only thing we ask is to fit some constants in format (no text formatting XD) so I don´t get crazy when it comes to format the whole thing... I just say that in case anyone wants to join ;).

I´ll be fixing the screenshots for The Ultimate Doom Forever.

[AlysiumX]

My reviews depend heavily on a number system. I rate layout, music, gameplay, and orginality with numbers of how i thought the level was. Now the finishing over all for the wad is the average number of those 4 catagories, giving plunty of information on how i rated each wad.

[jetflock]

wow, my wads were reviewed! too bad people still like to gripe about it. lol.
(sorry scuba, this isn't doomworld).

[Danimetal]

We´re also working on a submission done by Lutrov71... It will be out next week for sure :).

And well, for the good and for the bad, this is not DW but ND but let´s not talk about this here, Ok?.

[Danimetal]

Ultimate doom forever link is wrong. it leads too another wad. & can we get a link to these set of forums that permanently stays on the site? It says come tell us on the forums what you think, wouldn't it be better to have a quick link here ?

Is the link for the wad still bad?. Where, on the list or in the reviews page?. I´ll try to add a quick link too. Sorry for the late reply ;).

[AlysiumX]

On the main doom reviews site. (reviews.newdoom.com) scroll down to jetflock's ultimate doom forever, and click the link, and you get : nobrakes.zip

[Danimetal]

Fixed that. It was wrong in both places, surely my fault.

[Nuxius]

Well, now I know which one of Lutrov's wads you'll be reviewing. (heh :p)

[Danimetal]

*owned* Yeah, he submitted last week but we weren´t in time... What about some more submissions?. Anyone dares?.

[FATAL]

Well, now I know which one of Lutrov's wads you'll be reviewing. (heh :p)
Omg he haxorzed ours über kewl webiste! lolOLoll he gunna getsorz bands!

Hehe, Damn these moderator things, sometimes I hit the edit button instead of quote button!

[Danimetal]

Fatal, are you on crack again or something???.

[Doom_Dude]

No wonder he's crazy, he keeps getting blown up by that barrel he keeps chewing on. :P

[jetflock]

....nevermind....