I have not done a review in a while, but expect my next one to be in a couple days.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Review:
Bounty Hunters is a map well-known in Europe as the premiere arena game, complete with a variety of maps and modes with some classic chaotic gameplay features. One of the main selling points of the map is the total reliance on technical skills with the game’s five abilities in order to succeed. It’s also visibly polished to a shine, including a nice-looking loading screen with useful info.
Four different keyboard layouts that can be switched in-game at the press of a button. Nice.
Some of the icons are rather vague, like the temporal rift and repulse icons; the shield and blink icons might also be misinterpreted. This isn’t much of an issue in-game, but it makes the loading screen seem lacking somehow. Since there are only five abilities, it would be prudent to give short descriptions of each of the abilities in the loading screen, so that new players know what to do when the game starts, rather than trial-casting all of the spells once or twice when the game starts. In this game, new players can regardless beat veterans, though, so it ultimately does not cause any problems.
Once the game gets started, it’s clear that Tenshi gave the game the good old spit-shine before pushing it out to the public. Bugs are few and far between and often unnoticeable, the terrain is usually pretty interesting, and all of the other miscellaneous little details come together to make an impressive whole. It does seem somewhat cluttered, though, as text is flying everywhere, not to mention the effects being thrown around and the chaotic gameplay itself.
Don’t get me wrong; the popular-culture text quips that units spew lighten the mood and are a cool part of the map, but in a large game, there is a lot going on. Listing it off, I see text spewing from the players who die every few seconds, error messages and game status messages on the left, chat messages AND kill messages (and killstreaks) in the center, random units names, and I hear the constant announcer messages and one-liners by Jim Raynor while this is all going on. Add to that the very fast-paced gameplay where two shots equal a kill in most cases. It can sometimes be overwhelming.
Overlapping dialogs, even on my large widescreen monitor. I can only conclude that Bounty Hunters was tested in an IMAX theatre.
The strong southern hunter vibe, given off by Raynor’s accent, the music, some of the death quips, and those random unit names, is almost palpable. The environments are also generally pretty atmospheric, though some levels are better than others. Overall, the presentation of Bounty Hunters is quite excellent. There are some issues though, such as the fact that the players give off light sources, which hurts the framerate for no real reason, but that’s not too much of a problem in most cases. The real problem, besides the others I have mentioned earlier, is the water.
Something is just wrong with the water. It doesn’t even resemble water; it’s like a wobbly sheet of plastic stretched over the “watered” area with some foam floating off of the edges. You have GOT to fix those settings. It’s especially bad in the vaguely swastika-shaped level, where the otherwise fairly cool-looking terrain is ruined by a pool of opaque, quivering shit.
We are running around on the distorted shadow of a headcrab. On a doily-style swastika.
Seriously, what the fuck is this? It’s like quantum glass. Give the water some texture distortion or something and get rid of the model distortion. The current iteration of the water looks awful. Seriously. It really stood out to me.
Ignoring the blinding ugliness of the unidentified liquid present in some of the arenas, Bounty Hunters does have some great level variety. There are nineteen different arenas, each with its own theme, many of which have gimmicks and traps, just like any real shooter since Unreal Tournament. A proper map-vote system is in place with the usual presentation quality of the rest of the map. However, I have noticed that it was slightly buggy. During one of my tests, we had a group of three people. Two people voted for map A, and one voted for map B. Somehow, map B was chosen. I’ll never know why.
I must reiterate just how nice it is to have so many levels; it really helps the variety of the game. It’s content in its purest form; each level plays differently, has new gimmicks, and results in a different experience. You’ve done a great job in that department. In fact, the great level variety is one of the only reasons why the content score is not a C or lower.
There are five polished abilities for use by the player. Each player has those five abilities and only those five abilities. In Sudden Death mode, the player has only three. Only one of those abilities does damage; the rest are utilities: knockback, shield, teleport, and time field. It’s a decent enough setup with a good amount of versatility. After all, those abilities are balanced very well and each has many uses in the course of heavy combat. The time field, shield, and knockback spells are even charged and can only be used a few times in a single life, giving new players an advantage in that they will probably not live long enough to run out of those charges, while pros will last long enough to run clean out of goodies, giving the newbies an easier time to kill them. Even the damage-dealing ability is a piercing round that deals damage in a line, giving it a range of strategies in a large game with many people (getting a double-kill in one shot is always fun). For the first few playthroughs, it won’t occur to the players that the game is lacking depth, which really says something about how well those five preset abilities are made.
In a few seconds, one of those players is going to be dead. I’m not fast enough with the screenshot to capture the combat (the shot stays on screen for just a split-second), so you’ll have to take my word for it. Or, you can play the map.
The game gets fairly chaotic, since each of the abilities is fine-tuned for a close-in arena setting. Position control is pretty important since dodging bullets is nigh impossible and a whole bunch of strategies is possible with the abilities given. It works really well, for the most part. However, Bounty Hunters stops there. Once you master those five abilities, there’s not much else to do (other than kicking ass and chewing bubblegum). This map really needs some more ability variety. Why does this game have only one weapon? I can think of dozens of different weapons that would fit the map and could be adapted to fit the gameplay, assuming that the levels were fine-tuned to account for the new weapons. A lot of potential depth is simply lost in space because the abilities the player starts with are the only abilities that player will ever see under any play-through of Bounty Hunters. It even diminishes the gameplay, to some extent, because the entire flow of the gameplay now revolves around a single ability. For something so incredibly important to the map, I would normally expect the only weapon in the game to be super-special-awesome, but instead we have the mere pretty-cool-thingy Penetrator Round which doesn’t even bounce from walls or make waffles for breakfast.
“But DarkRevenant,” you might say. “You compared Bounty Hunters to Unreal Tournament! UT had the popular Instagib mode, which spawned everyone with one weapon: a shock rifle that kills you in one hit! How is that unlike Bounty Hunters?” First of all, Bounty Hunters does have more variety than Instagib Arena because you can actually use some utility abilities. However, Instagib Arena was a supplemental mode for a game featuring a dozen different weapons. It was not the game itself. Bounty Hunters does have the Sudden Death mode, which is much like Instagib with its one-hit-kill policy (unless you time the shield well enough) and the reduced equipment. However, the normal modes should have greater weapon variety any kind of weapon variety at all, if the map is to be expected to survive for any extended period of time.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed Bounty Hunters more than any of the maps I have reviewed so far. It came awfully close to being Gold, but the lack of different abilities put me off quite a lot, to say the least. I’m hoping that there will be positive changes in the future.
RATING:
Silver: This map is not perfect, but is entertaining and of good quality.
I won, in spirit. Which is to say, I didn't even join in.
Still, the winner wouldn't fuck up his chances of getting the prize money by spilling the beans. Even if someone asked, he'd say "no, I didn't win." I mean, what would he say otherwise? "Did you win?" "Uhh... I can't tell you that." It's a dead giveaway.
Anyway, the winner might even be some guy none of us has ever seen yet.
It's okay to modify maps for private use. To play with it publicly, you've got to have permission from the author or it's a form of plagiarism or copyright infringement, unless the edit is a parody/critique (a form of protected free speech) or 75% different than the source.
Reducing workload should never be the reason for randomizing elements of a game; it should only be used to offer variety to the player.
Look at Diablo and Diablo 2 for how to pull this off well; you need Unique monsters, for instance, to keep it interesting. Cool layouts are also very nice.
There is a very large difference between increasing accessibility and simply dumbing the map down, Tinman. Not everyone has a team of players willing to VoIP; it should be possible for a relatively new but skilled player to pose a challenge to experienced players.
That's not the point I was making originally, though. Simply put, totally random cards is not the optimal gameplay plan. The discard option doesn't help newbies in the slightest, either.
You don't necessarily have to have a set of specific decks, but OiledTinman is right that this map is similar to poker. However, poker is not as fast-paced as this map and does not have a teamwork aspect. In other words, this map's true purpose is inaccessible to those who have not memorized enough of the counters to be able to make split-second correct choices. There are a number of ways to avoid this; use your imagination. But as it is, a continuous set of random cards comes off as quite weak.
0
I have not done a review in a while, but expect my next one to be in a couple days.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Bounty Hunters by Tenshi
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (A-)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (B)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (B-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (A)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (B+)
Replayability - [3-]
Failures
Only One Attack - [- -]
Ugly Water - [-]
Bonuses
Level Design/Variety - [+ +]
Level/Mode Vote - [+]
Review:
Bounty Hunters is a map well-known in Europe as the premiere arena game, complete with a variety of maps and modes with some classic chaotic gameplay features. One of the main selling points of the map is the total reliance on technical skills with the game’s five abilities in order to succeed. It’s also visibly polished to a shine, including a nice-looking loading screen with useful info.
Four different keyboard layouts that can be switched in-game at the press of a button. Nice.
Some of the icons are rather vague, like the temporal rift and repulse icons; the shield and blink icons might also be misinterpreted. This isn’t much of an issue in-game, but it makes the loading screen seem lacking somehow. Since there are only five abilities, it would be prudent to give short descriptions of each of the abilities in the loading screen, so that new players know what to do when the game starts, rather than trial-casting all of the spells once or twice when the game starts. In this game, new players can regardless beat veterans, though, so it ultimately does not cause any problems.
Once the game gets started, it’s clear that Tenshi gave the game the good old spit-shine before pushing it out to the public. Bugs are few and far between and often unnoticeable, the terrain is usually pretty interesting, and all of the other miscellaneous little details come together to make an impressive whole. It does seem somewhat cluttered, though, as text is flying everywhere, not to mention the effects being thrown around and the chaotic gameplay itself.
Don’t get me wrong; the popular-culture text quips that units spew lighten the mood and are a cool part of the map, but in a large game, there is a lot going on. Listing it off, I see text spewing from the players who die every few seconds, error messages and game status messages on the left, chat messages AND kill messages (and killstreaks) in the center, random units names, and I hear the constant announcer messages and one-liners by Jim Raynor while this is all going on. Add to that the very fast-paced gameplay where two shots equal a kill in most cases. It can sometimes be overwhelming.
Overlapping dialogs, even on my large widescreen monitor. I can only conclude that Bounty Hunters was tested in an IMAX theatre.
The strong southern hunter vibe, given off by Raynor’s accent, the music, some of the death quips, and those random unit names, is almost palpable. The environments are also generally pretty atmospheric, though some levels are better than others. Overall, the presentation of Bounty Hunters is quite excellent. There are some issues though, such as the fact that the players give off light sources, which hurts the framerate for no real reason, but that’s not too much of a problem in most cases. The real problem, besides the others I have mentioned earlier, is the water.
Something is just wrong with the water. It doesn’t even resemble water; it’s like a wobbly sheet of plastic stretched over the “watered” area with some foam floating off of the edges. You have GOT to fix those settings. It’s especially bad in the vaguely swastika-shaped level, where the otherwise fairly cool-looking terrain is ruined by a pool of opaque, quivering shit.
We are running around on the distorted shadow of a headcrab. On a doily-style swastika.
Seriously, what the fuck is this? It’s like quantum glass. Give the water some texture distortion or something and get rid of the model distortion. The current iteration of the water looks awful. Seriously. It really stood out to me.
Ignoring the blinding ugliness of the unidentified liquid present in some of the arenas, Bounty Hunters does have some great level variety. There are nineteen different arenas, each with its own theme, many of which have gimmicks and traps, just like any real shooter since Unreal Tournament. A proper map-vote system is in place with the usual presentation quality of the rest of the map. However, I have noticed that it was slightly buggy. During one of my tests, we had a group of three people. Two people voted for map A, and one voted for map B. Somehow, map B was chosen. I’ll never know why.
I must reiterate just how nice it is to have so many levels; it really helps the variety of the game. It’s content in its purest form; each level plays differently, has new gimmicks, and results in a different experience. You’ve done a great job in that department. In fact, the great level variety is one of the only reasons why the content score is not a C or lower.
There are five polished abilities for use by the player. Each player has those five abilities and only those five abilities. In Sudden Death mode, the player has only three. Only one of those abilities does damage; the rest are utilities: knockback, shield, teleport, and time field. It’s a decent enough setup with a good amount of versatility. After all, those abilities are balanced very well and each has many uses in the course of heavy combat. The time field, shield, and knockback spells are even charged and can only be used a few times in a single life, giving new players an advantage in that they will probably not live long enough to run out of those charges, while pros will last long enough to run clean out of goodies, giving the newbies an easier time to kill them. Even the damage-dealing ability is a piercing round that deals damage in a line, giving it a range of strategies in a large game with many people (getting a double-kill in one shot is always fun). For the first few playthroughs, it won’t occur to the players that the game is lacking depth, which really says something about how well those five preset abilities are made.
In a few seconds, one of those players is going to be dead. I’m not fast enough with the screenshot to capture the combat (the shot stays on screen for just a split-second), so you’ll have to take my word for it. Or, you can play the map.
The game gets fairly chaotic, since each of the abilities is fine-tuned for a close-in arena setting. Position control is pretty important since dodging bullets is nigh impossible and a whole bunch of strategies is possible with the abilities given. It works really well, for the most part. However, Bounty Hunters stops there. Once you master those five abilities, there’s not much else to do (other than kicking ass and chewing bubblegum). This map really needs some more ability variety. Why does this game have only one weapon? I can think of dozens of different weapons that would fit the map and could be adapted to fit the gameplay, assuming that the levels were fine-tuned to account for the new weapons. A lot of potential depth is simply lost in space because the abilities the player starts with are the only abilities that player will ever see under any play-through of Bounty Hunters. It even diminishes the gameplay, to some extent, because the entire flow of the gameplay now revolves around a single ability. For something so incredibly important to the map, I would normally expect the only weapon in the game to be super-special-awesome, but instead we have the mere pretty-cool-thingy Penetrator Round which doesn’t even bounce from walls or make waffles for breakfast.
“But DarkRevenant,” you might say. “You compared Bounty Hunters to Unreal Tournament! UT had the popular Instagib mode, which spawned everyone with one weapon: a shock rifle that kills you in one hit! How is that unlike Bounty Hunters?” First of all, Bounty Hunters does have more variety than Instagib Arena because you can actually use some utility abilities. However, Instagib Arena was a supplemental mode for a game featuring a dozen different weapons. It was not the game itself. Bounty Hunters does have the Sudden Death mode, which is much like Instagib with its one-hit-kill policy (unless you time the shield well enough) and the reduced equipment. However, the normal modes should have
greater weapon varietyany kind of weapon variety at all, if the map is to be expected to survive for any extended period of time.Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed Bounty Hunters more than any of the maps I have reviewed so far. It came awfully close to being Gold, but the lack of different abilities put me off quite a lot, to say the least. I’m hoping that there will be positive changes in the future.
RATING:
Silver: This map is not perfect, but is entertaining and of good quality.
0
@EpicurusDarwin: Go
What stops you from using a periodic trigger and a while loop to run all of the timing and randomization in one trigger?
0
If you're sure, either you or a confidant of yours has won.
0
I won, in spirit. Which is to say, I didn't even join in.
Still, the winner wouldn't fuck up his chances of getting the prize money by spilling the beans. Even if someone asked, he'd say "no, I didn't win." I mean, what would he say otherwise? "Did you win?" "Uhh... I can't tell you that." It's a dead giveaway.
Anyway, the winner might even be some guy none of us has ever seen yet.
0
It's okay to modify maps for private use. To play with it publicly, you've got to have permission from the author or it's a form of plagiarism or copyright infringement, unless the edit is a parody/critique (a form of protected free speech) or 75% different than the source.
0
I knew it! Your main rival in Heart of the Swarm is Rick Astley!
0
@Gorandor: Go
"Real-Time" is also turn-based, just with one turn per game loop (many turns per second).
0
Reducing workload should never be the reason for randomizing elements of a game; it should only be used to offer variety to the player.
Look at Diablo and Diablo 2 for how to pull this off well; you need Unique monsters, for instance, to keep it interesting. Cool layouts are also very nice.
0
Discrete math students everywhere rejoice. Except for me, since I could do the work without computerized aids. Still, pretty cool.
0
There is a very large difference between increasing accessibility and simply dumbing the map down, Tinman. Not everyone has a team of players willing to VoIP; it should be possible for a relatively new but skilled player to pose a challenge to experienced players.
That's not the point I was making originally, though. Simply put, totally random cards is not the optimal gameplay plan. The discard option doesn't help newbies in the slightest, either.
0
You don't necessarily have to have a set of specific decks, but OiledTinman is right that this map is similar to poker. However, poker is not as fast-paced as this map and does not have a teamwork aspect. In other words, this map's true purpose is inaccessible to those who have not memorized enough of the counters to be able to make split-second correct choices. There are a number of ways to avoid this; use your imagination. But as it is, a continuous set of random cards comes off as quite weak.
0
Can you be more specific about how you disagree? I'd like to be able to learn something about what I do.
0
@The_Great_Jimmy: Go
When the delay is 0.5s, the solution IS to sprint at the right time; otherwise, I would have clicked like normal.
0
Ever play CardCraft in wc3? That map had a pretty good rendition of this. You need to take some cues from that map.
0
My cursor pack does not have alignment issues, afaik.