I had to wait a day after playing this one so I could collect my thoughts. So, yeah.
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:
I could make a couple introductory paragraphs to give some extra explanation of the gameplay of Golem Wars Classic, but I feel that this screenshot sums the whole thing up pretty accurately:
Mobs. Lots of mobs.
Each of the five players endlessly spawns their choice of zealots, marines, or zerglings. Each path has two upgraded forms that are unlocked after a certain number of kills for that player, but all three paths are upgraded simultaneously and the players can switch between them at will. Allowing this is a fairly risky move for a game developer because, with a spawn rate as high as it is in Golem Wars Classic, the players could instantly adjust their strategy to counter whatever the enemy throws at them. This inherently limits the strategic flow of the map because a winning strategy through unit choice will be very short-lived. In this case, stagnation and stalemate will dominate the map.
However, Golem Wars Classic doesn’t even get that far: even though the players can instantly switch their units, there is no reason for them to even want to. Sure, each path has different stats, such as life and DPS, but the huge problem is that all of the units are, in mass numbers, almost exactly the same. And mass numbers of these units are all you will ever see in this game. Even the zealots vs. marines matchup, for example, is basically no different than zealots vs. zerglings because of the zealots’ charge ability. Worse still, the upgraded forms of the base units are even more alike and bland, and are all ranged. There isn’t even a rock-paper-scissors element going on; just pick your flavor and send mass amounts of it at the enemy. This boils down to a nearly complete loss of unit strategy; formations and ganging up on a single target are just about the only things you can do with your mobs. Essentially, this is a huge let-down and causes the game to become fairly boring as time goes on.
This is just about the only type of battle you’ll see after the 5-minute mark: a reenactment of the Battle of Verdun. It’s fitting that those siege tanks in the bottom-left corner are doing most of the damage to my troops.
The best opportunity to kill off a player is right when you reach the next tier of mobs while your opponent is still trying to reach it. A mass attack with your higher-tier units will decimate his inferior technology because each tier is amazingly strong compared to the previous set. There’s no real counter to a higher-tier force other than just trying to get your own high-tier units as soon as possible, since focus-firing is useless when the game spawns absurd amounts of units for you to deal with.
If you don’t gang up on a single player or take advantage of the tech gap, the other main way of achieving victory is using some sort of strategy involving the super golems (the timed-life bonus spawns you get after every tier-up) or combo golems. Siege tanks seem to work the best because they alone deal splash damage, which is unbelievably powerful in a game involving mass amounts of crowded units. In fact, just about every other non-cloaking 4-piece combo golem is absolutely useless after tier 1. Even if the 6-10-piece combo golems were added in, I doubt the players would be able to field enough of them to make much of a difference in combat. The end result of this is a lack of any viable strategies, save for the very few I have mentioned. For obvious reasons, this makes the gameplay become quite bland, ultimately causing the map’s entertainment value to shrivel away.
The line of artillery is an effective strategy, unlike the use of most of the other 4c golems.
On the plus side, there are several dozen 4-piece combos and 9 super-golem spawn groups (2-3 different units per group), which adds up to quite a deal of unit variety. Many of the combo golems have different abilities and, of course, wildly different stats from the base units, which is a nice bonus. The problem is that most of the combo units are fairly useless. There are so many available, but it’s not possible to spawn many of them. Also, the basic mobs are, for all intents and purposes, the same after tier 2. Because of this, there is very little reason to get combo golems of any type except for siege tanks and whichever units can kill siege tanks the most quickly. On the plus side, the combo golems have a ridiculous amount of hit points, but they also generally do not have that much killing potential (except for the siege tank because it has splash damage). As a result, the combo units are somehow boring despite (or possibly, because of) the fact that there are so many of them. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of the game, because at this point the combo units were the last hope for Golem Wars Classic to be interesting to play.
On an unrelated note, this map actually does have a computer AI; any computer slots will “think” and actively play against you, mass attack, spawn combos (at least, I think they do…), etc. However, they are easily defeated by even first-time players. Still, having AI support is a very nice inclusion to any map, even if their skill level is pretty basic.
Why does this whole terrain setup even exist when I can just click one of the command card buttons instead? Also, mass-attacking is often pointless when you can select 255 units at once, though it does help with the lag, a bit.
There are a few miscellaneous problems in Golem Wars Classic, the most notable of which is the massive amounts of units being generated at all times. My computer can smoothly run the game at all-ultra settings, but this map brought my system to a crawl after four players each had amassed 200-300 units and battled with them. For instance, the pathfinding algorithm used by StarCraft 2 is truly excellent but is very demanding, as a thousand moving and attacking units engaged at once will render the game nearly unplayable if your CPU currently costs less than $250-$300 USD. Even just having the units in the game at all (even if they are unmoving) will lower framerates after some time. Another annoying issue is that some golem part combinations don’t actually make anything. Some of the combos are missing, so when you throw together some random combination to see what you get (out of boredom or something), you could simply get nothing.
This map has an idyllic goal to live up to, but it’s blurred and warped by poor execution.
To summarize this whole review: Golem Wars Classic doesn’t need a content patch; it needs a gameplay overhaul. On paper, this map seems to be a sure hit and a wonderful map. In practice, it just falls flat on its face with gameplay which I would describe as somewhat repetitive and fairly boring. The map was interesting at first, but then it all just melted away into blandness. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the gameplay dynamics of this map are practically nonexistent. Even a rock-paper-scissors hard-counter kind of gameplay mechanic with the base units would be a huge improvement. Redoing the combo units to make them all useful would be nice, but they should also be trimmed down in number. I’m done typing about this map; Golem Wars Classic at least has some good production values, but it needs some major improvement in the areas that count the most.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
The terrain isn't perfect, but it gets the job done for the most part. It's a million times better than the previous maps I reviewed, so I guess I'm biased a bit.
Losing some recognizance is a price I'm willing to pay for various reasons:
1. The overall score does not follow a #/# formula, so having #/# for the sub-scores would be misleading.
2. It fits my style more, in my opinion, to have a B- or C+ instead of a 3.5/5 or whatever. In my scoring method, + and - makes not very much of a difference, while the letter grade itself has much more of an impact. I don't get that kind of distinction with a #/# method.
3. I feel that ideas describe the quality of the game a lot more effectively than mere numbers. Letter grades are more ambiguous in general, so I put them there for the reader to have a general idea of what the game's strong and weak areas are, but the actual opinion and review is the large written portion. I try to divert attention away from the technical scores so that my text will be more meaningful.
4. Some of you are European so I can understand why letter grades might be less recognizable (Germany, for instance, uses a 0-5 system (or does it go down to 6?) in school rather than an A-F system). However, many countries use A-F grades in their school and university systems. Generally, C is considered average while F is a complete failure. B is good, D is bad, and A is great. I add in E and S for good measure; E is a partial failure and S is truly exemplary.
I was requested to include this on my future reviews:
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:
Foreword: Bounty_98 has come forward to me about some future plans for Haunted Temple that address several of the issues I will be bringing up. However, this review shall not change because he requested the review before putting said improvements into the map. I might give it a new score later on, if I feel like it, but we’re cool with a review as-is.
Everyone has their O face on. I can see why: that backdrop is great!
Haunted Temple is based off of a simple gameplay mechanic: hide from the killer. If you are the killer, you need to go around and check all of the unlikely hiding spots and secret areas for hidden, crouching, hapless civilians to ruthlessly murder. The killer can spawn seekers to help look for players, but searching every nook and cranny is the fool-proof method. On the other hand, if you are a civilian, hiding is just about all you do in this game. The killer is cloaked and is out for your blood. If you are found, someone is going to die. As such, you can’t run, but you can hide.
For obvious reasons, hiding is essentially the cornerstone of this map. It’s got to be meaningful and fun to hide from an unstoppable menace, so the killer has to be frightening and the environment must be interesting and immersive. I’ll talk about the environment first: Wow. Haunted Temple is a huge break from maps like Nexus Wars when it comes to the terrain. The atmosphere is foggy and thick, the lighting is stark and dramatic, and there are plenty of shadows to hide in. Better yet, the doodad usage is quite good, with a variety of mismatched environments ranging from a shopping plaza, to a freaky lab, to some kind of mining operation, to a whole bunch of other micro-environments that keep the variety and flavor of the map at a classy high level.
As far as the gameplay goes, the wide range of environments is essential for getting the players to realize where they are in the game. The first couple times, it will be confusing to get around the map, especially because the camera uses a third person perspective, but the map generally does well with having a number of landmarks that allow navigation. The fog and a few smatterings of bare areas and dead-ends disrupt the flow somewhat, but these are minor gripes that shouldn’t be high on the priority list for Haunted Temple.
Imported music is also present in Haunted Temple. It actually offers a lot of flavor and variety to the map, especially since the music apparently changes based on proximity to the killer. There are some stinger themes that play for important events, such as the death of a player, which also add a great deal to the environment. More importantly, however, it increases tension; music has a psychological effect on the player that can be manipulated to amplify various emotions – in this case, unease – for the betterment of the game environment. Since the theme of the map is hiding, tension directly increases the thrill of the game. After all, at any moment you could be- AAAUGH AHH GRAH-. … …
What a view! Also, you can’t see it in this picture, but those marine statues are pissing waterfalls.
I find it appropriate to abruptly shift the tone of this review at this point. I’ll start with the basics: hiding. For a map that is all about running from the killer and hiding like a sissy, Haunted Temple manages to be pretty damn fun for what it is. The problem is it could be so much more.
Hiding is an inherently passive gameplay mechanic. Running away and throwing yourself behind an object can only get the game so far before it needs some spicing up. As it stands, the civilians cannot do anything except walk, sprint, and crouch. The game causes the players to inexorably lose interest over time because there are very few actions that can be taken. The most direct approach to this is to simply add an action button for the civilians to interact with the environment and do various things. Operate lights, change the fog, flood an area, grab a crowbar, open a door, etc. There are so many possibilities that would make this map truly wonderful through some clever application of player and author ingenuity. The tactical possibilities become endless; instead of just hiding, a player could be able to actually work against the killer. The player doesn’t even need to be able to attack; just slowing the killer down or confusing it would be a way for players to constantly think of new ways to mess with people and survive. Replayability thus increases exponentially and the game becomes a lot more interesting. By filling the game with various environmental gimmicks, Haunted Temple’s issue of being essentially barren of content beyond the volume of terrain and number of hiding spots disappears almost entirely.
Right now, Haunted Temple is remarkably empty. All of the civilians are the same as far as the gameplay goes and the killer is only marginally better equipped. This not only makes the game less interesting, it also limits the effective actions that a player is able to carry out. In other words, variety is diminished and the gameplay suffers accordingly.
When I’m dead, I can climb walls and exit the map. I get a nice view, though. Also, the ghosts have health bars, which is really annoying.
Sometimes I feel that the player is not given enough information. We learn the controls and the goal of the map, but we are not informed of some basic information like what the killer looks like or how quickly she will kill you. The players are also left uninformed of the existence of seekers until… too late. Knowing what to look for is extremely important. My first time, I didn’t know what the killer looked like, so I was freaked out at the ripples that the ghost unit made. I only caught a short glimpse of the Kerrigan model’s outline before running like mad and eventually exploding in blood.
On a related note, I feel it needs to be said that the killer needs to be a more visible threat. It’s very heart-pumping and dramatic to be running from some kind of dark beast that tears you to pieces when it catches you. Unfortunately for Haunted Temple, it’s not very frightening or interesting when you can’t even see the killer as it’s chasing you. All you hear is the weaksauce attack sound being spammed and eventually you explode in a shower of blood when the killer’s wavy outline runs through you while attacking. It’s almost like an intangible evil detached from the players. The killer should be much more visible to the player it’s giving chase to, perhaps spewing evil sounds of impending doom to raise the player’s blood pressure. In short, the distorted-air look of the cloaking effect isn’t frightening. Just about anything else would be better; uncloaking in short proximity to a player, for instance, would help. If you want the killer to remain invisible, you could make it suspenseful and truly frightening by making the killer completely invisible, the only indication of presence would be marked by a general dimming of the lights and a large, gradient shadow surrounding its presence. The player wouldn’t know if he was next or was going to be passed by; it’s the kind of encounter that lets the player count their heartbeats. A scream, perhaps, when the player dies would be cool, too.
In general, Haunted Temple is a map that’s got a solid foundation and competent direction, but needs some improvements, especially some more real substance to keep it going. I’d love to see this map improve and evolve to something greater as time goes on.
RATING:
Silver: This map is not perfect, but is entertaining and of good quality.
I got a request to review Haunted Temple via PM, so I'll give it a whirl. Also, YiffMaster's review of Ultimate Tank Defense does a pretty good job of reviewing the map. In fact, it's good enough that I feel my own review would be too redundant, so I'll be skipping the UTD review.
At some point, after I've done more reviews, I can go back and give scores (but not full reviews) to some of the maps that I have decided against reviewing.
I'm pushing out a review ahead of schedule because I can.
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.
Failures
Awkward Camera - [- -]
Bad Text Placement - [-]
Insufficient Sound Cues - [-]
No Intro/Outro - [-]
Bonuses
Some of the Minigames - [+ +]
Review:
Partycraft was recently featured on the North American Battle.net server, so I decided to check it out. I was expecting a more-or-less unknown gem of a map, or at least something higher than the quality of Nexus Wars and Income Wars. I joined up, got comfy, and waited for the 23-second countdown timer to tick to 0. Wait, what? 23 seconds, not 30? I don’t know. Anyway, the loading screen outlined the map: like Uther Party of WarCraft III, the group plays eight random minigames from a pool of available games and the winner of the game is decided by each player’s performance in the various minigames. It’s a setup that got the excellent Uther Party map a great deal of fame back in the day, so I looked forward to what this new iteration would offer.
The map finished loading, and I was suddenly greeted by the first minigame. So much for an intro sequence... This map throws you directly into the first minigame, throws some text up at the top of the screen with the basic instructions on how to get through the challenge, and gives the players around 8 seconds to wait before starting. In this case, I got the hellion race challenge. Like the instructions said, it’s a good idea to avoid the stunning eggs and hit the speed boosts. However, the instructions didn’t say that the pathing system will kill you! After hitting the speed boost, my Hellion swerved around in a circle and went nowhere because I didn’t give it a move order fast or well enough, or something. Also, when multiple racers are in the same part of the track, the pathing system will cause you to go pretty much exactly where you don’t want to. Often, this means that you will grind to a halt or ram into a stun egg. The hellion race is more about luck than anything else, I’m afraid.
I’m on a highway to hell.
The hellion race (in-game it’s called “Drummer Derby” for a reason that I can’t fathom) is basically a good example for most of the minigames in Partycraft. Most of them are interesting the first time around, mainly because it’s something new. However, the execution is really lacking. While I was doing my second run of the map, I noticed that most of the minigames got old very quickly. Some of them are just uninspired and boring after the first time, like the Ghost Wars minigame. It’s just not handled well; the fact that the ghost’s only abilities are EMP and Snipe simply causes it to grind into a matter of luck and hotkey-spamming unless you get hit by an EMP, in which case you basically can’t do anything fun. The micro battle with the omegalisk, ghost, and archon was also snore-worthy. Actually, looking back, most of the minigames were flawed in some kind of painful way that really drained the map of its sense of quality. The lack of polish is a serious problem with Partycraft since it not only affects the feel of the map, but it also degrades the gameplay value.
Hiding behind trees is just about the most interesting thing you can do in this minigame.
While I’m on the topic of the game’s faults, I would like to make a special mention to the lack of any kind of triggered camera control for some of the minigames. While the micro battle and ghost wars minigames don’t need anything for the camera, many of the other minigames would benefit from camera control. In fact, I expected camera control on the hellion race, but instead was forced to madly scroll the screen around the track so I wouldn’t fly off into some unknown object that I can’t see. It would be a large improvement to have the camera clamped to the hellion, and for the camera to be clamped to your unit in the mothership-following challenge, or the moving siege tank maze challenge, etc. Related to the camera is the fact that the minimap is always zoomed entirely out. It’s standard convention for a minigame to restrict the camera bounds to the borders of the minigame’s space. Immersion is greatly improved this way and it actually makes the minimap be a valuable tool rather than a useless, wasted space on the interface where everything going on is too small to see.
The micro battle (pictured) is probably the only minigame where the minimap is worth anything.
There are some other polish issues, such as the Infestation Dodge minigame where the unit you’re trying to dodge is not very visible or contrasting. Why not change the terrain texture to dirt and have banelings spawn/unburrow instead? The players are more likely to run from a baneling out of instinct, plus the players will be able to see them a lot better. Also, thematically, infested terrans popping out of glowing red lights is not exactly logical. It’s truly something that will throw new players for a loop and cause them to die on their first try without really being given a chance to win, simply because nothing about the minigame makes any sense. Similar to this is the fact that almost all of the terrain in Partycraft is grass, trees, and rocky cliffs. That’s just about it for all but three minigames: grass, trees, and rocky cliffs. There’s no variation, no thematic shifts, no interesting terrain layouts or good use of doodads, and absolutely nothing memorable about it. Simplistic terrain is tolerable if it at least makes sense, but a solid patch of green across the whole map is not desirable in the least. The terrain isn’t strictly bad, per se, but it’s a significant issue that hurts the flavor score considerably.
This green grass and tree-filled ring of granite cliffs really gives me the impression of a cancerous, disfiguring zerg infestation.
A few other gripes I have with Partycraft include the fact that there are either no audio cues for a change of minigame, the start of a challenge, the beginning of the game, or the end of the game/victory announcement, or some of them are there but faded and forgotten pretty much immediately. Also, the message that a player has finished the challenge, being an important message that can incite adrenaline in a player trying to finish 2nd or 3rd instead of 5th or 6th, should be posted toward the bottom of the screen, roughly at the same level as the chat, so that it can be easily visible. Instead, it is posted way at the top left of the screen, with no other visual or auditory cue. In other words, unless you want to keep your eyes away from the action at all times by starting at some forgotten corner of the screen to keep up with the winners, you’ll be left in the dark with regards to the winners of each challenge. For a minigame map, this is a huge problem because it gives the players a detachment from the leaderboard and progression of the score, since it might as well be a random pick of winners if you don’t see the successes or failures of each player in real-time.
I’ve been hammering on this map pretty hard, so I’ll take the time to give it the credit it deserves. Partycraft is actually pretty fun, at least the first few times you play it. While many of the minigames are of questionable quality and value, a few of them are really fun. An example of this is the moving maze of siege tanks; it gets your adrenaline pumping, it’s unique, it requires skill, and can be spun-off any number of times with different styles and challenges – a perfect addition to a party game. Really, why can’t more of the minigames be fun and interesting like the moving maze minigame?
Despite the quality of most of the minigames, it’s actually pretty fun the first time through. It would be more fun if it actually had some more interesting challenges and was generally a better map. Also, Partycraft could use some more minigames, since you’ll essentially play all of them after 3 games, at the most. In general, this map has a lot of potential, but I think that potential is being badly drained by the map’s faults. It’s fun, at least for a while, but it is generally not a quality map. Fun isn’t everything, as far as a map goes. For this reason, the overall score of Partycraft is...
RATING:
Copper: This map is faulty, mediocre in quality, or just unremarkable.
That only works if the water has some sort of perfect circular, rectangular, etc. shape. Unless you want to spend days just making the regions, you won't be able to get an accurate entry point without a height check. Plus, having a wading effect is not really possible using your method.
No, you've got to do this stuff manually. Yeah, it's annoying.
<DarkRevenant> mainly it involves putting all of the water squares of the whole map in a region
<DarkRevenant> having a 0.25s timer or something
<DarkRevenant> check every unit inside that region
<DarkRevenant> for if it's under a certain height level
<DarkRevenant> thus, if its under that height level, it must be in water
<DarkRevenant> you can also get various depths this way
<DarkRevenant> then applying a behavior to that unit that either slows it down or attaches some kind of visual effect to it
<DarkRevenant> the worst part is
<DarkRevenant> to do an actual wading effect
<DarkRevenant> you need to literally track the position of every unit to see if it moved
<DarkRevenant> and then create an effect at the level of the water on every tick that it moves
<DarkRevenant> because a unit won't have an attachment point that's always at water level
<DarkRevenant> you'll have to create the effect and use a little bit of math to set its height
<DarkRevenant> in other words its an expensive system that takes a lot of effort to do
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0
All right, I've got five done already!
Golem Wars Classic
0
I had to wait a day after playing this one so I could collect my thoughts. So, yeah.
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.
Golem Wars Classic by Saeris
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (C)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (C+)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (A-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (B)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (B-)
Replayability - [1]
Failures
Massive Lag - [-]
Missing Combos - [-]
Simple Strategies - [- -]
Bonuses
Artificial Intelligence - [+ +]
Many Units/Combos - [+ +]
Review:
I could make a couple introductory paragraphs to give some extra explanation of the gameplay of Golem Wars Classic, but I feel that this screenshot sums the whole thing up pretty accurately:
Mobs. Lots of mobs.
Each of the five players endlessly spawns their choice of zealots, marines, or zerglings. Each path has two upgraded forms that are unlocked after a certain number of kills for that player, but all three paths are upgraded simultaneously and the players can switch between them at will. Allowing this is a fairly risky move for a game developer because, with a spawn rate as high as it is in Golem Wars Classic, the players could instantly adjust their strategy to counter whatever the enemy throws at them. This inherently limits the strategic flow of the map because a winning strategy through unit choice will be very short-lived. In this case, stagnation and stalemate will dominate the map.
However, Golem Wars Classic doesn’t even get that far: even though the players can instantly switch their units, there is no reason for them to even want to. Sure, each path has different stats, such as life and DPS, but the huge problem is that all of the units are, in mass numbers, almost exactly the same. And mass numbers of these units are all you will ever see in this game. Even the zealots vs. marines matchup, for example, is basically no different than zealots vs. zerglings because of the zealots’ charge ability. Worse still, the upgraded forms of the base units are even more alike and bland, and are all ranged. There isn’t even a rock-paper-scissors element going on; just pick your flavor and send mass amounts of it at the enemy. This boils down to a nearly complete loss of unit strategy; formations and ganging up on a single target are just about the only things you can do with your mobs. Essentially, this is a huge let-down and causes the game to become fairly boring as time goes on.
This is just about the only type of battle you’ll see after the 5-minute mark: a reenactment of the Battle of Verdun. It’s fitting that those siege tanks in the bottom-left corner are doing most of the damage to my troops.
The best opportunity to kill off a player is right when you reach the next tier of mobs while your opponent is still trying to reach it. A mass attack with your higher-tier units will decimate his inferior technology because each tier is amazingly strong compared to the previous set. There’s no real counter to a higher-tier force other than just trying to get your own high-tier units as soon as possible, since focus-firing is useless when the game spawns absurd amounts of units for you to deal with.
If you don’t gang up on a single player or take advantage of the tech gap, the other main way of achieving victory is using some sort of strategy involving the super golems (the timed-life bonus spawns you get after every tier-up) or combo golems. Siege tanks seem to work the best because they alone deal splash damage, which is unbelievably powerful in a game involving mass amounts of crowded units. In fact, just about every other non-cloaking 4-piece combo golem is absolutely useless after tier 1. Even if the 6-10-piece combo golems were added in, I doubt the players would be able to field enough of them to make much of a difference in combat. The end result of this is a lack of any viable strategies, save for the very few I have mentioned. For obvious reasons, this makes the gameplay become quite bland, ultimately causing the map’s entertainment value to shrivel away.
The line of artillery is an effective strategy, unlike the use of most of the other 4c golems.
On the plus side, there are several dozen 4-piece combos and 9 super-golem spawn groups (2-3 different units per group), which adds up to quite a deal of unit variety. Many of the combo golems have different abilities and, of course, wildly different stats from the base units, which is a nice bonus. The problem is that most of the combo units are fairly useless. There are so many available, but it’s not possible to spawn many of them. Also, the basic mobs are, for all intents and purposes, the same after tier 2. Because of this, there is very little reason to get combo golems of any type except for siege tanks and whichever units can kill siege tanks the most quickly. On the plus side, the combo golems have a ridiculous amount of hit points, but they also generally do not have that much killing potential (except for the siege tank because it has splash damage). As a result, the combo units are somehow boring despite (or possibly, because of) the fact that there are so many of them. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of the game, because at this point the combo units were the last hope for Golem Wars Classic to be interesting to play.
On an unrelated note, this map actually does have a computer AI; any computer slots will “think” and actively play against you, mass attack, spawn combos (at least, I think they do…), etc. However, they are easily defeated by even first-time players. Still, having AI support is a very nice inclusion to any map, even if their skill level is pretty basic.
Why does this whole terrain setup even exist when I can just click one of the command card buttons instead? Also, mass-attacking is often pointless when you can select 255 units at once, though it does help with the lag, a bit.
There are a few miscellaneous problems in Golem Wars Classic, the most notable of which is the massive amounts of units being generated at all times. My computer can smoothly run the game at all-ultra settings, but this map brought my system to a crawl after four players each had amassed 200-300 units and battled with them. For instance, the pathfinding algorithm used by StarCraft 2 is truly excellent but is very demanding, as a thousand moving and attacking units engaged at once will render the game nearly unplayable if your CPU currently costs less than $250-$300 USD. Even just having the units in the game at all (even if they are unmoving) will lower framerates after some time. Another annoying issue is that some golem part combinations don’t actually make anything. Some of the combos are missing, so when you throw together some random combination to see what you get (out of boredom or something), you could simply get nothing.
This map has an idyllic goal to live up to, but it’s blurred and warped by poor execution.
To summarize this whole review: Golem Wars Classic doesn’t need a content patch; it needs a gameplay overhaul. On paper, this map seems to be a sure hit and a wonderful map. In practice, it just falls flat on its face with gameplay which I would describe as somewhat repetitive and fairly boring. The map was interesting at first, but then it all just melted away into blandness. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the gameplay dynamics of this map are practically nonexistent. Even a rock-paper-scissors hard-counter kind of gameplay mechanic with the base units would be a huge improvement. Redoing the combo units to make them all useful would be nice, but they should also be trimmed down in number. I’m done typing about this map; Golem Wars Classic at least has some good production values, but it needs some major improvement in the areas that count the most.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
0
The terrain isn't perfect, but it gets the job done for the most part. It's a million times better than the previous maps I reviewed, so I guess I'm biased a bit.
0
@BuuGhost: Go @tigerija: Go @DarkShape80: Go
Losing some recognizance is a price I'm willing to pay for various reasons:
1. The overall score does not follow a #/# formula, so having #/# for the sub-scores would be misleading.
2. It fits my style more, in my opinion, to have a B- or C+ instead of a 3.5/5 or whatever. In my scoring method, + and - makes not very much of a difference, while the letter grade itself has much more of an impact. I don't get that kind of distinction with a #/# method.
3. I feel that ideas describe the quality of the game a lot more effectively than mere numbers. Letter grades are more ambiguous in general, so I put them there for the reader to have a general idea of what the game's strong and weak areas are, but the actual opinion and review is the large written portion. I try to divert attention away from the technical scores so that my text will be more meaningful.
4. Some of you are European so I can understand why letter grades might be less recognizable (Germany, for instance, uses a 0-5 system (or does it go down to 6?) in school rather than an A-F system). However, many countries use A-F grades in their school and university systems. Generally, C is considered average while F is a complete failure. B is good, D is bad, and A is great. I add in E and S for good measure; E is a partial failure and S is truly exemplary.
0
@tigerija: Go
I am specifically avoiding a number rating. Also, the text below the rating serves as the Final Note.
0
Finished the fourth review... I'll probably take a break.
Haunted Temple
0
Man, I'm on a roll.
I was requested to include this on my future reviews:
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.
Haunted Temple by Bounty_98
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (B-)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (C+)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (D+)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (B+)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (A)
Replayability - [2+]
Failures
Ghost Bugs - [-]
Missing Instruction - [-]
Bonuses
Cool Terrain - [+ +]
Music - [+]
Tense - [+]
Review:
Foreword: Bounty_98 has come forward to me about some future plans for Haunted Temple that address several of the issues I will be bringing up. However, this review shall not change because he requested the review before putting said improvements into the map. I might give it a new score later on, if I feel like it, but we’re cool with a review as-is.
Everyone has their O face on. I can see why: that backdrop is great!
Haunted Temple is based off of a simple gameplay mechanic: hide from the killer. If you are the killer, you need to go around and check all of the unlikely hiding spots and secret areas for hidden, crouching, hapless civilians to ruthlessly murder. The killer can spawn seekers to help look for players, but searching every nook and cranny is the fool-proof method. On the other hand, if you are a civilian, hiding is just about all you do in this game. The killer is cloaked and is out for your blood. If you are found, someone is going to die. As such, you can’t run, but you can hide.
For obvious reasons, hiding is essentially the cornerstone of this map. It’s got to be meaningful and fun to hide from an unstoppable menace, so the killer has to be frightening and the environment must be interesting and immersive. I’ll talk about the environment first: Wow. Haunted Temple is a huge break from maps like Nexus Wars when it comes to the terrain. The atmosphere is foggy and thick, the lighting is stark and dramatic, and there are plenty of shadows to hide in. Better yet, the doodad usage is quite good, with a variety of mismatched environments ranging from a shopping plaza, to a freaky lab, to some kind of mining operation, to a whole bunch of other micro-environments that keep the variety and flavor of the map at a classy high level.
As far as the gameplay goes, the wide range of environments is essential for getting the players to realize where they are in the game. The first couple times, it will be confusing to get around the map, especially because the camera uses a third person perspective, but the map generally does well with having a number of landmarks that allow navigation. The fog and a few smatterings of bare areas and dead-ends disrupt the flow somewhat, but these are minor gripes that shouldn’t be high on the priority list for Haunted Temple.
Imported music is also present in Haunted Temple. It actually offers a lot of flavor and variety to the map, especially since the music apparently changes based on proximity to the killer. There are some stinger themes that play for important events, such as the death of a player, which also add a great deal to the environment. More importantly, however, it increases tension; music has a psychological effect on the player that can be manipulated to amplify various emotions – in this case, unease – for the betterment of the game environment. Since the theme of the map is hiding, tension directly increases the thrill of the game. After all, at any moment you could be- AAAUGH AHH GRAH-. … …
What a view! Also, you can’t see it in this picture, but those marine statues are pissing waterfalls.
I find it appropriate to abruptly shift the tone of this review at this point. I’ll start with the basics: hiding. For a map that is all about running from the killer and hiding like a sissy, Haunted Temple manages to be pretty damn fun for what it is. The problem is it could be so much more.
Hiding is an inherently passive gameplay mechanic. Running away and throwing yourself behind an object can only get the game so far before it needs some spicing up. As it stands, the civilians cannot do anything except walk, sprint, and crouch. The game causes the players to inexorably lose interest over time because there are very few actions that can be taken. The most direct approach to this is to simply add an action button for the civilians to interact with the environment and do various things. Operate lights, change the fog, flood an area, grab a crowbar, open a door, etc. There are so many possibilities that would make this map truly wonderful through some clever application of player and author ingenuity. The tactical possibilities become endless; instead of just hiding, a player could be able to actually work against the killer. The player doesn’t even need to be able to attack; just slowing the killer down or confusing it would be a way for players to constantly think of new ways to mess with people and survive. Replayability thus increases exponentially and the game becomes a lot more interesting. By filling the game with various environmental gimmicks, Haunted Temple’s issue of being essentially barren of content beyond the volume of terrain and number of hiding spots disappears almost entirely.
Right now, Haunted Temple is remarkably empty. All of the civilians are the same as far as the gameplay goes and the killer is only marginally better equipped. This not only makes the game less interesting, it also limits the effective actions that a player is able to carry out. In other words, variety is diminished and the gameplay suffers accordingly.
When I’m dead, I can climb walls and exit the map. I get a nice view, though. Also, the ghosts have health bars, which is really annoying.
Sometimes I feel that the player is not given enough information. We learn the controls and the goal of the map, but we are not informed of some basic information like what the killer looks like or how quickly she will kill you. The players are also left uninformed of the existence of seekers until… too late. Knowing what to look for is extremely important. My first time, I didn’t know what the killer looked like, so I was freaked out at the ripples that the ghost unit made. I only caught a short glimpse of the Kerrigan model’s outline before running like mad and eventually exploding in blood.
On a related note, I feel it needs to be said that the killer needs to be a more visible threat. It’s very heart-pumping and dramatic to be running from some kind of dark beast that tears you to pieces when it catches you. Unfortunately for Haunted Temple, it’s not very frightening or interesting when you can’t even see the killer as it’s chasing you. All you hear is the weaksauce attack sound being spammed and eventually you explode in a shower of blood when the killer’s wavy outline runs through you while attacking. It’s almost like an intangible evil detached from the players. The killer should be much more visible to the player it’s giving chase to, perhaps spewing evil sounds of impending doom to raise the player’s blood pressure. In short, the distorted-air look of the cloaking effect isn’t frightening. Just about anything else would be better; uncloaking in short proximity to a player, for instance, would help. If you want the killer to remain invisible, you could make it suspenseful and truly frightening by making the killer completely invisible, the only indication of presence would be marked by a general dimming of the lights and a large, gradient shadow surrounding its presence. The player wouldn’t know if he was next or was going to be passed by; it’s the kind of encounter that lets the player count their heartbeats. A scream, perhaps, when the player dies would be cool, too.
In general, Haunted Temple is a map that’s got a solid foundation and competent direction, but needs some improvements, especially some more real substance to keep it going. I’d love to see this map improve and evolve to something greater as time goes on.
RATING:
Silver: This map is not perfect, but is entertaining and of good quality.
0
That very fact is why the thread is still open. Actually, it* was fairly entertaining.
*THE POST; haven't played the map0
Image removed due to an invalid URL: http:/www.thecouncilofmages.com/sc2/trollface.gif
0
I got a request to review Haunted Temple via PM, so I'll give it a whirl. Also, YiffMaster's review of Ultimate Tank Defense does a pretty good job of reviewing the map. In fact, it's good enough that I feel my own review would be too redundant, so I'll be skipping the UTD review.
At some point, after I've done more reviews, I can go back and give scores (but not full reviews) to some of the maps that I have decided against reviewing.
0
Alright, another one.
Partycraft
0
I'm pushing out a review ahead of schedule because I can.
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.
Partycraft by OCDrummer47
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (B+)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (C-)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (C-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (D+)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (C)
Replayability - [2-]
Failures
Awkward Camera - [- -]
Bad Text Placement - [-]
Insufficient Sound Cues - [-]
No Intro/Outro - [-]
Bonuses
Some of the Minigames - [+ +]
Review:
Partycraft was recently featured on the North American Battle.net server, so I decided to check it out. I was expecting a more-or-less unknown gem of a map, or at least something higher than the quality of Nexus Wars and Income Wars. I joined up, got comfy, and waited for the 23-second countdown timer to tick to 0. Wait, what? 23 seconds, not 30? I don’t know. Anyway, the loading screen outlined the map: like Uther Party of WarCraft III, the group plays eight random minigames from a pool of available games and the winner of the game is decided by each player’s performance in the various minigames. It’s a setup that got the excellent Uther Party map a great deal of fame back in the day, so I looked forward to what this new iteration would offer.
The map finished loading, and I was suddenly greeted by the first minigame. So much for an intro sequence... This map throws you directly into the first minigame, throws some text up at the top of the screen with the basic instructions on how to get through the challenge, and gives the players around 8 seconds to wait before starting. In this case, I got the hellion race challenge. Like the instructions said, it’s a good idea to avoid the stunning eggs and hit the speed boosts. However, the instructions didn’t say that the pathing system will kill you! After hitting the speed boost, my Hellion swerved around in a circle and went nowhere because I didn’t give it a move order fast or well enough, or something. Also, when multiple racers are in the same part of the track, the pathing system will cause you to go pretty much exactly where you don’t want to. Often, this means that you will grind to a halt or ram into a stun egg. The hellion race is more about luck than anything else, I’m afraid.
I’m on a highway to hell.
The hellion race (in-game it’s called “Drummer Derby” for a reason that I can’t fathom) is basically a good example for most of the minigames in Partycraft. Most of them are interesting the first time around, mainly because it’s something new. However, the execution is really lacking. While I was doing my second run of the map, I noticed that most of the minigames got old very quickly. Some of them are just uninspired and boring after the first time, like the Ghost Wars minigame. It’s just not handled well; the fact that the ghost’s only abilities are EMP and Snipe simply causes it to grind into a matter of luck and hotkey-spamming unless you get hit by an EMP, in which case you basically can’t do anything fun. The micro battle with the omegalisk, ghost, and archon was also snore-worthy. Actually, looking back, most of the minigames were flawed in some kind of painful way that really drained the map of its sense of quality. The lack of polish is a serious problem with Partycraft since it not only affects the feel of the map, but it also degrades the gameplay value.
Hiding behind trees is just about the most interesting thing you can do in this minigame.
While I’m on the topic of the game’s faults, I would like to make a special mention to the lack of any kind of triggered camera control for some of the minigames. While the micro battle and ghost wars minigames don’t need anything for the camera, many of the other minigames would benefit from camera control. In fact, I expected camera control on the hellion race, but instead was forced to madly scroll the screen around the track so I wouldn’t fly off into some unknown object that I can’t see. It would be a large improvement to have the camera clamped to the hellion, and for the camera to be clamped to your unit in the mothership-following challenge, or the moving siege tank maze challenge, etc. Related to the camera is the fact that the minimap is always zoomed entirely out. It’s standard convention for a minigame to restrict the camera bounds to the borders of the minigame’s space. Immersion is greatly improved this way and it actually makes the minimap be a valuable tool rather than a useless, wasted space on the interface where everything going on is too small to see.
The micro battle (pictured) is probably the only minigame where the minimap is worth anything.
There are some other polish issues, such as the Infestation Dodge minigame where the unit you’re trying to dodge is not very visible or contrasting. Why not change the terrain texture to dirt and have banelings spawn/unburrow instead? The players are more likely to run from a baneling out of instinct, plus the players will be able to see them a lot better. Also, thematically, infested terrans popping out of glowing red lights is not exactly logical. It’s truly something that will throw new players for a loop and cause them to die on their first try without really being given a chance to win, simply because nothing about the minigame makes any sense. Similar to this is the fact that almost all of the terrain in Partycraft is grass, trees, and rocky cliffs. That’s just about it for all but three minigames: grass, trees, and rocky cliffs. There’s no variation, no thematic shifts, no interesting terrain layouts or good use of doodads, and absolutely nothing memorable about it. Simplistic terrain is tolerable if it at least makes sense, but a solid patch of green across the whole map is not desirable in the least. The terrain isn’t strictly bad, per se, but it’s a significant issue that hurts the flavor score considerably.
This green grass and tree-filled ring of granite cliffs really gives me the impression of a cancerous, disfiguring zerg infestation.
A few other gripes I have with Partycraft include the fact that there are either no audio cues for a change of minigame, the start of a challenge, the beginning of the game, or the end of the game/victory announcement, or some of them are there but faded and forgotten pretty much immediately. Also, the message that a player has finished the challenge, being an important message that can incite adrenaline in a player trying to finish 2nd or 3rd instead of 5th or 6th, should be posted toward the bottom of the screen, roughly at the same level as the chat, so that it can be easily visible. Instead, it is posted way at the top left of the screen, with no other visual or auditory cue. In other words, unless you want to keep your eyes away from the action at all times by starting at some forgotten corner of the screen to keep up with the winners, you’ll be left in the dark with regards to the winners of each challenge. For a minigame map, this is a huge problem because it gives the players a detachment from the leaderboard and progression of the score, since it might as well be a random pick of winners if you don’t see the successes or failures of each player in real-time.
I’ve been hammering on this map pretty hard, so I’ll take the time to give it the credit it deserves. Partycraft is actually pretty fun, at least the first few times you play it. While many of the minigames are of questionable quality and value, a few of them are really fun. An example of this is the moving maze of siege tanks; it gets your adrenaline pumping, it’s unique, it requires skill, and can be spun-off any number of times with different styles and challenges – a perfect addition to a party game. Really, why can’t more of the minigames be fun and interesting like the moving maze minigame?
Despite the quality of most of the minigames, it’s actually pretty fun the first time through. It would be more fun if it actually had some more interesting challenges and was generally a better map. Also, Partycraft could use some more minigames, since you’ll essentially play all of them after 3 games, at the most. In general, this map has a lot of potential, but I think that potential is being badly drained by the map’s faults. It’s fun, at least for a while, but it is generally not a quality map. Fun isn’t everything, as far as a map goes. For this reason, the overall score of Partycraft is...
RATING:
Copper: This map is faulty, mediocre in quality, or just unremarkable.
0
@freche: Go
That only works if the water has some sort of perfect circular, rectangular, etc. shape. Unless you want to spend days just making the regions, you won't be able to get an accurate entry point without a height check. Plus, having a wading effect is not really possible using your method.
0
No, you've got to do this stuff manually. Yeah, it's annoying.
<DarkRevenant> mainly it involves putting all of the water squares of the whole map in a region
<DarkRevenant> having a 0.25s timer or something
<DarkRevenant> check every unit inside that region
<DarkRevenant> for if it's under a certain height level
<DarkRevenant> thus, if its under that height level, it must be in water
<DarkRevenant> you can also get various depths this way
<DarkRevenant> then applying a behavior to that unit that either slows it down or attaches some kind of visual effect to it
<DarkRevenant> the worst part is
<DarkRevenant> to do an actual wading effect
<DarkRevenant> you need to literally track the position of every unit to see if it moved
<DarkRevenant> and then create an effect at the level of the water on every tick that it moves
<DarkRevenant> because a unit won't have an attachment point that's always at water level
<DarkRevenant> you'll have to create the effect and use a little bit of math to set its height
<DarkRevenant> in other words its an expensive system that takes a lot of effort to do
0
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2. The author of the map and the Battle.net title of the map (if any) must be present and clearly visible in the original post or the thread title.
3. A score does not need to be given, but a general opinion of the map must be present in some form.
4. Insulting the author of the map is prohibited unless the insult is harmless and used for comedic value.
4.a. No insult will ever be condoned if the map author is offended or in any way discouraged from map-making by it.
Punishments
Breaking any of the laws in Section III. are considered minor infractions. In most cases, an offending review thread will be left open so that the reviewer may fix any issues with it. However, depending on severity, III.4.a may cause a major infraction. For the corresponding penalties, see Section I. and Section II.
Exceptions
Existing moderators and administrators are exempt from the rules stated in this book. Anyone caught impersonating a moderator or administrator in order to try escaping the law will be hanged.