 |
The March 2004 review of "One Must Fall:Battlegrounds" by Brett Todd exhibits a number of glaring inaccuracies and omissions which lead to the conclusion of insufficient game time. Brett makes several false statements regarding strafing, combos, and tournament, assertions which then affect the rest of his review. To cap it all off, Brett omits coverage of several of the most important and innovative features that Battlegrounds introduces for the fighting genre.
Strafing is not only in the game, it is absolutely fundamental to playing as the entire evade system is based off of the strafing keys. By missing the strafing concept (hold down evade and then use the arrow keys to move in the direction you would like to go), he would then not have seen dodging, jump evades, nor air evades. These are fundamental to being able to play the game, you cannot spend more than 30 minutes in a multiplayer game without seeing another player execute one of these evade moves. Understanding the absolute importance of the evade movements, the development team has taken steps to ensure that information on how to do so and how to use it are made easily available to the player. Attached to this email are a series of screenshots illustrating the placement of information. The first place that this information can be found was in the player manual. Printed directly on the controls page, it is impossible to miss with the"evade" key. Still, some players do not use the manuals that come with games and we have planned for that. The second place that the player is shown how to evade attacks is in the in-game help section available off of the main menu. The concepts of strafing and evades are so important to defense that they have been included in the fighting fundamentals section. Still, some players who have played a number of fighters and consider themselves advanced will not avail themselves of the in-game help. We understand that and have planned for that. The third place that exposes the evades system is in the training session. When first accessing single-player mode, the player is presented with three choices. The North American Open, Training, or Practice. Regardless of whether Mr. Todd feels that he is advanced enough to play the game without help of any kind, this mode should have been accessed in the normal course of an accurate review of the game. It is important to know if the training mode in a fighting game is worthwhile or well-designed.
Even months and months back, when William Harms took a look at OMF: Battlegrounds for PC Gamer, this was untrue. After more than a year and a half of development since that time, we have only worked in MORE moves, MORE combos, MORE robots than were even in the game at that time. The “combo” that he notes specifically in the text is actually not a combo at all, that is a button sequence for a single "special" move. An example of a full OMF:Battlegrounds combo would be something like this one for Gargoyle: B, b+RK, LK, RK, LP, f+RP, f+LK, f+RK, RP, f, f+LP, super talon - 27 hits The combo specified above uses a total of 10 actual attacks to produce a 27 hit combo, completely on the ground and ignoring completely many of the air attacks possible in the game. Over the past several years, players have asked us about how the combo system is set up, hence we explain in the game based help section that combos can be built by linking different attacks together, even suggesting that the player practice building combos in the Practice Arena in the Singleplayer menu. If you want to see some of the combo information which our own players have put together, illustrating a quick look at the combo system in Battlegrounds is, I would advise checking out http://www.angelfire.com/electronic2/mypictur/Combos.txt one of many fansites with combo lists, many of them much more complete (this was simply the first one I grabbed out of the forums). Much work has been put into making the OMF:BG combo system as open ended as possible, allowing players to learn move-links instead of combos and build their own combos on the fly according to the tactical situation.
The impression that Mr. Todd gives in this statement, and indeed in the paragraph following, is that we toss 16 fighters in and you either fight them sequentially or all at once. This is blatantly untrue, the tournaments each unfold using one of the game modes included in the game. All 4 game modes are used in the tournament systems, demolition, Team Demolition, Last Man Standing, and Last Team Standing. Further, there are never more than 8 players in the arena at any given time in single-player. In our most difficult Singleplayer match, in one of the advanced tournaments, 7 AI bots are setup (plus the player) to build a large team match which the player participates in. It sounds as if Mr. Todd read what was written on the box, played a couple moments of the first tournament and constructed assumptions based on that limited exposure rather than exploring and reviewing the tournaments, character quest, and unlockables in the game. The replay mode and replay system is completely ignored, training and help modes were similarly unchecked (and by all evidence, Mr. Todd never took the time to sample them himself, resulting in missing other critical gameplay elements). Mr. Todd never mentions the trophies, character quests, unlockables, or other items which come from the tournament mode, choosing instead to include only the aforementioned inaccurate statement about the game mode. Each of these missed or misrepresented elements are by themselves damaging enough, together they paint a solid picture that leads to the conclusion that Mr. Brett Todd spent little time with the game, ignored applicable training and informational elements, and wrote a review without actually working with the game he was informing your readers on. While we here at Diversions certainly know that there were problems with the game, we would liked to have earned our score based on what is or is not in the game, not on inaccurate conjecture linked with comparison. In the end, PC Gamer is a respected gaming magazine. There can be no excuse for missing all of these fundamental core elements of gameplay, which then colored the rest of Brett Todd's gameplay experience. Gamers and companies expect fair, accurate coverage as the information which PC Gamer provides to gaming fans can result in actual monetary loss and damage to publishers and developers. When PC Gamer and its editors drop the ball so thoroughly as to build an entire review on a series of inaccuracies, a remedy needs to occur. There can be no question that the review in the March 2004 issue was not based on any significant length of gameplay, or that several statements that Mr. Todd made in the course of his views blatantly misrepresented gameplay elements. If you would like to get a good handle on the game from some of your own staff, provide the text of this review to William Harms, the previewer (currently Senior Editor) who played the beta of this game hands-on more than a year ago. See if his experience then tallies with the review that Mr. Todd has written for this month's issue. Further, if you would like another retail box copy of One Must Fall:Battlegrounds to assess these items for yourself, we would be happy to provide one.
|
|
