Ive set it free - once we get a high enough N with organic reviews i will respond to this sensibly. There is a spectrum- I stand by my opinion that 2.5 stars is not consistent with the content of his own review. "Top notch" for the animation "Lovingly" "Beautiful" - and then 2.5 stars ? you can belive its honest fine - i think its not. I do know people who wont like it- of course you have that- but im looking at all the feedback in totality and some Behind the scenes issues you are not privy to- Lets let the market see who is right or wrong - setting it free should garner a good N and hopefully enough reviews.
A controversial review is just as good as a good review I think. It's gonna stir up commotion and with it, some publicity.
I can't say I'm surprised by the review. I don't agree with it, but it's more or less what I'd expected. I think the big demerit was that Shaun thought the controls were bad and I think movement is meant to be the crown jewel of what this game offers. I have 26,222 pearls at the moment, which puts me at #2 on gamecenter and I'll probably proceed to put myself back up to #1 after I'm finished making this post, although several people with considerably more have appeared and then disappeared of the list; maybe I can't see everyone for some reason. While I'm probably not one of the best players, there are very few people who have spent as much time as I have with this game. With that in mind, I have to assume the average player "isn't getting" the controls considering that it takes me awhile, each time I sit down with this game, to get un-rusty at playing it myself. On a quasi-related note, I really get tired of hearing that a review is just someone's opinion or worse that that is what it SHOULD be. Certainly, opinion is a big part of a review, but a good review should be written while the writer holds the question in his/her mind: "Is this review going to be useful for the largest amount of people possible?" That, in itself, is subject to opinion of course. I think the advent of the internet has falsely instilled people, mostly younger people, that every opinion is valid. Before people could quickly publish whatever they wanted, the path for expressing opinions involved more proving grounds before such opinions became widely available. Something I would like to see, and I think it's a natural evolution of contemporary media, is more reviews of reviews. Because reviewers aren't subject to enough scrutiny to serve as a barrier to being given the soapbox from which to preach their own brand, others should be encouraged to kick out that soapbox from under them. That said, I don't really have Shaun in mind for the above tangent and perhaps his "opinion" on this game is more relevant to more people than mine is.
I dont feel the score is consistent with his own review- the review feels sincere, bit not the final score. Im not saying it deserves 4 or 5 stars- what Im saying is 2.5 is flat out BS and you know it. But again- i want the market to settle how close or far the review is to any objective reality.
Smegly, i agree with you about the review. For me a review as it should be, in its essence, would be as you say: present the game or product with the scope of people finding it useful. However, Eli has stated time and again about reviewers here on TA, that this is nothing more but their opinion. Thus, you can only find that you agree or disagree with the reviewer, because that's what this is: a person giving his opinion, and opinions are not facts; Everyone has his own, and everyone should. This is why i said each reviewer should have a link to games he has rated, so we can understand the gaming preferences behind the opinion.
Like I said, I don't agree with the review. However, he did feel that the controls were very poor. For some games, that's more of a big deal than in others and here, I think it's a big deal. _I_ don't think the controls are poor, but I think it's consistent, for someone who considers the controls to be poor, to have rated the game the way he did.
Again, I'm not talking about Shaun's reviews or THIS one in particular. I'm not on board for this review, but I think he's a good reviewer in general and not what I'm about to talk about. I do have a beef with how defensive people are about this "sanctity of opinion" thing on the internet. People need to stop whining when they or someone in their stable writes a lousy review and they get flak for it. Not only do they have to take this flak, others should be encouraged to dish it out. There's not enough of a vetting process for this not to be the case. Ideally, a reviewer should be able to answer these questions in the affirmative: Can you write a positive review for a game you dislike? Can you write a negative review for a game you like? Can you write a review on the basis of how well a developer achieved the goals in a game they set out to achieve rather than your subjective goals you think the game should have striven for? Are you even capable of figuring out what those goals might have been? I've seen instances where two reviewers gave the same game negative reviews almost entirely on the basis of difficulty, one for being too easy and the other for being too hard. Clearly someone is wrong, maybe both of them, and there is some factor, call it normalcy, that undermines this notion of every opinion being sacred. There are a number of objective truths that reviewers systematically ignore and that's where they fail in their objectives.
What you write here is completely true - and I would argue that it wholly applies to the review we are discussing. Read every comment on the TA thread - every positive and every negative. You look at this experience in totality - and all the feedback. Think about this - they don't touch us for months - prior to releasing - I sent them tens of exclusive videos. Nothing. Not a single email back. We were covered in the Washington freaking post. National Geographic - twice. I sent them promo codes, video after video. No love. Ever. Not a peep. The acted as if we didn't exist even though the pre-release thread was very large. They claim (their own words) they don't review things they don't like. Fine - I get it. Then don't review it. So finally, 4 months later - we get a review - and low and behold its 2.5 stars. Think about how LOW that is - and think about the experience. The magic. The animation. Everything. The dolphin movement that dolphin trainers told us reveals things they hadn't noticed before. There is ALOT to this game that either the reviewer can't see, or is motivated by other forces - to totally sum it up as 2.5 stars. Completely far off from everything we are looking at in terms of feedback. We DO value the negative - thats what drives the updates and change to make it a better experience. If the animation was good enough to elicit an unsolicited response from a lead animator at PIXAR - who described it as "mesmerizing" - then I'm sorry - 2.5 stars is entering a territory of something ... fishy.
and by the way - I am preparing a post that will reveal some of our google analytics. You want proof that people are engaged with this experience - I will give it to you in cold, hard, fact. Compare it to industry averages - and lets see what is objective vs. political.
I bought the game a few days ago after reading through this whole thread. I'm a big fan of dev involvement in the TA forums, and it sounded up my alley. I have a bit of time on my hands after a recent injury, and thought this game was a good candidate for one of my first forum game reviews after having gone on a career-induced hiatus for a while. I ended up not writing the review, because as much as I tried, I couldn't get 'it' - 'it' being the magic and enjoyment so clearly seen by so many on these forums. I figured mine was a minority outlier opinion, and it wouldn't be useful or fair to put a more detailed version of 'it's not bad and probably worth full price for novelty of concept and execution of animations, if nothing else' out there. The game is well made, clearly a product of passion, but I couldn't find the fun or lasting appeal in it - just as I could very easily see that dozens of others at the very least did find that, in spades. The TA reviewer pretty much shares my assessment - including the acknowledgment that the review's stance is not uncontroversial, with a pointer to where other opinions may be found. As has been repeatedly noted in this thread, there was no TA review or acknowledgment for months... I can't help but wonder if TA's situation was like my own, in that no review was posted because it was expected such an article would be tepid and, if it remained true to the reviewers' impressions, would add little to nothing to the existing forum and fan conversation, and could possibly detract from it. Assuming there were repeated calls for an official review in this thread (I only remember the one that led to my purchase), TA may have faced a choice between a just-the-facts review barely above an 'it's out' notice, an honest but not terribly excited review, or continued silence that could be perceived as a slight or snub in light of forum attention and fallouts for an article. That said... There's no doubt that a 2.5 won't help sales if/when folk base purchases on TA review scores. Perhaps an op/Ed review by one of the game's forum fans would not be out of place, given how dramatically divided some informed opinions tend to be?
This is completely fair and appreciated. One will never please everyone - and certainly the ta review could mirror your sentiments which were a minority - but nonetheless there. Im curious - how far "which card" did you get to?
The only thing I'm defending is the internal logic in the review. I don't agree with the overall message in it. I'd said, some pages ago, how I felt about the possibility of TA reviewing this game and what happened when they did was basically what I thought would happen. Specifically, I figured a lot of what makes this whole thing such an impressive project wouldn't factor heavily into how it was interpreted purely on the basis of being a game. This isn't the greatest example, but I wouldn't evaluate a film that was some sort of technological breakthrough on that basis. I'd just evaluate it as a film. That the same film might be praised for other merits elsewhere wouldn't necessarily have much bearing on how I'd review it. If I felt it was using a horrible screenplay, I wouldn't feel any obligation to consider the film saved by something else. Is that directed toward me? I'm a fan of the game.
I've been following this game for a while, and after seeing that subpar score from the official review I decided I should finally try it and see what everyone's either complaining about or loving. Yes, the first impressions of the controls are pretty... Awkward. Not a simple joystick control method, but a more "3d axis ball," in which flicking or swiping rotates the ball towards a direction, and continuous swiping/flicking moves you forward that way. It's honestly really easy to get the hang of, especially if you think about it from a dolphin's point of view (Lol). Besides that though, it's a neat game. The feeling of pulling off a turn-around-and-bite after a tail bolt is awesome, and it keeps me playing to try and perform even crazier stunts.
Ok, let's be practical. The critics go to the controls and the camera zoom. Controls are far from what we'd call "typical", and some love them while others hate them, so: is it reasonable to add an option to zoom out the camera and to choose between original controls and joystick which grants 100% control of the dolphin? On a side note, I fully agree with the part which talks about losing sight of the enemy fish. Can you add indicators on the screen borders giving a hint on where to go? I miss something like a small arrow pointing where to go when the fish isn't in the visible zone.
This is one of the reasons I preferred the older version of the game. A lot of people complained about the camera leaving the dolphin, and I was worried about what would happen if they changed it to stay on him. I liked it the older way better -- because I could get a better sense of my surroundings. Maybe it's just in hindsight -- I can't currently compare the two versions. I agree with some points that Shaun made -- the irony is that he thinks the controls are better now and I liked them better before, without the tail bolt.
Maybe the camera could zoom in and out according to the needs of each momentÂ… I wouldn't mind seeing a Tiny dolphin, as long as I knew where on Earth the other fish were. Btw, got the hook of the controls if I thought of them as a trackball as the old Logitech trackball I had several years ago for my PC. That nailed it.
I honestly can't remember. I played for about two hours over three sessions, the last of which was in front of the tv while also watching Food Network. This was also the most enjoyable, so I'm actually curious to try the discussed standalone endless version. I could see myself playing that occasionally while watching TV with my spouse. (Some of my favourite games have never received my undivided attention.) I should emphasize that even paying full price and not being the biggest fan, I feel I got my money's worth. It was a novel experience and I did enjoy seeing the artistry on display, and all the little touches indicative of a labour of love.
They should! My site is tiny compared to TA, but it felt so freeing when I decided to scrap the rating system. Shaun's review is informative -- let people make the decision based on what he wrote, not just ignore the whole review (and game with it) because of the 2.5 stars.
