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[Janus]

What, don't they know that DF is Beyond Quality?

[Sowelu]

Disagree.  DF is considerably less playable than most commercial games.  It is, however, worth it.  Also, from the reviewer's POV, it doesn't matter if the game is still in development...what's available now is all that matters.

I had no problem with what they said about DF, myself.

[Zai]

What, don't they know that DF is Beyond Quality?

Win. Would read again.

[bombcar]

Dwarf Fortress is
Beyond Quality™

Says so right on the page.

[G-Flex]

Disagree.  DF is considerably less playable than most commercial games.  It is, however, worth it.  Also, from the reviewer's POV, it doesn't matter if the game is still in development

Of course it matters. That's like saying that, to a food reviewer, it doesn't matter that the bread is only half-baked when he eats it.

The point here is that judging it as if it's a finished product is silly. If it were finished, that sort of review would be fine, but since it's far from it, it's naive to do so, considering that you can generally assume a lot of the things about the game are going to improve or change.

Granted, there's nothing wrong with reviewing the game as-is. It's just that you give people the wrong impression when you don't mention "oh, by the way, it's hardly even close to being finished." If you mention THAT, it puts more context to it and lets people know that they might want to keep their eye on it a bit more.

[Tormy]

"We don’t claim that Dwarf Fortress is a particularly excellent game and there are countless other games that surpass it in quality..."

Huh...actually I don't agree with this sentence. DF's gameplay quality is already on epic level [diversity, complexity, little details etc...], even if it's just an alpha. This talks for itself I guess.

Depth maybe, quality not so much. While it does have a massive amount of diversity and complexity it also has its lack of polish and frustrating glitches/inconsistencies. For example Portal was a quality product, not the deepest or longest game, but it oozed quality. Now I'm not saying I'd have it any other way (I've probably spent to long reading the "What turns you off about DF thread) but Dwarf Fortress intentionally scarifices quality/polish for complexity/depth due to its limited development resources.

Okay the gameplay is not polished of course, because it's an alpha version. You are right, that it's lowering the overall quality of the game, but still:
"...there are countless other games that surpass it in quality." -> This is absolutely wrong imo. Countless games? What?   
It's a matter of subjective opinion of course, but this sentence is FUBAR to be honest.

[Sordid]

Yeah, true. "Superior in quality"? What exactly is this "quality"? Graphics? Well DF sucks in that regard. Depth, complexity, and detail? I'd be hard pressed to find a game comparable to DF in those respects. But since the purpose of a game is to entertain, we could define a game's quality as its ability to do that, in other words how much fun a game is. And clearly that is totally subjective.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Most of the time quality is, you know, quality. Polish. Usability. Friendliness. Think of it as of a baseball bat made with nothing but an axe. You can still play and have fun, but the occasional splinters will ruin everything.

[Sordid]

Ah but it all comes down to what exactly you expect. "Quality" isn't really a property in and of itself, a quality what? Yes, what you described wouldn't be a very good baseball bat, but it would be a perfectly servicable rough piece of wood, which can have any number of uses. And even the best baseball bat on the planet won't do you any good if you want to play tennis. I find that DF does what it sets out to do extremely well. Could it do it even better? Sure. Are there games that do it better than DF? No, because there are no games that do what DF does.

[vanarbulax]

To me quality is how well a game accomplishes its goals without annoyances and maintains a constant level of pace and interest (as said before polish, usability). Its pretty obvious that building walls, managing squads, even assigning jobs severely lacks polish/usability as it should this "early" in development. I'm not saying that dwarf fortress isn't engaging, or full of content and promise but it isn't made to a high quality (yet), if you remove the fact it's in an alpha (which is what the reviewer is doing when they compare it to other games).

To use another dubious metaphor and reference Portal again: Portal is full of quality, its a funky livable apartment which suits the basic living needs and is great when you just want a hassle free space. Dwarf fortress on the other hand is a fortress, nay a citadel under construction, it's large, it's confusing, it's hard to navigate and only a few of the rooms are actually habitable but its sheer scope and quirkiness/sense of discovery will make a dedicate few ignore its rough walls and lack of paint.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I was about to post some other comparison, but that one is very good. DF is an epic citadel in the making, Portal is a perfect futuresque cubicle with all your everyday needs. It's different kinds of quality, DF is epic by design while Portal is simply innovative, but where Portal allows you to smoothly glide through its intricate interior, DF gives you a pickaxe and makes you tunnel upwards.

[Cheshire Cat]

some of the choices on that list are a bit odd. it was really good to see df on there, though i really think the description could have been better. it does not even try to communicate the craziness df can dish out. or the fact that unlike most of the other titles it is a constantly evolving work in progress that is allways improving.

planescape: torment was a great game. nice to see other people remember it. one of the only games i can ever remember getting emotionally involved in. people remember baldures gate games more but i found them confining and by the book. like marching along a set of stereotypical fantasy rail tracks. ive played nearly everything on there, and torment, system shock 2, lemmings, freespace 2 and the thief are games are the only old ones i would go back to play again.

also, flashpoint was a totally undervalued and very wicked shooter. not at all like anything else ive yet seen. the creators tried very hard to make it feel as real as possible. and you could script your own ww3 battles with the level editor. i can remember flying around in a helicopter watching massive beach landings of US soldiers, with columns of russian tanks streaming from inland towns to the coast being ambushed by little groups of partisans, while hellicopters full of special forces tried to make their way inland and hold key points. not unlike DF it was a real labour of love and was buggy as hell.

as i mentioned, and as people are pointing out, some of those choices are pretty odd, for instance red alert realy has nowhere near the multiplayer appeal of starcraft, or many other RTS games. its got lots of horrible imbalances that as i recall never got patched out, and nobody plays it anymore. and counterstike source? gameplay wise its exactly the same as counterstrike, only when i played it nobody would use it for competitions, as the hitboxes (thats invisible boxes around bits of people that determine when a shot hits or not) allowed a lot of weirdness. at risk of undervaluing the fact that DF fortress is on there, these titles are not exactly the best most revolutionary and genre changing games of all time, more like a list of the writers favourites.