Personally, RPS has always needed tigher editting. The nut graph is almost always 50% babbling, it's like their calling card. On their writer's applications, there's probably a section that reads "Can you write an introductory paragraph before the jump that tells the reader nothing about the game and which is so obnoxiously silly most won't even read it?" Between Nathan Grayson and Cara Ellison, the caliber of the writing and the observations has gotten much weaker.
I think RPS has become the contrarian review site. Rarely these days do they review something without treating some aspect of it as a big failing. Perhaps they're trying to be critical because they don't want to just gush like fanbois.
The fact Jim's introduction is three sentences and is delivered completely straight tells me they at least think they're taking the WoT seriously.
EditI thought his review was ok. What he's trying to say, ultimately, is that this is a game made in about a year's time. I think that explains most of his comments. To me SRR has always seemed to occupy this weird spot between your average indie game and a AAA game, never quite being either. Looks too nice and has way too many people working on it to really be like other indie titles. But it's rough around the edges and isn't overflowing with development time like a AAA game. (Basically everything mentioned in the review: the quality of the writing being all over the place, rough animations, underwhelming bad guys, underwhelming monsters, levels that not fully realized.)
This is the part of the review that is most telling to me:
There’s another aspect to the overall offering of Shadowrun Returns, though, and it’s clear from the moment you start playing: this is a game that is set up as a toolkit. Sure, they’re shipping a professionally made campaign that probably supports a couple of playthroughs, but what they’re actually shipping is a full-blown campaign editor and the system to easily distribute campaigns.
And this is what I guess has worried me the most, especially when he mentions the Asylum level. When games plan to include an editor, sometimes things are too transparent, too simple because of the need to fit into the boxes the editor creates. Like the aslyum patients all having shotguns. I imagine that's why they were able to crank this game out so fast. When you're not doing novel solutions, scripting or mechanics in gameplay, you can create a lot of content very fast. That doesn't mean it's a bad game. But it's starting to sound like what it means is some of the gameplay is rather generic because there wasn't time to really polish it out.
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Topic: Shadowrun Returns - Let's Kickstart this into space (Read 52457 times)