Gamespot review is up

[Phil Ken Sebben]

So you think it is better just to buy a game not reading any reviews, no forum discussion whatsoever?? Maybe preorder it? And then be a complete idiot for standing there with a buggy, broken game you never should have bought in the first place.

Maybe mommy buy your games for you, but if you have to pay for them yourselves, it´s really irritating if game companies feed us with buggy, badly tested software with broken game features. But what do I know? Maybe you love wasting your mom´s money...

Yeah, real smart, trying to turn my own insults against me. Really. Guess they hit you pretty hard, eh?

No, I think it is ok to check reviews before buying something. But to let your entire decision rest on a few posts on a single forum is the trademark of a... *person with reduced reasoning capabilities*.

 

[Spearthrower]

I see a banning coming on.

 

[Danielos]

The game is not broken. Some features are broken in Marathon, but that doesn't make the whole game bad. Personally I think Marathon is a slightly unbalanced speed anyway.
The corporation feature, I don't know. It's hard but whether it was intended as us such remains to be seen.

True, but many Civ-players (including myself) only play with the Marathon game speed. So for us, the game seems broken indeed.

New reviews of BtS is up:

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/938800.asp?q=Civilization

 

[BlackJAC]

New espionage feature doesn't work all that well.

They got this spot on.

Sometimes criticism can be a good thing. What's the point in everyone falling over themselves to congratulate Firaxis on a job well done, when in fact, the game has some major failings?

 

[Öjevind Lång]

They got this spot on.

Sometimes criticism can be a good thing. What's the point in everyone falling over themselves to congratulate Firaxis on a job well done, when in fact, the game has some major failings?

I agree about espionage. It's just plain silly, in my opinion. I haven't got to the corporations yet (I only got my game yesterday afternoon), but if they flubbed that too, that is a huge disappointment for me. I was very excited when I read about the corporations.

 

[marioflag]

I don't think they gave 8,5 because of bugs, if anyone remember how was released civ4 it would be really strange that they gave it 9,4.
I think that the review was written by someone which didn't play the civ4 series because there is no point in giving it a vote which is smaller than for Warlords.

 

[CorSaiR]

i don't care much for the score, but this is no review. i saw civ4 patch changelogs more informative than this gamespots so called review.

mr. Andrew Park didn't get pass the opening menu screen or he did an expansion on the short summary from the back of the box.

 

[IronCrown]

Could someone briefly summarize what exactly about espionage and corporations is broken? I played two games to victory, in one of them my two corps giving me the culture I needed to win, and I didn't notice anything being broken

Or is it 'broken' only on marathon speed?

 

[DreamingOfYou]

Could someone briefly summarize what exactly about espionage and corporations is broken? I played two games to victory, in one of them my two corps giving me the culture I needed to win, and I didn't notice anything being broken

Or is it 'broken' only on marathon speed?

Yes, espionage is only 'broken' on marathon speed, because of the cause unhappiness/unhealthiness problem. Corporations I'm not sure about, but I play on normal or epic, and I also didn't notice anything too broken, and I believe most of the complaints about corporations are coming from marathon players.

 

[Ashbery76]

Could someone briefly summarize what exactly about espionage and corporations is broken? I played two games to victory, in one of them my two corps giving me the culture I needed to win, and I didn't notice anything being broken

Or is it 'broken' only on marathon speed?

It isn't broken.I really don't know what was expected of espionage it pretty much follows the same design of all the empire building games I can think off.

 

[HiroHito]

-24 for 24 turns is broken, no arguing about that, but I'm not too sure about corps, they seem to crush your income after a while tho.

 

[IronCrown]

The -24 thing is just a bug, . .. .. .. . happens. Guess people will just have to try a game on normal speed until the patch is out (even if it means they'll have to go down a difficulty level ). This doesn't break the game, the default speed setting is not named "normal" for no reason.

 

[Joosty]

BTS is not over- or underrated, but warlords never deserved the high marks it got in reviews.

 

[NikNak]

I think an 8.5 score is right on the money for Beyond The Sword. Let's face it, Warlords got a higher score because most reviewers were too generous with it. Warlords probably should've been a 7 at best.

Everyone here is quick to defend or vilify the game because we're on an internet forum dedicated to the Civ series. We can easily pick the review apart because many of us have a zillion hours invested in playing Civ and other strategy games in general. I think the reviewer did a pretty good job of coming at it from the POV that a regular player would.

To people that play Civ IV casually, (or at least not with the fanaticism we do) BTS adds or modifies a lot of things that weren't getting used by them in the first place. Enhanced espionage doesn't mean a heck of a lot to someone that never used spies. Corporations don't change the game for people that didn't pay attention to economics beyond staying in the green. Any of this being "bugged" will go completely unnoticed by people that never play Marathon games.

 

[MarkM]

To be fair, I think most people on this forum have an intimate understanding of the game mechanics and notice the needed changes in BTS. Novices on the other hand... might not notice much difference between vanilla and BTS, other than extra civs and leaders.

Yeah, it's pretty clear this reviewer doesn't actually play civ. It's hilarious how he says espionage is "useless," while the consensus here among hard core is that it's too powerful if anything (with all the well poisoning & everything).

And that "it doesn't change the core game to a great degree" is a kinda bizarre thing to criticize an expansion for!

 

[MarkM]

True, but many Civ-players (including myself) only play with the Marathon game speed. So for us, the game seems broken indeed.

The consensus is that it's pretty clearly a programming error in a single math formula. Have you ever written software? I do it for a living, and you always have bugs for untested combinations of states, even the best unit test scripts in the world don't catch everything. Firaxis has a demonstrated track record that they fix these obvious bugs. STOP using the word "broken" for this, you are being way way WAY overdramatic.

 

[seasnake]

Actually, I'm having a great time with it on Epic. Espionage can get a little annoying, but I figure if you put money into it instead of research you should get just as good a reward. If I'm not spending my money on culture, treasury or research, I want something just as valuable to me. By focusing my espionage points I can have a new strategy for neighbors. Using a spy I sent a city into revolt before I attacked, worked awesome.
Corporations are expensive. I accept that. There are ways around it (state property, anyone?).

^^I agree. The game isn't broken. It ain't perfect, but it's still pretty good and will patch up well the bugs.

 

[Cromat]

8.5 is very high for an expansion for a two (or three?) year old game.

 

[Gaius Octavius]

How high is it compared to that of Warlords?

 

[Danielos]

The consensus is that it's pretty clearly a programming error in a single math formula. Have you ever written software? I do it for a living, and you always have bugs for untested combinations of states, even the best unit test scripts in the world don't catch everything. Firaxis has a demonstrated track record that they fix these obvious bugs. STOP using the word "broken" for this, you are being way way WAY overdramatic.

I can definietly understand how a few bugs could emerge in the code. Programmers are humans too. What I have harder to grasp is that no actual testing of the game in Marathon game speed was done. Otherwise, problems like this would have been detected. This applies to the epic Next War game as well. If they have bothered to play it ONCE they would have noticed that for example the Apostolic Palace is missing (!!).

Overdramatic? Maybe, but to me it seems like sloppy testing...