1UP Review Gives Arma 6.7

[wamingo 1]

On  no account should games be reviewed after patching.

Why on earth not?

Even for consoles is it about to be realised that games needs a patching system - Xbob Live for starters. It's probably simpler, but then everything about a pc is more complicated so this should not come as a suprise to anyone.

I love it when some meathead comes to a forum complaining and then when suggested the patch, they argue "why should I have to use a patch, the game should just work".

People need to start accepting that nothing is surefire. Nothing is perfect, everything breaks and everything needs fixing.

Cars, washing machines, public services and people. And perhaps that last one in particular.

Quote[/b] ]

That they are firmly on the side of the customer, and not lapdogs to the people who pay to advertise with them.

I think you need a reality check.

Reviews like these are totally based on consensus. This guy probably didn't play past the first 2 missions, and most reviewers don't play many games at all. They are most certainly entirely lapdogs to their advertisers and their reviews are based on others which are based on consensus. That's why you will see the same factual errors repeatedly for the same games.

I know every reviewer has his specific audience and this particular reviewer is probably for the max-payne loving crowd, then 6.0 is perhaps not so far from the truth. But when people see a list like on This Page, then they're not seing anything remotely close the truth and they're basing their opinion on utter falseness.

Why do you have to search for an hour to find an unbiased review that can actually tell the truth? For a casual gamer perhaps yes 6.0, but for a sim loving player, which is still a gamer, like it or not, it's a lot closer to 10 (but maybe not quite there).

[Maddmatt 1]

...

I know every reviewer has his specific audience and this particular reviewer is probably for the max-payne loving crowd, ...

What? Look at my avatar, that's Max Payne! I still think this reviewer is an idiot

If you are going to get such a nice job as being a game reviewer, then the least you can do in return is to do it properly.

[d3dsh33p 0]

sounds about right to me

and the fact that this game has come out in america and nobody bought it shows its worth...

hell i cant even convince my friends to buy arma and if i do manage to convince them i end up feeling a bit guilty due to lack of any real player base. 100 players split up into 3 versions of the game online at one time is a real hoot lemme tell ya....

110% BIS

[4 IN 1 0]

wont goin to say much, as the good saying goes "others trash is anothers gold", you hate it, i like it, and i want to make the best out of it, its that simple

[karantan 0]

@Dwarden - I think you and Heatseeker are missing the point what Baff1 in his post is saying. I'll not explain it all over again, just read the baff1's post again if you want, and don't mesure all the world by this site's standards.

[Dwarden 1124]

i read his post 2 times prior and once while posting

like it was said most of reviewers don't care about 'uphold the consumer standards' or 'be on side of customers'

they on their own side ... not Your or mine or someone else ...

and i also said that i don't support release of crappy games with excuse 'we patch it later' ...

i got lot of experience in QA area and definitely it's worth it to release product in Very good or Excelent status

(yet even nearly perfect title still got room for patching)

[4 IN 1 0]

like some interview said: BI end up on their own

[froggyluv 2130]

sounds about right to me

and the fact that this game has come out in america and nobody bought it shows its worth...

hell i cant even convince my friends to buy arma and if i do manage to convince them i end up feeling a bit guilty due to lack of any real player base. 100 players split up into 3 versions of the game online at one time is a real hoot lemme tell ya....

110% BIS

I had the same experience with OFP. My geek squad buddies just couldn't get what I loved about OFP- "It' Boring!", " Dude you need to drop that and check out the graphics on this!"

How many of those guys are still playing 'That' game? Their always chasing the latest and the greatest. Me, I still have vivid memories from the first time I played OFP almost as if they really happened.

[karantan 0]

i read his post 2 times prior and once while posting

like it was said most of reviewers don't care about  'uphold the consumer standards' or 'be on side of customers'

they on their own side ... not Your or mine or someone else ...

and i also said that i don't support release of crappy games with excuse 'we patch it later' ...

i got lot of experience in QA area and definitely it's worth it to release product in Very good or Excelent status

(yet even nearly perfect title still got room for patching)

I agree that most of the reviewers don't care to 'uphold the consumer standards' or to 'be on side of customers' and that they're 'on their own side', but this is not the point here, this is mostly a matter of their own competence.

Was ARMA in Very good or Excelent status? You see, this statement is very questionable and it's vary from 'taste' to 'taste'. IMHO it's worth to release a product when it's READY. And I think you still didn't quite get it on what Baff1 is applying in his post, in my eyes and I think the core sentence in his post is

Quote[/b] ]On  no account should games be reviewed after patching. They should be patched before publishing.

[Baff1 0]

You missed the point , i do not support release of over bugged games

but IF You trying to suggest that NO patching should happen at all

(aka no improvements based on feedback, no additional content etc) ...

today most of games are way complex than in 80s or 90s where patching was NOT possible ...

ofcourse IF developers try use todays chance to patch online as excuse for LAME work, it's bad ...

Feedback driven improvements and additional content should be released in expansion packs, at which point they will receive new reviews.

Each release should be ostensibly bug free and content rich enough to warrant it's price tag.

While the complexity of modern games since the days of the 80's and 90's has exponentially increased and hence too the job of debugging and creating content, the financial rewards from sales of games has also.

Selling a million copies of your product is no longer the reserve of one or two titles.

The games industry is awash with money. Investors are all queuing up for the chance to make money. I know I am.

The returns are far bigger than one or two decades ago and the risks far less. Gaming as an industry has come of age.

If you wish to produce a budget title you are hardly in a position to complain when bad revues relegate your product to budget priced shelves.

It's a competative marketplace.

I understand the publishers reasons for staggering release across continents and allowing themselves the extra time and feedback to improve their products, and I understand the customers desire to see their product supported after it's release.

But a product with high production values has no need of this.

If you want feedback, release a beta.

If your product wants more content, program it in.

If you are incapable of doing this, other people aren't and your product will compare unfavourably to theirs in the market place.

This is the cold harsh reality.

In the end you have to choose your own compromise. BIS clearly didn't want to give away editorial control or intellectual property rights to their work.

Perhaps they chose to sacrifice the production quality of their game in the hope of greater financial rewards. Who knows, it's not for me to second guess their reasons.

Back when OPF released, they were an unkown quantity from a country without well established trade links to the developed markets. Even then little old Codemasters knew a good a thing when they saw one.

Corporations like EA and UBI are desperate to snap up companies like BIS. They didn't want to sell.

As a consequence they have been financially unable to bring high production values to their product once again.

The only difference this time, is that it's a tougher market. There is more competition out there and the publics expectations have risen.

This is no BF2, this is no World Of Warcraft, this is no Command and Conquer 3.

The amount of work that has gone into ArmA's development pales in comparison to titles such as these, that sell for the same asking price.

It won't get reviews on that scale. It doesn't deserve them.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Im not sure why the guy it talking about patches here, the reviewer reviewed Combat ops which is 1.6, and he isnt complaining about bugs either, just about that its too hard for him.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

6.0 seems fair enough to me

[SEAL84 0]

I gave ArmA a 10 on that page just to jack up the user rating a bit more. I'd give it a 7 at the moment but we all know it's going to get much better with time.

[sanctuary 19]

I know every reviewer has his specific audience and this particular reviewer is probably for the max-payne loving crowd, then 6.0 is perhaps not so far from the truth. But when people see a list like on This Page, then they're not seing anything remotely close the truth and they're basing their opinion on utter falseness.

Why do you have to search for an hour to find an unbiased review that can actually tell the truth? For a casual gamer perhaps yes 6.0, but for a sim loving player, which is still a gamer, like it or not, it's a lot closer to 10 (but maybe not quite there).

Interesting,

Now let's see what was the case of the 1st one.

So the same websites that gave utter falseness to ArmA, were giving the same utter falseness for this game too ?

Maybe the reason of such average reviews notes for the 2nd game is that in its time the 1st game had no equivalent, was completely original in every ways, breaking new grounds in its own genre, and so was impressing reviewers.

While the 2nd game is not anymore in the same "it's original and never done before" boat , as it is just an upgrade of the 1st one that is not as complete as people hoped and so will not impress reviewers as much as the 1st game BIS produced.

[OFPDude 0]

who cares if the reviewer liked the game or not, you can't force someone to eat spinach if they don't like it....even though it's good for you

you can stick with your burger and fries whilst I eats me spinach

[Dwarden 1124]

baff1 as you see only one model of game releasing or development it's no point to argue over ...

if someone release product with problems and fix it for free, it's better than just run away with Your money ...

btw. something is flawed in named titles at end of your post

most of WoW reviews was done after first game update was released ...

about BF2 , same story needed 3+ patches to be playable ...

and lol some of bugs were fixed in next title BF2142

CnC3 needed 3 patches to be usable and 4th to be fine 5th is coming ...

[.COMmunist 0]

I was waiting for this game for so long, and when I got, frankly I wasn't too impressed. I would give it a 7 out of 10. The game has good visual qualities, but as far as calling it a realistic simulator... nah, not really. It's about half way there. AI is still "learning" how to play Arma. AI helicopters fly right into certain death instead off attacking from safe distance, AI soldiers will not enter buildings and still have difficulties going arround things. Bridges for AI is a fucking disaster! If vehicles enter the city streets, 50% of a time they manage to get stuck there. Why can't they make wider roads and bridges and make more room between buildings?! There is not much reality in the AI firefights. Most of them are olympic gold medal shooters and have thermal eyes of a Predator (they can spot me hidding in the bushes from 100 meters or sometimes more!. Another problem, at least for me (and probably for 80% of Arma gamers), I don't know all those cool scripts in the editor to make the game super interesting! Why couldn't they make waypoints for paradrop? I know some basics like "removeallweapons this" or "moveincargo", but I wish the developers would simplify these things. I wish they would release a manual or online reference with all the cool stuff in this game. There are many of these online references available, but they all scattered all over the internet at different websites. All of them are written in the language that only advanced OFP players can understand. They are very noob unfriendly. People who make these scripts or find them in the game are great, but they never want to take time and explain it in noob terms (I don't blame them, after all the work they put into it, people just get lazy to write in simplified terms for noobs like me). But that is a developer job! The best thing that BIS did was creating an editor for this game, but they didn't finish the product, they never made a good manual for using the editor. If the Germans or the Japanese made this game, there would of been a great manual for it and it would of been written in the language that ANYONE could understand. So, I think this game is unfinished. They need another year of developing to finish it up. Also the choice of vehicles in this game can hardly qualify for realistic simulator of the modern warfare (even in the shithole like Sahrani! I know that you guys are very biased towards this game, because we loved the OFP so much, but lets be realistic, Arma is not what we were promised!

[Baff1 0]

And yet I run C&C without complaint with no patches. I've never seen a bug.

I would have continued to run BF2 without complaint or patches had people still run 1.0 servers. I held out as long as I reasonably could.

Can't think of any bugs I've seen in that one either.

The need to patch BF2 has been the only annoyance for me personally since I have 5 copies on my LAN, can't see the difference, and each upgrade has been a pain to install and configure.

Over 2/3 of all the games on my computer are unpatched.

As for releasing patches for free....

It's not free. You paid in advance.

They have had the use of your money and you don't have the product you have paid for yet.

If it's going to take six months to patch the game to a level you find acceptable then the game has cost you 30 Quid plus six months intrest on the money.

Free my arse.

Not to mention that instead of getting paid to beta test their software you are giving up your own free time to do it for nothing.

(For some perhaps, this is part of the attraction. The chance to contribute to the development process in some way).

I agree that having bought the game, I would rather they patch it up further than leave it be, but I bought Flashpoint. I'm an old hand with BIS, I knew it would be like this.

That said I don't expect to get heavily into this game for another year.

It would have been worth my time to do what I did with OPF, which is play it round a friends and then buy it for myself a year or two later with all the expansions patches and extra content all finished and included, when it was much cheaper.

It may well be better that they patch the game after release than not, but that doesn't make it good.

It's not that games companies shouldn't be encouraged to patch substandard work after release, it's that they shouldn't be encouraged to sell substandard work in the first place.

Regardless of any patches or reviews WoW, BF2 and C&C3 had vastly higher production values on launch than any BIS product to date including any and all patches.

You didn't pick up invisible weapons in BF2. The Helicopters weren't all but uncontrolable on launch.

There were no obvious and repeated texture bugs.

BF2 infantry don't lag near tree's or houses.

C&C helicopter Ai's don't fly into tree's.

Quite simply they are in a different league. That's why they score 10's and ArmA doesn't.

Not because they have been patched.

ArmA is a lower budget game.

It hasn't had the same number of man hours work involved. It didn't cost as much to make.

The same amount of human effort has not been involved.

Any one ArmA programmer may have individually put in as much effort as any one BF2, WoW or C&C3 programmer.

Any one of them maybe of equal or higher talent.

But the production values are still far short.

They didn't have as many programmers.

They didn't test it to destruction.

They didn't set themselves the same standard or quality control.

The patches BIS release are not simply multiplayer balancing.

As for which development model I only see, I see them all.

What's more important to me is the end result, not how it was made.

When I buy something, I want to see that I have got my money's worth. That the work I have paid for has been done.

For games like ArmA, I find myself settling for work-in-progress.

This detracts from my overall satisfaction with the product not enhances it.

It's not a deal breaker, I don't want to return my game for a refund, but it most definitely lowers my review score.

As it should.

[NeMeSiS 11]

They have had the use of your money and you don't have the product you have paid for yet.

Unless its stated somewhere where you can read it before you buy it that features will be added later by patches, you have infact gotten what you have paid for.

Its not like BI wrote on the 1.0 version of the ArmA boxes 'dont worry, whatever is wrong, we WILL fix it by patches'.

You have gotten exactly what you paid for, if you dont like that then you havent done proper research before you bought something. (And its not like it wasnt obvious that 1.0 had alot of bugs, and you werent forced to buy the game)

Developers dont have to release decent games, its usually a good decision because people tend to buy decent games over crappy games, but its not like its illegal to release buggy crap, and they certainly dont have to patch it.

Serisouly, what makes you think that when you buy something the developer has to patch the game to a level of your liking? It was your mistake by buying it.

And yes, ofcourse i think that a decent developer should fix their game if the released version has problems, but hey, isnt that exactly what BI is doing?

[kronzky 5]

Looks like we left the topic (the 1UP review in particular, or even reviews in general) a long time ago...

I'm closing this for a while so everybody has a chance to find a more appropriate thread to voice their opinions in.

[sle 0]

I found the 1up review for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (A wonderfully original game) to be a farce, and this one stays true to form.

Yes, Arma isn't perfect, but I think people forget what a massive achievement this game is. I'm playing Stalker at the moment, and though a great game, I think it made far more compromises than BI did with ArmA. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fanboy; I'm currently waiting for 1.07 so I can play the thing properly, but the 1up review in no way does the game justice.

[NeMeSiS 11]

I found the 1up review for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (A wonderfully original game) to be a farce, and this one stays true to form.

That gave it a 4.0!

Thats just hilarious..

[Yoma 0]

Hey that's odd:

I wanted to give my Arma 7.4 or higher.

But i have to give it 6.7 else my driver starts leaking...

I bet the reviewer has an ati card

[celery 8]

I found the 1up review for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (A wonderfully original game) to be a farce, and this one stays true to form.

That gave it a 4.0!

Thats just hilarious..

Oddly enough the review is pretty much right in my opinion. Fortunately I got income for reselling my copy.

[sle 0]

Oh well, one man's meat and all that. I thought it was a damned good effort.