Gamespot reviews fof 2004
 

I don't know if this has already been posted. I saw gamespot gave fof 2004 a 7.8.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sports/fr...04/review.html

Cool. Nice find!

That's a very honest assessment of FOF in my mind. Glad to see FOF get a review. :)

But in the two important categories it got a 9 for Gameplay, and a 10 for value

Very true!
I think that's the first review I've seen of FOF2K4..

Very cool. They have TPF on their site as well, but haven't reviewed that yet. I wonder what score it will get (assuming it is eventually reviewed.)

Great find ! Pretty good review. One comment though : a "1 hour learning curve" ??? That must be a pretty smart reviewer...

A very useful 1st post deserves a welcome to the board.

Skydog, worthy of the reference thread, methinks ?

You can pretty much get the basics down rather quickly, so an hour sounds fair, but yes it certainly takes alot longer to really get the complete depth of the game for first time users.

This was a great line from the review:

"The graphics are an antediluvian artifact of the DOS era."

How do you decide that the game deserves exactly 4 out of 10 for sound?

Ummmm.... there is no sound.

I find it amazing that these review sites can't fathom a circumstance where their little cookie-cutter five-category system doesn't truly apply. Should "sound" be worth 20% of the rating for a game that doesn't have any sound and clearly doesn't need any sound, nor want any sound? It's patently absurd.

I think the review is well done, and very fair... but the scoring system they use is at least as obtuse as anything they find in FOF 2004.

Apparently, to get a 1 out of 10 for sound, your game needs to emit a continous, horrible, piercing squelch for the duration of gameplay.

I don't think sound is worth 20% of the rating. It's one of the five categories, sure, but the final score is a separate rating and not just an average of the first five.

As for whether a sound rating is even appropriate, I think you could make a case for it. The game could potentially benefit from the use of sound in some places, but the lack of sound doesn't make it unplayable. A mark somewhere in the middle sounds about right.

or a N/A.

Yes, most definitely.


Greatest line ever. Give me an antediluvian artifact of the DOS era ANY day, baby! Weeds out the shallow gamers... ;)

Bingo.

Good point - ididn't even bother to verify my assertion, which was incorrect.

Still...the game rates a 9 in game play, a 10 in value, and an 8 in "tilt" (whatever that is)... but the lousy ratings for graphics and sound have to be what pull its overall rating below any of those. Whatever the weighting system, that still seems unfair to me, for a game like this. For a text-based sim, I'd think that gameply and value would be the overwheling components of what I'm looking for.

But then, judging from the gaga reaction to the slick TPF screenshots, maybe I'm wrong...

Well, just because its a text-based sim doesn't mean it can't be slick and attractive and modern looking (i.e. many of the .400 products, which are very nice to look at).

Even with my own stuff, I try to make it attractive and creative, for the most part, and give it some "atmosphere" (and succeed most of the time, I hope :)).

I'm laughing more at this than I probably should. Every time I picture it, I laugh out loud.

It's a great (by that I mean well written and fair) review and FOFC even gets a nod which is nice.

I'm pretty sure tilt is either the readers' reviews, or how much the reviewer liked playing it? That's what I always took it for.

Tilt is the reviewer's way of tilting the score to combat other scores which don't accurately reflect the game. In this case the tilt score was used to combat the poor graphic and sound scores to get the overall score in the right range for the overall score. It can also be used to lower the overall score of a game with pretty graphics and sound that isn't that terrific of a game.

Well congratulations to Jim for getting the review on a major site. That should help the visibility of the game tremendously. I myself first heard of the game in a Computer Gaming World (published by ZD, who also run gamespot).

Congrats again for getting such a positive review. I think the review accurately captured the game - in both strengths and weaknesses.

No, that wouldn't work. Sound can enhance a game, even a text sim, so the fact that a game chooses not to include it is not N/A. It's a factor in the quality of the game.

I think the fact that the reviewer still gave it a 4 even though there is no sound at all is a good indication that he recognizes that sound isn't crucial to the game, just a "nice to have".

But if there's no sound wouldn't it be a zero then?

If the game really needs sound, yes. If not, then you figure out how much the lack of sound hurts the game and find your rating that way.

But I don't understand why you would grade something that doesn't exist. It would be fair to say, "I think this game could benefit from having sound." That is fair, but that doesn't translate to a 4 to me. That translates as N/A. As in, there is no sound, so it is not applicable to grade its quality.

there's always great background music whenever i play FOF, so i say give it a 10!

OK then in that scenario since the game doesn't need sound at all it would be 10 then...the lack of sound is perfect for a game not needing sound...

I find FOF5 the ultimate in customization of sound.... hello winamp. :D

brilliant.

dola-

if FOF made a little ding everytime I clicked on something, that would be damn close to the aforementioned piercing squelch.

Good for you, Derek. A gold star.

As someone who remembers the DOS era of gaming (and never programmed in it), I've hoped people would recognize the work I've put into creating graphics classes that present massive amounts of information. In most cases, the reason I don't add pictures is that to do so, I'd have to remove information.

I think most of the people here understand that - they're looking for a game which allows them to express their own imagination. The attraction is not a fleeting glance at a piece of clip art, but the story they create on their own from the information I present. Look at the dynasties on this forum. Do any of them mention the original artwork on my splash screen?

Although I thought the DOS line was a little over the top, Brett gets it. He wouldn't have wanted to review the game if he didn't. I just hope I'm not forced to go full screen and waste valuable development time integrating a lot of artwork. I don't think the text sim which looks like a 1998 presentation is obsolete in 2004 any more than a book written in the 19th Century is obsolete.

--from an unpublished review--

"You know I really like the sound in this game. For a text based sim it's remarkably quiet and the lack of any noise at all compliments the program quite well. I'm giving it a 10 for sound for the mere fact there are no dings or piercing squelches."

No sound is much better than bad sound, so a 4 seemed like a fair rating. It's like the QB rating -- if a quarterback walks onto the field and does nothing, his QB rating is something like 37. He has to really screw things up to get below that.

Visuals are chrome when it comes to a text-sim. A little is nice, a lot is distracting. If anything, I'd like to see a bit more user-friendly customization available for logos and the like, but overall I have no major concerns.

I have no issues whatsoever with the lack of sound. Oft-times, games that throw a bone to "sound" come up WAY too short. Yips, yaps, and faux crunching noises do not good sound make, and even the best soundtracks would run dry quickly given the amount of time most of us spend poring over the FOF screens. No worries there.

dola

I did notice on the Gamespot review that the 12 reader reviews amassed a paltry 5.8 score - I wonder what gives?

Oh I agree with you 100%....just got through reading an IGN review of Coliseum that brutalized it based on lots of "prettiness" and peripheral type stuff that has little to do with gameplay, so it does matter to those types (that sadly get thrown into reviewing my games much of the time). The review was clearly written by someone who doesn't "get it" at all, and never should have been assigned to review a game like mine (or any non-glittery, non-mainstream games for that matter).

My comments weren't meant to slag FOF in any way...it presents info in a concise and clean manner, and I like that. Even with my own design, I tried to keep the easy to access info in the forefront, above any "chrome".

But my point was: the toughest and best way to do it is to merge clear well-presented info with bits of polished chrome here and there. That way you get the "grognards", and you might grab a few more casual players as well.

The one reader score for TPF was a 10.0 - I wonder what gives? (Note I last checked that site last night and can't get on the site from work right now for some reason)

I realize that the reviewer's opinions are no more valid than anyone elses, but I have to question a guy who rates OOTP 5 higher than FOF 5...

FOF 5's sounds are rated a "10" for me. I listen to my winamp all the time, and any sounds would detract from my "cool" music. When I briefly played tournament dreams, the sounds in that drove me crazy. I disabled all I could, but some were still present&annoying.

It's like the "custom soundtrack" option for the Xbox. It's a really cool feature.

FYI, the user reviews do consider sound as 20%.

Graphics
This includes technical use of graphics, as well as the aesthetic quality of a game's appearance and presentation.

Sound
This includes the quality and use of sound effects and music in the game.

Gameplay
This includes everything from the game's interface to its control and how well balanced it is--basically, how well a game plays and how enjoyable it is to play.

Value
This reflects the game's longevity--how long you'll be able to play and enjoy the game and also how much replay value you'll get out of it. The retail price of a game can also figure into the value score. Note: Games with bad gameplay often have low value scores. On the other hand, a game can have great gameplay (and get a high gameplay score) but can be very short (and get a low value score).

Reviewer's Tilt (Tilt)
This score basically lets a reviewer sway the final score--either higher or lower--based on the reviewer's experience with a game. Here's an example: A game might have really good graphics but really bad gameplay--so it gets a low tilt score to keep the overall score low, since the game ultimately isn't fun. Or a game might have poor graphics and sound but have a really good story--so it might get a high tilt to boost the overall score a bit.

The final user review score is the average of these 5 on a 1-10 scale.

FYI, it's up to a 6.1 now.

Yes, yes they do:

The Frickin' Eagles Dynasty, or whatever I called it.

:D

All I have to say is, FOF's non-sound is still better than TDCB's porn music playing.

I agree 100% here. Information and detail in gameplay over graphics anyday in my book.

And Jim, please don't waste development time integrating artwork over all the mounds of information you will include in TCY2.

That will be next right? Please? :)

Perhaps (TCY2)some(TCY2) subliminal (TCY2)messages(TCY2) would (TCY2)help (TCY2)Jim(TCY2) make (TCY2) the (TCY2)right (TCY2)decision...

:D

WRT the whole sound issue, clearly OOTP5 has FOF beat hands down with it's constant rehash of old Billy Squire, Ozzy Osbourne, and Zebra soundclips.

Agreed. The Solecismic website on the other hand needs an overhaul.

How much more do you really think you know than a flower does about who's behind the door!