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 | FM's review | |
| Posted By: goran | Date: 2/2/04 1:51 a.m. |
| In Response To: Re: my big rubicon confession (goran) They spent how long on this?
With that said, I would like to write up a larger review than my rating's comments. I won't be writing a massive in depth review, because honestly, my time is not worth spending on it for how unimpressed I was with this scenario. Please also note, this review has nothing to do with my work on Marathon:Evil. That was 4 years ago. My views on playing the Rubicon scenario are fresh and unclouded. First, the Pros: The installer was good and clean (hard to mess up vise). The un-stuffed archive setup was nice with the iconic pictorial. The icons for the program are done well and show thought to organization. The manual was put together with good information and enough to get a person started without going on and on and on about useless information. I am not sure if I enjoyed the beefy weapons or not. Mixed feelings. I would have a better Idea if I could get Aleph One to work networked... but since it refuses, and since I refuse to install Rubicon as normal Infinity, I won't ever know if the weapons are balanced well for net play or not. However, part of me doubts they would be from what I saw in solo play. The terminal art was done extremely well. Hats off to the guys who worked on those. The terminal text was done in the good tradition of Marathon and was clear of horrific spelling errors and poor capitalization/punctuation. The chapter screen art falls in this category as well, as being superbly done for what they were. The new textures for levels were well made. I enjoyed seeing them used and are of good quality. The levels using them were decent. Had good layout and construction, showed 'real life' likeness, like it was an actual place. Not like how some original Marathon maps are where they just sort of aimlessly wander corridors around with no discernable shape or features. Now, the Cons: Level design was good as noted above. Flow however lacks everything possible about the concept. Retracing the same pieces of floor over and over, finding dead bodies which YOU didn't cause adding to confusion of not finding your way around, and having many aliens teleport or come out of hidden doors while you are away from an area, all lead to bad flow. Having things open, that don't look like things that would open, when you are halfway across the map also adds confusion and lack of fun to the level. Too many times I found myself wandering the entire level, areas I had been in twenty times before, looking for that "door" that opened because I stepped on some door trigger polygon off in some hallway in another sector of the map. Or, clicking a button... then not hearing a damned thing or finding any information in any terminal about what it might be doing. Only to find out after retracing the entire level, fighting through countless more bad guys that suddenly out of thin air appeared in areas I had cleaned out before, some "wall" opened up and lets me into a new area. A new area which like all the previous levels I just spent loads of time in, it would have some switch or just the fact of walking into a room, would open up some OTHER wall/door that I have to now go hunt down. Rinse, repeat. To simplify that explanation, flow was poor. Very poor. So poor that I found myself getting a headache and getting "sick" of this scenario. When I came to a terminal, I was so worn out from running around aimlessly, I just yelled at the terminal "Screw you! You tell me nothing! Stupid thing!". It got so aimless at times, I just wanted to 'get through the damn level". Side note: When I play any type of first person shooter, even third person action, where it has a solo element and "levels" to go through and discover, I am one who tries to find everything. I like to get to every area, find every place, and pick up or leave behind every piece of non-glued-down material I can get my grubby hands on. To say what I said above "I just wanted to get through the damn level", means my will to explore was shot to hell, and my idea of "fun" was seriously compromised. To me, a level needs to be fun. If it isn't fun, then why bother making it. Poor flow, and throwing a player into endless ambushes and constant wondering, is not fun. Unless you like that sort of thing. If you do, then turn this entire review inside out and read it that way. Now back to the review... Terminals were great as I said above, however NO THOUGHT was given about long terminal text on vacuum levels, or levels with time limits. Its pathetic to try to force a player to sit and read something while time (or life) is ticking away. Only way to read them is to go back with a terminal browser program. However I wasn't going to bother wasting my time for it. Also with the terminals, the secret terminal was in bad taste, period. 'Nuff said there. Item placement wasn't done well. Many times finding ammo was difficult. Even on lower difficulty settings. And one thing that was continuously done (far more times than being "cute"), was either putting tons of nice ammo and/or weapons in view, but out of reach, or teleporting in a bunch of said equipment in a place you can't get too. Once is enough guys. But doing it almost once or twice every dang level?! Guh. It just turns into "yeah, woohoo! authors trying to fool me again... woooooo I'm impressed =P not". Difficulty settings. I don't care the reasons... but some people "have" to play on low settings because they like to have fun in a game, but lack the proper skill or hand/eye coordination to rip through thousands of enemies at break neck speeds. For me, I like to play levels at the same difficulty setting throughout the game (usually MD). The difficulty settings in Rubicon seemed untested or poorly planned. Testing should be done on all settings to see if flow ... oh wait, flow was horrible, so you can't go by that. I guess to see if its "possible" to get through areas. This scenario was not at all designed for the vidmaster either. Honestly, I would like to see anyone attempt to vid this entire scenario. Good luck. The game had some good shapes. However, many of the new weapons were poorly colored causing nasty bits and pixels to be off preventing good clean sharp weaponry. After all, the weapons are seen the most during game play, and having something ugly in your hands leads to dissatisfaction of the weapon. Thank goodness for Aleph One's blurring and internal smoothing, because software mode on those weapons is disgusting. Monsters weaponry is just off. Simply put. Guided grenades under water, lightning fast plasma bolts, high speed arsenals, almost endless firing rates... this isn't Quake3 damnit, this is Marathon. This concludes my review. I would like to wrap up my thoughts, and post a little note; I was unimpressed with this Major Conversion. It had lots of potential with some good designs/graphics/textures, but tried its best to ruin every ounce of fun I had while playing it. When something just ain't fun to me... I can't bring myself to say much good things about it. Personally, I think this entire thing was a waste of my time, and personal health (damn the headaches!). You can base your own thoughts, and write your own reviews if you do not agree with this one. As with all my writings, I will ignore any emails regarding them. Summaries:
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