Review a Trial? How can you?
Simply put, Nothing Else Happens. Ever. I’ve watched a six minute video after playing several of the three minute trials, and nothing changes, including the difficulty. Or, if it does become more difficult, it takes so long that you’re likely to become bored or dead well before.
That’s the primary issue with Bloc. Challenge is derived entirely from the controls. You rotate your craft to point the matching color quadrant toward the incoming block, then press one of the four face buttons on your controller to fire. But, not just any button. Nor even the button aligned in the direction you wish to fire. No, you must press the button with the matching color to the quadrant you wish to fire from. The developers call this ‘innovation’, but it is clearly obfuscation.
If you’re comfortable enough with the controller to manage the firing system, you’re also likely to be competent enough with the left stick to avoid collisions eternally, even on the highest difficulty setting. It becomes a game of endurance rather than skill, as you’ll simply play until you get bored. If, on the other hand, you find the dodging at all challenging, you’ll likely be unable to cope with the firing system. This is why obfuscation in game design is to be eschewed – it rarely turns out well.
So, is the game bad? No, it’s put together well and is mildly entertaining for a short while. The sounds and visuals are adequate and unobtrusive, though never interesting. It simply never goes anywhere after it starts. If you like playing on Level 1 forever, it just might be your thing.
Addendum: We’ve been assured by the developers that the difficulty does gradually increase. I was unable to notice it during the full length of several Trial games – gradual may be a slight understatement. I’d imagine once the challenge does kick in the firing scheme would grow increasingly irritating, but it’s moot to me as I was already disinterested before the Trial ended.
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Ooh, not just me then? I was beginning to worry I’d finally totally lost it
Yeah, I found that the only difficulty in the game comes from wrestling with the control scheme. I sort of got over considering that mechanic a challenge when they finally made keyboard overlays obsolete.
It just seems so needless. But hey, I’m not exactly known for my fondness of games that utilise a myriad of controls anyway.
Basing a review on the trial, which at this point is limited to 4 minutes, is like reviewing an alpha version of a regular game, not really fair. If you’re going to be honest, buy the full version and really review it.
I hope you’re not suggesting the team shell out money for every single CC game that’s released. We’ve already got 30 of them to choose from, and that number is just going to escalate.
These reviews, as indicated by their short length, are only supposed to be impressions of the game, and whether or not it’s worth downloading the demo to give it a try yourself.
I expect you’ll suggest we only buy certain titles to try out, but that is not only unfair, but how should we decide which ones to buy? We’ll try the demo, if the demo doesn’t grab us, we won’t end up buying it. If the demo was good enough to make us buy it, it probably was going to get a glowing review on the demo alone.
Jim, I’d love to be in the position to buy every single game on the service. It’s not going to happen though, is it? With 4-8 titles released a day I’d be burning through points faster than a fast thing going really fast.
The reason why I support reviewing of the demo version on here, and I understand you may not like it, is that this is precisely what the public will see. This is a developers one chance to impress the potential purchaser and if better/good stuff is forthcoming after the demo and not present in the demo (which I’m struggling to see how the format changes at any point, like 9572ad I watched the video and didn’t see anything different) then the demo is at fault, not the review.
Most impressions of games are formed within the first five minutes. As the demo timer isn’t too far off that, then you’ve got a brutal but effective system for letting people discover the game.
If any game author fails to use that to their advantage or if their game fails to impress for whatever reason, then that’s not the fault of us or the public.
It’s not like reviewing an alpha version in the slightest. Or at least, if the demo is like an alpha version then why is a developer trying to ask the public to hand over their hard earned money with an alpha version?
There are plenty of reasons to review a Trial version, one of the best being if the Trial shows everything in the game.
Another reason is if it would be cruel to expect one to subject oneself to the experience for longer.
Both apply here.
Aside from that, the review is -plainly marked- as being derived from the Trial, just especially so you can not waste your time reading it if you think it’s pointless.
Ok, well then you should NOT name the title a “REVIEW”, it should be impressions. You can’t get everything in a game from the trial…impossible with the time limit. My game will be a 2D platformer, how can I show off everything if the game is longer than 4 minutes? You can’t, you can show basics of the game and some features that will hopefully entice you. If you want to be a “real” reviewer, you would buy each and every game. I understand the reason in reviewing the trial for the simple fact of monetary reasons but that’s why you should call it impressions and not review.
Zedox, it’d still be a review, man. We could call it a monkey and it’d still be a review.
We don’t just review the trial (as I pointed out above) because of monetary reasons but precisely because this is what the public will see. You’re asking for their time and money, you owe it to them to not waste that time if you want their money.
It is your duty as a developer when asking for the public to hand over money to make that trial as engrossing as possible. I’m a developer myself as well as a likely purchaser of your product and you simply can’t tell me that making a good demo is impossible because it’s flat out wrong.
Getting into semantic arguments doesn’t change that fact and I’m not entirely sure what you’re hoping to achieve in asking us to label something differently purely to placate you.
I can’t believe some people are coming here and making judgements on XNplay on the strength of just a couple of reviews. They should wait until ALL the posts are up before forming an opinion of how things are done.
Chaps, some advice:
1. Your demo is the bridge to the public. With 4-8 games a day currently going onto the Community Games service – folks aren’t going to try each and every one of them. You can’t rely on the “oh well, it’s only [x] points and I’m bored†for good word of mouth or the majority of your sales. You certainly can’t rely on that from a reviewer. Make your demo the best it can be. Sell it to me. I want you to sell your games to me because I, believe it or not, want to hand over my money to people who make good games. If I review your game poorly and you’re not happy, fine. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me and if the game is truly that much better than I or any of the staff say it is – you’re safe in the knowledge that I, or the reviewer holds a sufficiently minority opinion as to not matter.
If you get 10 good reviews and 1 bad review, and you fixate on the bad review – you’re wasting your energy.
2. I’m not developing for the community (well, I might yet be – I haven’t decided yet) but I’ve known for months about the time limit. It is not an excuse for a poor demo. As the Blow write up testifies, if I can see the potential in the game even with a poor demo, I’ll mention it.
3. If you’re really that offended by me or any of the staff reviewing the trial version (and labelling it as a trial version review…) then give us access to the full game or a reasonable portion of the game somehow. I can run your games on my 360 if you supply me with an appropriate build, build a PC version that I can use, do something proactive towards getting good press and you might find you get better press. You might not, but at least you’ve done something constructive and tried. We have 3 staff precisely so that we can offer multiple opinions on the same game, use that to your advantage if you must.
4. Please don’t argue semantics with me. I’ve got a tolerance level of a gnat with concentration problems for poor internet argument techniques . Telling me I’m wrong or stupid or “not a proper reviewer†or I didn’t use the word you’d prefer isn’t going to make me change my opinion.
Convincing me I might be wrong on the other hand…
You’ve got a service here that you can use and shape. You have the power to shape how your game is perceived by the staff here and the public. Bitching may give you five seconds of feeling better about yourself but it won’t change any opinions. It certainly won’t sell more copies of your game or encourage me or the staff to help you sell more copies of the game.
I’m happy to help you guys out, but it’s a two way thing y’know. You can either treat us as the enemy which isn’t good for us or for you or you can try to use us and the site for good PR purposes.
Which would have the better outcome in the long run?
The time limit for trial versions has been known about for a long time but it’s only recently that it’s been announced that it would be 4 minutes. This has shocked many a dev who assumed (rightly or wrongly) a much longer trial experience. Indeed there are tales on the forums of games timing out while players are in menu screens pre game!
I’ve got a few things that I’ll be releasing shortly and I’d be perfectly happy with Bob ‘n’ the team ‘monkeying’ trials of them.
I had that happen with a game last night, loaded it up, went to put the kettle on, came back and the trial had killed itself and I had to reload.
Fairs fair, it is an odd way to enforce it and I’d like to hope that it doesn’t have a detrimental effect on sales because people believe it’s the devs doing. I can see the logic and the argument behind MS doing so, but it’s not a very customer facing decision
Blow doesn’t let you *really* get through the entire tutorial because of this. I believe this was raised as a potential problem when it was first announced?* And it did take two loads of the demo to play a reasonable segment of the game, but you can see the potential in the game still – it’s unfortunately a case of hoping that the rest of the game does live up to the potential because sans tutorial it can be a bit mystifying.
Which, as I say, is where attempting to garner good press comes in. Send out videos, send out screenshots and press packs, “trial” versions or full versions in one format or another. Not just to us, although if you can – please do, but to everyone you can think of who might be interested.
Promotion is hard graft, getting column inches is hard and I know bad reviews can chafe – I’ve doled out a few and been on the receiving end of a few. But if the 4 minutes are going to be an issue, try and make it *less* of an issue. It doesn’t take 5 minutes to bag some hi-res screenshots. It takes a bit longer to make a decent video or press version of the game, but it might be worth it in the long run.
I recommend Kieron’s excellent article on how to use and abuse the gaming press as a fine starting point. It works.
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=693
I know it seems like we’ve just popped up out the blue (and in many ways we have) but we’re all old hands at this sort of thing and all the staff ride both sides of the divide as developers and customers and in my case, a cheeky bugger at promotion (for my own works and others) to boot. I’m a bit abrasive (sorry, that’s just me) but I’m not out to stick the boot in for the sake of it. Honest! I want folks to do well wherever possible, but I’m not going to fib or pull any punches because I don’t think it helps anyone in the long run. We’re not perfect and we may cock up ourselves, but I accept this as “stuff that happens”
And cheers Paul, I’ll be happy to give your games a good monkeying. And I might even play them too
*not for Blow specifically but for more passive games in general.
Thanks for the continuing votes of “no confidence” guys, but I can assure you we do have some common sense. There are plenty of games that can be aptly or at least reasonably reviewed with play capped at a few minutes – most any arcade game pre-1985, for example. You may not see absolutely everything in that time, but you can certainly get enough of an impression to form a solid opinion and pass along some useful information to the community.
With Bloc, I am reasonably confident that you -have- seen absolutely everything seconds after you start the game. I even pointed out that while I don’t know with unwavering certainty that nothing ever changes, even -if- it does it changes too slowly to do the player any good.
As for your game or your game or your game, don’t worry about it! Nobody here has reviewed any games they haven’t got a fully formed impression of! I’ve personally played several of the game Trials several times and not felt like I was getting enough to go on for those games. The ones that left me with a positive impression I’ll likely buy and play further before reviewing. The ones that left me with a negative impression or simply confused I’ll likely never mention.
And if the rest of the world feels the same way about those sort of Trials, there you have something to worry about.
Normally I stay out of discussions of my own game, but I’m going to ask a few questions. I’m not going to dispute whether or not you liked it or what you thought of the control scheme. Those are subjective and are your opinions to form as you wish.
That said, you say the game never gets past “Level 1″ so to speak. Did you try the game on Gauntlet mode at all? I consider myself pretty much a “master” at the game and I can barely make four minutes in that mode; and that is with dodging and firing at the same time.
Did you get to try the co-op mode out at all? It introduces a nice level of required cooperation along with the fact that you can run into each other which can make it quite a fun challenge, again especially on higher difficulties.
Anyway, regardless of this negative press it seems the game was received well overall (what with Ars Technica deeming it their favorite game available and IGN saying it is one of the better deals on the market). I appreciate anyone and everyone checking out the game so I thank you for playing it (though, granted you are playing all the games).
Constructive commentary appreciated, Nick! You had me in a bit of a panic, there, until I loaded up Bloc again. I thought I had missed out an entire mode somehow.
Gauntlet would be the “even on the highest difficulty setting” I referenced. Is it supposed to get progressively more difficult? I never saw any change in the difficulty during my play.
As for the co-op I’ll just quote Ben Croshaw and say, “I don’t give a flying shit about multiplayer, and neither do a lot of people.” I’ll say that because while I do enjoy a bit of multiplayer now and again, on the rare occasions I have someone about locally to play with, he is going to want to play something far more flashy and possibly less amusing than Bloc, like bloody Turok.
I hate Turok
All difficulties do get harder over time, but they do so gradually (casual is much slower to do so than gauntlet). It’s entirely possible you just got used to the ramp up so it never seemed like it was there. How long did you make it in that mode? And here I thought I made a really challenging mode :p. Live and learn. There’s always the next game.
As for the co-op, to each their own. If you ever do have someone over and are bored and don’t have Turok lying around, consider giving it a go.