Many gamers of the hardcore variety don’t necessarily rely on the big gaming websites to determine if they are to buy a new release or not. Like the recent Gamespot/Gerstmann debacle, you might not be sure when they’re honest. But sometimes there are reviews that are just bad, mis informative, and just downright wrong. The masses pay attention to the big-name reviewers, whether it be IGN, Gamespot, or any of the other reviewers that might be seen on Gamerankings.

Now to my next point. The new Turok is a fun game. Originally I looked down upon it. It was a revived franchise that died off during it’s last iteration. The company holding the IP closed, so they sold it off. We get a new Publisher, Touchstone, and new first-time developer Propaganda games. We then find out the game has nothing to do with the original story, just a guy named Turok and some dinosaurs. Sounds like a recipe for a mediocre cash in.

So not too long before its release, the demo became available on XBox Live. I downloaded it and played it. At first, I was disappointed. Trudging through a dark cave with very little to do. Unfortunatley, not a good first impression for most. But after playing through the whole thing I fell in love. For my review, check out Bluecast Episode 11.

So I buy the game on day one. I had a blast with it. There was so much going on that I would consider it a type of evolution for the FPS genre. It has a few problems, but they are very minor. The game is also very polished, especially considering it’s coming from a first-time developer.

Now I read the reviews and the basically point out the game as being dull. Now, they’re not bad scores, just very slightly average, when in my opinion the game deserves better. But see, I said it, opinion. But reading through the reviews I found some errors. One reviewer states the game’s environments are all the same. Are we even playing the same game? The one thing that stood out the most for me was how different every level was. From jungles, to rocks, to water filled caverns, wrecked spaceships, underground installations, and lava-filled, meteor-shower scenery. The game has it all.

But the real issue here is different. You know what reviewers are doing to dock points on a game? Complaining about difficulty. Complaining about not being told what to do. From Gamespy:

Of course, it was the vents that were explosive, but would it have killed Turok to have one of our team mates mention this or drop some kind of hint?

Well considering half the level you use these vents to destroy enemies, and you’re pretty much by yourself down there, I don’t see a problem with giving the player a chance to figure something out for themselves. I want the chance to play the game.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the checkpoints flowed a little more freely, as most of the difficulty spikes tend to arrive after a protracted battle has already left you tattered and bleeding. Thus we frequently found ourselves trapped in a near-infinite loop of slogging through a few minutes of fighting only to be insta-murdered by the same swarm of annoyingly deadly giant gnats, giant scorpions or any of the myriad versions of velociraptor found in the game.

Oh ok, so now you just want this game to be easy so…you can beat it and move on to the next game you’re reviewing? Or are we as gamers now at the point where we don’t like a challenge? Conclusion: Lame review. Balls necessary.

From Evil Avatar:

The bigger problem is when an explosion goes off near you and knocks you off your feet. You become disoriented, and can’t shoot or move for a few seconds. The even bigger problem here is most times an enemy will be able to get off another rocket or grenade before you even get back to your feet, thereby knocking you back down before you really get back up. Before you know it your screen is a blurry red mess and suddenly you are dead.

The above right here is an indication that someone isn’t taking their time. There’s only one time in the game that I died from getting knocked down, and that’s when the T-Rex knocked me against a wall, and before I could move, she ate me up…which is fucking epic. If a grenade comes at you, use the ‘dive mechanic’ that the developers put in the game for you. That right there creates a whole new level at which you can play the game. Getting knocked on your ass is the game’s way of telling you, “Sorry, but we’re throwing dinosaurs and baddies armed with grenades at you. Don’t stay still, or at least use our ‘dive mechanic’.”

But to go back to my previous point, I believe a lot of the negativity came from the initial thoughts of the game. Most people had not much to think about it. When the time came to play the game, the mindset was already set to ‘meh’. And then we have reviewers complaining about difficulty.

Complaining about difficulty.

Yes, the flow of the gameplay.

It being difficult.

It being a fucking game.

When I see a reviewer complain about a games difficulty to the point of knocking down its score, it furthers my point that most of us as gamers are becoming pansies. That is fine, I guess, but what bothers me even more is that some of these gamers are on the inside. I came in here with only one point, but I guess I have a few. The game’s background already had it coming from the negatives. Reviewers might be rushing to work on other games, so it’s easily to pass through some that might have come from low expectations. That, coupled with difficulty, is a reviewers worst nightmare. Ninja Gaiden is fucking hard. But it generaly did not receive bad reviews because of that, but it had expectations set on high from the start.

There was a girl in the room, so I think Jose freaked. But that didn’t stop us from recording! This week we wing it. Jose has nothing to say, Adam has nothing to say, and Sean has nothing to say, yet we all had a good time. Adam hates on the negative Turok reviews, Jose regrets his HD-DVD investment, and Sean can’t get enough of Halo 3. Fun episode? You decide.

 

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Episode 11 of the BlueGamer Bluecast was recorded in two parts. The first with Adam and Sean, which includes a review of Turok on the 360 and Sean’s impressions of No More Heroes for the Wii. For the second part of the podcast, Jose joins again with Adam as they discuss random happenings in the industry as well as being a gamer on Valentine’s Day.

 

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I was thankfully able to obtain an ‘Early Access’ release of the Nokia N-Gage Service software for my Nokia N95. This software was really only meant for the N81, but a simple hack allows it to be used with almost any Nseries phone. Below are screenshots of the N-Gage service software.

For reference, here’s my home screen:

First of all, as you can see Nokia went ahead and totally ripped off XBox Live - and that’s a good thing. Sony could have done something similar to PSN, but apparently they thought they were good enough to do their own thing…which so far is not much. We’ve got a full fleged gamertag with gamerpic and reputation, as well as gamerpoints, or as they call them, N-Gage points.

And as you can see under ‘My Profile’, Gaming History and status.

Here you can see where you change your status.

Here is the points break-down.

And here’s some more stuff you can do.

Now I find all of this to be very impressive. Because of how dominant Nokia is in the world, this should have no problem taking off. It’s the U.S. that might be getting the short-end of the stick. Not many Americans know about Nokia hardware because of what they have to go through to get released here, plus for some reason people are so obsessed with iPhones. I would love to see Sony or Nintendo integrate this in a future handheld.

I have only played one game, and it was pretty impressive. It wasn’t actually an N-Gage game, but it was a game showing off what the device can do. There are three trial games I have that I’ll be installing over the weekend. I’ll be back next week with write-up on those.

I don’t know if it will still be this way by the time you click here, but Evil Avatar is now full of noisy posts. I don’t know where else to go.