Dark Messiah: Kick it. Kick it. Kick it

The Adventures of Sir Kicksalot Deathboot in the Land of the Conspicuously Placed Spike Racks.

What a lovely spice rack, does it have cinnamon? No? Only bloody chunks? Ohhhh… spike…

Does anyone else have trouble viewing 1up? Maybe it’s because I’m use IE or my security settings are too high, but I can’t ever get anything on it to load anymore. Nevertheless view source lets me read the review, which is a great read by the way.

I’ve always had problems viewing 1up - it’s really really slow. It timed out twice while I was trying to view Tom’s review.

It’s been loading exceptionally slowly for me today, so it’s not just you.

Troy

I have the same problems with 1up. :( It’s like, ‘Hey, remember what the internet was like on dialup?’

-Tom

Lol, I sort of envisioned all that just by reading comments on this forum ;p

The most powerful weapon in the game is a pair of hobnailed steel-toe boots, apparently.

Multiplayer load times are only a few seconds with textures on medium. 90%+ reduction compared to high. And yes, that’s absurd in its own right.

Your simple boot regularly upstages magic, stealth, archery, and combat, all of which are represented in the basic skill tree. No matter which “class” you choose, it will behoove you to play a Kicklord.

I LOLED

This game, when pieced apart, doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s unstable as hell if you deign to set its options above some nebulous level that’s appropriate to your PC, it’s Yet Another Generic Fantasy, there’s really no other viable build that warrior-archer in SP, kicking is way overplayed and obvious, you can see the demon girl’s kitty cat in the cutscenes (…no, wait, that’s OK I guess)…

…but boy is this game fun. I think it’s one of those games where the sum of the whole is way, way greater than its parts. It certainly doesn’t deserve a 40%.

And for those of us that are still on Dial-up trying to load 1up is well, shall we say impossible! Come on 1up this is really pissing me off, update that server from 1987 I’m missing all Tom’s reviews, you don’t want me to start reading reviews on GAMESPOT do you???

That was an excellent review. I just loved it. Perfect tone in response to this game’s contrivances.

I will say, though, that I had extremely unpleasant problems with it: when it ran, it looks all solarized and messed up. After I told Steam that the devs had admitted the problems and there was no patch available, I got my money back.

This was very, very good customer service and I’ll be buying something else from Steam to reward them for it. But I don’t know what.

Heavy sigh.

-Tom

Probobly the best example given why number systems are very unreliable and innacurate in PC game reviews.

Nothing against the reviewers themselves, it’s the system that they have to deal with.

But tom, that is an excuse right? It is like a magazine saying a game was 10 stars, only to find out it is a 1-1000 star scale. In the context of what is expected by people, you just gave the game a worse rating than a bunch of complete crap. Looking at this page is just confusing.

http://www.1up.com/do/sortIndex?ct=REVIEW&p=PC

I am not arguing the quality of the game, but when you decide (the site) to change the accepted scoring values, it isn’t the viewers fault for assuming your review is amazingly negative, it is the site’s fault for changing things up on the readers and not explaining it very well. Looking at the site, the scores seem to be a “mixed bag” of using the new system and old. And mixing in CGW reviews which still use the old system and 1up reviews? It is hardly the fault of the viewers that they complain about the numbers.

Chet

Looking at this page is just confusing.

Yeah, Darkstar One is 30% better than Dark Messiah ;P

I don’t mean this to sound like a dodge, but, well, I’m going to have to dodge that point, chet. It’s an editorial issue and as a freelancer, I can only go by what I was told.

My editors have been very clear that they want to use the full 1-10 scale, where a 5 is a middling game. When I was asked if I was sure I wanted to give Dark Messiah a 4 (someone even joked that fans of the game were going to be really mad!), I replied that I only wanted to give it a 4 if they were serious about using the entire 1-10 scale. I said that if they were going to use the typical 7-9 range, I’d rather give it a 6.something.

A few days later, the review goes up with the 4. I hope this means Ziff is serious about using the full 1-10, because as much as I don’t care about ratings, I’d at least like to kinda know what I’m aiming at when I pick my number. :)

-Tom

I wasn’t beating on you for it tom, but 1up. I just think deciding one day to change your scale for some vague reason is broken and will lead to issues like those discussed here.

You’re not kidding, that page of ratings is confusing as hell. Pac-man world rally is rated higher. Trying not to derail this into another “what rating scheme is best” thread, so I’ll just say that it would behoove 1up to have a very clear link to “how we score” next to every rating for the new year or two.

OK, I’ve got to say it-- 1-10 scales are silly, confusing, and most importantly, arbitrary. Please, don’t reply to this. I’m sorry! So sorry!