rec.autos.simulators

CPR Review on NEXTgen

John Walla

CPR Review on NEXTgen

by John Walla » Fri, 21 Nov 1997 04:00:00

On Thu, 20 Nov 1997 08:56:09 -0800, "Dean (CART Team)"


>http://www.racesimcentral.net/

No mention of the AI problems whatsoever. Yet another thoroughly
objective review, not.

Cheers!
John

Randy BO

CPR Review on NEXTgen

by Randy BO » Sun, 23 Nov 1997 04:00:00

John,

Understand that places like avault and Next Gen are going to review things more
from the casual gamer perspective.  The review I wrote, I wrote with more
serious racing sim fans in mind.  

I don't mind them putting out reviews that miss the mark in some areas because
I know that the kind of person who is really into racing sims is going to be
reading these newsgroups and read reviews like the one I wrote at Digital
Sports.  I figure the market is big enough for some reviews for "average
gamers", or as I'd say it, people who want to review the thing as a game
instead of a sim.  There's room for both types.  Just be a little tolerant <G>

Randy
Randy Magruder
Staff Writer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com/

John Walla

CPR Review on NEXTgen

by John Walla » Sun, 23 Nov 1997 04:00:00


There's room for both type of games and for both type of gamers, but
if a product is marketed as a sim and gets a five star review, that is
downright misleading. If you want it reviewed as an arcade racer,
market it as such.

Review sites have a responsibility, since they will influence the
spending of many people. It seems that too many sites think their
responsibility is to themselves rather than their readers. If it's a
good arcade racer then say so, but you need to review a game for what
it is, since THAT is the target market who will be coming along to
read the reviews. Tolerance has nothing to do with it.

Cheers!
John

Randy Magrud

CPR Review on NEXTgen

by Randy Magrud » Tue, 25 Nov 1997 04:00:00



>>John,

>>Understand that places like avault and Next Gen are going to review things more
>>from the casual gamer perspective.  The review I wrote, I wrote with more
>>serious racing sim fans in mind.  
>>There's room for both types.  Just be a little tolerant <G>

>There's room for both type of games and for both type of gamers, but
>if a product is marketed as a sim and gets a five star review, that is
>downright misleading. If you want it reviewed as an arcade racer,
>market it as such.

Don't forget that its a game and is still supposed to be fun.  If we
wanted a simulation, we wouldn't need the first person viewpoint.  The
thing could just crunch numbers and display graphs!  Extreme case, but
I think you get my drift.  Microsoft wouldn't have put in all the
newbie features they did if they didn't want it to be
'pick-up-and-play' for casual gamers.  Its possible they fail at this,
and quite frankly I was more interested in writing a review for
diehards like us.   I do agree that any reviewer who is out of his
depth with sims should admit upfront that they are just reviewing it a
as a pick-up-and-play game for casual fans so that we simheads know
what we're dealing with :)

Randy

John Walla

CPR Review on NEXTgen

by John Walla » Tue, 25 Nov 1997 04:00:00



>Don't forget that its a game and is still supposed to be fun.

Right. So how can it be fun when it is impossible to actually race in
this so called racing simulation? Oh, I forgot, I just have to "race
on the Zone".

I've yet to see a racecar that produced nothing but graphs - that's
the Honda engineer simulator you're thinking of.

I'm sure the pick up and play features work very well - the point I
made in my original post was that the AI don't work _at_all. Now it
may be that the Avault reviewer isn't a sim fan, but I'm going to go
out on a limb here and presume that he has, at some point in his life,
seen an auto-race. If not, then he has at least been on a road, and
knows that the people on the racetrack are supposed to be the "creme
de la creme" at doing what those people on the road are doing. How the
reviewer can then fail to notice that the AI are spinning all over the
track in stark contrast to anything he has seen before, is utterly
beyond me. Hence my comment about it being an "objective review". A
bit like starting a game of Quake and finding that the bad guys have
all slaughtered each other before you got there - sorta defeats the
purpose.

Cheers!
John


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