CPR Review on NEXTgen

On Thu, 20 Nov 1997 08:56:09 -0800, "Dean (CART Team)" >[link lost in import] No mention of the AI problems whatsoever. Yet another thoroughly objective review, not. Cheers! John

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/

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

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>>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

>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