IGN Review

[Capitaine]

IGN Review

They gave it a 6.7.

A somewhat considered review, but it falls prey to shallow appreciation of the genre, a failure to understand the "command" scheme in Panzer Command, and improper comparisons with ToW and CM.

I could nitpick this review apart but am not inclined to put forth the effort. It sounds to me like people who mostly play RTS games, or are coming with a set mind of how they want things to operate, wrote the review. Meh.

[Erik Rutins]

This is the e-mail I sent to Steve Butts after reading it this morning:
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Mr. Butts,

I read your review this morning and while I appreciate you reviewing the game and thought you made some good points, I thought I should point out a few issues and respond to some of the questions you raised.

"In the case of Kharkov, every second turn is designated a "reaction" phase during which your choice of orders is severely limited. i've tried to think of a reason why you might be limited in your commands during one turn and not in another but it still doesn't make sense to me. "

In short, it's because of realism. We don't feel it's realistic to be able to change the orders entirely for every unit under your control every 40 seconds. Instead, we have 80 minute turns that are split into two phase. You can change your orders completely every 80 seconds, but you can only make adjustments (reactions) in the middle of the turn (40 seconds in). We think this creates a good balance of realism and player interaction. We also opted to give the player more control and more frequent interaction than CM's 60 seconds, so that we would not have to have a "TacAI" running the battle instead of the player.

"There are four campaigns here (five if you count the boot camp series of training missions), each of which offers a look at one of the major phases of the War around Kharkov."

I hope you also noticed the many semi-historical Random Campaigns, which can range up to 100+ missions and provide a lot of additional value.

"(even if it still sometimes doesn't seem to work)"

As far as I know, there was an issue with Mount that affected only a couple of houses on one map. This has already been fixed in the current beta update.

"but there's no excuse for not including a way to plot waypoints for your units."

I can understand why you want them and we may add them in the future, but honestly we've found that once you get the hang of the game they're not all that necessary. You're not moving so far in 40-80 seconds in Kharkov that they are indispensible. Also, the automatic pathfinding will plot you around the corner of a house without needing a waypoint.

"We'd also wish that the designers had more distinctly separated moving the movement of the entire platoon and its leader. The way the current system is, every order you give to your platoon leader is immediately followed by all of the units he's leading."

This only happens if you change the platoon base order. Once you're already in the base order, you can make adjustments without resetting the entire platoon. I'm sure we can make this a bit more user-friendly though, but we tried to explain this in detail in the manual.

"In Kharkov only the enemies that the currently selected unit can see are displayed on the map regardless of whether or not there are other friendly units that can see them."

I don't really understand this complaint. If you just deselect your unit, you will immediately see an "aggregate view" of all spotted enemy units. Only when you select a friendly unit is your LOS limited to what that unit sees, since that make targeting for that unit more convenient. This is an interface feature rather than an interface flaw.

"There's a similar lack of information in terms of path plots and target designations. While you can see the movement and fire orders of your currently selected unit (and even platoon, if you can find the shortcut key), there's no way in between turns to see all the plots and targets at once."

If you hit the "U" key twice, it will toggle between showing the paths and targets for your unit, your platoon and your entire side. Since you can switch it to show your entire side's plots, I hope this will resolve the issue for you.

Also, regarding the graphics score - as far as games from independent small wargamer developers go, I think that Kharkov looks better than CM1 and any other wargame that came from a small developer. TOW has a mainstream development/publishing history before it went to Battlefront and obviously games like COH are magnitudes beyond us in possible development resources. While the graphics score may be fair when comparing to games like COH or COD, I don't feel it's accurate as far as the wargame market goes. If we'd made this game 2D instead of 3D, which would have required much less development effort, would you have rated its graphics the same way?

In any case, thanks for your time and consideration.

Regards,

- Erik

[z1812]

Hi All

Very interesting. Just so you all have something to compare to. This fellow gave review points at first release to the following as below:

Combat Mission Shock Force: 5.2

Theatre of War: 7

Company of Heros: 9.4

As usual, and this is nothing new, a review is a review and only one person's point of view. For example:

Based on his review I would not have bought CMSF and boy am I glad I did buy it.

I would have bought ToW ( I did and I am sorry ).

I most certainly would have got Company of Heros and that would have been a mistake. If I have to choose accuracy or graphics I will always err on the side of accuracy.

PCK received 6.7. Well for a wargame at first release, to me anyway, it is at least an 8.

regards John.

[Capitaine]

Well done Erik.  Your clarifications are right on the mark.

[runesson]

haha what a wanker[&o], company of heroes???  I think this starts to outshine cm by far

[JMass]

"but there's no excuse for not including a way to plot waypoints for your units."

I am bored to read crying about waypoints, personally I hate to spend time to set (CM's) waypoints, I think the PC approach is far better.

[tevans6220]

This is a prime example of why I put no faith in reviews of any sort. It's all just a matter of opinion and personal likes or dislikes. Apparently this guy is more into rts than tactical sims. Bottom line is that I like PCK and really don't give a hoot what Mr. Butts thinks of it.
 
Erik, you and Mr. Heath are gonna have to start greasing the wheels of some of the reviewers the way that other publishers apparently do. Ever notice how some games get excellent reviews but turn out to be crappy games? The only thing I can figure is somebody got paid. How many reviewers give bad reviews to a game that the publisher is actually paying to advertise on their (reviewer) specific website. I bet it doesn't happen very often. So get with the program guys. 

[NefariousKoel]

ORIGINAL: JMass

"but there's no excuse for not including a way to plot waypoints for your units."

I am bored to read crying about waypoints, personally I hate to spend time to set (CM's) waypoints, I think the PC approach is far better.

Yep! At first I was a bit confused, as perhaps the reviewer was too, but I've come to like just 1 click movement. It's not done me wrong, either.

As for the reviewer's preferences... Ugh. I got a free copy of CoH with a video card I ordered awhile back. I played it for approximately 4 minutes. I'm disgusted with all these generic RTSs and even more disgusted with how some still get such high ratings as he gave that one. [X(]

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: NefariousKoel
I got a free copy of CoH with a video card I ordered awhile back. I played it for approximately 4 minutes. I'm disgusted with all these generic RTSs and even more disgusted with how some still get such high ratings as he gave that one. [X(]

It's not really the place to talk about CoH, but it got that sort of rating from just about everyone for the simple reason that it's one of the best PC games ever coded. It's well designed, is actually far from 'generic', requires considerable skill and thought to play well, has a superb range of both single-player and multiplayer options, was/is pretty much 'issue' free and is top quality entertainment... assuming of course you don't hate the genre on sight.

Actually, that's a reasonable enough set of scores IMHO. I agree Kharkov is rather low but it was never going to get an 8.5 on a mainstraem site for reasons of graphics alone. I disagree with Erik on that, review scores should be absolute not relative to the resources available in developing them. ToW is about right at 7 and the CMSF score is fair enough for the game as it was on release. It's a solid 8 or 8.5 now (and full credit to BF for that), but reviewers are under no obligation to go back and revise their pieces every time a game gets patched. If BF wanted an 8.5 score they should have finished the game before they released it.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Hertston
It's not really the place to talk about CoH, but it got that sort of rating from just about everyone for the simple reason that it's one of the best PC games ever coded. It's well designed, is actually far from 'generic', requires considerable skill and thought to play well, has a superb range of both single-player and multiplayer options, was/is pretty much 'issue' free and is top quality entertainment... assuming of course you don't hate the genre on sight.

I happen to like COH as well - it's a fun game.

Actually, that's a reasonable enough set of scores IMHO. I agree Kharkov is rather low but it was never going to get an 8.5 on a mainstraem site for reasons of graphics alone. I disagree with Erik on that, review scores should be absolute not relative to the resources available in developing them. ToW is about right at 7 and the CMSF score is fair enough for the game as it was on release. It's a solid 8 or 8.5 now (and full credit to BF for that), but reviewers are under no obligation to go back and revise their pieces every time a game gets patched. If BF wanted an 8.5 score they should have finished the game before they released it.

I do disagree with this - though I recognize it's IGN's policy to do so. Look at movies - film critics are capable of judging an independent film developed for < $100k just as well as they can judge a $200m movie like Star Wars. There are parts of the movie-going audience that would much rather see that low budget independent flick than Star Wars. Critics understand this and they take it into account. I'd like to see a bit more of that when it comes to computer gaming.

Regards,

- Erik

[mossicon]

Mainstream review sites are never going to give an "indie" game a high rating because the publishers haven't paid for any advertising, so the site has nothing to lose. 6.7 is a pretty good score for an obscure, niche game on a mainstream website.

[z1812]

Hi All,

Most digital wargamers I know cannot be bothered either with CoH or ToW. Mind you that reflects their point of view. I have been lurking about forums long enough to know that wargamers are quite an intelligent group..............well the majority are anyway. They probably would not be swayed by a game sites review in any case. Most would visit the forum of the game they are interested in to see what information is available and proceed from there. And of course wargamers always reserve the right to express their opinion.............wanted or not.[:'(]

Regards John

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: moss_icon
Mainstream review sites are never going to give an "indie" game a high rating because the publishers haven't paid for any advertising, so the site has nothing to lose. 6.7 is a pretty good score for an obscure, niche game on a mainstream website.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't think Mr. Butts would have changed his score or review at all if we had advertised on his site. I'm sure he wrote the review as he saw it, I just disagreed with some of his points and felt that in a few cases I could help with some features he may have missed.

Regards,

- Erik

[NefariousKoel]

ORIGINAL: Hertston

It's not really the place to talk about CoH, but it got that sort of rating from just about everyone for the simple reason that it's one of the best PC games ever coded. It's well designed, is actually far from 'generic', requires considerable skill and thought to play well, has a superb range of both single-player and multiplayer options, was/is pretty much 'issue' free and is top quality entertainment... assuming of course you don't hate the genre on sight.

That's kinda close to the point I was making. I dislike playing an RTS swarming clickfest and would likely have given CoH a 6.7 if only for it's production values. I'm sure the reviewer was doing the same in the reverse sense for this since he surely doesn't look for deeper gameplay (as evidenced by not understanding certain gameplay features), but more production quality.

Either way, I don't pay much attention to reviewers as many end up being mainstreamers who got stuck with reviewing something they would never even load up by choice. "Oh! He plays strategy games! Let's give the review to him!" .. etc. Moss has the right of it.

[sullafelix]

Wargaming, real wargaming is as esoteric to the masses as Zen is. I've never seen a review that didn't pan a wargame for something that a grognard didn't find to be one of the best parts of the game.&nbsp;I don't believe that they can sit there and plan for awhile. If something isn't happening every moment their level of boredom hits the sky. I'm playing XIII century right now and just because it doesn't have a campaign ( like total wars )&nbsp;it has been panned by every review. Even though it's battle AI blows away all the vanilla total wars and is up there with Shogun and the original MTW.&nbsp;That would mean they would pan most wargames that were ever made.TOW was such a shame and then the fact that they changed their tune and said it was never meant to be anything but a RTS game.

[helm123456789]

I also wouldn't take to much away from a review from IGN as it appears their reviewers are unable to read any of the docs that accompany the game before slapping their half baked feable attempt at producing a review.&nbsp; To them it appears that all you need is eye candy and you have a great wargame.&nbsp; Who needs realism all they are looking for is giant unrealistic explosions and little men running around with green health bars above there heads.
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[thewood1]

ORIGINAL: helm123456789

I also wouldn't take to much away from a review from IGN as it appears their reviewers are unable to read any of the docs that accompany the game before slapping their half baked feable attempt at producing a review.  To them it appears that all you need is eye candy and you have a great wargame.  Who needs realism all they are looking for is giant unrealistic explosions and little men running around with green health bars above there heads.

Yeah, unlike most users who read the manual from cover to cover before the first play...NOT!

[thewood1]

Before you jump on Butts's review...
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CMBB = 9.0
CMAK = 8.7
CC = 8.2
CC3 = 9.0
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read em and you will see he is not some mainstream hack.&nbsp; He even comments on subpar graphics and still gives&nbsp;CMBB a 9.0.

[NefariousKoel]

Sounds to me like he was trying to play CM or CC in a PC setting.&nbsp;

Thus far, I'm liking PCK as much as, if not more than, both CM and CC.&nbsp; I think with a little more work, I'd definitely like it better than both series.

*Runs and hides*

[Joram]

I just got this game and can't comment on the gameplay much yet but the graphics do feel a bit bland.&nbsp; The models are great to be sure, especially when zoomed in, but there just seems a lack of atmosphere in the environment itself.&nbsp; The environment is just too abstract for my taste.&nbsp; Hope that makes sense.&nbsp; It doesn't detract much for me but I don't think his graphics comment is that far off.&nbsp;
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