Reviews 4 Hugs, or Gold, either one.
THREAD CLOSED!
Hey hey, old time reviewer throwing their hat in for reviewing any (scrap of) level that gets thrown at them. Admittedly, I'm used to reviewing full games and such but it'll probably translate easily enough. Anyway enough about me, I doubt anyone really cares, so let's set down some kind of template shall we?
What will be assessed?
and how much weight will they carry?
Originality: I'm afraid in today's heavily saturated market, this is what will matter the most to the review. Something that's completely new will always be better than something that's been done to death, unless it's rubbish of course.
Gameplay: It's not like I can review a level and not take this into account. What if it's a movie? Then you'll score poorly Then I'll take that into account.
Visual representation/ atmosphere: I'll collide these two categories together because they would normally both fall under the category of "immersion". It's more important than you think to get the player completely involved in the level, they'll be more forgiving. This too will be a huge factor in any review, ever.
Ingenuity: Sometimes you see something in a level and just think "daym, how in god's name did they manage that?". A lot of the time clever ideas and tricks add to the big "wow factor" of a level. Though depending on the level type this will carry a different weight.
Glitches and the like Funnily enough, this won't effect the review too much because once pointed out, these things are generally dealt with pretty quickly. I'll definitely point out everything I can though.
Scoring
I'm not going to give a score :P Sorry, in my experience they're way too subjective based on mood/ time of day/ whether or not you've had a cuppa and so on. Instead I'll do a brief concluding paragraph with pros/cons and recommendations to whoever would like it.
Now who wants a review? (:
Zompocolypse: Life After Z-Day Review
Zompocolypse: Life After Z-Day by Hamsalad
I've realised two things. Thing 1, I must be the 54th review to have a go at reviewing this level, though I haven't bothered reading any of the other reviews for it so I hope this won't just highlight my incompetence. Thing 2, the most important factor in my reviews is originality, yet here we have a zombie level.
Oh dear.
Okay, maybe I'm being a little harsh, but honestly there is nothing more generic than a zombie level. This one even conforms to the extent that you have a paintinator to paint them to death with. Though let's now push that annoying and hideous aspect of the level to the side and try to focus on everything else that "Zompocolypse: Life After Z-Day" has to offer.
Visually, this level sets out to impress with liberal use of decoration and an assorted pallet of materials to imitate a kind of derelict/ industrial feel. Pipes run throughout the whole level and Hamsalad has gone a bit crazy with cobwebs which, if I'm honest, is quite effective. However, there are many minor things that I can nitpick away at, as immersion is such a delicate thing that one slip up can make the rest of your work pointless. For one, the zombies break through the doors to the sound of an explosion, which is slightly confusing. Also, they kill you by electrocuting you. Wouldn't it be possible to put some sort of player sensor switch on the zombies which connected to an emitter of black, poisonous gas? That would work a lot better.
Gameplay wise, there's not much to talk about. You walk up to a zombie/ group (herd?) of zombies and then proceed to backtrack whilst spamming R1 furiously. This is fine for the first few, but gets extremely repetitive, especially when you consider that it actually involved going backwards so when you finally kill the group you have to run all the way back again, which is never a good thing. I did really enjoy the small time you spend in a building that was burning down, it added some variety but I don't think it went on long enough to make up for the rest of the level.
Although I admit this level was well polished and has obviously had quite some time poured into it, it just doesn't strike me as anything out of the ordinary. No new idea is introduced, no experimentalism at all is attempted and even the immersion, the strongest part of the level, is cracked by little small, tiny things.
This level is recommended to those who are not interested in trying something completely new and/ or have a zombie fetish.
It's a shame the first review had to be so negative, but honestly this is the kind of level that I really can't stand. The creator has talent, which is obvious to anyone, but with this level it seems to go to waste. He should remember though, that this is just one man's opinion and this one man has very strong opinions :P. Also, I'm sorry this is a tad short, but I honestly don't enjoy being negative, whatever you may think.
The Versus levels will be played and hopefully reviewed tomorrow, as will the LBP1 level. I just have to find the disk and then blow all the dust off of it. (:
Football Kick by Thunderbolt444 review
Football Kick by Thunderbolt444
I think the last thing you can call this level is ambitious, it's as simple as it comes: a goal moves up and down and you must press X at the right time so a football goes in a goal. "Surely there's more?" you must be asking, but no I mean it, that's it. Oh sure, you have 2 minutes to score as many goals as possible but if anything 2 minutes is too long.
With a concept this basic, you really expect the execution to be flawless and all in all I'm afraid I found it pretty clunky. Actually aiming your shots is something that seems to have an element of randomness to it, I pride myself on having the reaction time of your average ninja but sometimes I'd hit the ball in the same place as I had before and it would move at a completely different angle, which confused me. On top of this, I've had balls bounce into the goal and then disappear without giving me any points at all.
Thunderbolt444's slap-dash approach has also been applied to the visuals. No effort, at all, has been put into making the level look even remotely like a football pitch and if he wasn't trying to do this (then why the crowd?), then I'm quite sure he could have done much more than making a large block of one material, cutting a square into it and adding 2 stickers. If you want to see what I'm talking about a picture has been put up for us.
Maybe I'm looking at this in the same way that I view a full level and maybe that's the reason I'm being so harsh. But really, for a mini-game style level like this the gameplay+visuals are more important than ever. I guess it is original to an extent, that extent being that it's another take on the basketball levels, but originality only matters if the rest of the level can stand on its own merits, otherwise it's pointless.
I can't help but thinking that this level came out of the creator seeing some repetitive and simple, yet successful versus level, and tried to make his own. Then he could figure out how to make it multiplayer and forgot that these levels are only popular because of local competition.
Now let's have a look at my checklist.
Originality: average
Gameplay: poor
Visuals: poor
Ingenuity: poor
Glitches: found
Impression I've left on any future person who wants a review after a track record of only ever posting negative reviews: very poor.
I didn't like this level, maybe you will if you're in to competing against yourself, but if Thunderbolt444 put as much effort into making the level as he has promoting it then we'd have a much more refined and playable experience on our hands
It may seem like I only do these reviews to rant at people, I don't. Bring on the next victim!
@TnTyson: Oh hi there... :)
@Thunderbolt444: It's probably a good thing I didn't try the zombie level :P But honestly, I've layered out my points and I hope you take them into account when making new levels. (:
LBP: Sack-Kart GP (Stage 1) by Odd-Kid review
LBP: Sack-Kart GP (Stage 1) by Odd-Kid
Grumble gumble, I only ever give negative reviews, grumble, and now I have to break that trend.
First off, this level is good.
Now, I know I said I would put a huge amount of emphasis on originality and this isn't especially original, but it's absolutely solid in all other respects and, in it's own way, does manage to have some originality. Visually however, the level is stunning. I don't think I've ever come across top-down levels that look quite this good, what's more is that there's a perspective trick employed to make it look like some parts of the level are actually sloping (which we all know is impossible) and again, I've never seen that done before.
I think the thing that stuck me most about this level is the little things, that's not to say the unimportant things, but the things that you don't think you'd notice. The first example would be the fake-sloping thing I've already mentioned, however as well as this you have things like the acceleration being mapped to R2 to allow you to change speed and the loudness of the engine depending on the acceleration.
You even slow down if you go on the grass... now that's attention to detail.
The gameplay itself was smooth and well thought out, it isn't possible to just hold your finger down on R2 since there are some places where you really need to slow down to turn and I like that, it incorporates skill into the level. I never found much use for the power-slide however, mostly because I tried it and wasn't sure what it actually did. This is possibly due to my TV being miniscule and the cart being quite small itself though.
It saddens me that this level has such a small amount of plays, but then again this isn't the only example of a great level being completely ignored by the community. I imagine that it's incredibly fun when playing with friends (I had to play on my own because I'm "so ronery"), but then again it's probably because this type of level has been done to death that it hasn't had much exposure.
I managed all 5 laps of this pretty long course, by myself, without getting bored. That should show you just how good it is. This is basic top-down kart racing done to perfection.
Level Hearted. See, I can be nice too, on occasion.
Glasshouse by TnTyson review
Glasshouse by Tntyson
And a few tips for very new creators
What I'm going to do with this review is to go through a few things that I (as in personally, as in "if I say something you think is wrong don't slaughter me") would suggest to newish level creators and then apply it the TnTyson's level.
1) Assume every player is borderline retarded
By this I mean make everything blindingly obvious. This can be done simply, i.e putting everything you need on the screen where the player can see them, by signs or, how I prefer to do it, with game cameras. The first one being the most necessary of course, TnTyson is a bit guilty of putting things you need to grapple where you can't see them and it's only by guesswork that you actually get to them. He does put signs in, I'll give him that, but they're in glass so they're hard to see and personally I saw them and thought they just meant jump.
2) Make it challenging, but not in a cheap way
I want to know when I play a level that I died because I made a mistake, not because the level is bleeding impossible :P My general rule is if I can ace a level I've made pretty easily, it's about the right difficulty. You have to remember that you made the level, so will know every single distance/trick it has so if you die when playing it too often it's usually because you've made it too hard. Again, TnTyson had places in his level where I literally had to repeat 20 odd times to get it *just* right.
3) If it can be done in one layer, do it in one layer, not in all of them
This is a smaller, but nevertheless important thing. If everything in your level is made using 3-layer deep materials, change it to one. This doesn't change how the level plays at all, gives you space in the background to put decorations and it's quicker to make. Be sure to put it all in the front layer though otherwise you can jump off. TnTyson didn't do this and it would've helped a lot if (s)he did.
4) Before you start a level, think of a concept for it that makes it different
TnTyson actually did this, I just wanted to bring it up :P When making a level you have to think "what will make people want to play this?" Now you don't see too many fully glass levels chucking about the place so I commend him on this. However, then you have to think "does this concept work?" and in this case there are many flaws with fully glass levels. For example, if you spawn next to an obstacle you have to backtrack and take a run up.
5) Variety
Within your concept, think of how you can stretch and expand it to allow as much variety as possible. This is especially important with longer levels to stop people becoming bored. TnTyson did this to an extent with multiple grappling hook sections spliced with normal platforming but I felt he could have done more. Even (possibly) adding a part where there's some non-glass material as well to help with the platforming.
At the same time as this, don't try and pack in everything. I noticed a grabinator section where all you did was remove a bomb from a bouncepad. This may have worked better without the grabinator.
6) The Devil's in the detail
You have to think that when you're making a level you're effectively exchanging time for like-ratings. Anything you can do, however minute, will make a level more enjoyable. People will pick up on them and quite a lot of the time will forgive you for a lot of things now that they've seen that you've put that extra bit of effort in.
This also applies to visuals, learn to love the corner editor. Some good creators will literally just lay down one block of material and then only use the corner editor from there on. It allows you to make everything really smooth and stops me from noticing where a square was used, triangle, circle etc. TnTyson again, this is to you :P
7) Practice is horrible but necessary
Do you know how many levels I made before I made 2 half-decent ones? 12. Now not all of them had much effort put into them but you learn form each one. On top of this try to pick up things when you play other peoples' levels or even story levels. "What are they doing here? What materials are they using? How much detail do they pack in? How did they make this?" These are things you should be asking yourself all the time. Also, even though originality is important don't be afraid to take inspiration from other people. This is more general of course, but if you take a little bit of this, a little of that, you end up with something that is unique and yours. No one got anywhere without taking the best ideas and refining them. Think of the lightbulb and car for instance, two inventions that weren't good at all until someone else came over and improved them.
8) If you don't enjoy doing it, don't do it
Some people enjoy spending months on one level, I don't. So they've got hundreds of hearts and I'm stuck with a lot less :P But I have fun with it and, apparently, that's what matters.
So TnTyson, I know this wasn't a normal review, but hopefully you picked up a lot of things from this and realise the problems that I had (:
