Kingdoms PCZONE Review - Thumbs Up!

[ataribaby]

PCZONE (major UK PC games magazine) has given the Kingdoms expansion a Classic award with 90%.

It looks very promising; they're usually pretty strict with reviews and hardly give out Classic awards to full games, let alone expansion packs.

[Budwise]

Because of moderators being as they are, I still have the PCGamer review but am not allowed to post it. Just PM me and I will send the pre-release review to you.

[GFX707]

RTW was given 90something percent despite all its bugs. M2TW too I believe.

I wouldn't bother getting your hopes up until you've played the game yourself :)

[Durallan]

I would agree. the reviewers seem to look at the game in a different light to some of you. They don't seem to notice the glaring problems with diplomacy and a few other things, so keep reality hats on and lets see what we think of it!

[icek]

i dont belive there are still people that belive in reliability of those payed-up reviews.

[John_Longarrow]

Icek,

Its not a paid for review. Its a review with too little time to really learn what does or doesn't work in game. Most of the reviewers don't spend 50+ hours on a game, they spend 1 or 2. That is fine for a lot of FPS games, but it can't begin to give justice to something with the scope of a TW game.

[Durallan]

or civ 4, galactic civilizations, or any RTS game really, which is a shame.

[I Am Herenow]

Well, to be honest, I've bought the current issue of PC GAMER (I assume you meant that BTW - the cover of PCZONE didn't say anything about Kingdoms) and they say they still play M2 MP battles daily, so they must like it - and other games in that issue got under 50% scores (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix got 51% or something - and, having played the demo, I'd agree).

Besides, if you forget judging M2 on how many bugs there are, but judge it simply as a game - i.e. put it up against every other type of game out there, and go on entertainment value - then you could certainly do a lot worse than making thousands of little armour-clad men kill each other.

[joe4iz]

i dont belive there are still people that belive in reliability of those payed-up reviews.

Well my friend, I have bought too many stinky games in the past not to relie of the reviews. They have some other nice articles also. Most of the reviews are pretty much dead on.
My subscription pays for itself if it keeps me from buying one game. I started subscribing years ago when a particular franchise put out a sequel.


Besides, I can't lug my PC into the "Throne Room" if you now what I mean.

[icek]

Icek,

Its not a paid for review. Its a review with too little time to really learn what does or doesn't work in game. Most of the reviewers don't spend 50+ hours on a game, they spend 1 or 2. That is fine for a lot of FPS games, but it can't begin to give justice to something with the scope of a TW game.

So thats what there are nicknames for. Because i wont use my subname under such "review" witch is more like preview.

[Forward Observer]

Writers of previews or reviews of pre-gold releases tend to cut such games a lot of slack because they like to think that the glaring bugs will be ironed out before release.

Expansions also fall into this category, but usually the developers can use an expansion to correct additional bugs not yet corrected in the original game---that is unless they introduce new bugs like the 56 year old bug that came with the Viking expansion to the original MTW.

I still read previews with with a lot of skepticism--well even reviews for that matter. I have seen even the US version of PCGamer give a modestly good review to a really crappy bug-ridden mess like Microsoft's "Combat Flight Simulator 3" and in the same issue give a really poor review to a bug free fun little game based on the Disney movie "Treasure Planet".

It wasn't the same reviewer, but obviously the reviews were skewed based on the prejudices and pre-formed opinions of the reviewers plus a lack of true managing editorial supervision. I actually let my subscription drop after that issue, but being the game-whore that I am, I eventually renewed it.

You may already be aware of this site, but the place to really get a handle on reviews is "game rankings. com"

They gather and link to almost every online preview, review, or news release. They will also list all the mager magazine review scores along with the on-line stuff, and will include a pie chart of all the rankings.

For example here is their page for MTW2.

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpage...asp?q=Medieval

It is interesting to note that the average of 30 or so published reviews computed in the findings give MTW an average 0f 87% (there is not a single review below 80%) while the individual rankings base on votes from players is only 78%.

This is usually always the case with such complex games as the totalwar seriies, and it all boils down at least two major factors.

1. "professional" Reviewers are never going to have the time to explore a game fully like individuals will; that is--before the reveiwer has to meet his or her publishing deadline.

2. individual scores are going to be skewed by those individuals who absolutely hate the game and give it a unrealistic ridiculously low scores like 0% or 10%.

It is alway interesting to read the reviews of games where the large majority of reviewers give a game very good scores while one or two reviewers give the same game a horrible score. You always wonder if they hardly played the game at all, but were simply pre-disposed to dislike it, and wrote their review accordingly. After reading a lot of these bad reviews, it is usually obvious that this is the case.

Cheers

[ataribaby]

Cripes. I didn't expect much of a response on this one... I just got my copy of PCZONE magazine early in the post (I've been a subscriber for several years), and just thought I'd share the optimism.

I suppose it's a bit much to expect people to trust in the reliability and reputation of a magazine that they don't know. That's fair enough - healthy scepticism. It's also understandable that people are a pretty cynical towards reviews and reviewers in general; there are a lot of duff ones out there.

Ah well... the review made me more excited about the expansion, but with hindsight it was a pretty pointless topic to post... Soz.

[Patricius]

I thought PC Zone give every major title 90%. Maybe not.

[gardibolt]

And doesn't every TW title get an enthusiastic thumbs up? I'd be awfully surprised if one didn't, frankly. They make a great first impression, and it's only after a while that the annoying bugs come to the fore.

[ReiseReise]

Reviews (and the games themselves) are not written for gamers like us, they are written for the other 95%; those who buy a game, spend 20-30 hours on it, get their eye candy, feel their power rush, have their "Elephants with cannons on them, awesome!" moment and then go back to being h4xrz and pwning n00bs in whatever the flashiest FPS is right now.

[I Am Herenow]

Well the games are about seeing lots of little men kill each other, after all. For us guys, it's just that the excitement shifts from elephants with cannons on them to knights with historically accurate chainmail. Merchants, Princesses, accurate representations of the Feudal system etc. are all very nice, but the main element of the Total War series is its battles.

[sapi]

Reviews (and the games themselves) are not written for gamers like us, they are written for the other 95%; those who buy a game, spend 20-30 hours on it, get their eye candy, feel their power rush, have their "Elephants with cannons on them, awesome!" moment and then go back to being h4xrz and pwning n00bs in whatever the flashiest FPS is right now.

Correct

*returns to playing the latest FPS

[Kadagar_AV]

I dont know if I'll trust CA again to be honest...

after they released medieval 2 with a 100% passive AI (come on, it's not like that could have sneaked through unnoticed by the bugtesters) I just feel like they dont give a **** about the customers.

[Odin]

Wow a game review magazine gave a positive review to a game? Nice to see the gaming industry is still working in unison.

CA makes good games, it just takes a few patches for them to get solid. And yeah the AI could be better but thats the most tired argument in the gaming world.

Want to be a paying beta tester like MTW2 1.0? Buy kingdoms at release, better yet you, yes you, might even be one of the few who actually writes the script that corrects a bug or too (two handed, shields, ring a bell) and you can be glorified on message boards throughout cyber space !

And you paid to do it !

Me? i'll wait until its out for a good 3-6 months the massess have created thier "wish lists" and "bug threads" and CA fixes them (or leaks a patch that might, by accident of course.....) or a mod comes out that repairs them.

[Lacessit]

I dont know if I'll trust CA again to be honest...

after they released medieval 2 with a 100% passive AI (come on, it's not like that could have sneaked through unnoticed by the bugtesters) I just feel like they dont give a **** about the customers.

Passive AI was 'created' while Listening To The Community. CA was trying to implement last minute changes to please Community-demands, and butchered their own AI while doing so. They were already well aware of passive AI when 1.0 came out, and fixed it relatively quickly in the first patch.

I WILL be buying Kingdoms.

[alpaca]

Since I don't have time to play it when it comes out anyways, I might buy Kingdoms a week after it comes out. Hopefully until then I'll get some real review by some of you freaks who already spent 40 hours on it during that week

[Slug For A Butt]

Passive AI was 'created' while Listening To The Community. CA was trying to implement last minute changes to please Community-demands, and butchered their own AI while doing so. They were already well aware of passive AI when 1.0 came out, and fixed it relatively quickly in the first patch.

I WILL be buying Kingdoms.

Shield and 2Hander bugs were game breaking bugs as far as I'm concerned. Even if you didn't know the cause of uber powerful peasants or Zweihanders not doing much against cav, you must have seen that there was somthing not right?
And did CA make this a priority in the first patch?


I WILL NOT be buying Kingdoms for quite a long time, if at all.

[Lacessit]

Shield and 2Hander bugs were game breaking bugs as far as I'm concerned. Even if you didn't know the cause of uber powerful peasants or Zweihanders not doing much against cav, you must have seen that there was somthing not right?
And did CA make this a priority in the first patch?

As I said (or implied maybe) the first patch was for the issues that were known to CA BEFORE the game came out. Heck, even the community, with its gazillion critical 'test-players' took a few months to figure out Zweihanders and shield-bug. And when they were known, they wére adressed in the second patch. I don't want to sound as a fanboy (I probably do ) but I still trust CA with my money

[NagatsukaShumi]

Since I don't have time to play it when it comes out anyways, I might buy Kingdoms a week after it comes out. Hopefully until then I'll get some real review by some of you freaks who already spent 40 hours on it during that week

I am one of those freaks alpaca

Rest assured I shall play it a little bit before butchering it and putting the prime cuts of modding changes in a list for the AD board

[NagatsukaShumi]

As I said (or implied maybe) the first patch was for the issues that were known to CA BEFORE the game came out. Heck, even the community, with its gazillion critical 'test-players' took a few months to figure out Zweihanders and shield-bug. And when they were known, they wére adressed in the second patch. I don't want to sound as a fanboy (I probably do ) but I still trust CA with my money

Jesus, a CA sympathiser, a rarity!

[edyzmedieval]

CA sympathisers are VERY rare. Collectible items, I must say.

[NagatsukaShumi]

CA sympathisers are VERY rare. Collectible items, I must say.

Just a bit! It would be nice if people thought about how games are made for a few seconds and compare TW to other games.

[The Stranger]

simple, games are made before christmass.

[DisruptorX]

CA sympathisers are VERY rare. Collectible items, I must say.

Hey, I have nothing unkind to say about MTW 2. Only TW game I haven't enjoyed every moment of was Rome.

[Budwise]

Hey, I have nothing unkind to say about MTW 2. Only TW game I haven't enjoyed every moment of was Rome.

Word

YES, CA please pay attention. I often wonder how a game developer could put a bug in EVERYTHING and not catch any during testing. BUT, as you said, I have enjoyed the games that I have played under M2TW and will not complain about the MANY MANY shortcomings that it offers.