darwinia takes a beating!

[LeatherRaven]

Please be assured that Parallax is a very competent reviewer and whatever you think of his views they certainly weren’t made lightly nor without due dedication to the game itself. No 30 minutes reviews here, have no fear. As far as scoring goes I consider anything over 80% to be a great game…to take it into the 90% category has to be something that really, really hits the right spot in all areas. Personally, I’d say that 5.9 was a lowish average, but I wouldn’t say it was bad, especially by UK press standards. I’m sure that all of us have hated a highly scored game at one point, or certainly in my case, loved a low scored one!

Rhi

[Kelv]

Like Michael Filby, I too found the lack of pathfinding and AI and absolute pain. I found the Alt Tab combination difficult to come to grips with, and I also found the need to swap focus almost impossible to comprehend. The graphics were soooo retro, and the lack of instruction soooo limiting…

But I wasn’t going to let it beat me. I kept going back with my pitiful squad that seem determined to self destruction, my engineers that did the wrong thing, or worse still, nothing at all. I walked for miles and climbed the backs of mountains, and then wiped out my squad with a badly aimed bomb… I destroyed the ants by brute force and subterfuge, before I realised why I was developing armour… I saved 350 Darwinians when I only needed 100… because I could !

I have played until 3am, and I am nearly 50, with a warm (and forgiving) lady to cuddle up to… Am I mad, or just enjoying a game that holds me more captive than HL2 (which I loved, and finally finished in mid march – work just got in the way…)

…all in all, I love it. I have not had such a good and challenging time since Magic Carpet (50 levels, and couldn’t finish the last one because of a bug ! – still a great time was had by all !)

I still have more to do… but I will not give up, It’s different, it’s great, it’s independent, and I love it. I don’t review games, I don’t post on forums, I don’t play a lot of games (work just gets in the way), but I bloody love this one.

Kelv

[xyzyxx]

<removed - xyzyxx>

[Hendar23]

Now I like Darwinia, I do. But I think everyone has gotten a bit carried away with the whole thing. Am I the only one who thinks it's not that innovative or original? It's and action strategy game. Fulllstop. A good action strategy game, but nothing more. It plays like Cannon Fodder or Syndicate and it has a funky Tron-esque plot. It's nice. But it doesn't stick two fingers up at the concept of game genres like everyone seems to think it does. And it's very, very easy.

[Samwise415]

Agreed, Hendar. Definitely a fun game (until it crashes), but the gameplay isn't revolutionary. I think that's what throws some people - the title and storyline imply a heavy focus on cutting-edge a-life, or some similarly "evolved" game, but the actual gameplay is more like an 80s arcade title. Fortunately, I like arcade games, and I'm also easily distracted by "teh shiney" (the game is REALLY pretty). So I found Darwinia quite entertaining for a while.

I still have to agree with the reviewer who said not to buy it till it's patched, though. The bugs have been so vicious that I've had to warn all my friends away from it (I lost enough credibility with my Vampire: Bloodlines fanboyishness). Sigh.

[Iris]

The bugs have been so vicious that I've had to warn all my friends away from it........

And deprive them the chance to try out the game altogether because you experienced a problem that they may or may not encounter at the same magnitude as you did? Quite unfair if you ask me.

[Samwise415]

I did recommend the demo highly, since it doesn't cost money and it was reasonably fun. However, I can't in good conscience recommend they spend hard-earned money on a game that has known fatal bugs in it, at least not until a patch comes out to address those bugs and I've verified that it fixes them. There are plenty of great games out there that don't crash constantly.

Of course, I'm not "depriving" them of anything - they're free to ignore my advice and get the game anyway. They know better than that, though. I'm actually pretty forgiving when it comes to game bugs (as hinted earlier, I recommended Vampire:Bloodlines to everyone I knew very highly despite its lack of polish), so those who know me take it pretty seriously when I say a game is too buggy to play in its current state.

[elDiablo]

Well, I personally have had Darwinia crash on me a few times (ie, more then 20, easily).

However, these were in beta phases. Since the full release, I have not seen a single crash. At all. Darwinia is a LOT less buggy then Uplink. Did you buy that? If so, why? That was full of bugs. It was still bloody good though. And so is Darwinia.

Yes, there are a few problems (ie, the millions of DeeGees on screen slowing down even the biggest of machines), but its still bloody good fun! If you feel, however, that it is unplayable, then fair enough. Wait for a patch. If however, you can stand the game quitting on one level in the game (or some such), why not? You're gonna get the patch when it comes out either way... And you're gonna have to pay for the game either way... So why wait? I just don't understand... =/

[Iris]

And you're gonna have to pay for the game either way... So why wait? I just don't understand... =/

True. By the time a patch is released, I can imagine one would have already finished the game to death, and have moved on to playing the mods or even make their own levels, much akin to Uplink and any other moddable games out there so.....why deprive yourself of the moment? =)

[Rkiver]

Some people just don't like a game that crashes, each to their own. Not everyone likes every game. If they want to badmouth it, let them. We can just badmouth them in return, rather petty, or stop purchasing whatever they do. It works both ways, but is childish in the extreme.

[Tortanick]

Now I like Darwinia, I do. But I think everyone has gotten a bit carried away with the whole thing. Am I the only one who thinks it's not that innovative or original? It's and action strategy game. Fulllstop. A good action strategy game, but nothing more. It plays like Cannon Fodder or Syndicate and it has a funky Tron-esque plot. It's nice. But it doesn't stick two fingers up at the concept of game genres like everyone seems to think it does. And it's very, very easy.

All things are relative, this style of controll was found only in four games that I know of: Syndicate + Wars Cannon fodder 1&2.

Also I can't speek with any authoroty on any but syndicate however I highly doub't any of those games let you manage an army AND a commando team at once. May not be revolutionary but compared to the other action stratergy's you can sub catorgorise it in its very evolutionary.

This is assuming the other games exist at all. Ask any EA marketing guy if they exist (the most recent, syndicate wars, being 9 years old) and I wouldn't be suprised to see them say no makeing darwinia revolutionary
A revolution dosn't have to make somthing new, somthing old and forgotton can be restored. RL example anyone?

[Samwise415]

If however, you can stand the game quitting on one level in the game (or some such), why not?

Actually, I can't stand it. The crashes finally became annoying enough that I stopped playing the game. If the bugs get patched out I might pick it up again, but until that time, it's simply not fun. Which is why I (and possibly some of the reviewers giving it low scores) am not recommending it in its unpatched state.

Sad but true.

[Darksun]

I played RC2 from start to finish without a single crash or even annoying bug.

[juice]

You can pretty much guarantee that the game will crash out if you've enabled hardware audio acceleration and you're playing on a level with red darwinians.

There's quite a few posts in the buglist about it. I hit the same problem multiple times, before browsing the forums and discovering the cause - some form of memory leak.

Switching to software mode fixed the problem.

Also, under heavy load (i.e. huge RvG battles), the gesture-recognition seems to fall apart - you can still draw the symbols, but it refuses to understand them. Which is both very frustrating and can make the difference between victory or failure...

To be fair, however, I've experienced very few problems in the game apart from this.

Commenting on the reviews, and the controversy thereof:
This game is a mix of many things, and I think to fully appreciate it, you need to have an idea of the history of gaming - and AI evolution. I suspect that the reviewer who kicked off all this fuss may not be coming from the same background...

Do you remember the Spectrum? Do you remember the Amiga? Do you remember how Sir Clive's inventions became something of a joke during the 80s? Do you remember watching Tron as a kid, back when the most powerfull home computer available would be lucky to manage more than a 100 gouraud shaded polygons per second?

If you're not British, and you've not yet hit your mid-twenties (or older), then you're going to miss a lot of the stuff in the game.

For me, the graphics trigger nostalgia, while the gameplay treads a nice line between simple blasting and tactical solutions. The backplot evokes memories of the 80s - all the burgeoning possibilities of the IT revolution coming to every home in England, and the wierd and wonderful failures along the way. The Dr may well be a cheeky homage to his Clive-ness, but the Protologic story reminds me of the Jupiter Ace and the Konix and...

In the end, it's down to how much you want to invest in the game - and how willing you are to be drawn into the story. You can treat it as Cannon Fodder meets Lemmings (assuming you're old enough to remember these games) and just blow things up. Or you can be drawn into the story, empathise with the backplot, and do your best to save a unique miracle formed from a tired old man's dreams...

I don't really know if this is an argument for or against the state of the reviews, but consider this: how much do you get out of playing Zelda? Or Mario? Or Sonic, or Metal Gear Solid or any other game with a heritage stretching back 10 or 20 years?

How much of a difference does that continuity make to the way you feel about the game? How much does it affect your review score (both positively and negatively)?

[Parallax]

Ah, the old "question the reviewer's gaming knowledge" chestnut. Yes, I'm old enough to have had a Spectrum, a C64, an Amiga (amongst many others), to have played Lemmings, and was around when Tron first showed up.

And guess what? Any reviewer worth his or her salt will rate a game purely on how fun or entertaining it is, not on whether it brings back memories. If you want to relive the past, download an emulator.

In any case, you'll find all the teenage reviewers manning the PS2 mags.