Tank Universal: IGN review
Community Forums/Showcase/Tank Universal: IGN review
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| Forgive the pimpage, but IGN's just put up an interesting review of Tank Universal - interesting in how they handle/react to an indie game. http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/921/921178p1.html |
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| Well, congrats to the reviewer (probably about 12 years old) for completely missing the point of the graphics style. |
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| yah...hard to tell if it's a good or bad review. Kind of a sweet and sour mix. weird.... |
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| I think on the whole it's pretty positive - I like his closing comments of course ;-) and I understand where he's coming from with the graphics - there are elements that are pretty awful (character design and animation for example). That comes from trying to do everything oneself. The lack of multiplayer and in-game saves are a definite lack. It's interesting the range of opinions TU's received from the reviewers. There's been gushing puff-pieces that even I felt were OTT to one completely dismissive review by a self confessed strategy/rpg/board game afficionado who surprise, surprise, just didn't like the game and wrote it off on that basis (thanks mate). Thing is, if you get one really bad/unfair review, it can drop your metacritc score. This then affects where your game appears on a number of Steam pages. |
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| I think the humans and animations could have been better, but the overall graphics were nice looking...I don't think the reviewer realized that they were SUPPOSED to be faceted... |
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| i might buy it off steam, if i have some money left over after the haunted house tonight. the reviewer really didn't like the style at all, but i think its cool. and after trying to make my own tank game its not so easy. and mine was point and shoot. for a one man show it is really good. |
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| mtnhome3d There's a 3 level demo available that I'd recommend you try first - if you haven't already. www.tankuniversal.com after the haunted house tonight. Haunted house? ;-) |
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| Well, congrats to the reviewer (probably about 12 years old) for completely missing the point of the graphics style. Uhm, it doesn't seem to miss a thing... it's quite fair to say the truth if you read the whole article, both the bad and the good. Graphically wise it's a style which can both look charming and dull, and undeniably even if you love visionary vr styles, at its heart many consider the idea because it's doable in a low budget production. I can't comment about the timing and quality of the story and cutscenes since I didn't play the game, but if you skip to the third part of the review you can see that it concentrates on the gameplay which is defined solid and varied, and that is the most important part after all. Technically, from the few movies and screenshots which I looked the style seems fascinating but far less refined than Darwinia (however Darwinia IMO falls short in the gameplay department, where it looks like here it's the other way around). Edit: I know the two games are totally unrelated besides the style, before someone points it out. :) |
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| Doiron I agree. |
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| yeah a haunted house. sposed to be the biggest one in the state or something and yet they don't have a website =|. oh well. i played the demo and i liked it but had no extra money at the time so ill get it now, hopefully. |
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| I think the review is really quite harsh actually. Indeed, the reviewer makes some positive comments about the gameplay, but this bit below is a bit too far in the negative direction, and is in fact completely unfair in my opinion. Imagine, if you will, rooms that have no feature other than four blank walls. Imagine smoke and explosion effects so primitive that they look like an ad-hoc collection of rectangles, and a radar screen littered with such chunky, jagged objects that you feel like you've chosen the wrong resolution. Imagine simplistic wireframe borders and a color palette so limited that floors blend into walls and walls into ceilings and ceilings into sky. In this way, the game seems less a retro flashback than a low-budget college project. Just because it doesn't look like Bioshock et al, doesn't mean that it has no merit. Grrr... |
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| yeah - maybe this sort of criticism is perhaps why most indie games are 2D affairs? |
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| Quote from under review: trust a New Zealand kiwi to do this. lol. This is quite typical of the NewZealand race. They always do things like this. I bet this game is actually really cool. What? What do "they always do"? Oh, and what big10p said: congrats to the reviewer for completely missing the point of the graphics style. |
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| lol, ya, that part about the particles looking like a collection of rectangles was pretty stupid...obviously it's supposed to look unphotorealistic (bioshock graphics werent all that for me :) ). Though I do quite agree that the static effect is way too blurry. It looks low-resolution, but interpolated so it has that ugly blur effect you get from scrolling to close to an image. I think you should take advantage of the steam update system and change the static to look more pixelated... |
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| I totally agree that some of TU's media could have been better; like the smoke, the mech walk, some retro sounding explosions... I think the artistic side of the game is split between the late 90s techno genre soundtrack, and the late 70s visuals and sound FXs. I think this game would enjoy some multiplayer maps too! EDIT: But, this doesn't make the game bad in any way. |
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| I 2nd the missing the point of the graphics .... I thought the review quite harsh. I love the way the graphics within the game take forwards disney's (I think it was disney) initial foray into 3d graphics in the film TRON, and I think it is an immersive game. my 10p (;-) |
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| Face the facts MadJack.... You kicked ass with Tank Universal! Kudos to you for designing a fun game and getting it to the point where you are actually getting reviews. |
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| Indeed. Finishing a game of this size is praiseworthy enough in its own right. ;) |
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| That's a pretty good review. You got a higher score than a slew of 'AAA' games ;) |
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| You kicked ass with Tank Universal! Heh, thanks - it was a long road to get to that point ;-) I should be getting my first total sales report from the publisher next week, so fingers crossed... |
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| All in all not a terrible review, and I think if you put it into perspective it should be even more impressive. Tank Universal is literally a one man show competing with team built titles. I think the game is great and I hope that it does well for you MadJack. -Gooney |
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| Ouch... All publicity is good publicity. |
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| What did the reviewer want shaders etc, can't say that would fit with the style. anyway the average reads review is a bit higher that there score. Id go with reads reviews over an ign review anyway. Well done on get the game out there anyway madjack |
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| im surprised buna vista interactive hasnt taken issue with the whole tron look and feel, i guess they let a lot of tech demos go as thats all they are, but this is onsale and screams "ive watched too much tron" without wiki/googling it i think tron was taken to disney as a concept and not an in house idea, kinda how pixar started (after splitting from ilm or was that someone else?) with disney, now the two are inseperable makes you wonder how much disney makes on 'own brand' products compared to other guys stuff i remember reading that the estates of aa milne (sp) and the other winnie the poo guy only licenced disney to adapt the existing stories and not merchandising rights (or own stories), there was talk of them taking them to the cleaners as even eeyore out sold the whole micky, mini, donnald and goofy lines together |
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| I 3rd the missing the point of the graphics. But overall I think it was a fairly good review. If I had read that review I would give it a try for myself. |
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| ..to me, comments about graphics are entirely irrelevant..especially having in mind that game was made to BE like that, not as a flaw...and guy spent huge time talking about that, while gameplay wise he didnt talk much and in real, to me its more important and having said that, I have spent more time playing TU demo than Far Cry2 today..why..because after seen beautiful graphics and such boring gameplay, its all lost its taste..however, i do agree that multiplayer missing is something what should be done..for tank type of games, i think its a must..but again..game rulez, if you ask me.. |
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| im surprised buna vista interactive hasnt taken issue with the whole tron look and feel, Just to point out - the game may have a definite Tron 'vibe', but it's not Tron. There's no lightcycles or recognisers or flinging discs around. There is an MCP look-alike on one of the levels (as a bit of a joke), but all the artwork and content is original. |
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| but all the artwork and content is original. it just looks alot like tron ;) the whole how can we express a wire frame world for the movie becoming solid black's with red and the odd blue neon glowing edges check guys with glowing parts of their clothing check there is alot of the LOOK of tron, regardless to the movie/game elements, too much that im worried that perhaps theyve just not seen it yet and if/when they do, esp as its for sale, they come a knocking im sure it will run on this rig, for some reason ive never dl'd the demo to find out |
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| Tank Universal borrows more from the light cycle sequences of the ancient 1982 Disney sci-fi flick Tron Im ancient? *tear* IM GOING TO SUE THEM FOR CALLING ME OLD! lol. I dont like that website anyways :D Game totaly kicked ass though. |
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| in computing terms 1982 IS ancient although it does give the impression of fred flintstone using stone slab punch cards ;) in movie terms the word should be 'classic' or 'cult' or even 'cult classic' or 'marzipan' yes the graphics look dated now but tron 2 movie had better not 'upgrade' their graphics card or else |
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| TerryB Not 'ancient', just 'experienced' ;-) |
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| well, the reviewer is a bit of a knob. but hey - hes an aussie, and you're a kiwi - so its justified :P btw i am a customer ;) |
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| ahh..hes aussie...no wonderr :) now its clear..in that case, MadJack..relax...its not bad at all then :) |
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| Heh - in that case, I'm surprised the reviewer didn't work in a sheep joke as well! |
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| lol - you said it. ;) |
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| I'm an aussie, and I thought it was a baaaaaad review. It felt like he was trying to pull the wool over the reader's eyes. He kept trying to ram home the point about the graphics. I thought it was shear nonsense. I felt like I was being fleeced. What do ewe all think? By the way, I love the game. It was criminally underrated in that review I think. |
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| I havn't checked out the game, yet, but from the looks of it I would assume it's meant to maintain those esthetics as part of the spirit behind it. The reviewer certainly hurled himself into a self-traumatizing sense of shame with such relentless joy of tearing something up that he obviously can't or wouldn't want to relate to. I wouldn't be too surprised, if it wasn't the first time he went overboard with his selfrighteous desire to represent authority. It may have given him a big kick the first time around, piercing him only mildly with what should've been a trauma of shame, but he might have found justification by a sufficient amount of actual sheep, who were to second his stark opinion. In his defence, if there could possibly be such a thing, I would assume that he simply comes from a different realm of games and can't look at this particular one from "our" vantage point. Since I havn't played it myself, but only looked at screenshots and have a decent imagination, I also believe that its visual consistency is awesome and admirable to most of us here. I'm sure, if we were from the UT team or some EA slavelabor camp, we'd have a somewhat different perception as well. But, nontheless, he certainly sounds like a fragrant S-hole with perfectly inappropriate insensitivity and runs the risk of being nothing but a little propaganda suck-up... that's, by the way, yet another possible assumption. |
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| ervin You really should have resisted ;-) But then you aussies always have been more interested in our sheep than ourselves. I expect you get a few cold nights over there? Taron Heh - I'm actually not that upset about it as I somewhat expected a rather brittle attitude from a website devoted to reviewing and pimping the latest AAA titles. On that level though, the review gives a fair amount of grudging praise and it's the positive closing comments that will interest people enough to check it out I think. (also, there is a three level demo you can check out ;-) |
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| Hahahaha - yes, I can never resist a sheep joke or six. The forum rules prohibit posting of far superior jokes though. :o) Taron - if you are interested in this sort of game, you really should check it out. Not only is it a cracking game, but it is also a real inspiration for us Blitz3D developers. |
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| Dude. it's a fantastic one man accomplishment. |
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| Dude. it's a fantastic one man accomplishment. Thanks mate! ;-) |
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| Ugh - currently completing a Russian language conversion. Cautionary tale - if possible, try to avoid hard coding on-screen text messages. A lot of the text messages can be sorted by replacing DATA statements, but I've also hardcoded a lot of on-screen text messages. As such, I've had to scan through the code and replace those with their russian equivalents. If I'd realised, would have set up all on-screen text to read data from a central source so I could just swap out language definitions in one go. Live and learn. |
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