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My 30 minute Darkfall review (1/10)
Mkay, so someone mentioned yesterday the shop was open so I went in to buy the game and downloaded it. I got distracted by watching Red Cliff and forgot about the completed torrent. Anywho I got into the game a little while ago. Here is my experience.
First the verdict: 1/10 (I don't think people would accept 0/10)
I spent 30 minutes in the game and I challenge Tasos and his minions to prove otherwise!
Character Creation:
What a stiff bunch of generic fantasy looking figures. They all looked kinda dull and I finally went with an Orc. I like orcs. They are pretty. So I chose to make him very green - aka games workshop green and went with an eyepatch and stuff. To my dismay all I could do was flip him around sideways - and I couldn't even do this by placing the cursor and dragging. What a drag. Really.
After getting bored with this I logged into the game. Oh and the stiff loading screens would have made my good old ZX Spectrum proud.
Graphics:
For a game that came out around the time of "Everquest I" it is really pretty. Textures are definitely on par with the best games of mid nineties. O wait !! We are in 2009 !?!? :-O
Animations was choppy and I finally found out I could get third person view when equipping a weapon. Yup I made it that far. I did get dizzy from the ground textures so looking up into the empty sky made me feel better. I was dissppointed to learn I couldn't turn around and face my toon from the front like in WoW.
Everything in the game made me feel nostalgic for the birth of PC gaming. Only I could never go back to those days due to this awful thing called evolution.
Gameplay:
I managed to discover that little blurp to the left on my screen was an action pane and I found two spells to put in there. One was a heal and the other was mana missiles (??). I didn't find a way to activate them though.
Finally having equipped my sword looking object in my backpack I ran into a castle looking for npcs with golden question marks over the head. None was found during my playtime.
I was starting to get bored and the apple pie in the kitchen was drawing me to it, so I found a lonesome fellow orc and drew my sword. I managed to swing it close to him and my toon sounded growlish like my stomach thinking of the apple pie. Finally after swinging some time I noticed I had reduced his stamina by 0,80 point.
Out of the blue some statue or other thing zapped me three times to my death. Lying dead on the ground the other orc was standing above my dead body. I am not sure to this minute if he was gloating or just puzzled or as confused as I was. Some bar on the screen was very slowly climbing up and then froze. Finally after hitting a lot of keyboard keys (okay I was frustrated at this time) I finally managed to get revived. Weee.
Community:
One dude on something looking like a mount or Tasos' grandma stopped and stared me in the eye. I am sitting too far away from my 46" Tv in my living room with wireless mouse/keyboard to see the chat window which is tiny in full HD mode so I am unsure if he spoke. But he did stare me in the eyes.
Wrap up:
Okay, my 30 minutes was up. I ran again after reviving, this time I passed the castle where the statue zapped me for wildly swinging my kitchen knife. I found another still, dead, lifeless, animationless area with some lava... I immediately jumped in the lava. Interesting I didn't die immediately just as one don't in WoW or AoC but instead of swimming I just fell to the bottom. O well. I revived and hit the QUIT button.
/uninstall
Okay I gotta go get the apple pie and start working on my resume for the job application to Eurogamer.
I heard they had an opening !?!?
Cheers
Draccan
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CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
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Comments
haha.
Todays lesson, Apple Pie > Darkfall.
can i have your account?
trolL'D
This was the worst review I have ever read,
I have never played darkfall but i am a huge follower of upcomming sandbox games such as Mortal Online and all I can say is if you are so into carebear themepark games you should stick to reviewing those. Not saying that darkfall is amazing but you didnt even give it a chance you compared everything to WoW.
WoW is a shitty game.
Now I already know you will hate the game I am most interested in, mortal online, because its all FPV.
Go back to your themepark games and stop harasing sandbox gamers.
after reading what he wrote and reading what everyone after him has wrote i find this funny x2.
Rage, player reviews even generates kid emotions out of you guys, eh?
my balls itch.
Nah, even those morons have standards. Just ask your mommy to resub your account to that other game. Remember to eat her pie first.
Can you please put some warnings here and there? like "ATTENTION HIGH VOLTAGE OF SARCASM"
Otherwise, fellow Bartillo-like users will fail miserably.
Long Story
i think that was the point.
well it appeared like a serious review to me >.>
you're to serious guy.
i think that was the point.
Either am I taking this very much sophisticated, or you are wrong sir and whole idea behind this was to criticise that infamous review of eurogamers, and thus it would be ridiculous conclude that point was to troll people who think like-wise such as Bartillo.
Long Story
can i have your stuff ?
BestSigEver :P
i think that was the point.
Either am I taking this very much sophisticated, or you are wrong sir and whole idea behind this was to criticise that infamous review of eurogamers.
eh. whats the difference.
Not a single untruth in there, take it whichever way you want honestly either way its kinda funny.
i think that was the point.
Either am I taking this very much sophisticated, or you are wrong sir and whole idea behind this was to criticise that infamous review of eurogamers.
eh. whats the difference.
Trolling people who do think like-wise and trolling people who do hold the opposite are different frankly. Bartillo being on the same side, and getting trolled looked like pretty much tragic.
Long Story
i think that was the point.
Either am I taking this very much sophisticated, or you are wrong sir and whole idea behind this was to criticise that infamous review of eurogamers.
eh. whats the difference.
Trolling people who do think like-wise and trolling people who do hold the opposite are different frankly. Bartillo being on the same side, and getting trolled looked like pretty much tragic.
uhm. i am most definatly not understanding what it is you are trying to say, your first sentence nearly gave me an aneurysm
i think that was the point.
Either am I taking this very much sophisticated, or you are wrong sir and whole idea behind this was to criticise that infamous review of eurogamers.
eh. whats the difference.
Trolling people who do think like-wise and trolling people who do hold the opposite are different frankly. Bartillo being on the same side, and getting trolled looked like pretty much tragic.
uhm. i am most definatly not understanding what it is you are trying to say, your first sentence nearly gave me an aneurysm
Alright I am going to save both of us from this burden.
We are not inhaleing the same thing for respiration purposes. In fact, we do not even live on the same planet. Therefore, "shared grounds" does not apply to our situation.
Long Story
@ OP ... thank you for the good laugh.
jedi mind - heavenly divine, steadily shine in '99!
i think that was the point.
Either am I taking this very much sophisticated, or you are wrong sir and whole idea behind this was to criticise that infamous review of eurogamers.
eh. whats the difference.
Trolling people who do think like-wise and trolling people who do hold the opposite are different frankly. Bartillo being on the same side, and getting trolled looked like pretty much tragic.
uhm. i am most definatly not understanding what it is you are trying to say, your first sentence nearly gave me an aneurysm
Alright I am going to save both of us from this burden.
We are not inhaleing the same thing for respiration purposes. In fact, we do not even live on the same planet. Therefore, "shared grounds" does not apply to our situation.
Just the facts:
Darkfall scores a 1 out of a possible 10. Reviewers hardly played the game based on the server logs.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/4/view/forums/thread/235448/My-30-minute-Darkfall-review-110.html
Draccan came to me over a month ago and asked for 2 accounts to review Darkfall which they promptly received. Today, more than a month later they came out with their long awaited review and we REALLY flunked it would seem. Darkfall got 1/10.
1/10 according to the Draccan scoring policy means: Avoid at all costs etc. You can find the scoring policy here:
http://www.Draccan.net/scoring_policy.php
Scroll down to 2 and see how much this guy hated Darkfall and how strongly Draccan prompts everyone to avoid it at all costs.
Draccan warned me personally about the bad review on the way, and I asked him to give us some consideration and get another reviewer on the case since 2/10 is the lowest review they’ve ever given, and Darkfall’s reviews so far have been mostly good ones. It sounded very unfair to me and I appealed its publication. Not even the harshest critics of the game or the trolls on various forums would give it that low a score. This is a niche game we explained and perhaps the reviewer’s play-style was completely different and he was maybe the wrong kind of person to review the game. Darkfall isn’t for everyone after all, and having someone who can’t handle this kind of game write the review would be unfair both to the game and to Draccans readers. You can’t use the same tool for every job. Draccan’s refused and basically said that he carefully selected a reviewer that would be fair to the game and that he would stand by the review. Then he posted the review.
When we read the hostile review by Draccan, one thing became apparent: he had not played the game at all. Draccans readers and Darkfall players are posting bullet lists of factual errors in the story. The reviewer hadn't even figured out the very basics of the game before he wrote about it. We checked the logs for the 2 accounts we gave Draccan and we found that one of them had around 3 minutes playtime, and the other had less than 2 hours spread out in 13 sessions. Most of these 2 hours were spent in the character creator since during almost every one of the logins the reviewer spent the time creating a new character. The rest of the time was apparently spent taking the low-res screenshots that accompanied the article. At no point did this reviewer spend more than a few minutes online at a time.
Darkfall is the largest MMORPG game of its kind and this guy spent a few minutes playing(?) before he tore it apart. How can someone do that responsibly? Draccan didn’t even give Darkfall a chance.
The entire review is opinionated and hostile; it attacks the game, the creators and the company at every chance. The creators and developers of Darkfall, as well as the Darkfall community through its reaction, consider this review suspect and question the motives behind its publication. We can take a bad review, but not like this. Even the worst reviews that we’ve received commend our efforts and speak of the potential of Darkfall. The majority of our players love the game. This review might keep new players from ever trying a game they would enjoy.
We sent the play-time information to Draccan and asked them to take down the article as it is damaging our game’s reputation but also Draccan’s reputation. We asked to get an unbiased reviewer on the case who will actually play the game before writing about it. They said that taking it down now would be more damaging to their reputation than if they left it up. After our reaction to publicize the play history of their reviewers to protect our game, they asked us to wait while they try to confirm what we already knew from our logs. We’re afraid that waiting any longer is unacceptable to us, because this review was designed to drive people away from our game and allowing it to remain without any kind of reaction is out of the question. Out of professional courtesy we’ve waited 5 hours longer than we said we would before posting this.
An update: Draccan got back to us via their editor and said that their reviewer is a contributing writer rather than a staff writer, that he claims to have spent at least 9 hours playing the game and they will stand by their publication. We wrote back that this is a lie and that our server logs(which they already have) show the playtime down to the second and they are at their disposal. They offered to re-review the game and see if the second reviewer has a different opinion than the first one. We wrote back that it might be hard to find someone to confirm the first review, especially if they actually play the game.
~Tasosos
: )
~Hairysun~
http://www.straightdope.com/
30 minutes play and you want his stuff? I can't imagine him having any uber pvp loot to brighten you day with lol