Comments for Indie Game Reviewer

Comment on Review: The Dream Machine – A Surreal Stop-Motion Point and Click Adventure by toni

toni — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:21:04 +0000

Amazing. What else can I say?

Comment on Review: Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction by Patrick Bartholomew

Patrick Bartholomew — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:51:53 +0000

The last word I’d use to describe Flatout 3 is extreme. Perhaps this is your first experience with the smash and dash style of racing game, but Flatout 3 is easily one of the most timid entries into the genre. If your experience has mostly revolved around games like Gran Turismo, or even Need for Speed, I can see where this might look like a crazy leap in direction. Pick up Flatout: Ultimate Carnage or any of the Burnout games and then make a comparison. If this game would have come out seven or eight years ago it’d probably deserve an 8, but it’s an inferior retread of the games that went before it.

Comment on Review: Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction by mannotah!

mannotah! — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:20:39 +0000

My 2 cents, i think it’s worth 4 outta 5 stars. Pretty decent game, and it gave me more fun than any other game. May be bad in some elements and perhaps when compared to others (i don’t know flatout1 nor flatout2, i never heard of them before but i think they must have deserved tens everywhere since everyone says they are the best games ever built) but flatout3 gave me a lot of fun. Most other racing games feel so… safe, perhaps even boring. FlatOut3 is the exception: It’s just plain fun to play, over and over again. Perhaps next time the developers should go for a safer choice, and just please the crowd instead of just me. Make the game less extreme.

Comment on Review: Machinarium from Amanita Design by Review: The Dream Machine - A Surreal Stop-Motion Point and Click Adventure | Indie Game Reviewer

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:58:15 +0000

[...] fan of Point and Click adventures (a generic category that encompasses anything from Gemini Rue to Machinarium), I can assure you “The Dream Machine” is an amazing game experience worth your [...]

Comment on On Numerical Rating Systems – An Op-Ed by Trish

Trish — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:54:38 +0000

I just discovered your site the other day, so forgive me for commenting on something already a week old, but I had to chime in a little. I think using words such as “good”, “great”, “mediocre”, etc. is a better idea than stars, or at least together, for two reasons. Firstly, stars are not only arbitrary but carry individual and cultural connotations for each person. Up until I got a Netflix account a couple of years ago, it seemed a rather arbitrary system to me. Now I tend to rate things based on its system, “Hated it”, “Didn’t like it”, “Liked it”, “Really liked it”, “Loved it”. Others may have other ideas of what each star amount means in their own minds. Unless they’re intimately familiar with what exactly YOU think each star means about a game, people will assign the stars whatever arbitrary meaning they’ve assigned those ratings in their own minds. The second reason is the cultural aspect I’ve just mentioned. At least in the United States, we’ve been trained to understand that anything below about 70% is a “failure”. When you give a person a 50% on something, they’ve done pretty abysmally. That’s not “mediocre”, that’s, “You have no idea what you’re doing.” I think a lot of people, in absence of another more specific rating system for the stars, just equate them with percentages, and this is the reason for “Nothing below 8 is very good” and the near-total lack of anything scoring less than 3. In a lot of American minds, especially those of our nerd/gamer core who tend to achieve high grades in school, it doesn’t matter if it’s a 5 or a 1 really, you’re just telling us how absolutely worthless it is at that point.