Review of Heroes of Neverwinter (Facebook App) by Atari

[Neuroglyph]

Dull, dry presentation of "facts" without interpretation is not a review.

Dead on Hussar!

Thank you for your support Hussar and Kitsune9, and I'm gratified that you enjoyed my review style. And I tend to agree with you as well, that a dry presentation of facts is not a review - at best, it's simply a "news report" about a game, and at worst it's just free advertising/propaganda for the product.

It's too bad that some gamers only like that review style if it agrees with their own opinions. But if nothing else, a controversial review does offer an opportunity to spur on a lively debate... and it definitely pleases me to see how passionate gamers can become defending their favorite game - even if it is just a Facebook app.

 

[JohnnyZemo]

Sorry, but I have to agree with Dannager.

The purpose of the review should be to tell the reader whether or not the game is made well and worth playing.

Is it reasonable to expect D&D novels to precisely follow 4E combat rules? How about the Book of Vile Darkness movie? What if it doesn't match up exactly with the 4E ruleset? Would that make it a bad movie?

Clearly, the reviewer was hoping that this game would be a precise rule-for-rule port of D&D 4E, and the game is not. It would be reasonable to note that in the review and mention some of the key differences, but spending the entire review angrily detailing every difference between the game and 4E is pointless.

This review is mainly concerned with the reviewer's expectations of the game rather than the quality of the game. You have to review something for what it is, not what you were hoping it would be.

I'm not a big fan of Facebook games, so I tried this game once and haven't returned to it. However, many of my other Facebook friends (many of whom are lapsed D&D players) seem to like it quite a bit.

 

[Dannager]

It's too bad that some gamers only like that review style if it agrees with their own opinions.

This is one of the most disappointing parts of how this has been handled; you could have posted a review that did nothing but praise Heroes of Neverwinter for its strict adherence to the 4e rules and giving it a 5.0/5.0, but as long as you spent the entire review comparing HoN to tabletop 4e, I (and others here) would still have issue with how the review is written.

You need to understand this: Our complaints aren't about the fact that you don't like the game. They're about the fact that you have written your review in such a way that we essentially have no idea whether or not this game is actually enjoyable to play, because you haven't actually talked about what makes the game enjoyable and what makes it unenjoyable (beyond, of course, how closely it mimics 4e rules; and frankly, that really has no bearing on any game's fun-factor, especially when translated to a different medium and format).

I am sure that there are video game reviewers who hate sports titles, but are forced to review them anyway. Does that mean that they give them 1/10 scores and walk away? No.

 

[Dannager]

Is it reasonable to expect D&D novels to precisely follow 4E combat rules? How about the Book of Vile Darkness movie? What if it doesn't match up exactly with the 4E ruleset? Would that make it a bad movie?

Bingo.

Clearly, the reviewer was hoping that this game would be a precise rule-for-rule port of D&D 4E, and the game is not.

This is also kind of troubling. Why did the reviewer go into playing this game with the expectation that a Facebook game would hold itself to a strict interpretation of the 4e rules?

 

[Dannager]

Dead on Hussar!

Again, no one is arguing against this. If you think we are, you have not understood what we're saying.

 

[Dannager]

It's my understanding that most product placement is purchased. Community wasn't using current products so maybe they actually needed permission on that score. BBT has used a number of current games as parts of scenes, but I don't recall them being named except for D&D 4E and Magic. I've seen them play Talisman unnamed.

Thanks for the links! It certainly could be that it was purchased product placement. It sort of makes me wonder if producers of stereotypically geeky products are lined up to get their goods on BBT.

 

[jeffh]

You need to understand this: Our complaints aren't about the fact that you don't like the game. They're about the fact that you have written your review in such a way that we essentially have no idea whether or not this game is actually enjoyable to play, because you haven't actually talked about what makes the game enjoyable and what makes it unenjoyable (beyond, of course, how closely it mimics 4e rules; and frankly, that really has no bearing on any game's fun-factor, especially when translated to a different medium and format).

Yes, exactly. As disappointing as the review itself is, what's far worse is how egregiously the criticisms of it are being misunderstood.

 

[Hussar]

Meh. On a site devoted to table top RPG's, criticising a video game based on a TTRPG for not following the rules of that game isn't exactly straying too far from what the intended audience of the review would consider as good or bad.

If this site was devoted to video games, yeah, I could better see the criticisms of the review. However, on a site where daily several people spend considerable amounts of time debating whether or not a +1 to hit spread over thirty levels is a broken feat tax or not, basing your review of a 4e video game on the mechanics of said game isn't too much of a stretch.

Just my 2 cents worth. To be honest, I've never played the game, nor do I ever really intend to. Just not my thing. But whinging about how the review of the game focuses too much on the mechanics of 4e on EN WORLD seems a bit strange to me.

 

[Dannager]

Meh. On a site devoted to table top RPG's, criticising a video game based on a TTRPG for not following the rules of that game isn't exactly straying too far from what the intended audience of the review would consider as good or bad.

I'd honestly prefer to believe that there aren't that many of us for whom strict adherence to a set of rules from another game in another medium in another format wins out over the game's playability and fun factor. That would say some very unflattering things about the community on this website.

EDIT: Furthermore, I can't imagine the awful review scores Neuroglyph would have given a game like Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, an old arcade side-scroller ranked in the top 50 arcade games of all time. But it has D&D in the name and doesn't follow the D&D rules, so it must suck.

 

[jeffh]

Meh. On a site devoted to table top RPG's, criticising a video game based on a TTRPG for not following the rules of that game isn't exactly straying too far from what the intended audience of the review would consider as good or bad.

If this site was devoted to video games, yeah, I could better see the criticisms of the review. However, on a site where daily several people spend considerable amounts of time debating whether or not a +1 to hit spread over thirty levels is a broken feat tax or not, basing your review of a 4e video game on the mechanics of said game isn't too much of a stretch.

Just my 2 cents worth. To be honest, I've never played the game, nor do I ever really intend to. Just not my thing. But whinging about how the review of the game focuses too much on the mechanics of 4e on EN WORLD seems a bit strange to me.

These things are definitely of interest to people here, but they're hardly make-or-break. It's one thing to discuss them, it's quite another to seemingly base the entire review on them. Even Neuroglyph seems able to distinguish between fun factor (as Dannager has been calling it) and faithfulness to 4E when pressed, which makes it all the more disappointing that the review itself treats them interchangeably when they obviously aren't.