NTC3'S PROFILE

OK, I have edited out the "many games" section from the review, since I admittedly haven't played much of what's on there. However, I've read the Journeyman review, and I think that you're confusing the two issues. I might have missed something, but I don't think that either the review OR the comments below it actually wanted the random dice rolls to return. Hell, half of the criticism was not for the minigame itself but for the need to frequently change equipment in order to initiate it, and the rest just said that it featured too often: the review itself says "sometimes it's possible to have too much of a GOOD thing."

I'll also say this: minigame ≠ QTE, and the latter is what you've essentially gone for in Journeyman. Have you played Iji? The way the hacking minigame was done in that game was nearly perfect. While rm2k3 probably wouldn't have supported it, it doesn't mean that a QTE, particularly one QTE used for everything, which apparently was the case in Journeyman, is your only option. I still would have had gladly taken that "Press Z" minigame for every terminal if that was my only alternative to waiting for a computer to decide if you've succeeded or failed. Alternatively, I would've had liked to have a minigame like the original Iron Gaia IF:

1) There was no chance element with those data nodes.

2) The area was much more open and wider and patrolling programs didn't move so fast, so that it would've functioned more like actual stealth.

3) There were a lot fewer terminals: something like one terminal per corridor/2 corridors would've been much better placement for an similarly long minigame.

I hope that my post shows that you actually can win; I think your problem with this and other decisions like that is that you have a tendency to create false dichtonomies for yourself, so to speak, and thus restrict the choices you think are available.

author=myformerselves
If the short can measure the long...accurately and fully encapsulate the whole of someone's life in two words. Describe to me 1000000 years of history in one pithy sentence.

Well, you certainly seem to think that it's possible. Otherwise, you wouldn't have reduced all of the characters besides Genie to a single quote. Nor would the numerous critiques of consumerism be simplified to statements as trite as "Buying goods will bring back your loved ones!" Also...

author=myformerselves
Liberty, your comment is disingenuous to the other reviewers who enjoyed the game. Perhaps you should take off the brown-tinted glasses?

These two quotes above are in direct disagreement with each other. If the short cannot measure the long, thus making my review irrelevant, then reviews which praise your game must be equally irrelevant. It's really either one or the other.

author=myformerselves
You have approached Middens as if it were Mario Kart.

Unlikely, because then I wouldn't have included the Storyline section, which takes up nearly half of the review.

author=myformerselves
Much, if not all, of your argument is based on aestheticism. The target goal of aestheticism is beauty. Seeing beauty as a standard to judge any work is sterile and lazy. Art arises in unique social contexts with distinct values for different people. Creators develop a specialized aesthetic on their terms. There cannot be – and should not be -- an overall aesthetic.

Nope, that's just one definition of it. My definition of aesthetics is about the audiovisual elements working together in order to, again, evoke emotion from the player, and the success is judged by how strongly these elements manage to evoke the intended emotion. Middens fails at that, because soon, my only reaction to its frequent stylistic changes was annoyance, and not particularly strong one at that. You can say that inconsistency was a statement, but you ignore that this statement would've been adequately made with about 20-30% of the areas you've ultimately included. Believe it or not, dwelling on a theme for too long can dilute its impact, and that's exactly what happened here.

Let's go back to the 2-3 areas with that oil blur-thing flowing in front of the screen. That stylistic choice obviously signifies something and draws attention to the area, except that there was nothing specific to draw attention to. There was just more collage of things, a couple of NPCs who are again reduced to a single quote and a couple of enemies (Hell Maw and Nocturnal Maw, if I'm not mistaken). If that area was found early on, I might've been intrigued, but with about a hundred similarly weird rooms/corridors before that and a couple dozen or so after, it was just one of many. If you wanted it to stand out more, there should've been more interactivity: as it is, there's little difference between the rooms once you stop caring for the artstyle changes.

author=myformerselves
Your review assumes that a soundtrack should be a collection of catchy tunes that are "pleasant" to listen to and demerited what is obviously meant to be experienced outside of comfort.

Same as above. Soundtracks in games like Silent Hill or little-played The Suffering have been made to truly discomfort and succeeded at it very well; and thus I described them as great even if they often weren't comfortable. That's not the case in Middens: most of the tracks were just there, and the more unpleasant ones never elicited a strong sense of dread, unease, or something of the kind: it was again mostly irritation.

author=myformerselves
You accuse the game of poor pacing---never realizing that in Middens the player sets their own pace.

You don't set the pace at which the plot unfolds, partially because it's never clear what is actually needed for progression, and partly because the ending (one of them, anyway) is not available until you accumulate 30 Nothings. If the player was fully capable of setting the pace, which is what you claim here, then the player would've been able to skip to the end, or to any plot-significant section, at any time. (FYI, the 2008 remake of Alone in the Dark actually allowed for that, even if it was a shit game by all other metrics.)

Instead, you've got that barrier in front of the player, and there's still quite a lot of fighting and running about places if they intentionally set out to get those Nothings. Thus, the pacing criticism is absolutely valid.

author=myformerselves
What is unfair about writing a review of a review? He should be happy I covered his review in good detail and glad I took the time to read it and reply---even if you don't or he doesn't personally, agree with the points of my review of his review.

Was it intended to offend? If so, it didn't work, as I remain unperturbed. You certainly haven't covered my review in any great detail, however. Nearly all of your comments thus far have centered on the aesthetics section, which makes up a minority of my review. I've yet to see any proper response to my criticisms of the game's plotline or the gameplay mechanics.

Oh, and lastly, I've just checked other reviews, and three of the positive reviewers also haven't developed anything. To the surprise of no-one, you didn't dismiss their opinions as irrelevant for that reason. Tis' the season for hypocrisy, it seems...

http://rpgmaker.net/users/Max%20McGee/reviews/

author=Max McGee
I can't help but feel some informational authority on the matter of the relative merits IG:V and IG1. When I say that IG:V is a substantively better game than IG1, that certainly feels like objective fact, especially since I created both games and know their ins and outs and particularities better than anyone.

Well, if so, you would also have to accept that Final Fantasy IX is superior to Final Fantasy VII and that Metroid: The Other M is the best Metroid made, since that's their creators opinions on them. Believe it or not, it's actually a frequent phenomenon for the creators' opinion on their works to be significantly different (you could even say out of touch) with the popular and established opinion of them. On TVTropes, we even have a page for that.

Now, when it comes to your concerns about an audience, that wouldn't be as much of a problem for two reasons. Firstly, I haven't mentioned TVTropes for nothing; I'm a somewhat prominent user there, and we've got a page for Iron Gaia there, created mainly by yours truly. It hasn't had much of an impact yet because it's not cross-linked; once it reaches 100+ crosslinks, though, the views will accumulate a lot faster. If you doubt me, here's the site ranking of TVTropes vs. RMN. I've been delaying doing so, partly because I've got plenty of other game pages I want to add and crosslink alongside IG, but also because I wonder if their state, there's just been something I wanted to ask you first.
I've read the comments on the other IG and IG: V reviews, as well as that "Looking back" article you did about the series, and while highly informative, there's still something I don't quite understand. Mainly; when you create these games, what is ultimately more important to you: your artistic vision/integrity etc. and ensuring that it remains unaltered, or is it acclaim and/or popularity? If it's the latter, then I just want to give you the example of Shakespeare. As we all know, he's one of the greatest playwrights to have ever lived, and yet he had re-written his works in response to feedback from his audience, and sometimes he did so dozens of times. If that kind of compromise was acceptable for Shakespeare, then why do you have such a commitment to keeping gameplay and/or story elements that have proven to be unpopular and to hold your games back, even in your own estimation?

I mean, nothing really prevents you (or someone else you trust) from going back and replacing the dialogue you consider juvenile in Iron Gaia, and doing other changes like that. Out of all the things I could name as potential improvements to Iron Gaia/Iron Gaia: Virus, only a few are constrained by the engine (i.e. lack of battle animations, inability to have the character sprite change alongside equipment) or by work already done (i.e. mapping designs, some story elements). The rest is still up for grabs with just a few changes, and I easily could PM you a list of those, if you want.

So... that's not quite what I expected this post to look like, and I hope it doesn't feel too pointed or anything. I still respect a lot of work you've already done, or the fact that you're still present here in spite of the meagre audience and working on Lionheart and other projects I didn't get the chance to play yet.

I have in fact played Virus (I even referenced it in the opening), and I've got an even longer review of it written and pending approval. I don't want to say anything more about it here, except that I disagree quite strongly about its merits relative to the original. It's actually quite interesting to know that the System Shock similarities are accidental, though. Thanks for that.

As for ABL, I have written a full review on it, too, available here. I'll just say here that while the way ABL narrative branches is still astonishing, and its graphics, level design and soundtrack are all significantly superior, the actual gameplay is frequently underwhelming. Enemy/character skills are one area at which your game excels significantly: 90% of enemies from ABL literally have none, and combat becomes very boring because of that after a while. Also, I predicted the fate of Paradise (SPOILERS for anyone else) as soon as I saw that the Director was still alive, and so I just felt annoyed when it was razed to the ground a couple of hours later. There was nothing quite as predictable in your game.

Well, that's it for now. I feel like we're going to be arguing a lot more once my Virus review gets through, though.