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muxec
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Mingapulco
Jul 2002
time: 07:29
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MOO actually looks well, nice planets, very cool *.bik movies, realtively good ships' pics. But most of atempts to find something good in the gameplay fail. The first thing that looks wrong is clicks and hostile interface.
The clicks. Most of reviewers wrote, that player do not do anything except pressing "End of turn", but I completely disagree with them. The player performs a lot of needless clicks, and i'm going to explain where.
The worst clickable thing is "task forse"In Moo2 everything was good. You have ships you can move each ship separately. But Moo3 is to "wise" to allow this. For example you want to send colony ship. You can not simple send the ship when it's completed. You must perform 8 needless clicks:
1. Click the star
2. Click "new task forse"
3. Click and select dropdowns of task and size (4 clicks).
4. Add the colony ship (using auto build to awoid 2 more needless clicks).
5. Confirm.
Also you must wait for a next turn. I have no idea why can't I simply send the single ship. If you know, please explain me.
Other click-stuff is queue. To set planetary queues you need.
1. Guess where the queue is located (it took 40 minutes for me to understand that the queue is in the economy screen
2. Click economy, click military queue, and click planetary queue.
3. Set production spending in planetary and military.
Also you sholud remember, that you can not add or remove queue items with a single click as in Moo2.
OK, you bought the new PC mouse with extremeky good click rate. But your troubles are still serious. You have no real documentation to the game (no good manual, no info in the encyclopedia, no tutorial). The first thing that you ask is : "How to change DEA build speed?". If you understood this by yourself you are genious. After this you'll ask "How to add the spaceport to the region?" or "How to add upgrade to the mining DEA?" or "How to vote the bill imideatly?". After hour of search in fansites you realize, that you can not do the simpliest things.
But hostile interface is not the only problem. Look at the techs. Yes, in real life president can not tell scientist what exactly must be developed next. But Moo3 isn't real life simulator, it's a strategy game. Gameplay is more important than realism.
MOOving on... You succeded to perform a lot of clicks to create the attack combat task and started the batlle. WTF, what the small strange ship that fire each other over the rectangular grid? Why do these ship look ugly a little?
The AI appears to be OK, but if you give planetary management to the AI you can not select AI style. You want one planet with military AI and other with scientific AI, but you get the same ****.
Finally i ask myself why the game is so ugly. And i know the answer. The game developers did not want to make a good game. They simply desired to make more money. They knew, that fans will buy the game anyway, and not-fans will not buy it or will use warez version. So they did the bad game with long-term purpose. They thought that after bad MoO3 more hopes will be on MoO4. And the greedy developers will make more money. When Elementalgames unc. coded their game "Space Rabger", they did not have a task "earn more money". They desired to make a great game and they managed to do this. It must be an example for the Moo developers. When Malfador developed SpaceEmpires they knew, that nobody will buy bad game. And Moo developers must learn from it.
P.S: Waiting for MOO4.
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Kahn
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quote:
Originally posted by Q Cubed
That could be said for a lot of games these days... *cough* Enter the Matrix *cough*... |
Kahn's third rule of game buying: Don't waste your money on any title that is based on a movie and is relaesed around the same time as the movie it is based on!
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Kahn
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I wouldn't call several toddler programs from the bargin bin and a failed attempt to adapt "Star Fleet Battles" much of a resume. Your company's track record for the time period it claims to have been in business is not very good when compaired to peers such as Breakaway Games (Been in business for the same period of time, released a quarter of the number games, but have over twice the units sold and much better gamer acceptance.).
To be fair though, I did not realize you had the "Castles" series also, but having not played it, nor paid any attention to the reviews, I cannot speak for the quality of that particular venture.
As to your earlier reference, I'm still looking for the one page ad announcing MoO3 4th qtr 1999 from Microprose. (I already found the one stating 2nd qtr, 2000). In the event that I don't get around to finding it, I'll just drop an email to one of the folks around here from the old Microprose.
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Kahn
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Got to thinking after my reply, so I checked out GoneGold.com. According to them, NONE of the games listed on the software page you cited had been released before the date (Feb. 2000) alleged by QS for the award of the MoO3 contract. Sorry Charlie!
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Stormhound
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New Jersey
Jan 1970
time: 00:29
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Dude, the Castles series was in the 90's! You may not have played them, but *I* sure as heck did. You need better sources of information.
(From the-underdogs.org:
Castles: 1991
Castles II: 1992
I trust those are far enough before Feb. 2000 for you?)
Last edited by Stormhound on 02-07-2003 at 05:51
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Kahn
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I thought "Castles" pre dated 2k, though I'm getting old and the years seem to pass quicker now. Though your source lists Castles (1) as being developed by Interplay (though I would take your word over the site's as Interplay has always been a publisher rather than a developer).
The one bad thing about the internet is that it's pretty hard to find info such as this before ~1996. Heck, I even went back to one of my publishers (The Wargammer) and they had no record for "Castles".
So the correct answer is 2!
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Grumbold
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London, UK
Mar 2000
time: 05:29
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quote:
Originally posted by krait23
Someone who does not feel oblieged to reinvent the wheel.... |
I believe it is vital that games always seek to stretch beyond existing parameters and try something new. Even in an established series. Of course we would all prefer that the majority of good ideas make it into the finished product and that the majority of bad ideas fall by the wayside, but inevitably that does not always happen. If they don't at least try then all we would get are more C&C, Doom, flight sim and football management clones.
All the games I have played a lot in the last five years have been revolutionary or very evolutionary. SMAC, EU, Combat Mission, EverQuest, Asherons Call and others come to mind. Anything that has been too similar to what has gone before has failed to live up to expectation, so its been played a bit then chucked on the shelf to gather dust.
There are a thousand developers out there who play safe, design with the tried and tested patterns in mind and abide by the 'keep it simple' motto. I'm very glad that IG/QS strove to be different and really give us a game where running a thousand planet empire was possible and manageable despite the vast number of details because each planet was itself complex and unique. They aimed high and fell tragically short. I'm going to be hoping that someone has the courage to attempt another big leap soon, because if someone comes out with yet another Moo2/Imperium Galactica/Pax Imperia clone I shall no doubt buy it but be bored rigid after completing my second game.
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krait23
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I (obviously) believe that games, especially those in a series of games, should always retain what worked well in previous versions and only improve that which did not work so well. Not change everything at all costs so you got something new all over.
One of the games I spent a lot of time with this year was Icewind Dale II. It was great (just like the previous BG titles were, but I think its even a bit better). The BG Saga is a good example of a series that gets better and better with each part, but still stays very close to the original game. My roomate is playing BG1 again atm, and I am now playing BG2 again, and recently finished IWD2. Comparing them directly there are so many, sometimes little but important changes (You can really make out the evolution that took place when you play those three titles more or less at the sme time), yet when playing IWD2 you still completely feel like playing a BG game. I think this is the way things should work.
They also made Neverwinter Nights, which is a completely different game. And they did NOT hide it behind the 'Baldurs Gate' label. I believe it was reasonably successful anyway (I don't like it too much so I don't really know much about it).
Guess it comes down to whether you are a 'conservative' player (like me, who likes IWD2 a lot and doesn't like NN too much) and a 'progressive' player like Grumbold (who would probably like NN and not like IWD2 so much if he liked the BG games at all).
And MoO3 is a feast for progressive players and a slap in the face for conservative ones...
Lata
Krait
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Hydro
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Winfield, IL, USA
Jun 1999
time: 05:29
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The developers of Moo3 took a risk and tried to give the otherwise moribund TB game genre something new. Most people are conservative and don’t like some or all of what was new since they expected Moo2.5.
I applaud the Moo3 team for their attempt since the TB game genre seems to be stale or dying. I am also disheartened that there were aspects to what could have been a great game that antagonized so many – very poor documentation, slow responsiveness (with the patch), features with dubious value.
After spending much (perhaps too much) time with Moo3 I’ve decided I like the game, and I hope the non-beta patch makes it better. I’ve tried GalCiv and it seems a bit thin; yes it is intuitive, but Moo3 is much richer. I am alone in this since all of my friends who have tried Moo3 have run away screaming, and that’s too bad. Moo3 has so much potential, and I think it is a shame that this effort might drag down the Moo title.
Hydro
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29-06-2003 23:42
MoO3 was pretty much doomed from the moment QS took over (though some credit has to be given to the incredibly bad mismanagement that lead to the downfall of Microprose). How many titles had this company relesed in the marketplace prior to landing this contract.... ZERO!
As for the chances of a MoO4, don't bet the farm on it. Any game that jumps the shark within the first week of it's release isn't going to inspire many corporate types to lay out good money on a wrecked franchise.
On the bighter side, as P.T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born evey minute!". Just look at Battlecrusier 3000!
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