pg0p+@andrew.cmu.edu (Peter Cranston Green) (12/08/89)
Mr. Liberato and netpeople, Congrats on a good idea (nay, a great idea). (Oh, BTW, I'm posting to the bboard, because my mailer couldn't figure out how to get to drivax.UUCP. Sorry!) Anyways, here are my comments to Psygnosis: 1) I, too, am more than a little frusturated with Psygnosis. The last three games I have bought from them have been screwy in some way or another. Baal generally works, but about every 3rd game, the graphics are loaded up funny. This means that the forground or background playfields are thoroughly messed. Ballistix never worked -- I got a 'not a DOS disk' error. I am currently trying to get a working version through Lightspeed Distribution. The third game is Shadow of the Beast. It randomly crashed about 2 out of 3 games on a my Amiga 500 for the 25 or so times I tried before it stopped working alltogether. I don't even have any perhiperals attached to my computer outside of a second disk drive. To spend 20 - 30 dollars a crack for this frusturation is a bit much. 2) Psygnosis is lucky they have such good artists. Without such awesome graphics and sound, their programs would hardly be worth the hastle. If not for the wild effects, I would have ceased being a customer long, long ago. 3) The games themselves are generally poor. I have 5 games from Psygnosis. Shadow of the Beast is probably the best. It would actually be a good game if not for the fact that the ratio of play time to waiting-for-all-these-stupid-scenes-to-end-time is about 1:1. I want to play the game, not watch the same graphics screens over and over and over and over again. Don't get me wrong, they add a nice touch -- the user should just be able to click on the fire button to end them prematurely, though. I just cannot see why they would pass over this detail. Psygnosis -- you're selling games -- not graphics demos. Blood Money also has great graphics and sound. Every time I show my computer to my friends, it's the first thing I boot up. Do I ever play? Noooooo. This game is not fun. You are too busy being worried about dying and losing all your firepower to actually enjoy the game. I like to consider myself a pretty good video-gamer -- I've played hundreds, if not thousands of different games. Yet Blood Money is still a bit too difficult. I don't know how many times I've slipped up at the very end of a world, ruining my game, and causing me to undergo the stress of not putting my fist through the 'Tough luck sucker, you were wasted' message. Baal is not too hard, but hard enough to make the game less fun than a more forgiving game. Besides it's nothing spectacular. Why play it, when I have other games like Populous that are a blast and a half? Ballistix I don't know about because I haven't been able to play it yet for reasons already mentioned. Finally, there is Terrorpods, which must be about the lamest game to date on the Amiga. To summarize: -- Make your games reliable -- I can't tell you poorly you come off, Psygnosis. -- Make your games fun. I want to be able to win a game without devoting 1000 man-hours to the task. I'm not a wimp, I just have other things to do with my time than play the same screen 600 times. -- Let's skip on the forced graphics demos. A good game will get played 100s of times. Yet the screens get boring after the 10th time. -- Improve the concepts behind the games for more ingenius play mechanics. -- Keep up the good work on the graphics and sound! What is the problem? How difficult is this to understand???? Do you actually play the games before you release them? Good grief. Peter C. Green pg0p@andrew.cmu.edu P.S. Here is a short list of games to look at for hints on how to do it right: Robotron: 2084 Stellar 7 Xevious Archon I & II Rescue Raiders Ultima I thru V DungeonMaster