Eternity’s Red-Headed Stepchild

Despite bashing and trainwreck and all that, what really interests me is whether the game actually is that bad or not. It looks awesome, but if Destructoid is to be believed the looks are deceiving.

Is Destructoid to be believed?

John Walker on RPS also said he agreed with the Destructoid review:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/08/05/eternitys-child-the-wrong-platform/#more-2246

I haven’t played the game (though I might just pick up a PC demo if it comes out to check it out) but from what most people seem to say it seems like the developers forgot the fact that you first make the core mechanics work well, then you work on fancy content, not the other way around.

Damn, it really does look like a beautiful game. That sure is wasted artistic talent :/

Oh, and Lorne, wouldn’t it be in this situation like living with your retard child for a few years until someone tells you that it’s actually retarded?

I mean, he should’ve noticed himself that the game is kind of broken.

He either is pretty delusional or in complete denial.

I found Luc’s reaction to be much more understandable than the one from the whole Destructoid community. Of course, as a professional you shouldn’t blame someone else for the faults of your project. But about half the people just started bashing him with commentcs like ‘Fuck you Luc!’ for no apparent reason. They didn’t even give him a chance to fix stuff with the new patch.
In my eyes the whole issue doesn’t spotlight how and why this game turned out bad, but really shows how immature a seemingly great part of the community at Destructoid is (though the review was quite constructive – especially the second part). I hope this is not the kind of ‘indie spirit’ that keeps on spreading, otherwise it has taken quite a wrong turn.

I hope Luc can fix the majority of the issues with his patch and that this once promising game gets the chance to live up to it’s beautiful graphics.

I bought the game as soon as I saw it was out. At first I had some problems getting it to run, it kep crashing as soon as I pressed a key, before I was even in the game itself… apparently it was because of the gamepad settings, which were ON, even though the game doesn’t support gamepad. Anyway.

I must admit I haven’t played it very much, I found the controls to be a bit cumbersome, though not as bad as in the Dtoid review. Had other stuff to do. For sure it looks better on screenshots than in motion, and the shooting part wasn’t very well thought out. But I’m gonna give it a chance. After I’ve played enough Braid and Rez to make my eyes bleed ^_^

YuRiPa, there’s really no point in talking about what should have been. We can’t change the past, all we can work with is the situation as it is now. And as it is now, the game is already released and it’s fucking broken, so I think a patch is in order.

colorfool, I know what you mean. A lot of the communities at the bigger sites are just… *mean*. In a thoughtless, unfunny, and bigoted way. Kotaku is pretty much the gold standard for this.

Unless he completely snaps and becomes one of the crazy personalities we love, everyone will have forgotten about this soon enough. I don’t see the big deal. Even the best of us say stupid shit from time to time.
If he makes a habit of it, that’s something different.

I have a lot of sympathy for Luc’s situation here. In certain respects the bar seems to be set higher for indie games than mainstream titles. Players will cut you a bit of slack for not having the latest 3D tech, but in return they want superb gameplay, a budget price, innovative art and a bag of chips.

The best indie titles do deliver, but release something that’s slightly flawed and the level of toasty flames seems completely disproportionate to the problem.

internet people are dramatards, this is not new.

what bugs me is that it seems a commercial game released very broken. Its hard enough to convince the average gamer to give indie games the time of day, and that doesn’t help at all.

This is one of my biggest indie-dev fears: releasing a game that I’ve poured my heart and soul into, only to be told it’s a load of crap. I haven’t played the game but it does look nice. I’ll check out the demo if they release one.

I agree with what bateleur says – Indie games appear to be given a harsh treatment with reviews/expectations. Maybe it’s because an indie developer has a name and face, while a commercial game is just a company name, and they don’t get involved in the community?

Reasons why mainstream developers get less personal insults are accessibility, censorship and “blackmailing” in my opinion.

On their own sites and forums, companies moderate the hell out of posts. Potentially negative posts get removed very fast. This is also true for mainstream gaming sites that don’t want to appear to have a bad community.

On external sites, those developers never appear. People cannot insult somebody who’s not there. The most contact you can get with a mainstream company is via a support or marketing guy that just reads random nonsense from cue cards.

Plus their PR guys know how to coerce even the biggest gaming sites to deliver a good review for a bad game.

On the flipside. If a game is crap, it is crap. And no amount of Indieness on it will make it awesome.

I wish people would realize that it can be incredibly tough to make a game. Luc made a game. Most of the critics of his game haven’t. Also how reliable are the editors of destructoid? It seems that anyone these days can become a “professional” game critic. ZZZT!!! Wrong!! Even most of the reviewers and article writers in Nintendo Power aren’t professional in my opinion. They gotta kiss the ass of Nintendo first before they can review or talk about a game. The Mother series has been a hot topic with Nintendo – NP tries to avoid it like the plague. “Earthbound? What the hell is Earthbound!?”

After reading through the reviews on Destructoid, it did feel like the criticism was personal. But, Luc seemed to take it personally too. Of course if you’re making a game which you hope to sell and is your baby, criticism will sting. From the looks of it however, Luc did make a mistake in releasing the game prematurely. I say prematurely since obviously there were flaws in the game play. If your communication with your programmer is bad, why release the game? Either part ways or re-establish communication, fix the flaws, finish the game together and then release it. My programming partner and I don’t move ahead on anything until we’ve thoroughly discussed it and know what to expect when working on our games. We’ve already had to put a project on hold.

Luc made a mistake in releasing the game too early. It should have been playtested and bug-fixed until it was fit for release. I get the feeling from some devs that there seems to be a race or hurry to get a game out. I had that feeling once too. However the universe works differently – everything balances out in someway or another. You can rush and release a piece of crap or you can take your time (perhaps making people wait) BUT, release a masterpiece.

Lastly, I don’t trust the personal opinion of a “professional” reviewer ALONE, whether they are really professional or think they are because they are editors on a popular site. I trust the general concensus. I trust the final grade given from a combination of reviews: Individual reviewers, reviewers who have made games themselves – being in the indie scene is bonus – Derek Yu would be a good example AND the gamers who are playing or have played the game.

I’m a gamer myself obviously – can’t call myself a developer yet, I’ve only just begun on a few projects in the last few years. Nothing is finished yet. I haven’t played the game yet. I did and will criticize Luc for releasing the game too soon – since, everyone who’s played it so far has found or experienced control flaws. From what I’ve seen, I really like the concept and especially the artwork. I also love the fact that enemies will chase you anywhere in a level unless you beat them rather than if you are half a screen ahead of them. To me that makes a level a bit more dynamic and more difficult – I like challenges. Destructoids reviewers also said they didn’t like how the story was given out completely before one started playing. Again, speaking of premature release, did Luc do any beta-testing? There are enough trustworthy individuals that can also give constructive criticism out there. Online beta-testing would give the best feedback possible. Beta testers are part of your potential market and target. That could have both saved Luc a headache and also provided support for the game in case it was given a very destructive or personal review.

If you’re going to show your game to more people that a couple of your friends and your parents, then be prepared to get negative reviews. There’s nothing easier for a 12yro to write “Fuck you, you and your shit games, stop making crap assholes”. It makes him look good to his classmates and he knows you don’t know him and he doesn’t know you either. Fun, easy, etc.

Beyond that, if your games does suck indeed, instead of taking it personally (something that isn’t easy) try to see what you can fix. Of course you can’t rewrite the whole game or change major parts (like rewriting the story in an adventure game perhaps), but revamping the controls is something you can do.

When Nikwi was reviewed in Game Tunnel, it had the worst review of all the games presented this month. But instead of bashing GT (which btw could also make the people there not want to review my future games), i decided to fix the points they mentioned and changed the control scheme, fixed the installer, added a couple of extra things, etc. Two things i didn’t fixed were music and a save system because both required a lot of work i couldn’t do at the point (also i got some positive comments about how passwords have an “oldschool” feeling to them).

In the end i saw the negative parts of the review as something good for improving my game. I believe every developer must do this and “filter out” stuff that he/she would take personally.

Harsh.

It’s funny to see a difference of mature comments between even this post and the one on dtoid.

Sorry, we’ve all discovered alcohol and it’s not “cool” anymore.

It doesn’t excuse one’s comments and it doesn’t impress anybody to tell them you’re drunk when you post.* I see it too many times in developer/gamer land and it just adds to the all around lack of professionalism.

*By the way, I’m totally with a GIRL as I write this. Honestly, she’s like my girlfriend n’ stuff!

the truth is that a site like destructoid can’t do a review like that on a commercial game, even worse than Luc’s one, simply because any publisher will blacklist them and kick their ass to the moon, and then other publishers would be scared to be reviewed too.
It’s that simple, a commercial game, by a mid-big publisher just can’t get a so low vote on any site in the face of the internet that’s not a sort of blog.
Also, Eternity’s Child price is so low that’s almost free, you can spend more buying image-packs on xbox live.
Too bad he got stupidly himself involved on the flame, a post on the site would be ok, but direct repling rabid huge-ass gamers is such a wrong move

Eclipse, you might want to check out our reviews of Kane and Lynch, Condemned 2, Assassin’s Creed, or Legend of Zelda. We’re equally harsh on commercial titles.

Oh fuck I have to try the demo. The comments section was hilarious, now I just want to see how accurate the reviews were.

Wow, 14 “Fuck you lucs”
destructoid is definitely a gathering of mature individuals

Everybody in the whole spectacle reacted poorly – the dtoid readers were thoughtlessly rude, and Luc reacted too defensively.

At the end of the day though, the reviewers of the game are being pretty fair to Luc – sure, they bashed the game, but without excessive sarcasm, and all the while praising Luc’s effort and commitment. If that’s all it takes to anger the guy, I’m not sure that the absence of the excessively cruel dtoid comments would have improved the situation at all.

And it’s been said before – when you put a price tag on something, promising it will someday be a lot better just isn’t enough. It may be cheap, but it’s still money.

This post is racist against redheads.

Not to beat the dead horse, but in my opinion Eternity’s Child should have never been released in its present form. If you look back through youtube videos of the game, you will see its evolution from a fairly typical GBA platformer, into a much, much darker, yet just as generic PC platformer… and now suddenly shifted into an Abuse-like shooter.. Something went wrong. Maybe Luc realized that the original gameplay just wasn’t fun (as it certainly didn’t look exciting in the videos). Perhaps the shooter mechanics were his solution to an even less-playable game, if so, it still feels like a bandaid over a severed limb. Ohh… and my biggest question – where is the whole beautiful story outside of a lengthy text-only scroll?! This is one part of the game that is BEYOND lame!

am i the only one who dosent like the art?

its 14-year-old-ish.