Press and Reviews Thread

[Yak]

Cool, another nice review in the bag . Pretty fair I thought - for some people the early levels could be a bit slow I guess. Definitely I think Vindaloo mode is the sweet spot where the diff curve starts to stiffen up nicely whilst still remaining plenty of fun .

Mind you having said that I still come back to Korma and Madras just to chill'n'arc .

[Jest of EVE]

Cool, another nice review in the bag . Pretty fair I thought - for some people the early levels could be a bit slow I guess. Definitely I think Vindaloo mode is the sweet spot where the diff curve starts to stiffen up nicely whilst still remaining plenty of fun .

Mind you having said that I still come back to Korma and Madras just to chill'n'arc .

Korma is, I think, the place to be for learning bullet calligraphy techniques with different ship types.
Applying them in Madras adds challenge.
Applying them in Vindaloo is up there with Space Giraffe.
Applying them in Phaal is ...... Level 70+ in SG!!!! (experience required!)

Make another game Jeff, seriously! C'mon GRR!! The LS sheepies need feeding

GL as always and best of returns on your considerable investment.

[ALLseeingEYE]

That is a bit funny JOE. I'll admit, Gridrunner is not an easy game once you get tot he later levels of Vandaloo and Phaal, especially if you are trying to do score runs, but I found Space Giraffe generally much more difficult.

Not saying it was impossible, I beat it, then played through around 40 of the remixed levels, and am pretty damn solid at it, I must say. But I think it comes down to some basic things. Perhaps the gameplay in Gridrunner is similar, but not having to have 3 lives in order to be able to create a level checkpoint, and especially the largely forgiving nature of Sheepie save make Gridrunner much more forgiving for me.


Anyways, good review from Destructoid. Sounds like he actually really loved the game, but just didn't like the early levels. Might be that he just didn't know the mechanics well at that point though. Even though Korma and Madras are somewht easy, I still think they are damn fun to play.

[Jamesac]

Noticed by limb_clock: http://www.destructoid.com/review-gridr ... 0760.phtml

That's another good review...

Actually it's a shit review. I mean sure, I'm glad the reviewer had nice things to say about GRR, but he spent far too much time on things that are irrelevant. Space Giraffe was a divisive game and he didn't like it. That's fine, but he's not reviewing Space Giraffe. The topic at hand is GRR, and while acknowledging past games is perfectly fine, devoting giant chunks of the intro text to it and mentioning Space Giraffe in almost every paragraph is a disservice to what's supposed to be the focus of attention.

Full disclosure- I am by no means a god of writing. There's a major flaw in my review that I wish I'd been able to fix. I do know, however, that when I want to praise something, I don't start in with the negativity. The review I just read wasn't "I love Gridrunner Revolution" but rather "I can't believe how great Gridrunner Revolution is after the crapfest of Space Giraffe".

James

[Mark]

Actually it's a shit review. I mean sure, I'm glad the reviewer had nice things to say about GRR, but he spent far too much time on things that are irrelevant. Space Giraffe was a divisive game and he didn't like it. That's fine, but he's not reviewing Space Giraffe. The topic at hand is GRR, and while acknowledging past games is perfectly fine, devoting giant chunks of the intro text to it and mentioning Space Giraffe in almost every paragraph is a disservice to what's supposed to be the focus of attention.

Full disclosure- I am by no means a god of writing. There's a major flaw in my review that I wish I'd been able to fix. I do know, however, that when I want to praise something, I don't start in with the negativity. The review I just read wasn't "I love Gridrunner Revolution" but rather "I can't believe how great Gridrunner Revolution is after the crapfest of Space Giraffe".

James

Isn't he just trying to get people who wouldn't even consider thinking about playing "the next game after Space Giraffe" to give it a chance? That's how it reads to me - "You may not have liked SG, but you may well like GR". It may well not be the best approach to writing a review, but it strikes me as a generous one - encouraging people to challenge their own preconceptions about the follow-up to a game that was practically legendary in its divisiveness. There are a lot of people who have strong negative opinions of SG - many of them probably without even playing it, tbh. Getting them to even consider giving GR a chance is probably half the battle.

Jeff and Giles have done their best to get GR to appeal to the folks who wouldn't give SG the time of day - I'd say reviewers doing the same is a bonus. I also don't think he ever suggested SG was a crapfest in any way - he just struggled with it the same way many people do (apparently in his case partly due to colour-blindedness).

[ALLseeingEYE]

@ALLseeingEYE - amazing with the effort you put into it (I've seen your work om the different forums). Well done!

Thanks dude. May as well try , when Llama needs it the most. Definitely a bunch of guys here doing a lot, but sadly still, while I get a lot of views in the threads I've made, no-one seems to want to join the discussions . Ah well, as long as it got a handful of people to come try it out, that's good enough.

[Yak]

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... revolution

84 on metacritic

[HGFB]

Are you seeing that translated into sales yet? The Wired review should have been very high profile.

[IronGiant]

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/gridrunnerrevolution

84 on metacritic

Very good indeed.

A pity that more users aren't giving it a score - I mean, 18 votes so far - WTF? For starters there are loads of people on this forum who could give it a rating out of 10.

[gilesgoat]

Are you seeing that translated into sales yet? The Wired review should have been very high profile.

I think it's still a bit early to say, if things are continuing to go like that it could be pretty good, but they have to continue
to go like that ( or better ) for quite a while.

I mean it's not going bad at all so far, certainly is going much better than SG, what I think it's more important is not just
"this and that" but that the OVERALL reception of Gridrunner Revolution is really very good, I think those things are never
"one factor only" but the sum of various parts.

We have a coupe of things to sort out in a not so long term and I think definitely one of the next steps will be to ( try ) to
be on Steam.

I say/use words like "try","could","should" because after the past experiences I am really not taking anything for granted
and "I'll believe it when I'll see it".

I think as a start so far we really could not have better than that I mean the reception of the game is really good, comments
are really good, people like to play it and think it's good.

I think we still have a bit on the back on the mind the fear that "is it going to be ok for quite a while or it's going to be
another of those bubbles that after 1 month is all over ?"

Time will tell, it's really too early to say but yeah, I'd say so far is going ok, I would say "a really nice start" not just for
sales really ( actaully maybe that's the last thing that comes out from all this ) but for what people really thinks/say about
Gridrunner Revolution

Anyway "stay tuned", there's more to come from LS

[IronGiant]

I'm sure you know all this already, but there have of course been many great games in the past that have been very well reviewed by critics yet which have then "slipper under the radar" of most of the potential customers due to lack of publicity, etc.

I think that the publicity needs cranking up a fair bit as there is relatively little discussion of GRR on many of the forums. Unless of course it's just a game that people like to play but not to talk about. Even so, I had hoped to see more people saying "you MUST buy this game", etc.

[gilesgoat]

I'm sure you know all this already, but there have of course been many great games in the past that have been very well reviewed by critics yet which have then "slipper under the radar" of most of the potential customers due to lack of publicity, etc.

I think that the publicity needs cranking up a fair bit as there is relatively little discussion of GRR on many of the forums. Unless of course it's just a game that people like to play but not to talk about. Even so, I had hoped to see more people saying "you MUST buy this game", etc.

Well yes .. but gets a point where really you are asking yourself "then what else MORE I should/could have done ?".

I mean it gets the point where the only remaining answer sounds like "spend a fuck load of money ( that in don't have ) into
plastering ads about the game all over the place saying "YOU MUST BUY THIS GAME" "

I mean if people are not saying it ( or saying it enough ) the only remaining thing is to say it by yourself "big and loud".

I suppose .. I am not sure ..

I am a bit "suprised" that despite much effort and the fact I think there's "quite some exposure" of GR Rev yet as you say
you don't see ( yet ? ) many discussions about it in forums, at least there are not many bad words around it either.

We contacted/sent material so far "to all the possible we been able to" and we'll continue to do that, still waiting for more
stuff to come out in the press/magazines/etc. considering all we sent around there should be at some point quite some
stuff coming out .. in theory ..

News seems to be anyway a bit slow in spreading, very fast in some places but quite slow in others.

But as I said it gets the point where you are asking yourself "what else I can do now to promote even more" and/or
"is that really just that I miss ?".

Certainly the "propagation by word of mouth effect" I dare to say "does not work that much at all", I was really expecting
it to work much better for SG it did not do much at all, the only thing that seem to "massively working about word of mouth" are
bad news, not the good ones ( I am cinic here but also realistic I'd say ).

So yes "publicity" .. I think this time we are really trying/tried the best, someone else was suggesting us in maybe buy
( and so pay ) some ADs space somewhere but I am not really expert/so sure of that, plus we really don't have very much
money to invest in this.

[IronGiant]

Yes, I see what you mean. Of course massive advertising would help, but that costs loads of money. Positive word of mouth is your best option - you seem to be getting that in small doses, but there's not that much general chat about it just yet.

Of course, there are low budget games which get a lot of positive word of mouth and a 'buzz' is generated around them so that almost everyone at least knows their name, but they are few and far between.

Short of GRR being mentioned on the mainstream news I also can't think of anything else that you can reasonably do.

I suppose that people in this forum could help a bit by mentioning it in various gaming related forums - I've seen a few about, but only a few.

There's also the forthcoming Gamespot review to look forward to.

How about getting it mentioned on The Register?

How about Google ads? They don't cost much do they?

How about creating a GRR click-through 'advert' that people could put on their web sites? Just a GIF image, perhaps available in different sizes so that people could incorporate the relevant one into their web pages? Clicking on it would take the browser to the Llamasoft page for GRR.

Perhaps also create a small animated GIF of the game that shows a tiny amount of some colourful gameplay? That could also be put on web sites - some animated GIFs can be quite detailed and of course they don't need to be postage stamp size.


Just some ideas, no doubt others here could think of some more.

[bcass]

Another idea might be for someone to create a Facebook group. I don't personally use Facebook very much, but millions do!

[Harlequin]

I remember when new Llamasoft releases had large adverts in all of the relevant British computer magazines, including full page ones in the weeklies. Have advertising costs increased so much as to make even smaller single adverts uneconomic these days?