The definitive Space Giraffe thread

[Kamineko]

Who said they were absent?

[gilesgoat]

The reviewer has been given the duty to create a stateless, general review of something [...] That's not reviewing. It's editorializing. (sic)

*snip*

Er, no. Utter nonsense. Here's my "editorial":

The reviewer, or should I say journalist, is there to write copy which sells. When copy sells, ideas spread, be that for better or worse (admittedly). While this neither justifies nor excuses this chump, one has to ask why people perceive journalists as scum?

This review is clearly gutter tabloid bullshit. And from the amount of pan-forum discussion generated it seems to have done its job.

However, there is much to be said for "all publicity is good publicity".

A 4 or a 6 would have been *far* more devastating. Who wants mediocrity? I think from what I've read in these pages is that some consideration needs to be put into how these scores should be read. Is it reasonable to believe the publicity would have been better if Space Giraffe got a score like this?

And this being from the "Official" Xbox Magazine? From a conspiracy point of view, this little excercise will probably/hopefully cause more copies to be sold. 2 out of 10 is so *conspicuous*. I see a cult classic in the making. You just wait for the other reviews. And the sales.

I sympathise with your points of view - it must be really hard at this stage but don't take this apparent "criticism" to heart; don't believe a word of it. Believe in the forums. Believe in the word of mouth generated by this and the support rallying around you and the consequent units sold.

I hate it in a way as well, but step back from it, try to laugh at the idiocy - the idiotic lunacy of this supposed ignorant review - and try to see it as the ultimate compliment in a world of banal and boring games and even duller/annoying associated marketing bullshit and moribund print journalism.

Hang in there Jeff and Giles, my men, it will all come good. If there is a conspiracy, it's in your favour. You've got a great game, an artistic statement, and sure, this view is all a bit postmodern, but I am genuinely looking forward to buying it because from I can see, it looks like a stormingly fun game.

And it seems I am not alone in thinking this.

So if we would have got an '1' or a '0' that would have been lot better
because everyone whould have said "fooking hell that's incredible I MUST
SEE what's that shite ?".

Well .. the incredible thing is that maybe after all, in 2007, this is exactly
what would make LOT of people go to have a look at it.

You have a point here, after all the mayority of people are masochists
nowadays otherwise it would not explain all those cell phones and remortgages offers

[Mark]

It's fine for me to make such judgements because I have seen a lot of people learn to play SG and nobody has ever had such an extreme reaction to it. The guy was plainly woefully fucking incompetent. As I pointed out before the enemies plainly *are* visible or everyone would be dying random, undeserved deaths and nobody would get any decent scores at all. That part of the review is either a barefaced lie or shameful incompetence.

I could make out the enemies in the artifact infested youtube video. The reviewer must have been either blind or autistic.

I've played the first 20-odd levels, and feel confident I can do pretty well at them. However I've also watched level 64 being played in the flesh, and really was at a total loss, truth be told. Seriously - what you've seen so far probably doesn't compare to what there is.

Having said that, watching a game being played is incredibly different to playing the thing, and without the experience of the 40 intervening levels I probably never stood a chance of making that much sense of it. My mate got a "semi-respectable" rating for that level. I'd have got an "absolutely fucking bewildered" one (if it existed).

You've got to allow for people just not getting certain ideas too. You can put in all the audio cues you want, but I know people who, after several months of play, hadn't realised that the enemies in Geometry Wars have signature audio cues. How can you possibly not know that "Wom!" = black hole? These people exist, and it scares me a little.

[Dr Derek Doctors]

er, our alpha test was a bit more rigorous than "a bunch of people at a retro weekend" and yes, I would have expected real criticism if I'd been doing stuff wrong.

As it wasn't stated in your original message, I felt I had to seek clarity.

But purely empirically and outside of anyone's opinions, the lie can be comprehensively given to the "impossible to see the bullets" argument simply by the fact that good SG players consistently score better than less good ones. As I said before, if the game's cues were genuinely not visible then scores would be pretty homogeneous due to random, unfair deaths. This is very much not the case (and I can, if necessary, post screencaps of leaderboard rankings and scores showing that to be true).

So I can *prove* that the "bullets aren't visible" argument is a flat-out lie or a simple lack of competence.

Does avoiding bullets factor majorly into the scoring or does killing enemies? I mean if you're really good at killing enemies then would they get the chance to fire as many bullets? I'm note saying the bullets are invisible, I'm just asking whether invisible bullets would truly lead to uniform scores.

[Yak]

Who said they were absent?

Whoever tried to claim that the reason they died was due to the game not being clear about what the threats were. It's simply not true, or nobody'd ever be able to score a decent score or progress more than anyone else.

[Dr Derek Doctors]

didn't you read my second paragraph?

"Being accused of that kind of crap specifically rankles because I *know* that the necessary cues are provided through more than one sensory channel, quite comprehensively. To say that the cues are absent is just wrong and stupid".

I did, but I misconstrued it, sorry. So - to sate my curiosity - how exactly are you warned of a nearby bullet then aside from the bullet object's visual proximity?

[james_bass]

So if we would have got an '1' or a '0' that would have been lot better because everyone whould have said "fooking hell that's incredible I MUST SEE what's that shite ?".

No, not at all. I just have a certain (naive?) hope that people see through this sort of nonsense. The sorts of folk I think would be interested in Space Giraffe are not the sort of sheep (sorry) who would rely on a dumb review anyhow. The sorts of games you're selling are at the very least pitched to semi-intelligent simians.

Just look at the forum outcry: the "OMG it got 2/10" review seems to have primarily enraged your fanbase and stimulated a hell of a lot of debate. Debate which seems unilaterally to have transpired to be in your favour.

Fascinating stuff, and fun to consider, but I'd try not to worry quite yet.

Conspiracy theorist? Me?

Marketing bastards? Them?

Etc...

[Yak]

er, our alpha test was a bit more rigorous than "a bunch of people at a retro weekend" and yes, I would have expected real criticism if I'd been doing stuff wrong.

As it wasn't stated in your original message, I felt I had to seek clarity.

But purely empirically and outside of anyone's opinions, the lie can be comprehensively given to the "impossible to see the bullets" argument simply by the fact that good SG players consistently score better than less good ones. As I said before, if the game's cues were genuinely not visible then scores would be pretty homogeneous due to random, unfair deaths. This is very much not the case (and I can, if necessary, post screencaps of leaderboard rankings and scores showing that to be true).

So I can *prove* that the "bullets aren't visible" argument is a flat-out lie or a simple lack of competence.

Does avoiding bullets factor majorly into the scoring or does killing enemies? I mean if you're really good at killing enemies then would they get the chance to fire as many bullets? I'm note saying the bullets are invisible, I'm just asking whether invisible bullets would truly lead to uniform scores.

Well the guy's talking about being killed arbitrarily so I'm guessing he must be dealing with the simplest level of things, avoiding deadly threats, and all things that offer a deadly threat are plainly signified.

The actual interaction with bullets and enemies and whether you choose to kill them, avoid them or manoeuvre them into a favourable configuration for you to exploit in a manner advantageous to your score is the *actual* core of the gameplay and something that genius-boy over at OXM and all thoise fuckwots who tried to claim that SG was simply Tempest 4000 seem to have completely fucking overlooked.

Simply *surviving* in SG isn't actually very hard at all. Anyone having serious problems with surviving enough levels to understand the game is having serious cometence issues.

[Yak]

didn't you read my second paragraph?

"Being accused of that kind of crap specifically rankles because I *know* that the necessary cues are provided through more than one sensory channel, quite comprehensively. To say that the cues are absent is just wrong and stupid".

I did, but I misconstrued it, sorry. So - to sate my curiosity - how exactly are you warned of a nearby bullet then aside from the bullet object's visual proximity?

Muzzle flash, audio cue, actually looking at the fucking source prior to it firing and having rudimentary knowledge of its behaviour. Hardly rocket science.

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

Night loves!

[amanset]

Christ all this almost makes me want to get a 360 just so I can play SG and make my own mind up regarding all this fuss.

Unfortunately I just lay down around 19,000 SEK on a new iMac so I won't be doing that. If I hadn't just done that though ...

[Dr Derek Doctors]

Muzzle flash, audio cue, actually looking at the fucking source prior to it firing and having rudimentary knowledge of its behaviour. Hardly rocket science.

That's at the moment that it's fired, right? After then is it tracked purely visually?

Anyhoo, it's late. Can't wait to get my hands on the game proper later on the month. I've 400 points burning a hole in my account and would really like to form an opinion on Space Giraffe given it's status as software lightning-rod.

[james_bass]

Christ all this almost makes me want to get a 360 just so I can play SG and make my own mind up regarding all this fuss.

OMG! My point made earlier has been proven!

Unfortunately I just lay down around 19,000 SEK on a new iMac so I won't be doing that. If I hadn't just done that though ...

Ah, market economics does rule all, after all. Alas.

[Mark]

Does avoiding bullets factor majorly into the scoring or does killing enemies? I mean if you're really good at killing enemies then would they get the chance to fire as many bullets? I'm note saying the bullets are invisible, I'm just asking whether invisible bullets would truly lead to uniform scores.

No - from my understanding you often want to get in the path of bullets. The bullets stick out like a sore thumb generally (I've died a few times without knowing why, so I'm not going to rule obscured bullets out, but my gut feeling is that I missed something else). The game rewards you for shooting enemy bullets to push them out of the web, and therefore they're pretty damned visible (they flash blue to red and nothing else I've seen so far looks anything like them). Juggling bullets earns you bonuses. And so I've died way more from being lured into the path of a bullet I knew was there due to the prospect of bonus points, than I've died by hitting the ones I was trying to avoid.

[Harlequin]

SG at RV this year ... first time anyone saw it and EVERYONE loved it! Even me and I was crap at it!. The truth is in the eating eh ...

I would bear in mind that those at RV, much like YakYak members in general, were a self-selected sample of people who mostly would have enjoyed almost anything from Llamasoft. I think that the testers, however, were mostly non-YakYak people selected by Microsoft who test for a living.

And this being from the "Official" Xbox Magazine? From a conspiracy point of view, this little excercise will probably/hopefully cause more copies to be sold. 2 out of 10 is so *conspicuous*. I see a cult classic in the making. You just wait for the other reviews. And the sales.
[...]
I hate it in a way as well, but step back from it, try to laugh at the idiocy - the idiotic lunacy of this supposed ignorant review - and try to see it as the ultimate compliment in a world of banal and boring games and even duller/annoying associated marketing bullshit and moribund print journalism.

I agree. A 'Marmite', love it or loath it work is likely to attract far more interest than something average, and on XBLA interest translates into people trying the actual demos.

Does avoiding bullets factor majorly into the scoring or does killing enemies? I mean if you're really good at killing enemies then would they get the chance to fire as many bullets?[...]

One of the central strategies of the game, as I think has been previously mentioned, is to not shoot enemies unless absolutely necessary. Better scores are obtained by keeping enemies alive until one can hit them with the giraffe's body itself.