ninjabee.com

You guys are helping me feel much better. I really shouldn't be so easy to drag around like this, but I've been living and breathing this game for too long. I should probably take a break.

I think the only reason I care about one man's opinion is that I assume a whole lot of other people already do. Let's hope everybody looks at the player review scores instead of the critic review scores.

In any case... thanks.

The way it's supposed to work is we (me and anyone with Phenomenal Mod Powers who feels energetic) are supposed to update the initial post to contain all reviews collected in this thread, so someone only has to read the first post to get all the official stats. Thus the stickiness.

It worked great with OKX and Clyde, but I dropped the ball this time. I should fix it, but maybe when it's not 2:30am.

Thanks, staticwrap, for collecting so many reviews (with urls and summaries!) in one post there. That's essentially all the work right there.

Well, generally, these reviews are only based off of 4 peoples views. Not really enough to gage the quality of the game, correct?

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Well, don't let the reviews get too much too your head. In the end, it are the gamers who really value the work you've done. I've been playing turn-based games since the 80's, and Band of Bugs is a very good one. It could've easily been in the $20-$30 range in terms of quality and representation.

Too bad that this genre of games doesn't have that many releases over a year. As a result, they will only compare it the the few they know (for example, Disgaea/Final Fantasy Tactics (because it has an isometric view) or Advance Wars (because it is turn-based).

Will they compare it to X-Com's UFO : Enemy Unknown? No way, that's retro! (according to Wikipedia, that was released in 1993-1995; I feel so old!). Will they compare it to Panzer General? No way, that's also over 10 years old! Who remembers those games? And they will not compare it to the even older stuff...

In order to succeed in a full-price market a turn-based-strategy game needs to have loads of options. As soon as you go the fantasy route, you are obliged to grab the RPG-flavour with it and you will need levelling techniques (which makes is more difficult to balance a game for multiplayer purposes). If you don't go the fantasy route, you needs loads and loads of units to impress the people.

However, how does one dare to compare a 'budget' game (and I call XBox Live Arcade games 'budget games') to a full-priced game?

Panzer General did not have the option to choose with which units you would fight the battle, but did that stop it from being one of the best WW2 turn-based strategy games? No! It is after all, a STRATEGY game, solve the problem with the means/units at hand.

There is a PC game called Naked War which has been released last year if I'm not mistaken. It received rave reviews and scores of 9/10. It is a good game, but it doesn't offer the variety and possibilities Band Of Bugs has.

They should have turn-based-strategy players review the game, not non-turn-based-strategy gamers. I don't like soccer games, so I am not the right person to review soccer games. There is a computer games TV programme on the Belgian TV (that's where I come from) which is presented by a bunch of retards which only like drive-games, soccer-games, 3D-platform-games and FPS-games. They barely review anything else, especially if it is not a big-name-game or a license. I really don't care about Splinter Cell 25 or Fifa How-far-are-we yet. I want the reviews of original games! However, games that are not of the 'we already have thousands of these' category receive bad reviews because they're different...

I understand you can be upset about lower scores and bad reviewers, but in the end it are the gamers and their word-to-mouth that will make a game great. You've seen the Penny Arcade reference, and it are things like that, that should encourage you to keep doing the things you do (very well)!

Band of Bugs is a game that can be enjoyed by veterans of the genre, and it can introduce new people to the genre. It's not expensive, so why not try it?

The IGN review is bull. The Game spots score is bull to.
So far though so user reviews have been around 7 8 and 9.A few low scores though.
Most reviews feel that it's too simple for fans of the TBS genre and to hard for causal gamers, but go on about how they don't go into detail about the online mode, or map maker.
All in all the low scores are of people who take one look of the game and pass, in stead of seeing how much it has to offer.

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Yeah Zee gets it right.

I often disregard press reviews now after Shadowrun. All the playerbase absolutely loved it, but the reviewers gave it crap ratings. The playerbase are still loving it and so am I - kinda shows somethng about the reviewers that gave it rubbish ratings. 1Up However suprisngly gave it a good review - and i usually dislike them. It was a fair review touching on all the points.

I have been very shocked by the low reviews of Band of Bugs, hopefully more reviews will come and lift up the game. I absolutely love it..and my only real complaint is that ranked matches and non-spider-hunter matches are hard to find...probably because a bunch of jerks are giving BoB bad scores...or because people are still so engaged in the single player campaign (as I was until I finished it). Anyways, I have reviewed the game on my blog Here hopefully people find it more fair/accurate than the IGN or gamespot reviews out there. Keep up the good work Ninjabee!

BAND OF BUGS REVIEW

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Graduate Games
Gnade Games Blog and Game News

Wow...there is so much I missed this weekend.

Here's the Xboxic review: http://www.xboxic.com/news/3106

8/10

I'll be reading this now epic thread and updating the top post hopefully tonight (if I don't get sucked into Band of Bugs now that my internet is working!!!).

You couldn't have said it better!

I bought Earth Defence Force 2017, the reviews said 'it was not next-gen, repetitive', and it is one of the most fun games released this year. I bought Shadowrun, and never had so much fun with an FPS, and the reviews demolished it. After the 'Driver 3 scandal' some time ago, I look at reviews with slightly different glasses (the game stank, but some magazines gave it 9/10 because they wouldn't get any exclusive promo material from the company if they didn't rate it highly.)
Too bad that reviews are often the first glimpse and promotion for new games 'that aren't big' (think of the famed sequels ).

So the best ways are to browse around forums, and see what the reactions are. One of the nicest I've read were on Gamefaqs:
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=938058&topic=36249091

Oh shnap! Lunar is in da houseeee!!

EDIT: By the way, I don't seem to have you on my friends list. Go ahead and send a friend request.

And yeah, really...why aren't we friended?

Okay, now that I've read all of those reviews and all the posts here I can finally make some comments.

First, I agree that it is hard to take a review seriously when a review does any of the following:

Admits to hating the genre
Can't even spell the developer's name correctly ("Ninja Bee")
Does not take the context of the game into account (e.g., XBLA arcade title, 50MB limit, $10)
Glazes over or completely skips a major part of gameplay (both GameSpot and IGN failed to mention the turn structure *at all* which is why Multiplayer works so well in BoB)
Mentions acclaimed games that have features that the reviewed game lacks but fails to mention acclaimed games that function the same way. (Selective memory anyone?)

That said, obviously the crashing leaderboards and other issues clearly affected the IGN and GameSpot score. And I can understand why. I haven't been affected at all, but they are legitimate complaints.

Obviously it is up to NinjaBee ultimately to run quality control, but I'm shocked to know that MS didn't check the leaderboards against a gamertag with 100 friends. Maybe there will be a new TCR after this?

But here is where I start to get a little upset about these reviews -- adding the level editor was something that NinjaBee did for *us*, the community. But of course, it adds exponentially more opportunities for the game to break. But they did it anyway because they wanted to give us more value for our $10. Yeah...*more* value for $10, as if the game wasn't worth $10. What other $10 lets you create levels *and* play them over Live? None.

The other amusing bit is how some game laud the graphical style and others poo-poo it. Same with the casual nature of the gameplay. Same with the story line. It all seems like a knee-jerk reaction based on pre-conceived notions from other games. It's like me saying that because I like PGR3, Forza is a crap game. WTF?!? Put the game in context, sure (although many didn't even do that) but don't deride the game for trying to accomplish something wildly different (i.e. making TBS games *accessible*!!).

Oh well...I guess they got me a little angry. Hopefully the technical issues can be ironed out and this game can find the audience it deserves.

/rant

(Oh, and I'm gonna split off this topic off as suggested and keep the top stickied one just for reviews...if you hate that idea, let me know.)

And the worst thing is that people unfortunately listen to the reviews since they think they are a good judgement on the game and it will lose some sales because of that.

It's actually one of the reasons that I love reading reviews on NetJak, even if I'll never play the game they are talking about or the game came out eons before or something. They'll at least go into detail about what they loved and hated about the game so that I can make up my *own* mind based on the whole picture. Not just, "I hated this. It was so bad. I couldn't stand it. Oh, and the rest of the game was great."

Ooo a review from Gnade Games' blog I stumbled across your blog through a google search and ever since have enjoyed reading your arcade reviews.

Your review is spot on Well done..