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Diabolical Metacritic reviews


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Hi all, just been reading some user reviews on Metacritic

www.metacritic.com/game/pc/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy,

and I was so shocked I felt compelled to write one highlighting the positives of CMBN. I'm sure I'm not the only one on these forums who would feel aghast at reading those early reviews posted on Metacritic, so if you've got the time and inclination why not post your thoughts on there?

I also noted there is yet to have been a review posted of CMFI (I can't because I can't get FI working on my PC). Anyone fancy posting the first review?

Cheers

Odin

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If think that's the critic score Erwin, which is respectable. The user one I found is another story...

Sburke, Metacritic scores are highlighted on Steam. Although CMBN can't be purchased from Steam, it is a site frequented by Steam users (as well as plenty of others). These people need to learn about the fantastic game they're missing out on!

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Odin,

It's always interesting to see what people think about the game and why, even a former Forum Member. What I find jarring is that two entirely different scales are used. One's for the critics, the other for the gamers at large. To the untutored eye, it looks as though CMBN has terrible reviews from the gamers proper, but this is merely because the ill-advised decision was made to use two different systems and present them side by side. I found the effect extremely jarring and disconcerting.

Regards,

John Kettler

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If think that's the critic score Erwin, which is respectable. The user one I found is another story...

Sburke, Metacritic scores are highlighted on Steam. Although CMBN can't be purchased from Steam, it is a site frequented by Steam users (as well as plenty of others). These people need to learn about the fantastic game they're missing out on!

Sure, go ahead and make me feel like a luddite. :P Yeah I admit it, I am way out of touch with where most people get their info, then again I wouldn't trust most reviews anyway. I am a luddite and a cynical skeptic!

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Sort of amusing reading the ramblings of "that guy who used to post here."

It's not hard to see who has an axe to grind, that's pretty one-sided slam flavoured with some personal spin. Like the very strong insinuation that BFC has watered down their product to gain mass market appeal. That really is a first, usually it's the other way around. You know, how instead of water BFC mixed in growth hormone and peyote, scaring away sensible casual folk. Which I approve. The hardcore edge, not the illicit substances.

I also like that he apparently has very limited insight on how game development works, going by quotes like this:

"judging by all the features that they are now furiously trying to weld back into the game engine, after having proudly stripped them out"

Good job, way to understand technology.

It says "User Reviews" not "User Opinions." I feel mislead.

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A game that gives a fully downloadable demo is not common. Basically if someone is writing a review that is negative and not stating this then they are not being fair.

Otherwise any review is good as it does advertise the game and anyone halfway serious will most likely download a demo and probably end up in these forums sooner or later and make some sort of informed choice.

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He's still around and although he finds the game sub par he still creates mods for it.

His upload count is presently at 34 which includes mods as well as scenarios. That's quite an output for someone who has such serious issues with the game and never misses an opportunity to run it down on the Internet.

So I think it has something to do with his multiple personality disorder.

That's maybe a bit unkind. I suspect it's nothing more complicated than he loves the game itself but absolutely hates Steve, BFC and the Beta team that he was once a part of. I don't have any issues with the guy. He's never hurt me and so that's how I rationalise his otherwise, strange behaviour.

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Thank you, thank you, too kind. It was either that or Milton, as quoted by Khan (Montalban): "Better it is to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven."

But like Lucifer (presumably - I'll be sure to ask when we meet), it seems to me Michael sincerely believes that it is BFC who fell from grace, not him.

Just for the record, I'm a huge Dorosh fan not just on Canadian military history but on wargaming history in general. And while he certainly has a right to express his negative opinion, I am sad he's persisted in this gadfly crusade against BFC

5* out of 10? Really? So you personally prefer 50% of all other games out there to CM2 in blindfold taste tests? Or are you saying it's ~50% of the wargame CM1 was? Or is this relative to some other Platonic Form of the Ideal Tactical Wargame whose characteristics we may divine only after lengthy immersion in the wargaming Tao of Dorosh. Which I'd be happy to do -- like I say, the guy's hypersmart -- but sadly his general publications and blog posts have dwindled to near nothingness.

* In fairness, he may have given the original CMBN a grudging 6; I can't be bothered to look.

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Oh, I'm not playing. I get so much of where Michael is coming from -- I use CM almost purely as a tool to better understand military history, and like others here frequently beat my head against design issues that occasionally seem to fly in the face of that even if they don't affect the gaming experience for most. But I neither expect most BFC customers to share that degree of interest, nor do I expect BFC to cater to me.

In any complex occupation you can find exceptionally intelligent people whose sense of self gets so wrapped up in their own inimitable expertise that they'd rather be Right than successful. They actually become resistant to change, because if they aren't in charge of it it threatens their core belief that Nobody Can Truly Understand This But Someone Who Has Walked My Path. And once they frustrate enough supervisors their careers top out and they find themselves surpassed by "amateurs" and dilettantes, so they become even more bitter and resentful and convinced they are surrounded by idiots. But those wounds are self-inflicted. I know that amounts to cheap shot psychoanalysis of a person I have never met, but I have encountered it many a time in professional life and have myself stared into the abyss of self-marginalization.

Many a brilliant religious reformer who wound up burnt at the stake was in this mold, initially admired for singular clarity of vision but unable to compromise and eventually put down like a mad dog. Savonarola for example won private audiences to preach to the Medici; even the Pope made excuses for his vitriolic abuse for a surprisingly long time. But the genius didn't know how to stop.

The stuff of Ayn Rand novels.... but of course she only painted half the picture.

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Apologies if this is a bit OT but I just happened to have completed Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and was struck at how the situation she describes re the virtues of unfettered free enterprise is almost exactly the opposite of what we're living thru today. In AR's world the heroes of industry were men of iron who invented and built things, made railways run etc.

What would she or her characters have thought of Wall Street bail outs, failed executives of failed companies being rewarded with huge bonuses, outsourcing to other countries, the biggest rewards to gamblers/financial manipulators who produce nothing...? I think she and they would have been appalled - hence the lack of any AR material being used by right wing politicos today.

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