What's going on at Nali City ?

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H

Hertston

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I KNOW reviews are always a matter of opinion, and the Nali City guys have seen a lot more than me, but.....

Like many of you, I use the Nali City scores as a guide to which user maps are worth trying. But IMHO, recently they have started giving some really weird scores at the top end. For example;

DM-ProngII. NC says 9.5. Herts says "one large open area with a couple of tunnels, looks quite pretty, dull to play after five minutes. 6"

DM-Empowerment. NC says 10(!). Herts says "passable Q3 clone, but lacks the flow and playability of a true Q3 map. DM-Brutality2 did it much better. 6.5"

Do these maps really belong up there with the likes of Anubis, Organic, Palazzo and Foolsbravado ? Or do you agree that these scores are rather odd ?

Comments please....


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hal

hal

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That's a topic discussed pretty heavily at Nali City Forum. In fact it's been rather heatedly debated... fairly, I think, for the most part... unfairly at others.

To address those scores you mentioned... DM Prong was a rather popular Unreal level. It was the first popular map to use the Jump Pads that GorGor coded. It does have a good deal of strategy, and the pads (which we've all seen by now) add a bit of dimension to an otherwise nicely done, if not a little simple, map. I'd give it a 7.5 based on the coding done on the jump pads.... they are wisely used here.

DM-Empowered.. a nice tight map. Nice texturing and good intertwining layout. I don't think it has a lot of originality... put me down for a 7.5 on it.

You mentioned Organic... I didn't care for that one either. It was a lot of cool ideas thrown into one huge map that tried to do everything. A good start for a single player map... just not my favorite DM map.

Like I said.. the reviewers are open to comment on the Nali City Forum... you should let them know what you think. Understand that they provide free opinions (yes opinions) and they spend a lot of time doing it for us. (well some of them anyway!) /~unreal/ubb/html/wink.gif

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I used to believe the Nali-City guys, until I stumbled upon a review of CTF-SpacePirates. Now, I had already downloaded this map, and considered it one of the crappiest CTF levels I've ever attempted to play. While interesting in theory, it had somewhere close to 12 redeemers on the map(at least), and a huge *** open "space" in between the two ships that took an hour to cross. The sizes of the two "bases" were totally disproportional. It was just rediculous. So anyways...I saw the NC rating and it was 8.5! Egads....

So anyways...my faith in the NC reviews was thuroughly shaken after that.

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titanus

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I notice that more and more of the reviews are not done by the original reviewers...

Perhaps a time to worry about? Correct me if I made some mistakes.. :0

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S

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DM Empowerment in my books should have scored a 7 where as DM prong should have scored a 10! DM Empowerment to me was to cramped and the bots just stood there like dummies where as DM Prong not only was there room to move, the bots at any skill level loved the fire out of that map /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif My hats off to the creater of DM Prong...Space Pirates in my book should have scored a 4 the bots got lost, and there was alot of slowdowns on that map! I think there are alot of maps that they have reviewed, and gave alwful good scores to those maps that really did'nt deserve it! Where as alot of the maps that got the really low scores to me were 9 and 10 material. Take DM Helleth for example I think it scored an 8 but I think it should have easly scored a 10 not only did it look good and had space to move the bots adapted to it quite nicely.. There are others, but that would take up to much of this forum in reviews..

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hal

hal

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See... this is the problem that you run in to. People disagree on reviews obviously. I, for instance, thought that Helleth was a really amateurish map. The rooms were big and boxy and empty. The Sky Box was poorly integrated into the map... there were numerous places you could see the "wrap around" of the texture glaring at you through the open windows.

It's just trying to do, real hard, what EvilAtje's DM-Damned did very well. Try the two and see if you would still give Helleth a 10.

I agree with CTF-SpacePirates. I d/l'ed that after reading the glowing review...only to be reminded of an average Unreal type (3rd Party, of course) map. That is a good solid 4.5 in my book.

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