AS-ColdSteel, LOL

This review was incredibly inaccurate. The map is practically a classic in the UT AS community (which it doesnt seem the reviewer belongs to) andeserves far far better than the score given. the map was released a LONG time ago. if youre going to review it now, review it as if you saw it when it came out- of course it looks dated, it came out a long time ago!

you cant give a bland looking old map a higher score just because it's old (im not talking about the map in question just in general), its only right that standards should increase over time. and a map being a classic in some sub-community doesn't mean it shouldn't be reviewed objectively.

... or that is a great one. How many iGiB Anda-like players wouldn've point a few 'classics' ?... (i'm not bashing ColdSteel objectively, though)

reviewing old maps should be forbidden
its like reviewing Unreal right now and giving it a 0.1/10 because the graphics cant compete with the new doom 3
you simply cant review such map fair

the point of a review is to let people know if its worth having though, if the map was good 3 years ago, that doesnt mean its worth having now, like unreals graphics arent worth having now. so its seems fair to me. ill agree reviewing efforts should be focused on more recent stuff but reviewing old classics is fine since it could bring it to the attention of people that never got it first time around, but its logical that if you're going to review old maps they should be judged alongside newer ones, the review isnt advising players if they should download the map 3 years ago its advising them if they should download it now. thats the way i see it anyways.

name me 1 old map that would receive anything higher then an avg review nowadays
reviewing old maps automatically mean thats its putting down what once was a legend, just because it got old

is unreal worth getting ? if i give it to a 14 year old kid who just got in to gaming hell say "omg this looks so utter sh1t", so any old game should be reviewed with very low scores then..
thats simply not really logical, youre rating the thing yes, but it cannot be rated like this because it was made with all different rules and standards in mind
its like putting a sheep or a cow in a blind date show and then expecting it to find a human male date
thats not gonna happen

its better simply not rating them at all

I figured I would make some people upset with this review.

First, the map's age is really a non-issue. As time passes and our video cards pump out more and more detail, standards for graphics and performance do increase, but in a game like UT, our concept of good gameplay remains relatively constant. There are plenty of UT maps that are four or five years old now whose layout and design are no less brilliant for their age. And that's where AS-ColdSteel falls far short in my opinion. I didn't mark it down much for graphics, but for gameplay. Besides, what comments I did make about graphics -- like those textures Aggressor brought up -- don't have much to do with age. Adding two new textures to a map that already had dozens of custom textures included would not have been difficult, wouldn't have hurt performance, and would have gone a long way.

That the bots can't defend split objectives is, like you said, a result of stupid AI, but in the sense of poor pathing, not because of inherent restrictions in the engine (not entirely, anyway ). A bit of trickery could get the bots positioned in such a way to defend both objectives at once. For the fact that you can hammer jump over several objectives, though, there's hardly any excuse. Yes, we've all seen it in other Assault maps before, and I didn't like it then either. Yes, every Assault map has choke points, but they can be handled in such a way that they don't stack the odds too heavily for one side or the other, and I don't think that was done sufficiently here. We could argue about this all day.

I know it's strange to review such an old map, but it was there in the queue; clearly someone was interested in seeing it examined in detail. As an aside, I'm curious as to people's thoughts on this. Should there be some kind of time limit as to how long people have to request a review after a map's release, so we don't get a bunch of four-year old maps in the review queue? I'm not sure if I like that idea or not, but it's just a thought.

As for your comment, SirTahngarth, that it seems I'm not a member of the Unreal community, remember that while we all try to look at maps critically and carefully, there is still a considerable degree of subjectivity present, particularly in regards to gameplay. I've been playing UT since its release, and still have all the "classic" maps from its glory days. But "classic" status does not guarantee a map high marks from every reviewer whose path it happens to cross. Given any piece of art from any field of endeavor, no matter how renowned it may be, it's a simple thing to find ten thousand people who think it's mediocre or worse. My review is my opinion, and I stand by it.

I agree with the guy, maybe I woulda given the map a slightly higher score, but the bugs he mentioned are there and they were there when I first played the map too.

Those are bugs more inherent to UT99 assault than to the map. If i rated every assault map based on his criteria, there wouldnt be one that would get more than a 4. The same problems would still exist in most 2k4 assault maps, if not for the nerfing of shieldgun jumping.

"classic" generally implies staying power. And generally, Staying power = good map.

0.5 cast because of shieldgun jumping abuse (which as I said almost every assault map has somewhere or another) and chokepoints (which are not always a bad thing in assault, and affect both teams the same because each team is subjected to them in each round) is simply wrong. There are problems yes, but nothing deserving of what I consider a "failing" grade for a rating. Youve done some good reviews, but this one was really really weak, for a map that probably should have been left alone to begin with.

No, those are bugs about the map itself, lots of AS maps made around the time of Coldsteel didn't have the same problems.

Acording to our schema, I'd have given the map prolly a 6. That is a fitting score for Coldsteel. It may be one of the better known AS maps, but it isnt one of the best. I never really enjoyed it much online.

Hourences said:

name me 1 old map that would receive anything higher then an avg review nowadays
reviewing old maps automatically mean thats its putting down what once was a legend, just because it got old

is unreal worth getting ? if i give it to a 14 year old kid who just got in to gaming hell say "omg this looks so utter sh1t", so any old game should be reviewed with very low scores then..
thats simply not really logical, youre rating the thing yes, but it cannot be rated like this because it was made with all different rules and standards in mind
its like putting a sheep or a cow in a blind date show and then expecting it to find a human male date
thats not gonna happen

its better simply not rating them at all

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i know i agree comparing them to maps made 3 years down the line isnt ideal, but if you are going to review old maps, how would you feel if an older inferior map got a higher rating than argel or something just because "its old", even though it is technically worse?

im not saying review a bunch of old maps and give them low scores, im saying if you must review an old map, judge it on the standards the people reading the review ought to have, that is, todays standards. if you gave unreal to a 14 year old you should tell him not to judge it on graphics but on innovation where it should score higher than doom 3, you talk as if when you give a 14 year old unreal youre saying "only judge on graphics"

the fact is unreal looks like dog-**** next to doom3. that doesnt make it a worse game, but it does mean it should score lower in a "looks" category than doom3. that's all im trying to justify here. similarly if this map looked worse (i havent even played it im talking about principle here) than a map which would score a 9 these days, it should score less than that.

The cast score was docked significantly for unbalanced choke points and serious hammer jump abuse, yes, but also for a lot of bad choices as to start points, item placement, Assault-specific AI, etc. It was certainly harsh, and maybe it could have scored a bit higher as Prophet said, but I've played plenty of other Assault maps that do a better job of circumventing the pitfalls of this game type.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue the content of the review in this thread anymore since I doubt it's going to accomplish anything on either side, so if anyone would like to continue this, feel free to PM me. You're all entitled to your opinions, of course, and I respect your points of view. Sorry if you thought I was too harsh.

SirTahngarth said:

...for a map that probably should have been left alone to begin with.

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If even posting the review was inappropriate, I apologize. I've been trying to get some of the older requests in our queue done, hoping that we can reduce the size of the backlog and improve the average time that elapses between submission and review. I'm still interested to hear what you (or anyone else who's been on the team at NaliCity for longer than I have) think we should do with those requests. There are a bunch of maps in the queue right now that are for maps three or four years old. Are we obligated to review them, or can we just remove those really old requests from the queue?

Yes the map is old, but as a reviewer you are not supposed to let age affect the score. Whether you should review old maps because in general theyll all receive pretty bad scores is another point. I don't totally agree with IronBlaydes score but the review was valid. Cheers to IronBlayde

"i know i agree comparing them to maps made 3 years down the line isnt ideal, but if you are going to review old maps, how would you feel if an older inferior map got a higher rating than argel or something just because "its old", even though it is technically worse?"

i didnt say that either
i said it can never be judged fair, and if it cant then it means it shouldnt be reviewed
your above example isnt fair either, nor is the other end, rating it lower
its imposseble to do it correct, thats the point

you cant blame a map for not using health vials on ramps or small cylinder/non incidence lighting when those type of techniques werent know nor standard back then
its like bashing some ancient greek guy and flaming the fu<k out of him because he doesnt have a car
yeah duh he doesnt

its not just the visuals, core gameplay is the same, but other gameplaythings changed trough the years

Iron does make valid points about those critical gameplay flaws and all but im not looking at this map and review in particular, im looking at the general idea of reviewing old maps
no matter what old map would be reviewed, it would almost never get a decent score, and thats unfair

Aggressor said:

And it was rated with a 10 from Ironblayde in the comments.

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Haha... oops. That opinion I won't stand by. I had a lot of fun with Bridge a couple years ago, though truth be told, I haven't played it in a long time. That comment wasn't based on a critical analysis of the map, just a bit of naïveté and a lot of nostalgia. Nice catch though.

all fair points i guess. it's reviewed now, people can make up their own minds.

It's like a UT map has been reviewed in comparison to a UT2004 map. The visauls in a good ut2004 map would probably kick the living daylights out of a UT map (Though perhaps in terms of style it wouldn't) but gameplay would still be viable for judging. To a lesser degree this is similiar to what has happened here.

I would like the review to be taken down personally. It's just too old.

AS-Bridge had this problem, where you could bypass defenders at the first optional objective and make two thirds of a map. With bots that is. Not to mention that Bridge has much more awful choke-points (Even more than Asthenosphere, yup ), whereas in ColdSteel you alway have a broader path except at the beginning and the end. Not to mention that in the bridge itself, there are four explosives placed. In a similar manner I could say that you get two for free. And it was rated with a 10 from Ironblayde in the comments.

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I sense hypocracy here.... And notice how quickly he backs down from his rating of another old map when approaced about it.

Instead of doing controversial old reviews, just delete them from the queue if the long list bothers you. With the new request system essentially giving priority to newer requests,ts really not worth the time. And frankly i think reviews are being done at a more brisk pace than they used to be. Less stress, less risk. Please, stick to the top of the list- your reviews there have been so much better.