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Biodome posted:It's already fun for me but now it'll be even better. Can't wait for the patch!
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Mar 9, 2014 20:39
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tuyop posted:Amazing Breaker for iPhone is free. No unnecessary dub step trailer.  This is the new standard by which all iOS games are judged.
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Mar 9, 2014 20:41
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duckfarts posted:Trainyard is down to a buck again, and it's a great puzzle game even if I can't get past this one loving puzzle still. I love Trainyard, but my old Android phone broke when I only had two bonus puzzles left to solve and I'm not sure I can go through that pain again.
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Mar 9, 2014 20:46
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Whirlwind Jones posted:So apparently Block Legend is a huge loving buggy mess and I'm surprised it was even released with so many problems (that hasn't stopped me from sinking a fair amount of time into it though). Thank goodness. The quests not working was a big deal since grinding starblocks is painful after you unlock a few characters (I unlocked the Witch first, and I'm not really sure if any other passive will be good as doubled stat growth compared to everyone else). I have a "discover 5 items" quest at the moment and I don't even know how to fulfill it.
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Mar 9, 2014 20:53
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Forsaken media is who does block fortress, bug heroes, and a few other first person shooter with defense mixed in. They have been in the top 10 paid games a few times. They are kinda known for buggy releases, but they update games with bug fixes and free New content for a long time.
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Mar 9, 2014 20:56
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Notorious QIG posted:I love Trainyard, but my old Android phone broke when I only had two bonus puzzles left to solve and I'm not sure I can go through that pain again. I'm pretty sure there's an "unlock all puzzles" button somewhere in the options, if you want to skip to the end or whatever. The bonus puzzles almost all look terrifying and difficult to my tiny brain, so it's nice to be able to just ignore all the ones I've stared at for ten minutes and just got kind of annoyed on.
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Mar 9, 2014 20:58
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priznat posted:I'm also playing "Smash Hit" and digging it. Something satisfying about throwing metal balls through glass panes. Did the premium unlock for the checkpoints. Looks fantastic on the Air! Smash Hit is a great game; surprised there's not more buzz about it. It's beautiful and has pretty original gameplay. Bonus points for being free with only one $2 IAP to unlock stats and restarting from levels you've made it past. For free you could (theoretically) play the whole game. This is the way to do IAP -- I tossed the $2 after about 3 tries. http://www.cultofmac.com/269194/smash-hit-ios-game-week-editors-pick/
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Mar 10, 2014 02:51
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RoboCicero posted:Thank goodness. The quests not working was a big deal since grinding starblocks is painful after you unlock a few characters (I unlocked the Witch first, and I'm not really sure if any other passive will be good as doubled stat growth compared to everyone else). I have a "discover 5 items" quest at the moment and I don't even know how to fulfill it. I think the quest just straight up don't work. I beat the 3rd stage, definitely cleared 100 tiles, and found more than 5 items and none of them triggered.
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Mar 10, 2014 02:58
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Whirlwind Jones posted:I've been enjoying it, but the fact that TouchArcade gave it a 5 star review when the game has so many glaring bugs (equips, a huge aspect of the actual gameplay literally aren't available at all in the current build) is pretty hilarious and also pretty damning of the state of "games journalism" these days. Nobody with a secondary school education takes Touch Arcade seriously for any purpose besides a general heads up on what games are out. That's hardly a good yard stick for the general state of games journalism. Also: reviews and journalism are two different things. Has Quiz Up every patched those big security problems people were talking about late last year?
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Mar 10, 2014 03:30
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Thanks for the heads up on Smash Hit (even though it's at the top of the free chart, I literally never browse the app store). Been having fun so far but it kind of feels like it suffers from the old 'shmup problem where as you get power ups the game becomes easier and easier, and then if you ever lose those power ups you're immediately thrown to the wolves in a super hard area with a puny single ball again. I was able to maintain a full 5ball chain for the first 3 checkpoints which felt like a pretty good accomplishment.
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Mar 10, 2014 04:04
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While I wasn't feeling Card City Nights at first, it is definitely worth playing; it can be a little rough to start, depending on what cards you get, but given that I've now finished it, it's definitely worth getting through some of the difficulty rough patch that I was in earlier. Fun, fairly imaginative, definitely worth the 69p.
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Mar 10, 2014 04:15
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Whirlwind Jones posted:Thanks for the heads up on Smash Hit (even though it's at the top of the free chart, I literally never browse the app store).
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Mar 10, 2014 05:45
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Whirlwind Jones posted:I've been enjoying it, but the fact that TouchArcade gave it a 5 star review when the game has so many glaring bugs (equips, a huge aspect of the actual gameplay literally aren't available at all in the current build) is pretty hilarious and also pretty damning of the state of "games journalism" these days. I'm pretty sure the TouchArcade guys consistently use the excuse that since so many iOS games are garbage they can't help but give the ones that stand out positive reviews. I don't think that's necessarily the best conclusion, though.
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Mar 10, 2014 05:49
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randyest posted:Wow either you're really good or I suck (I probably suck.) Do you flick balls up from the bottom of the screen like the cultofmac review says to do, or just tap (and try to tap high for distant crystals) like I do?
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Mar 10, 2014 06:18
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trying out that Mines of Mars game. I land, i talk to the Bot, I run left, I run right... I have a gun and a pickaxe. It does not tell me what else to do. How do I dig? I tried clicking and holding on blocks below me... the last thing it told me to do was to click on the portal in the center of town or something. I did that... but nothing? Also, I wish this had (or will get) MFI controller support. [edit] nevermind, my clicks must not have been registering. I clicked the port. I'm good now. [edit2] Nope did the Port, talked again to the bot who said he'd show me minerals, can't dig where I am... don't know what to do next... Feenix fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Mar 10, 2014 |
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Mar 10, 2014 06:24
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randyest posted:Smash Hit is a great game; surprised there's not more buzz about it. It's beautiful and has pretty original gameplay. Bonus points for being free with only one $2 IAP to unlock stats and restarting from levels you've made it past. For free you could (theoretically) play the whole game. This is the way to do IAP -- I tossed the $2 after about 3 tries. Yeah I like how the levels seem to be somewhat randomized (within a certain set of "rules" for that segment) so it keeps it a lot fresher. Definitely worth the $2, I've been hooked on it and it looks great on the iphone 5 and even better on the iPad Air. Great fun just for the smashing effects too, if you like cracking frozen puddles etc this is definitely a game you'd enjoy 
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Mar 10, 2014 06:56
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Fallom posted:I'm pretty sure the TouchArcade guys consistently use the excuse that since so many iOS games are garbage they can't help but give the ones that stand out positive reviews. I don't think that's necessarily the best conclusion, though. I'm open to suggestions on how to improve things, but so far in March the App Store has averaged a pace of 92 game releases per day, so the games we rate highly very much are the cream, of the cream, of the crop. Of that 92, ~30 are Flappy Bird clones, ~30 aren't even in English or if they are they're so poorly translated they might as well not be, ~30 range from shockingly mediocre and done before to OK at best. The surprisingly small remainder are actually what a reasonable person would describe as "good." Yes, high ratings would stand out more if we reviewed more bad games, but I seriously don't see the logic in paying writers to review things like these games that came out today just so games like Block Legend feel more special. People love being like "Ugh! Another five star TouchArcade review for this poo poo button pushing block matching simulator!" then drop the mic and bounce before providing any actual useful feedback. Mobile games are weird, and the way you score them sort of needs to be weird too to deal with how quickly the market evolves. Our ratings really just reflect how much we recommend you download something, as that feels the most timeless in the rapid pace of the App Store... Which still technically is one platform even though we're five years in now. For instance, with a weird recommendation-based scoring system it still makes sense to rate something like Ravensword five stars because it's a really cool game and still worth checking out. If instead we were using some table of sub-categories averaged together for a final score, I'd argue things would be even weirder as we'd still have given Ravesword five stars or close to it, but it'd be averaged out giving five starts to its amazing (at the time) graphics. (This method would also have drawbacks like 10000000 wouldn't be five stars because how could we give a game with simplistic pixel art five stars to average in for its graphics?) If you stumbled across the 2009 review of Ravensword today from a Google search or something, and say five stars for graphics and downloaded it because of that you'd be like "WTF this looks like dog poo poo compared to Infinity Blade III," which we'd also undoubtedly have given five stars to in the "graphics" subcategory. We've had what feels like generational leaps in game technology, but it's still all the same iOS games marketplace with newer iOS devices introduced over the years. There's no clear cut division where we can be like, for example, "OK, all those old games we reviewed highly are Game Boy Color games and all these new games we're reviewing highly are Game Boy Advance games." When you're running a web site like TouchArcade, so much of the value of the site comes from a massive back catalog of content in our review database, so things need to be more universal so our content from the Ravensword days isn't useless. Personally, I liked the days before we started assigning scores to everything. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people not only demand in-depth reviews, but also want those same reviews summed up in a numerical tl;dr that they can use to do crazy comparisons between totally different games that came out at totally different times. In the end, we're just delivering what readers want: A site you can load up and see what kind of crap you should download on your iPhone today because you're bored. As much as I'd love TouchArcade to be some highly esteemed online game magazine where our hard-hitting reviews are revered on the level as Famitsu content is, the world of iOS doesn't really lend itself to that because of how disposable everything is because of how ridiculously crowded the App Store has become. We don't create the market, we just do our best to react to it. I'm not sure how better handle things in a world where a game like Block Legend can be released on a Thursday, reviewed on a Friday, and forgotten or replaced by something else the following Wednesday... But that's the reality that TouchArcade exists in.
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Mar 10, 2014 18:27
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io_burn posted:words on how it's tough out there for iOS reviewers So, fair points, but the problem you've got is that your site seems to set as a standard "decent game = 5 stars", with a very occasional 4 or 3 star for games that are too buggy/poor to fall into the 80-90% that get 5s. You're claiming that there's a shitload of shovelware out there taking up all off the 1 - 2 star spaces on your review spectrum, but that's shortsighted - the scale is what you make of it, and you can always claim that games so obviously poor don't even register. Based on how you're describing it, you're using a simple yes/no scale - is this worth buying? Yes = 5 stars, No = no review. There's so much more you can say with the stars without even changing that overall criteria - "Mehhhhhhhh = 1 star", "Yes, if you can put up with buggy/stupid poo poo = 2 stars"; "Yes, if you like these kinds of games and can overlook a little crap = 3 stars"; "Yes, if you like games = 4 stars"; "Yes, even if this seems outside of your normal genre or desires, this is so well done as to demand your attention - 5 stars". But you seem to be attached to this idea that the broad spectrum of all possible games to be reviewed must somehow exist on your scale, resulting in a system where your reviewers saying "Yay! This is good!" means nothing, which doesn't add to your value as a site.
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Mar 10, 2014 18:46
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Obviously the solution is a logarithmic scale.
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Mar 10, 2014 18:49
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Eschers Basement posted:So, fair points, but the problem you've got is that your site seems to set as a standard "decent game = 5 stars", with a very occasional 4 or 3 star for games that are too buggy/poor to fall into the 80-90% that get 5s. Every game review site has this inflation where under 80% is bad and over is good. People are not going to care about 2-star games since there was 3 5-star games uploaded that week.
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Mar 10, 2014 18:56
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Eschers Basement posted:So, fair points, but the problem you've got is that your site seems to set as a standard "decent game = 5 stars", with a very occasional 4 or 3 star for games that are too buggy/poor to fall into the 80-90% that get 5s. How you described our rating system is exactly how it's used right now. Shovelware doesn't even fit anywhere on our rating scale, and instead the 1-2.5 star slots are reserved for things like Dungeon Keeper, Tales of Phantasia, the Pacific Rim game, the really bad Borderlands iOS game, and free to play games that are decent but mired with bad IAP elements. I'm saying we skip the poo poo entirely, and because of the quantity of games released we focus on the better ones, which is why our average score is something around 4 stars. I'm not sure where I'd find stats to back this up, but in an anecdotal sense it feels like most outlets have the majority of their scores land in the 80% range. I'm not sure why we seem to get so much more poo poo for that than everywhere else.
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Mar 10, 2014 18:57
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Incidentally, there are only six games under the "1-stars" tag but a considerable amount (30+) under the "2-stars" tag. I would be damned to tell you the real difference between the two tiers, except the one-star games appear to be public service announcements against games that really need to be called on the carpet as egregiously, needlessly disappointing, whereas two-star games are just plain disappointing. Also, a lot of these (surprise, surprise) are big-name games. I think it's one thing to say that ratings are inflated and another to say "what does a 4, 4.5 or a 5 star rating even mean"? The latter is a really tough question. I would like to think a weighted (?) model would work, where you get a star for "consistently works without crashes/freezes", another for "(nearly) bug free", another three for "fun example of its type or else novel" and a possible negative star for "bad or exploitative design". That way you could have Dungeon Keeper still be one star even if crash/bug free but have some room to make things granular otherwise. Never mind how difficult it is to retroactively implement a fix to a ratings scale, of course. Edit: Eli already came to his own defense, but I'd also add that I realize practically no one reads a "how our ratings systems works" page, in-app or on the full site. Kenny Logins fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Mar 10, 2014 |
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Mar 10, 2014 19:05
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xzzy posted:Obviously the solution is a logarithmic scale. I think the solution is The Film Standard's Oscar selection formula. It would probably be just as reliable, too.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:11
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The iOS Games Megathread: a better rating system for our pooping games
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Mar 10, 2014 19:13
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Another problem is the people who vocally care the most about this also seem to be practically impossible to please, and with our traffic reliably growing I'd say we're probably doing the right thing? Maybe? Gah, I don't know, I'd love to make everyone happy but it seems like our loudest and most dedicated review score internet commenters are just looking to pick a fight with an excuse to be nasty and pedantic than actually have anything change. It's a weird mindset to wrap your head around because of how aggressive folks get about these things. On a personal level, if it looks like something I'd enjoy (and this isn't just limited to games) and it's reviewed poorly I'll still probably check it out and if something is scored highly and it's not something I'm in to I'd just skip it. I don't know why the internet makes me feel like a weirdo for that.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:13
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io_burn posted:Another problem is the people who vocally care the most about this also seem to be practically impossible to please, and with our traffic reliably growing I'd say we're probably doing the right thing? Maybe? Gah, I don't know, I'd love to make everyone happy but it seems like our loudest and most dedicated review score internet commenters are just looking to pick a fight with an excuse to be nasty and pedantic than actually have anything change. I myself prefer reviews you have to read to get the impression, instead of simply checking a star/number rating. On the other hand I have no patience for video reviews. Go figure.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:28
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If I may be serious here for the moment. Here is the thing io_burn. I don't go to your site for what I consider reviews that are relevant to my purchasing choices. I go to Pocket Tactics. Granted, Pocket Tactics has chosen to focus on a specific (niche) mindset when reviewing iOS games, but close to 80% of the games they give a high numerical rating for I agree with and they are must buys for me. You both have a numerical rating system. Why [in this forum] are their choices considered more on the mark than yours? Edited: Clarity
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Mar 10, 2014 19:28
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Kenny Logins posted:I myself prefer reviews you have to read to get the impression, instead of simply checking a star/number rating. On the other hand I have no patience for video reviews. Go figure. I do this with a lot of things. Video Reviews/News just demand too much of your attention, while a text review can be read at your own pace, while listening to anything else you like. Also, it still kinda looks like work, unlike video reviews. -- Block Legend is super good, can't wait for the patch changes though (How was it not ever tested on the Mini/Air?). Faif is a decent puzzler that I'm starting to figure out, and it's aesthetic is worth the price of admission alone. Also, it's very cool to see all of these Unity based games doing well.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:33
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I would read the poo poo out of posts "seriously" reviewing awful iOS games, it would be hilarious. Kind of like the worst things for sale for the App Store.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:35
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Still not sure why people care that much about game ratings. 95% of these games are literally under $5. It costs more to get a combo meal at a fast food restaurant than to buy one of these games. I'm not one of those "if you can afford an iPhone then you can afford a game" people, but if a $1 game entertains you for more than 5 minutes then have you really lost anything? At least someone has taken the time to highlight unusual or exceptionally well-made games for your benefit.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:41
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topiKal posted:At least someone has taken the time to highlight unusual or exceptionally well-made games for your benefit. This is the best benefit for me and why I read Pocket Tactics et al. Finding great games on the store is really hard.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:43
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topiKal posted:Still not sure why people care that much about game ratings. 95% of these games are literally under $5. It costs more to get a combo meal at a fast food restaurant than to buy one of these games. I'm not one of those "if you can afford an iPhone then you can afford a game" people, but if a $1 game entertains you for more than 5 minutes then have you really lost anything? Your second point answers your first. People want to know the how of the unusual and exceptionally well-made so they can prioritize. Otherwise you'd have to have all the money to buy all the games and then all the time to play them. edit: maybe more to the point on the last thing I said: Toucharcade has over 7000 articles with the tag "games" and over 2000 articles with the tag "reviews". And that's just the ones they deign to talk about at all. Kenny Logins fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Mar 10, 2014 |
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Mar 10, 2014 19:46
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Kenny Logins posted:Your first point is basically an argument against the existence all (iOS) game review sites. That's a fair point, though what I'm trying (probably poorly) to say is that the mere existence of the site serves to make people like me waste a lot less effort (and dollars) by pointing out which games stand out from the crowd. While I often disagree at least partially with the reviews, I've yet to download a really highly-rated game that I felt was a complete waste of money. Even if I did, it would be far less often than if I went by the app store's god-awful ratings.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:51
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Toucharcade should use my 5 rating system: BUY IT / PIRATE IT / WATCH A STREAM / MAKE FUN OF IT / IGNORE IT I guess "watch a stream" can be replaced with "WAIT FOR IT TO BE FREE  "Note: I've been trying to prove that Kotaku ripped off my ratings system but they halfassed it because there's no PIRATE IT score.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:54
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Kenny Logins posted:You said before that you used to not use a ratings system, but felt demand to and gave people what they wanted. Was that cry for ratings about the same (or more or less) than the cry for reforming your ratings system now? Do you think implementing a ratings system alone corresponded with an increase in site traffic or maybe you're just doing well because you do everything else well? I'm just curious as to whether you find there's a real casual relationship you suspect or if it's just a coincidence. The traffic growth largely has come from expanding our free to play game coverage, with those stupid guides on how to play the games without spending real money doing exponentially better than "good" game reviews in literally every metric you can measure web traffic in especially in overall unique page views and bounce rates. It's like people search Google for "clash of clans guide" or something, discover TouchArcade, and stick around. It's good from a business sense, I suppose, but at the same time pretty sad that I can spend days working on really cool feature content or developer interviews and it gets no traction comparatively. But, how well the guides do allows me to afford writers that are working on things I actually think are cool. Helical Nightmares posted:If I may be serious here for the moment. Because the people who post here are more hardcore gamer types and sites like Pocket Tactics are focused specifically to your interests, so of course the things posted there are going to line up with what you like more accurately. It's like any kind of critic, you need to find one who shares your taste and chances are you'll agree with their assessments. Just because we're casting a wider net and write things from a bit more casual perspective doesn't make our ratings wrong. Pocket Tactics doesn't touch most of the things we post about, and that's fine. Different strokes for different folks and all. TouchArcade is largely written for the person who has an iPhone who likes video games, we cater to a more mass market audience and both the coverage and overall tone purposefully reflects that. Historically, when we post about things that are big on Pocket Tactics, they'll get next to no traction with our readers... So I'm not sure how much sense it makes to tune our reviews angle specifically to the hardcore crowd. io_burn fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Mar 10, 2014 |
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Mar 10, 2014 19:56
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The only rating system I use is "is there ten pages of people slobbering about this game in the iOS games thread?" Every time someone posts "gawd go make a new thread" I add another star and once it hits five stars I spend my lunch money to buy it.
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Mar 10, 2014 19:57
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xzzy posted:The only rating system I use is "is there ten pages of people slobbering about this game in the iOS games thread?" Yeah this. Works every time.
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Mar 10, 2014 20:06
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io_burn posted:Because the people who post here are more hardcore gamer types and sites like Pocket Tactics carter specifically to your interests, so of course the things posted there are going to line up with what you like more accurately. It's like any kind of critic, you need to find one who shares your taste and chances are you'll agree with their assessments. Just because we're casting a wider net and write things from a bit more casual perspective doesn't make our ratings wrong. I get the feeling that since (as far as I know) the Pocket Tactics people don't directly post here, you also get complaints here directed to io_burn, the TouchArcade guy where complaints here about Pocket Tactics don't go to anyone in particular.
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Mar 10, 2014 20:11
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topiKal posted:Still not sure why people care that much about game ratings. 95% of these games are literally under $5. It costs more to get a combo meal at a fast food restaurant than to buy one of these games. I'm not one of those "if you can afford an iPhone then you can afford a game" people, but if a $1 game entertains you for more than 5 minutes then have you really lost anything? Whoah, some of us take fast food seriously, even if it's only $5. On my website, Tasting America, McDonald's is five stars, compared to poop which I didn't review (0 stars). Nothing in between or higher possible, it's a website for dumb people but I'm just going to hint at that for now in case they are reading.
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Mar 10, 2014 20:21
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topiKal posted:That's a fair point, though what I'm trying (probably poorly) to say is that the mere existence of the site serves to make people like me waste a lot less effort (and dollars) by pointing out which games stand out from the crowd. While I often disagree at least partially with the reviews, I've yet to download a really highly-rated game that I felt was a complete waste of money. Even if I did, it would be far less often than if I went by the app store's god-awful ratings. End result: to the extent that my opinion was swayable on a title, Toucharcade has only really lead me astray a very small amount of the time, well within the confines of "I should have known better", and most of that time was on very early titles in the App Store's lifetime. Otherwise, they've been spot-on more often than they've been inflated on any given title, and that's partially accountable to taste (i.e. not accountable). io_burn posted:The traffic growth largely has come from expanding our free to play game coverage, with those stupid guides on how to play the games without spending real money doing exponentially better than "good" game reviews in literally every metric you can measure web traffic in especially in overall unique page views and bounce rates. It's like people search Google for "clash of clans guide" or something, discover TouchArcade, and stick around. It's good from a business sense, I suppose, but at the same time pretty sad that I can spend days working on really cool feature content or developer interviews and it gets no traction comparatively. But, how well the guides do allows me to afford writers that are working on things I actually think are cool. That being said there are always going to be outliers for pageviews (I imagine "Five Alarm Freebie" alerts do well) but I must admit I enjoy the odd feature on "the plotline of Infinity Blade so far" or "tips straight from the developers" that you don't see on other review sites.
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Mar 10, 2014 20:26
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