Night Trap (3DO) [Archive] - Retrogaming Roundtable

digitalpress

11-16-2003, 03:25 PM

Critique the critique!

Rate this review on a scale of 1-10. Please explain your score. Was the review entertaining? Informative? Well-written? All of these things should go toward your critique.

http://www.digitpress.com/reviews/contest/nighttrap.htm

digitalpress

11-16-2003, 03:25 PM

Balloon Fight

11-16-2003, 10:37 PM

4.

I had no idea if i was even reading a review. I liked that the author was being creative, and thought of a new format, but i didnt like it. No pictures also, and what kind of name is Egon?

Balloon Fight

11-16-2003, 10:37 PM

4.

I had no idea if i was even reading a review. I liked that the author was being creative, and thought of a new format, but i didnt like it. No pictures also, and what kind of name is Egon?

maxlords

11-16-2003, 10:55 PM

6. Great concept, but it doesn't really cover all the bases. Well written, but it's more of a fun review that you'd include after a real one had been done.

maxlords

11-16-2003, 10:55 PM

6. Great concept, but it doesn't really cover all the bases. Well written, but it's more of a fun review that you'd include after a real one had been done.

Scoots

11-17-2003, 03:17 PM

I'm kind of on the fence with this one. Either great or terrible. I'm going to give it a 7 because a lot of time and thought obviously went into this. I don't LOVE the execution, but it's an interesting idea and does manage to cover both sides of the coin quite nicely.

7/10.

Scoots

11-17-2003, 03:17 PM

hamburgler

11-17-2003, 05:13 PM

6 of 10

showed how he would compare the game to someone else to see if they really liked it. That was the only thing that saved this review from being very crappy.

Jorpho

11-17-2003, 05:42 PM

There's still a lot of missing information that I would like to know here - plot, features of the acting that make it lousy, potential appeal, just why is this the best example of an FMV game - but this review does manage to get an interesting point across.

7/10

Gamereviewgod

11-17-2003, 07:26 PM

I love the format, just like the anceint Bob and Rod or whatever the hell their names were from Nintendo Power. No, I didn't learn alot, but I was entertained. Oh, and Egon is from Ghostbusters. Egon Spengler....remember? 7

YoshiM

11-19-2003, 09:58 AM

It ain't bad, but it wasn't overly informative either. If I had no clue what Night Trap was, all the information this review gave me I could probably find on the game's box except that FMV sucked, except if you put yourself back in 1993.

I rank this a 5 out of 10. Funny approach, a fun read but no more informative than a passing game related conversation with an uninterested sales clerk.

zmweasel

11-20-2003, 11:04 PM

* Wretched format. I don't want to read a debate between Beavis and Butt-head; I want to read interesting and informative criticism.

* "Sid" claims, in his opening paragraph, that "producing one of these games required absolutely no knowledge of game design, which is a good thing since the parties responsible had none." A principal designer of Night Trap was Rob Fulop, a man with a long and illustrious list of game credits. Digital Pictures also employed Mark Turmell at one point, and he's hardly a design slouch either.

* Another fallacy: "The only reason games like this were ever made was because they COULD be made, thanks to the advent of CD gaming technology." Digital Pictures' technology stemmed from Hasbro's unreleased videotape-based game console, and was later ported to the CD medium.

* "Egon" says "[Digital Pictures is] emulating a scary movie here, and I think the game is very successful at keeping the suspense level high." Has he actually PLAYED Night Trap? It's 100% pure camp.

* No mention of the controversy that engulfed Night Trap, and how it (along with Mortal Kombat) spurred the creation of the ESRB.

3/10.

lendelin

11-21-2003, 02:15 AM

Strenghts:

- effort to present a unique format of reviewing the game

- good effort to discuss the pros and cons under the technological conditions/possibilities when the game was released, and how we view it today (applaudable effort, becasue combining retrospective gameplay and gaming at the release time are very difficult)

- good presentation of the clash between two very different gameplays

Weaknesses:

- the author neglects the main topic, namely the game itself!! The game itself is relegated to the background, except mentioning that we hop from videoframe to videoframe; therefore, the reader gets only a minimum of information about the game. The result is...

- ... it's not actually a review, it's a general presentation of the pros and cons of gameplay of a certain era of videgames. Not even the defender of the game talks much about the specifics the game itself, and doesn't convincingly explain why this game is fun to play.

- the platonic dialogue doesn't really work because the arguments of the accuser of gameplay is much stronger developed than the arguments of the defender.
Platonic dialogue is ideal when there is well reasoned ambiguity about a subject matter, which is not the case here. The defenders "positive" arguments are primarily negated aspects (misperceptions of the time, those games are NOT like todays games, the non-existence of items and complicated button controls is refreshing)

- a platonic dialogue works well as an intro for a discussion and/or a presentation of non-harmonizable aspects, but not well for a review which tries to come to a conclusion even about the most ambiguous aspects of a game. 1) the reader gets confused, 2) the overall scores can't be justified.

OVERALL (for originality): 4/10

digitalpress

11-21-2003, 01:21 PM

This one is getting "cut". Low review scores from our judges and forum. Sorry! Thanks for playing though... there are lots more contests coming up :)