Monday, July 2, 2007

Positive and Negative Beta User Reviews Episode 2

The second episode on this topic, this time targeting Macupdate, which has less reviews..

Pros:

4.5/5
There's a lot lacking here, as people have mentioned - various bugs with screen and control handling (still can't change my controls from the defaults, even after the download), and it took some patience to figure out what the controls even were (documentation sucks). However, gameplay is smooth and it's so nice the play DC again, even a little bit.

Good enough for a teaser release, but thus needs to come together soon. There are still some basic gameplay bugs in this demo (death is sometimes cancelled by falling down a chute, for example), and it is ANNOYING to go back to the main hall every time you stumble into a level that is not part of the demo. Just put me back where I was, please :(
 -Alden Stradling
(Macupdate)

4/5
wot the hell us up with you moaning mo fo's!!
Sure there are a lot of problems and nothing is 100% complete, but it ain't even at v1 yet!! :(

To the author, great release and thank you - appreciated over here. :)
 -Anonymous
(Macupdate)

5/5
Its like being in a time machine going back to the set of a black and whie film, very eerie. I love the attention to detail in this version, no other game has ever had as many bricks! You still need skill to play this game too. Please can we have an OSX release of Solaris II next.

The weirdest thing is the price of a mac has dropped since the game was first released in 1991, $5,000 dollars bought you a 20 mhz Mac IIsi with 5 megs of RAM 40MB hardrive and 13" of glorious 256 color.
 -Anonymous
(Macupdate)

5/5
I know the game as i played it on the mac plus, but the beta 11 wouldn't start up, it complains about a "NewpixMap" Does anyone now what that means. I did play beta 6, and i loved it!
 -Darcastler
(Macupdate)

3.5/5
This game isn't to good yet but by the time it's finished it should be really cool. I hope it has customizable keys.
 -Zoolander
(Macupdate)

4.5/5
This us a great game, as was the original. Everything is looking good so far. It has all of the excitement of the original ad then some (yes, I'm old enough to remember playing  DC and BDC for hours on my old Mac SE). The only problem is it will occasionally crash for no reason, but that's to be expected as it is only a beta
 -Anonymous
(Macupdate)

4/5
As a veteran Macgamer, I cans still remember playing te original Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle on my dad's SE. I had nightmares about swinging around on a shap pendulum. The atmosphere of the old games and the good old rock chuckin' fun has been flawlessly reproduced and enhanced. The stars are give are JUST for the beta demo. I have high hopes for the finished project, as it would be difficult to screw up such a great game.
 -Lester
(Macupdate)

5/5
this game is stupid just kidding it is so good I play it every day butt I want the hole game please tell me where to buy it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 -JAMESON
(Macupdate)

5/5
the best game I have ever plade. the music rules.graphicks are good
 -john
(macupdate)


CONS:

2.5/5
Would be a decent little game is a) there weren't so many bugs (major ones that make game play impossible), b) the demo didn't crash, c) the "training" area worked in the demo and e) if there was some clear way to learn the controls. It's got the graphics and sound, it's just missing in the details department something fierce
 -John
(Macupdate)

2/5
Poor Default controls. And it requires you to download and instal extra drives so you can configure the controls! Just plain lame. Apple has API for this stuff, even a cross compiling library lets you access keyboard and mouse events. It's not that hard.

It defaults to a low resolution, low color full screen mode. Switching to window mode causes the game to crash.

Level exits are poorly defined; I have to walk offscreen instead of going through one of the doors? That isn't intuitively obvious, there are other side scrolling games that have done this better.

So it's essentially a side scrolling game circa 1995. It's been done before, and they couldn't even be bothered to do it well apparently
 -Tomis
(Macgamefiles)

2/5
shite
 -ben
(Macupdate)

3/5
This game is too unfinished to give a correct score, but it is looking good. I like the idea of developers releasing unfinished "demo betas" of their products, so that people will know weather or no to anticipate the product.
 -Hugh
(Macupdate)



And there you have Macupdate.com, it seems to be filled with more varied responses, but highly positive ones.

Final Take: A lot of people still bash it due to the beta state it is in.

More episodes will be on the way later.

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