The Dark Mod Grand Christmas FM Contest!

[Melan]

Yes -- I mean, a choice between an editing platform like TDM and a beautifully crafted full game like The Nameless Mod was never going to be straightforward, but really, a bunch of "survival horror in yet another scientific complex/abandoned town" mods taking Editor's Choice? Good grief.

[aidakeeley]

Perspective: MODDB Editor's Choice...

 

Madonna is in The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame... Rush is not.

 

Fuck The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

[greebo]

Well, that's what people want: shooters. TDM or Thief-like gameplay will always have a tiny, but (hopefully) more delicate audience. I never understood how people can keep playing the same old shoot-em-up stuff over and over, and manage to drool every other year just because another shooter introduced a slightly different type of machine gun in the newest version. The graphics improve massively, but in principle it just boils down to who is able to point and click his mouse faster, you or the AI, you or the other guy over the internet. (That's a polemic way of putting it, I'm aware).

 

Compare these online petitions: there is one petition for the release of the dark engine source code, which managed to gather 1000 (in words: one thousand) signatures over the time, and there is one petition for a dedicated server addition for CoD: MW2: ~250.000 signatures. (I know, online petitions are pretty lame and Thief is ten years old, wheres MW2 is younger, but to some extent it's valid to compare which types of games manage to gather more people behind them.)

 

That's part of the reason why I never had any illusions that TDM is appearing anywhere up at moddb's ranking.

[Crispy]

Somewhat ironic that one of the nominees is essentially a Doom 3 remake.

 

Some seriously massive bias there for sure. Just the nature of the ModDB audience I guess. Most highly-moddable games are shooters, so a site centred around mods will naturally attract more shooter fans than fans of other genres.

[STiFU]

Well, that's what people want: shooters. TDM or Thief-like gameplay will always have a tiny, but (hopefully) more delicate audience. I never understood how people can keep playing the same old shoot-em-up stuff over and over [...]

Well, multiplayer adds a lot to the experience of shooters. Dominating others just feels great!! That's why games like MW2 have such a wide audience. I myself played Battlefield 2 a lot back in the days for the same reason, ~350 hours of total gametime. Seeing the head of an enemy player bounce back after a well aimed Sniper-shot from 400m distance or more feels awkwardly rewarding... I agree that most shooters are boring though and I haven't been playing anything besides TDM the last few months, but I'll definitely give "Battlefield: Bad Company 2" a shot. (Fully destroyable buildings, wooohooo )

 

Still awkward TDM wasn't even mentioned. It definitely is a highly professional singleplayer mod and also highly different to others.

Edited February 2, 2010 by STiFU

[Crispy]

Even in singleplayer there is subtle variety which does enough to keep things fresh, at least in the best shooters. Fundamentally they're all about movement and timing, which are gaming staples. Just about every classic arcade game can be described purely in terms of its player and enemy movement rules (hence ROM CHECK FAIL, which is required playing do it now).

 

These days all the good shooters add additional elements like environmental manipulation. Half-Life 2 has the gravity gun + explosives + spinning razor blades of death. Tricking a Big Daddy from Bioshock into taking out your opponents for you is a lot of fun (and I can think of at least 3 ways of achieving that, off the top of my head). And you can't go past setting a group of splicers on fire and then electrocuting them when they dive into water to extinguish the flames. Instant kills all round! Just make sure there isn't a neutral Big Daddy in the same pool of water.

 

In terms of mods, of course, TDM unquestionably deserves to be on that list. But them's the breaks.

[Ladro]

Yeah very disappointing. Someone should send the "editor" a message.

 

They noticed some really flat games, without any innovation on modding, and not a single word for the revolutationary TDM that already produced these good maps by the community with a so short time :-(

 

This is not disappointing, it's a shame!

[Springheel]

That's why I don't have high hopes for Thi4f. Imagine if we made TDM specifically to try and get into the Moddb rankings.

[Melan]

I am not sure it is all "mainstream appeal". After all, The Nameless Mod is a complicated immersive sim built on an almost decade-old engine (and a very strange one at that), making TDM's omission even more puzzling. Granted, TNM has the all important "Something Awful-frequenting ironic hipster" demographic to vote them up, but still. Editor's choice should be less populist somehow.

Edited February 2, 2010 by Melan

[Ishtvan]

That's why I don't have high hopes for Thi4f. Imagine if we made TDM specifically to try and get into the Moddb rankings.

Darn, I knew we should have set TDM in WWII!

 

In all seriousness, I guess we shouldn't expect that much journalistic professionalism from moddb. They probably generated that list in 10 minutes based on mods they happened to play in the past and links their friends sent them.

[SneaksieDave]

Without passing (much) judgment on their selections (I don't think I could bring myself to play a DE mod, but maybe that's just me), who cares? We know that stealthy play isn't as popular as shoot'em up (or Britney for that matter). The gobs and gobs of shooter fans vote up that genre and that's that. As for editor's choice? Well, it's not like the editor did any of the hard work on the mods.

[Bikerdude]

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/features/the-dark-mod-review/2#readarticle

 

A couple of Fm's seem to be missing including mine...

[Melan]

Review's from January 2, so it's pretty straightforward why.

[Bikerdude]

Review's from January 2, so it's pretty straightforward why.

I meant it from a can the missing Fm's be added etc :-)

[Nielsen74]

I think you hav to ask Koroshiya_Ichi if he/she want´s to post review´s for the rest of the missions or you could sign up your selv and post some review´s

[Bikerdude]

That's some exciting "shooting stationary AI who do not fire back" and "jumping puzzle" gameplay there.

I hadn't noticed till now, but where is TDM in that list..? and I cant believe that such a basic boring mod for such an old crappy game won..TDM was and still is easily better than the other entries..

Edited September 11, 2010 by Bikerdude

[LEGION]

I guess for them TDM is missing a SP-campaign to be considered as a "real" mod. The talked about 30 hours of gameplay for The Nameless Mod. But you´re right, it looks like crap, Deus Ex I mean, especially the AI-animations. Still, the mod sounds interesting, but it seems to be not my cup of tea. Deus Ex has also this static player-movement I can´t stand, and the footstep-sounds are horrible, hell, most likely I´ll never play it again after I saw this...

[Melan]

I hadn't noticed till now, but where is TDM in that list..? and I cant believe that such a basic boring mod for such an old crappy game won..TDM was and still is easily better than the other entries..

Don't knock The Nameless Mod before you played it at least halfway through. It takes some time getting used to, but it gives you a huge, branching plotline where you have a lot of different alternate routes to reach your objectives, and where the actions you take have a meaningful impact on the game world and further events. That level of complexity hasn't been seen since the original DX, so it deserves some serious praise. It is the antithesis of "basic".