What kind of person writes a negative review of a game they've spent over 8000 hours playing?
' Battlezone 98 Redux ' has over 900 reviews on Steam and is rated 'Very Good', but a user who has played it for over 8,000 hours has posted a review saying 'I don't recommend it'. Joshua Wallace of PC Gamer, a game news site, has published an article in which he interviewed the person himself to find out why he posted such a review.
I tracked down the guy who gave a negative review to Battlezone 98 Redux after playing for over 8,000 hours, and came away convinced he was right | PC Gamer
The controversial 'Battlezone 98 Redux' is a remake of 'Battlezone,' a PC game released by Activision in March 1998 that combines FPS and RTS.
Steam: Battlezone 98 Redux
https://store.steampowered.com/app/301650/Battlezone_98_Redux/
At the time of writing, 925 reviews had been submitted by people who had purchased the game on Steam, with the overall rating being 'Very Positive.' However, a reviewer named 'Harp McDarperson,' who boasts an overwhelming 8,461 hours of playtime at the time of posting his review, gave the game a negative rating of 'Not Recommended.' Joshua Warrens of the news site PC Gamer has identified this reviewer as Scott Smith.
Steam Community :: Herp McDerperson :: Review Battlezone 98 Redux
Activision's last patch for 'Battlezone' was version 1.4, released in November 1998, and in 2002 multiplayer support was discontinued and the servers were closed. However, the source code for the multiplayer library 'Anet' was made public by the community, allowing volunteers to continue playing by applying further patches unofficially, and the final version was '1.5.2.27 U1'. Of course, Mr. Smith was one of the users who played this unofficial version until the very end.
If Battlezone 98 Redux had been a good remake, Smith might not have complained, but in reality, he says, 'it's inferior in almost every way to the unofficial version.'
First of all, Battlezone 98 Redux has upgraded graphics, but the original version's most attractive feature, 'destroyed ships flying into pieces,' is no longer there, so Smith said, 'It's hard to call it an upgrade.' I've harshly dismissed it.
In addition, there are many bugs that did not exist in the unofficial version, such as 'jump sniping can be exploited' and 'satellites can ignore the radar range and discover everything'. There is even a pretty severe bug that 'the game crashes about 30% of the time when you try to load save data'. For this reason, Smith and other volunteers have created and released a patch using
When Battlezone 98 Redux was released, Smith said he 'didn't want it at all.' However, he was worried about whether the unofficial version would continue in the future, and in a panic, he sent an email to publisher Rebellion.
Although there was no response from Rebellion, the release of Battlezone 98 Redux brought in so many users that the unofficial multiplayer environment was completely destroyed. As a result, Smith was forced to switch to Battlezone 98 Redux.
However, as mentioned above, there were many bugs, and especially in the multiplayer mode, there were many cases of disconnections unrelated to the Internet environment. In addition, it was discovered that there was a mysterious user who never made any comments on the official Discord channel where notifications about the start and end of the multiplayer mode are broadcast.
Smith has been gathering information for a year and has concluded that bots are being used to provide users with a 'misleading activity experience' in the failing multiplayer mode. Although the operation of bots has not been officially confirmed, Wallace, who spoke to the group, wrote, 'The lack of trust and communication makes what was once a small group of passionate and active people feel like they are being hijacked and manipulated from the outside.'
By the way, Steam reviews show both the time played at the time of posting and the current play time, so we know that Smith's total play time exceeds 9,000 hours. When asked by Wallace why he continued to play for 600 hours after writing a negative review, Smith replied, 'I only started the game to solve a problem someone was having.'
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