Hi All

Well this is my first post but i have been watching from the sidelines for a few weeks now. Just thought i would add my thoughts on the above discussion since i brought LFS after reading the review in PC Zone. Having not long passed my real driving test i started taking an interest in racing games. It just so happens that one of these racing games caught my eye whilst flicking through the pages of this magazine.
I was a little put off by the impression i got of the people who play it but i am wise enough to understand most online games are populated by a small number off Ar** Holes. The main point that i have to make is i still purchased an S2 licence even after reading the reviewers oppinions on the people who play it. I dont know how many people were put off by the review but i had other reasons for buying it. The main reasons where the fact it got 90% which does not happen very often and the fact that the reviewer was impressed with how realistic it was. I was also impressed by the fact that it is an online game at heart, i mean what better way is there than to race against real people ?
This leads me to the closing point which as a community you need to address. Please do not let the Ar** Holes take over and more importantly please do not let these Ar** Holes give the rest of the new members a bad name. The more times a new member is banned or berated for making a mistake for the fear of them being an idiot the more you prove the reviewer right in his comments. There are a lot of genuine newbies that have put their faith and money into this game please dont let us down.

Kindest Regards Tim

How the hell did he get a job with them ?? I think i'll apply to that magazine now as a writer, i'll keep you posted

I'll be writing an email and possibly a letter I'll deliver down to the Future Publishing buildings, by hand. This is an obviously unfair review, again. I'll also be offering to goto the future publishing offices to demonstrate licensed S2 to them.

Quote from CI-Man :

Hi All

Well this is my first post but i have been watching from the sidelines for a few weeks now. Just thought i would add my thoughts on the above discussion since i brought LFS after reading the review in PC Zone. Having not long passed my real driving test i started taking an interest in racing games. It just so happens that one of these racing games caught my eye whilst flicking through the pages of this magazine.
I was a little put off by the impression i got of the people who play it but i am wise enough to understand most online games are populated by a small number off Ar** Holes. The main point that i have to make is i still purchased an S2 licence even after reading the reviewers oppinions on the people who play it. I dont know how many people were put off by the review but i had other reasons for buying it. The main reasons where the fact it got 90% which does not happen very often and the fact that the reviewer was impressed with how realistic it was. I was also impressed by the fact that it is an online game at heart, i mean what better way is there than to race against real people ?
This leads me to the closing point which as a community you need to address. Please do not let the Ar** Holes take over and more importantly please do not let these Ar** Holes give the rest of the new members a bad name. The more times a new member is banned or berated for making a mistake for the fear of them being an idiot the more you prove the reviewer right in his comments. There are a lot of genuine newbies that have put their faith and money into this game please dont let us down.

Kindest Regards Tim

It's good to know that people see through bad comments in reviews, and are able to realise that a small proportion of players can, if unlucky, ruin the game experience as it must have done for the reviewer.

Welcome to LFS. Enjoy your stay. I look forward to racing with you in the coming months...

you guys are going to love my review

And your avatar.........

Quote from the_angry_angel :

...This is an obviously unfair review, again.

Again? The review is the same as the one we saw before back on RSC, but there might be another review i dont know of?

Yes I think the one in the magazine (printed) is the same as the online variant. Thats why I said they 'ignore us' Despite our complaints and ill feelings, they didn't bother adding any extra info in the online version, even though it wasn't posted for several days after the printed one became available.

Incase anyone's interested, I've just sent off my email to the "editors".

If you wish, I can put it online, as a template for more "complaints".

*is a PC Gamer subscriber* say no more

Quote from the_angry_angel :

Incase anyone's interested, I've just sent off my email to the "editors".

If you wish, I can put it online, as a template for more "complaints".

If it's okay with you then I'd like to see it, though I won't write to them..

Yep, no worries:

Quote from My Email to Future Publishing :

Despite the high score that the LFS Alpha received, I feel that the actual review was grossly unfair.

First of all, the S2 he reviewed is Alpha code - by no means finished; the damage, AI, physics. None of them are what you can expect to be in the final S2 release. At no stage during the review in the magazine or the website was this made clear.

I am also slightly confused by the fact that the reviewer describes 2 of the vehicles as a "Mitsubishi Starion", and a "Fiat Punto". These vehicles are not in game what-so-ever, and could lead to a misrepresentation of the sim. Infact, the only real vehicles in game are the RaceAbout, and the MRT5 - both of which are unavailable in the demo.

More importantly the reviewer was racing online, in demo servers. These demo servers are notoriously known for the bad behaviour, impersonations and so on. Had the reviewer been on a licensed server, he would've found the behaviour to be much more acceptable, and importantly, very friendly. Again, this was not made very clear in either review. It sounds as if all the online servers are the same - which they aren't.

I am not the only one who feels this way. You may wish to check out the new official forums here, in particular this topic: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=657
You may also be interested in this topic, at RSC: http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=216207&page=1 which mirrors the comments.

If you wish, I am prepared to come to the Future Publishing offices and give a member of staff temporary access to my S2 licensed account (whilst I am on site) to demonstrate the servers, other vehicles and tracks, and features (such as auto skin downloads) that are unavailable on the demo.

Theres also another bit after that about their website "demanding" you register before you can view more than 2 pages. But its not really relevant.

Edit: Incidentally, I've been a very happy customer of Future Publishing, until recently. PC and Linux Format have both started to go down, in terms of quality, along with the rest of their publications it seems.

Good mail!
I would be quite thankful if you would keep us updated with replys etc. as it's pretty interesting what they reply back to you.

Regards,

Mikkel

i would say thats a fair email, nice one! just need to await a response now, hopefully it will be a positive one.. well by way of apolgy in the mag itself maybe.

PC Gamer qualiy has been getting better recently, now showing mods for games etc. i have only ever bought 1 issue of PC Zone, and noticed how 'shabby' it was and how inaccurate some of the reviews were in that issue. been a Gamer since

anyway getting a bit OT so i'll leave it at that

Chris

I used to enjoy pc zones reviews because despite a game's hype they werent afraid to slate it unlike gamer, however as this review shows they now just slate every game. This review is utterly disgraceful and has done LFS no favours what so ever. The reviewer makes countless missrepresentations and mistakes and the entire thing comes accross as narrow minded and half arsed.

What kind of reviewer reviews an alpha demo version of a game tells people false information (pricing car names etc) when they havent even bothered to do any real research let alone buy the product in question. I highly doubt we'll see an apology or another review, the attitudes of the reviewer in his review are equally aparant in his stubborn forum posts.

It's their loss at the end of the day, we havent gained many players to the game we love so much, they have however lost readers.

whats wrong with these people!!!!!!!!!!

Quote from PCZONE :

we encountered a problem. The reason reported was:

We do not allow posts in the forums from users until they have been using the site for more than seven days. Unfortunately you have been using the site for only 1 days, but we look forward to hearing from you in 5 days, 23 hours and 35 minutes.

wtf??????

As attached to the bottom of that mail above:

Quote :

As an aside, another thing that really irritates me, is that if you want to do anything on your site, you have to ****ing register after about 2 page views. Forceful reaping of visitors details in this manner is unacceptable, in my opinion.

Their whole site needs reviewing, not just their forums, or the magazine itself.

Anyone here 'big, muscular and a bit neanderthal'? Fancy a job? Go to PCZone and give them something to remember us by. And if they ask, we didn't put you up to it :P

Did he even play LFS?

"including a damage model that contorts and deforms the cars to a degree that won't fail to make you laugh (side panels are shed, bumpers are mangled and dropped and so on)"

WTF?!!

I think he: loaded LFS, closed his eyes, clicked the mouse a bit, ctrl-alt-del out of LFS, open eyes, make stuff up at random.

Edit: Decided that he might have not bothered with the first and fourth steps :S

Quote from Scawen :

I know Phil's aim is to sell magazines, not copies of LFS. But can he have realised quite how negative it looked to anyone reading?

Ofcourse he can, as he's a professional writer who knows exactly what it takes to get people attracted to reading his stories till the last letter. It doesn't really matter what he writes, as long as people enjoy reading it or are interested about his opinion on the subject he writes about, his aim is achieved

Quote from TCStelten :

he's a professional writer

Err.... in what universe is he considered a professional writer?

hehe, true, maybe he means the RSC universe, which recently started its shrinking progress, where imo, many dont understand some concepts, including the ethical one which was mentioned.
seems to me like a demo review not a full S2 review. the screenies are demo only also...

Quote from Janezki :

Obviously they (he?) visited some demo-server... :P

a good reason for that would be to deliver a "S2 review" to a mag while having just played the alpha DEMO which only has the cars and track featured on the screenies. the whole article is MISLEADING. Intentional or not, its irrelevant for the quality of the mag that prints such stuff.

its not even LFS S2, its a freakin alpha demo! not even our full alpha...

hi. here's a wake up call for y'all...
for the last.. i dunno how many years now, my best friend has been working on a really cool FPS controller. unfortunately because of NDA's and the fact it's about to take off, I can't really go into detail about it
Anyways, this guy is neck deep in all the latestest gamer magazines and I will
say this.... This particular rag is so far below the radar line - who cares what
they say one way or the other? LOL the people that probably read that
review the most are ppl that were already exposed to LFS and the writer's
parents. The others? Well if they were there, I'd bet it was by accident and
they could care less for racing sims. So whatever is written there, really don't
make a difference.

But in all honesty if you wanna blame somebody for these lamer reviews our "religion" is getting, then we ought to blame the devs (yep Scawen Eric and Victor )
See if they'd pimp out their stuff like give freebee licenses to these "profesional writers", then you'd see waaay better reviews. But with these
so-called waay better reviews, you'd get a bigger lot of wreckers and other assorted idiots. Like what if the reviewer actually plays The Sims and could care less for a decent racing sim? So he gives up his license to some half wit nephew that completeted all the "missions" for NFSU? When it was all said and done, we'd just have another wrecker to deal with. Or worse. like he's a burnout that really doesn't play ANY games and palms off his free license for another high ball at the bar?

You know, a couple a years ago when I had the S-1 demo, the amount of wreckers was nonexistant compared to the ones in the S-2 demo and
even the Full alpha deal. No "pc gamer wannabe" rag influenced me to get this game. I got it cause I thought it was cool . Maybe it's cause I've been subjected to so many, but I almost NEVER let the opinions of a reviewer
determine whether or not I buy that particular game.

@ scawen (if your there dude) why do you really care anyways? you got enough cash and heck you even got a large harcore following already.
Shouldn't you, Victor and Eric be busy slipping pound notes into the wasteband of some cute little thing swirling on a pole?

I mean think about it: who really gives a rat's A** about what this guy says when he probably wrote the review only cause he lost out on the chance to rate AOE III?

Oh well, y'all take care and remember, even though you can't ALL be from Texas, I respect you anyways

To be honest all this artical shows is how bad the current field of industry "writers" is, I mean PC Zone is infamous for thier bad reviews but I think its about time that someone gave PC Zone a bad review.

Im sure the devs really dont care about these kinds of comments, it will happen with all games that the public can play, any public server has the ability to be populated with arses, most of them arnt.