What's wrong with MOO3 (Review)

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by Spectrex
See Ion Storm and Daikatana. At least outwardly, the two parallel nicely: a development company with little or no prior history attempts to create a revolutionary game, and in the process undergoes significant staff and design changes, and several release date extensions. The final product of all this turmoil is, perhaps unsuprisingly, crap.

Last I knew, QSI did not have little or no prior history. I recall playing Castles back in the mid-'90's when I was still in school, before even MoO2 came out.

Contrast that with Ion Storm, who were formed to create Daikatana.

I won't argue that the development of MoO3 might make one think they'd never done it before, but that's simply not the case.

[marc420]

Hi,

I recently found MOO3 for under $20, and figured it was time to give it a shot.

After playing it for a week, (using 1.2.5 patch and now with MegaMod), I'd have to give it a mixed review.

I tend to like very large and complicated games. So in some ways MOO3 appeals to me. There's a lot I like in this game about the way a galatic empire is modeled and presented to a player.

After having read for awhile had bad the UI was, I'm really wondering what all that was about. I'm having no trouble moving around in the game. I had a little bit of trouble finding the build ques, but blame that on the manual that was a waste of trees instead of the UI design. It also took be awhile to find the little >> link that takes me straight to the que from the planets screen.

But the thing I like about the UI is that it appears to be consistent. Once you learn how to move around in it, its easy to find your way.

Like I said, I happen to like very deep and complicated games. To me, it comes with the territory that everything won't be one click away from the front screen.

There are few things I'd change. The one that comes to mind is that I'd like to be able to learn more about ships I have in a TF. Currently I have to note the name, and go to the shipyard to examine the ship. But that's a minor thing to me.

What does bug me is the sense that even after the game is well after its release and been patched, that the game is still unfinished. There are things in the game that either apparently don't work or no one knows how they work. I spent half of last night looking through the Atari boards trying to find a difinitive answer on ECM /ECCM. I never could find what I was looking for, and was left with the impression that most of the posts were wrong.... which probably means I'm wrong and I don't understand it yet.

And what it really means is that no one is sure if this even works in the game, and it certainly isn't well documented ... even in forums.

Also, the combat system bugs me. I don't care that I don't have detailed control over every move and shot. That fits the scale of the game and the player's role as emperor and/or fleet admiral. What really bugs me is that as the admiral of the fleet, there is no one who can tell me a darned thing about what just happened to my fleet. Any navy is going to have a system of collecting information about its combats. This game leaves you staring at the movement of dots on the screen, that can't be slowed down, paused or replayed, and then from that you are supposed to be able to know why it is your fleet won or lost the battle.

So all in all, I'd give this game a mixed review. There are parts of it I really like. There are parts of it that seem incomplete, never finished, or just poorly done.

I do get the sense that between QS and Atari, the management of this software project was seriously screwed up. I suspect for software managers out there, this could be a case study of how NOT to design a game. But with the work on the patch, it seems to be getting something close to a decent game.

The scary thing is that after the patch the game still feels incomplete in places, and that the word is we'd be real lucky to get another patch.

One last question, everyone seems to be talking about MOO4 and who has the rights to the game. What I wonder is, what does the name of the game matter? That's all MOO really is. If some company wanted to sit down and make a good 4x space game, but didn't have the rights to call it MOO, would people buy it. Personally, I don't care if its called MOO, but I'd love to see someone take the concepts that were tried in MOO3 and use them in a solid, finished, and polished game.

Atari and QS then could cluster around and stare at their lawyer's agreement that they own the rights to MOO, and the rest of us could play a great game.

[benstandby]

Originally posted by Kahn

Kahn's third rule of game buying: Don't waste your money on any title that is based on a movie and is relaesed around the same time as the movie it is based on!

It's like wearing the shirt of the band that's playing TO the gig.

Like wearing a Bon Jovi T-shirt to the Bon Jovi show.

Like... um.. help me out here guys...

[Kahn]

of rip-offs and old farts....

Originally posted by benstandby

It's like wearing the shirt of the band that's playing TO the gig.

Yea! A cheap rip-off T that cost the counterfitters 15 cents to make in Taiwan, but cost you 20 bucks outside the stadium... and of the same "high" quality!

Like wearing a Bon Jovi T-shirt to the Bon Jovi show.

Dang, and I thought I was old!

[COLOR=Light Blue]...Kahn stands up from wheelchair, raises lighter up in the air, falls face down for lack of ballance.
{Muffled} "I've fallen and I can't reach my bottle of Geritol!"[/COLOR]

[benstandby]

Re: of rip-offs and old farts....

Originally posted by Kahn
Dang, and I thought I was old!

You are. I'm only 24. The name "Bon Jovi" is just so darn full of comedic potential that I thought I'd try to be a funny guy and use it.


So are you gonna listen to my show? [points at signature] 'Cause if I can be this funny on the threads...

[Vince278]

Someone please remind me, what's this thread about?

[Grumbold]

T-shirts?

[Gandalfgris]

Just got my copy three weeks ago, and haven't finished yet a single game, hadn't lost any either.

It has a very step learning curve, and haven't even reached the way to create a strategy that makes sense. Actually I don't think I fully understand the way it works, but as a friend of mine told me, "finally you got a game that makes you use your head, weren´t you looking for that"

And that's true, I've never run into a game that made me think so much about it. Even do the interfase is not as friendly as it should, and I don't like the senate, and think the battles are confusing, and some other buggy things like that, I'll keep on trying and write a review later on, perhaps in a month or two.

[dexters]

Originally posted by Grumbold

There are a thousand developers out there who play safe, design with the tried and tested patterns in mind and abide by the 'keep it simple' motto. I'm very glad that IG/QS strove to be different and really give us a game where running a thousand planet empire was possible and manageable despite the vast number of details because each planet was itself complex and unique. They aimed high and fell tragically short. I'm going to be hoping that someone has the courage to attempt another big leap soon, because if someone comes out with yet another Moo2/Imperium Galactica/Pax Imperia clone I shall no doubt buy it but be bored rigid after completing my second game.

Firaxis should hire whoever did the planet viceroys and have him do the Civ 4 governors and let Soren concentrate on doing unit AI and leader AI.

The MOO3 vics are amazingly smart. Both Civ3 and Moo3 employed learning governors. Whereas Civ3's learning governors often made incorrect choices, and learned slowly... eventually forcing Firaxis to cut back on the governors and dumb them down. I could play Moo3 and be reasonably certain that my governors will be doing the approriate thing, even if it's not 100% what I want.

[Grumbold]

Civ3 is almost the antithesis of Moo3. Lots of features trimmed down, cut or simplified to make a leaner game that the AI can compete capably at with relatively few cheats, but governors who I wouldn't trust to run a hot dog stand. A collaborative project could bring very interesting results.

[dexters]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Civ3 is almost the antithesis of Moo3. Lots of features trimmed down, cut or simplified to make a leaner game that the AI can compete capably at with relatively few cheats, but governors who I wouldn't trust to run a hot dog stand. A collaborative project could bring very interesting results.

Yeah, like I said, the planet viceroys in MoO3 is far superior to the one is Civ 3 and there would be some room here for growth in Civ 4.

The problem with Civ 3's AI though is because unlike MoO, where territory is really just a bunch of dots on a starmap, the AI is really taxed, calculating movement on all those land tiles.

MoO3's AI can still probably mount a better invasion than the Civ3 AI, which, still appears to have no clue how to handle a naval invasion.

Also, MoO3 has a working Senate, as opposed to the UN in Civ 3. And Civ3 fans have been asking for something like the MoO3 sentate for ages, still, no sign of it.

Credit though has to go to Firaxis who has released a combined 5 or so patches now, for both Civ3 and PTW and the AI in the latest build is really much shrewder now compared to the old unpatched Civ3 AI.

[Vince278]

There's an interesting thought. Having a U.N. in Civ4 similar to the Senate in MOO3.

[Nightmyre]

it does have problems, but i love the game. completely different experience than playing other games.