Visions of Aftermath - The Boomtown
 

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and download (if available)

This sounds like a really interesting game, I am going to play it and see.

I didn't see this one coming. I had better get the extras ready. :)

I haven't been able to find the manual anywhere, hopefully you have it Geezer. Would make me most happy. :smile2:

Here you go in the meantime.

I tired to get that PDF from HotUD before, and it just wouldn't work. It has today....makes me mad. Oh well thanks a ton.

What do you do when it tells you to insert the map disk and hit space?

Hi everybody!

First of all I'd like to make clear that this post, while being in some part critic about the review, is generally meant as an inspiration for discussion. All statements are purely my own opinion, even though I know I tend to express them as being written-in-stone facts. ;)

Rating this game 3/5 is IMO judging by today's standards. Those standards suggest that a game is merely the sum of all its comprising media, as opposed to being appealing AS A GAME. It has become pretty rare nowadays that games are designed to reflect their setting in their game mechanics. Most of the time what we get is "RTS in Star Wars setting", "FPS in Carebears setting" or something similar.

As my nickname suggests, I am a great fan of post-apocalptic fiction. Visions of Aftermath (VoA) provides little outstanding "classic" media and thus isn't the most "classically" atmospheric title in this setting. Apart from the manual, which is at least "pretty well" written, the only other thing that really transports the feel of a post-apocalyptic world is the game mechanic itself. But, and I am putting it as a question although I am clearly of the opinion: Aren't the game mechanics in and of themselves a medium? Can they be? Should they be?

Which this leads me to the point I'm trying to make: VoA, for me, is a purely great game. The emphasis here is on "game". If compared to other titles in the same setting, VoA does not offer much in respect of text, graphics or sound to put you in the mood of a post-nuclear wasteland. But take for example the Fallout series: You could exchange all graphics, texts, sounds without altering the game mechanics in any way, and substitute it with a completely different setting, while maintaining a similar grade of immersion. This being hardly or not at all possible for VoA is the reason why I think the game deserves the 5/5 I gave it.

Hopefully I accomplished my goal of starting a deeper discussion. And well, I also hope I didn't tread on anybody's feet. And thanks to the reviewer for his work, although I disagree with him about VoA being a mediocre game. =)

Regards
~W

The second part doesn't naturally follow from the first, in fact, they have nothing to do with each other that I can see.

"Appealing as a game" implies that the measure of a game is its fun factor, and your implication that all that matters is the integration of mechanics and setting is particularly jarring. Meanwhile, I see no reason why "judging by today's standards" is a bad thing. By and large, we're humans living in the year 2010, and the game should be judged by its value and interest to people living right now.

I do agree that it'd be hard to transplant Boomtown's mechanics to another setting (though I could personally see a mod/clone/Total Conversion for a fantasy or Wild West setting, or a virgin sci-fi planet; it'd be an interesting project at the least). However, game mechanics alone are not a particularly good medium in my view; there has to be some chrome/setting/fluff to translate them from mathematics to art. Furthermore, the fact is that the game is not pure mechanics, and I think your attempt to forcibly discount the packaging is a flawed argument; if its graphics, sound, text, or software bugs make the game less appealing, they make the game less appealing.

My personal view is that graphics, sound and text usually do add to a game's value as a source of fun, even if they're not necessary, and of course, actively bad graphics and sound (which this game doesn't have) will make a game painful to play. For the record, I agree with the reviewer's score but for different reasons. It's tremendously fun as a game, which is what matters, but there's an absolutely terrible savefile-corrupting bug that on its own is enough to make playing the game something of a chore (having to quit to menu and copy the save every couple of months in case the world I'm playing with gets corrupted is not something I want to do).

Just one comment, which might be a theory because I can't speak for everyone.
I doubt that the reviewers rate the games based on today's games.
Mainly because most of the people on site are dedicated players of abandonware, and have actually some of us have actually lived through the time when these games were new and fancy.
It is very much my impression that the games are rated according to when they were made, and what you could do at those times.
:)