The Inside Scoop on Gaming

This is an amendment to my review of Baldur's Gate from last week. Judging by the incredible amount of e-mail I got on the subject, it is obvious that my review was seriously misinterpreted! I never meant to insinuate that you had to cheat to win (although I take full responsibility in not making that clear--I should have written those exact words). You can get through the game without cheating, but it takes a lot longer.

The reason I wrote the review in the first place is to point out the game's greatest flaws: that you can cheat far too easily, and that playing evil gets you a lot more loot. I myself never cheated while playing and never cared to. I stumbled across a hoard of cheat ideas by accident while looking up game hints on the web. Why did I bother to attack this game and not praise it? Because it's not perfect, and if its game creators are not aware of the problems it has, how can they possibly improve upon further installments?

A lot of people have assumed that I must have no sense of strategy since I did so poorly in combat. Well, considering how well I do when playing Warcraft II or Starcraft, I would have to say that my combat strategy wasn't the problem; the randomly generated numbers that determine a hit or miss were. I kept missing (sometimes up to six or seven times in a row) and my enemies did not, even on the easiest level there is. Why is this? I couldn't say, other than it comes down to randomly generated numbers and I got lots of low ones.

So did I like the game? No. I was bored stiff playing it, even before getting killed all the time. This is just my opinion and not a measure of the game's quality. As far as computer RPGs go, I liked Diablo a lot better (it's my favorite all time computer game), and that didn't even have a very compelling story like Baldur's Gate does.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Baldur's Gate
Author: Various Category: Computer RPG Company/Publisher: Interplay Cost: Varies Page count: n/a Playtest Review by Mark Strecker on 02/06/99. Genre tags: Fantasy	This is an amendment to my review of Baldur's Gate from last week. Judging by the incredible amount of e-mail I got on the subject, it is obvious that my review was seriously misinterpreted! I never meant to insinuate that you had to cheat to win (although I take full responsibility in not making that clear--I should have written those exact words). You can get through the game without cheating, but it takes a lot longer. The reason I wrote the review in the first place is to point out the game's greatest flaws: that you can cheat far too easily, and that playing evil gets you a lot more loot. I myself never cheated while playing and never cared to. I stumbled across a hoard of cheat ideas by accident while looking up game hints on the web. Why did I bother to attack this game and not praise it? Because it's not perfect, and if its game creators are not aware of the problems it has, how can they possibly improve upon further installments? A lot of people have assumed that I must have no sense of strategy since I did so poorly in combat. Well, considering how well I do when playing Warcraft II or Starcraft, I would have to say that my combat strategy wasn't the problem; the randomly generated numbers that determine a hit or miss were. I kept missing (sometimes up to six or seven times in a row) and my enemies did not, even on the easiest level there is. Why is this? I couldn't say, other than it comes down to randomly generated numbers and I got lots of low ones. So did I like the game? No. I was bored stiff playing it, even before getting killed all the time. This is just my opinion and not a measure of the game's quality. As far as computer RPGs go, I liked Diablo a lot better (it's my favorite all time computer game), and that didn't even have a very compelling story like Baldur's Gate does. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 3 (Average)