I enjoy new map reviews but i don't think the soul boxes are a problem. They're an option to use or not and in my opinion, doesn't restrict player freedom. In short, they optional.

I would agree with that statement... but...

The soul boxes are the only way to acquire one of the map's WW's. As far as I'm concerned, that's gating off content, so yeah, I will take a point off for that.

I would NOT take a point off if:

1. A map's soul boxes look aesthetically pleasing (this one's do)

AND

2. The boxes hide no reward, ie. they are essentially "for fun" only

THEN I would consider them fine, I guess. It's my bad though, I should mention the above in the review.

Hey, I wrote a review for this map!

http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php?topic=10687.new#new

Come tell me what you think!

THE FOLLOWING IS THE REVIEW FOR VERSION 1.0. AN ADDENDUM FOR V 1.1 IS AT THE BOTTOM!

Bus Depot is easy. Easy-peasy. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, you might even say (if you’re in 2nd grade). If Bus Depot was a girl, it literally wouldn't even have legs to close. It is THAT easy.

For starters, Bus Depot is WIDE open, just like… you know what, I’ll add a fresher joke here. Bus Depot is so goddamn full of open air, you could mistake it for the inside of Paris Hilton’s head. As soon as you pop the first door, you have more than enough room to run trains pretty much wherever you please. That’s not to mention the 100-meter sightlines you can easily draw on some spawning zombies!

It doesn’t help that the map (roughly the same size as Ascension) only contains FIVE pieces of buyable debris… you can buy out the whole thing faster than Donald Trump can buy out an entire Chinese sweatshop. That is to say, it’s not hard to open up the entire map by Round 5.

The wall guns are all bonkers powerful and cost less than 2k, so really there’s no reason to even use the box except to try more of the firepower out. Oh, and you can get the wonderweapon for free… by Round 5.

How? Because most of the map is a scavenger hunt. Find the giant flaming skulls, shoot all of them, then grab your CEL-3 Cauterizer. Run around staring at the dirt like some sort of senile mud-wrestler, then get thousands of points and quick powerups via the dig sites. Even the powerswitch is created through the tedious and annoying process of finding three separate buildable parts.

Does anyone enjoy this? The shameless rewarding of players for… really, just looking at a map, taking it all in like they should do anyways. Why not reward players for completing challenges, or surviving to high rounds, or simply being good? Well, that would ramp up the difficulty, and we can’t have that!

I sound like a salty old asshole, but you know what? I’m tired of maps that can essentially be beaten by Round 5. I’m tired of trying to limit my own character’s strength to raise the difficulty, only to find that the map is so easy nothing I can do will make it challenging. I’ll stop here before I pop a blood vessel -- but do you get the idea?

Moving on, let’s chill and talk about the pro’s: yes, there are a lot of them. The weapons are good, because they aren’t covered with those weird ass see-through holes and they don’t make little wet-fart noises when you left-click. So, they basically meet my standards. They don’t EXCEED my standards though, mind you -- I set them a bit too high for that  .

The map itself caught me totally off-guard, because it’s not really a Bus Depot. 90% of the map is actually comprised of customized TranZit locations, with a tiny Bus Depot area to lure you in under false premises. It’s like getting catfished, and trust me, I know a thing or two about that  ! Nonetheless, I’m glad I wasn’t relegated to playing in another pure remake map.

What else? The detail was good, the areas were interesting, and there are some fun toys to screw around with. Again, the main flaw of this map is just how boringly easy it is. However, if you are a new player, this is a great map to learn zombies on while testing out all the latest and greatest features the custom scene has to offer.

Oh, wait…

I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THE FUCKING SOUL BOXES. GODDAMN.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE STOP WITH THE SOUL BOXES ALREADY. THEY AREN’T FUN, THEY AREN’T INNOVATIVE, AND THEY RESTRICT PLAYER FREEDOM.

-1 point on Custom Content for Team Gryffindor. And yes, I will continue to subtract points from every map that includes these damn boxes.

While they are optional, the fact that they block the player from a WW until they are completed is gating off content using them in my eyes, and will be treated as such. Hence the loss of a point.


UPDATE V 1.1:

RichGaming has made very laudable efforts to make Bus Depot's gameplay more intense and responsive with the latest patch. Essentially, the update is an extensive rebalance of several aspects of the map.

For starters, the wall guns are no longer absurdly strong. This is a pretty big deal, as wall guns are what you might be using up till at least Round 7. They are also interesting choices now, such as (everyone's favorite) the SMR and the SVU-AS.

An even more important change is the massive rework the Depot area got. While it used to be open as all hell, the latest patch added more debris to the area and, most critically, improved the spawn zones so that zombies start much, much closer to you. This is a marked difference over 1.0, which saw training turn into an exercise in sniping.

Additional barriers in the Nacht part of the map open up the possibility of camping there -- adding some more replay value to the map.

Now, there are still some things I'm fundamentally against. These include the soul boxes, Double Tap 2, and scavenger hunting, BUT, if one wishes, these things can be avoided to raise the difficulty: although I wish this was done more effectively by the map itself.

However, Bus Depot is a significantly more fluid and challenging map for the rework it got. I look forward to future updates... perhaps a "Hard" mode with Verruckt sprinters, no WW's, and weaker perks? Whatever the mapper decides to do next, Bus Depot will remain a good map nonetheless.

REVISED SCORE:

DETAIL: 8/10
CUSTOM CONTENT: 8/10
FUN SCALE: 8/10
REPLAYABILITY: 6/10

OVERALL: 30/40 -- Excellent





DL Link: http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php/topic,10658.0.html

For starters, I wanna say that this is a really great concept for a mod! I think any mod that keeps vanilla gameplay while giving more options to players is a 100% must-download, personally.

Anyway, I screwed around with most of the options. I don't think a lot of them are useful outside of trolling friends, but I did find that setting vision to default_night made the maps look A LOT better. That + 90 FOV significantly improved overall visual quality.

However, the menu is very difficult to navigate. I would adjust controls to as follows:

Right click + V = open menu

Scroll wheel = go up/go down

F = toggle

This would make navigation much easier and not require the player to waste ammo in their gun going through the menu.

Also, the ability to set some options as default at the start of every match would be fantastic.

(Image removed from quote.)

Thanks, will strongly consider trying this next time I write!

Indeed. There are much better things to be doing with one's time. 

Eh, for me it's

1. Wanking
2. Reviewing

So reviewing is productive after all!

A misunderstanding on both ends my good sir, though I feel I was wrong for keeping it going. I do feel it should be dropped. If you ever feel what I said, no matter how minute, offended you, you are always free to approach me through PM.

Thanks man, and I'm sorry if I took it too far on my end also.

I will just make this comment now. Even though I dont like these kinds of jokes myself, Im not saying reviewer should stop them immediately, as they are not directed towards anyone. If they would be, then it would be a issue. Also:

This was not offending reviewer at all. He stated his opinion and didnt only comment on that, but said the review was good none the less. He was stating his opinion in a non-rude way

Again, this is why we have talked about locking the review section from comments, it can go way too easily off-topic, as seen here

Yeah, it can go off hand. I guess we can wait and see for the updated UGX launcher, maybe just add a rating system for reviews without comments? Thanks for your input.

Shotgun, I won't forgive you if you quit making reviews. You seriously brought up a new and much more addicting theme of reviews which felt much more appealing than the plain old "pros and cons" theme. Keep those reviews coming man, good job.

Thanks dude, I really appreciate it!

I do want to point out I didn't say it was an "issue" nor did it "offend me", nor did I say it was innappropiate, just....didn't fit, but he obviously took it a little personally, I didn't think he would, since it was such a minute comment in an also positive comment, nor did I think he would have made such a big deal over it.

Can you stop being passive-aggressive? You could address your comments to me, for starters, as that's who you're talking about. You can also drop the moral highground shit and trying to paint me as a butthurt child.

Your response was similar to many others that consistently say parts of my own reviews "don't fit" or should be changed, etc. So, I responded as such, because yes, it's discouraging when every other comment on something you spent 2 hours writing is a critique or a critique-with-compliment-attached, especially when the critiques are universally vague and give no examples unless I actively push for them.

What REALLY confuses me about all of this is the comment I'm responding to. Nowhere in this thread have I directly targeted your character in any way, shape, or form. I responded to your comments honestly, and I would have responded to a similar comment the same way, without singling you out. It's your critique, fine, I don't like it but it's your opinion.

Which you respond to by passively-aggressively attacking my character. And you're talking to me about being triggered by opinions?

I would greatly prefer if we could just drop the issue, I understand that you're still a good guy Scob and I've always respected you, so I'd rather not argue over what could be a misunderstanding. I just think you should know that, yeah, I got frustrated, but that's not me being triggered or petulant, it's me responding to a recurring trend in the comments of my reviews.

Every person has their own style of humour and I don't find yours particularly distasteful. As a map reviewer I believe you choose the right choice of words to explain what you mean even if it can be considered somewhat offensive to some it doesn't to me. This is an 18 rated game we are playing here and we should all be able to act like adults about things like this. If it was Tomikaze who chose this style of wording I don't think it would have been an issue with some so I am not sure why it is an issue with you.

At the end of the day it was mearly an attempt at making your review humourous and I didn't find it inappropriate. Please do not change your style just because some members find it degrading towards a map. I would rather see you be yourself than pretend to be someone else just to please others. The thing that makes each member unique is how they are, not how they pretend to be. I enjoy your reviews and would rather you continued them as you do currently.

Thanks Zen, that means a lot and I will continue to write how I always have. I'm really glad that some people do appreciate it, that's why I write reviews in the first place.

Nobody is asking you to drop the humor, but jokes like this:

Do not fit a review like this, what relevance does a joke about fucking your mother with a bag over her head have to do with the map?

You're talking my small comment too personally, if you think this is a waste of time and want to quit, that's your own prerogative.

That's my style of humor, and that was an allegory to describe what DOF does on W@W's tired old engine.

Again, every other review has complaints about something in my style that people think should be chopped off, modified, whatever, whether it's the score I give or the actual things I say. So I'm pretty much tired of it, again, I don't have time to waste writing things that people don't like/make them uncomfortable. So I'll either have to change how I write or just stop doing it entirely.

So...
A third Review aye? Not sure it was necessary at this point, but anywho.
Can't say I enjoyed reading this review. It's got some points in it where I just think 'why?'

Uhm, ok.  I have no idea what points you are talking about, but thank you for the "feedback"

Some of the sexual jokes, etc. didn't really fit the review imo but good review none the less, I highly suggest anyone who is into CoDZombies give this a go.

Yeah, I'm pretty much considering dropping the humor from my reviews entirely and just making pro/con lists because it seems nobody else actually appreciates it. Actually, I'm most likely going to stop reviewing at all, because it's pretty much a waste of my time.

Played every COD (excluding spin-offs) up till Ghosts. COD 2 campaign is the only one to really write home about IMHO. COD 1 was good but lacked, well, a lot of everything.

WAW was pretty cool, especially in coop, and BO2 made an honest effort. MW1's was also pretty fair.

I cannot think of any reason why you shouldn’t play Das Herrenhaus. If you’re blind and missing both arms I still recommend you try to find a way to play this map. I am so certain you will enjoy this map that I am perfectly willing to drop such a blanket statement -- and if you somehow regret playing this map, then please write me a formal complaint seeking redress for your wasted time, in which case I will politely tell you to FUCK OFF you tasteless asshole.

Seriously, there’s almost no sense in writing a review. I mean, it’s fantastic, play it right now. Come back later and tell me I was right.

Nonetheless, I will still attempt this exercise in futility both for record-keeping purposes and to remind you that, no, your life isn’t all that shitty: you’re not the chump wasting his Sunday night writing a pointless review for a children’s vidya game.

DETAIL (9/10)

The map utilizes dynamic depth-of-field, which basically makes stuff further than 10 meters away blurry. It’s like putting a paper bag on my mom’s head when you fuck her: yeah, she’s still ugly, but at least now you don’t have to SEE how ugly she is.

Although whether this map even needs DoF is questionable, as this is definitely one of the best-looking maps ever made. The lighting is absolutely on-point, there’s detail everywhere. Yep, it’s like fucking my mom, only if she was attractive and not dead (unless you’re into that of course).

Also, there’s a dynamic music score that shifts every single round. And now that I’ve experienced it, every other map feels a bit hollow, because goddamn does it add to the immersion.

GAMEPLAY (8/10)

This map comes from the “classic” school of zombies gameplay: that is to say, ACTUAL zombies gameplay. You open the doors, you get to power, you buy your way to PaP, you collect your perks and guns. That’s why I love it: there’s none of the cocktease BS like hiding PaP behind an easteregg, or locking doors until you fill a soulbox, or whatever else people do to deliberately hobble their own maps. So for once in my life I don’t feel like the crippled kid in the candy store, whatever the fuck that means.

There actually is an easteregg, and I’m told it’s quite expansive, however I honestly can’t be bothered to do it. Sorry, those things just aren’t my type. But since I wasn’t forced to do it in order to fully experience the map, I don’t have to take points off the gameplay score. Yay!

You’ll love this map if you just wanna sit down and have a wank have a drink as you explore a huge map across dozens of unqiue rooms.

CUSTOM CONTENT (9/10)

The weapons are “on-fleek” (as the kids say these days), without being overbearing or dominating the map. I say this because a lot of maps cram in so many weapons, all with completely confusing and random stats, that they just dominate the entire experience until the map feels like a slushy pool of gray muck with some BO2 guns poking out of it. Instead, there’s a nice variety of WWII and Cold War guns on display here, plus a really cool Bioshock Infinite inspired shotgun. Boom-boom motherfucker.

On top of that, there’s custom textures, custom zombie skins, and the previously-mentioned custom music score. Oh, and nova crawlers. They’re pretty short, so I tend to overlook them (wow, that was terrible).

REPLAYABILITY (9/10)

Because this map focuses on creating an easily accessible and familiar layout, there’s no reason why you won’t wanna play it over and over. You won’t feel like you have to play 20 rounds just to take it all in, or have to complete a complex EE every time you try to get to PaP. For that reason it’s about as replayable as any quality BO1/2 map, and that’s saying something. Plus, you can always attempt to do the EE if you get bored.

DETAIL: 9
GAMEPLAY: 8
CUSTOM CONTENT: 9
REPLAYABILITY: 9

TOTAL: 35/40

EDIT: Oops, forgot to put a line thru "have a wank" (was thinking too hard about wanking) AND a download link! I am a smart man. Fixed both: http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php/topic,9998.0.html

You're 'currently working' on a review? Damn, I didn't realise reviewers spent this long on them, anyway I digress.

A simple solution to the 'noobs can't be trusted' conundrum is like I said, any coloured ranked member can vote (from Famous Male Pornstars to Mapper Elites and everything in between) - I can't see how anyone would have opposition to that?

And the tracking downloads thing would be impossible since most maps are linked through Mega/Mediafire, etc and not through the site directly.

And I think people are still getting hung up on the name. I repeat 'First Mappers' or w/e it should be called is a EUPHEMISM, stop taking it literally. We all know it really means 'Shit Maps' but of course we can't have that as a section (sigh), it DOESN'T MATTER if it's your first or 100th map; if it's shit it goes there, if it's good it doesn't. End of.

Rofl, by "working on" I mean started 30 min ago 

The problem with colored names is that donators are included, and literally anyone with $3 can become a donator. But I digress. You are right about DL tracking, I didn't think of that.

Anyhow, the pro's of ratings outweight the con's.

The reviews are so damn lengthy half the time. Thats why I never read them.

Here is a new idea then: Implement a rating system and only map reviewers can review the maps. Now map reviewers have purpose other than writing witty novels for a map review.

Reading a 1-page review: 5 minutes

DL'ing a map, playing it, finding out it's shit: 25 minutes

Choice is yours dude.

Anyway, I agree with Stevie about the ratings system. Although I'm not worried about too low of scores, but too high of scores. Standards in the zombies community are waaaaay too low. Prison Mission has 10 stars on ZM, and it's literally the worst map I ever played. Universal democracy is wrong, some people just don't deserve an opinion. Too many noobs shotgunning out "BEST MAP EVAR" (it's the first map they've played...)

Nonetheless, we need a rating system because reviewers can't get 'em all. I'm currently working on a (glowing) Das Herrenhaus review, but that's just one of the many maps currently out, and I've already missed many I'd have liked to review. Just not enough time, especially since I'm working on a map of my own.

Would be nice if UGX tracked an individual's downloads, and that was part of the criteria... so like 100 posts, 30 maps DL'd