CBL Episode 6: Mount & Blade: Warband

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Dedae

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Jan 24, 2010
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The Sixth episode of Checkpoint: Basement Level is up. I reviewed Mount & Blade: Warband. I need feedback. The people at GameTrailers are great, but while mostly supportive (or negatively sexist), give me a lot of 'great job thanks' but what I really need is 'needs more of this' or 'less of that'.


Direct Link (GameTrailers)
http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/checkpoint-basement-level/346937

Direct Link (YouTube)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYoZMA3T1I
 

Korten12

Now I want ma...!
Aug 26, 2009
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good review, your voice is clear, and you got many of the games idea's through. Myself haven't played any castle seiges yet in the single-player and only on multiplayer but I can't wait to see now what you mean. :p
 

Stranger of Sorts

Individual #472
Aug 23, 2009
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From the (very) little I know from public speaking, you need to work on the end of your sentences. You tend to become really low and croaky, something which you probably won't do when talking to someone else. So just relax a bit more and don't try to sound authoritative, just talkative.
 

StarkRavingSane

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Mar 4, 2008
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Stranger of Sorts said:
From the (very) little I know from public speaking, you need to work on the end of your sentences. You tend to become really low and croaky, something which you probably won't do when talking to someone else. So just relax a bit more and don't try to sound authoritative, just talkative.
That.

And maybe work on your consonant pronunciation. You gotta be unnaturally precise with those lil buggers. Still, this comes from a smartass who attended one public speaking course. A long time ago.

Apart form that it's great. Especially the footage in the forest. Nice to see you actually took your time to show "connection" to the game's realism aspect.
 

Riobux

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Apr 15, 2009
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Watching through it, I couldn't help but feel you missed some key points about Mount & Blade: Warband. For example, I couldn't help but feel you missed the massive chunk of NPC management. Not only levelling the peasants you get, but also managing the more intelligent NPCs you can sometimes find in Tavens. You also never mentioned about the large amount of mods available and still being created now, these vary from small weapon alterations to full-scale complete mods (e.g. 1886 is a western version of Mount & Blade: Warband, however it is currently still in some development and you can currently only play it online). However, I think I can see it's hard to find a balance between missing information that may be important and making it too long, which I think you nail at least most of the important points worth making.

Another slight minor problem I had was the swearing. I know you only dropped "*****" to describe being a female in the game (which I felt the extra difficulty in being a female in the game was actually enjoyable, partly due to the realism, but it's just me) and "crap" during the conclusion, but I think it helps to get into the habit of being swearing-free since websites with more traffic like IGN and Gamespot tend to have swearing-free videos usually. While swearing can give a refreshing feel and feel like you're getting a review from a person and not someone employed by a large company who told them what to say, but I think it's a habit worth picking up if you want to make videos for bigger websites, then again it's a website-to-website basis and you may not intend to get that far. It's really up to you and I may not have a real point here, I'm sorry if I don't.

However, despite it, I think the review is good. It doesn't feel amateurish but it doesn't feel too professional (if you want to know what I mean, just look at the IGN videos featuring the female presenter who helps with game hints, I sometimes wonder if she actually plays the games herself or if she just gets given a script). It feels down to earth in an enjoyable way. It's not gimmicky in any way which is something that is a refreshing change (like you wouldn't believe it, wading through all gimmicky stuff is like wading through a marshland, filled with inane creatures with no real intelligence resembling humanoids and just full of sludge). I think the forest shots were a nice connection to the Mount & Blade: Warband setting.

Anyway, I hope I managed to help. Good luck with future videos and if I have a good enough memory, I'll try to check your videos out if I need another opinion on if I should buy a game or not that I'm uncertain on.
 

dukeh016

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Jul 25, 2008
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I'm gonna go ahead and echo the last poster- M&B is really a successful game because of the mods. But thats in defense of the game than anything against your review.

Speaking and presentation wise, I would suggest you try doing your review without a script. You know what you want to say, so just say it. Its clear that you are reading a card (In my imagination, you have an overweight 40 year old man holding a cue card. This guy: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pennck/grabs/salbig.gif ). So you either need to find a way to not read from a script, or find a way to convince us you aren't reading from a script. My suggestion would be to just talk to the camera about the game and see if it looks natural. Pretend its a friend/pet/imaginary friend. I don't know how popular you are. Or work on your memorization. Anywho, that's my suggestion.

As a last aside, you can hold down ctrl+spacebar to speed up movement on the strategy map.
 

Dedae

New member
Jan 24, 2010
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Thanks for the crit. guys! Really, really helpful.

I'm not looking at cards! I think i just have the crazy eyes o_O