The Results of the 1999 Survey

The Sword

The Sword. A mission with a wonderful cutscene before and after. A mission where you have to get into that mansion, and grab the sword. A mission where you get lost in the upper floors. A mission where the giggling Viktoria drives you crazy. A mission where the higher floors have turned into a mad labyrinth. And a mission with odd hiding places for the loot, as if the owner of the mansion would have expected you. A mission where you could indeed develop a funny paranoia. And the mission where you can grab a glowing mushroom. And the first mission of the entire game where I have a unsolved problem: What the hell is the purpose of the odd blue key that I found in the garden?

Well. No need to say it more explicit, but nevertheless: A mission that I love.

But sadly, also a mission that the majority of the subjects of the survey did not love so much.

[Descriptive Data], [Scores], [Comments], [Final Comments]

Descriptive Data about this mission

The mean score is, well, bad. It is the least preferred human mission of the game. Most probably this resulted from the scaryness and anomality of the place - a fact that I love, but that others dislike. Nevertheless, the Modalvalue is with 3 relatively high.

The distribution of the scores

Score	N	%	Y-axis: "N", X-axis: "Score"
1	19	8.4
2	29	12.9
3	31	13.8
4	21	9.3
5	30	13.3
6	28	12.4
7	15	6.7
8	19	8.4
9	8	3.6
10	8	3.6
11	5	2.2
12	6	2.7
13	6	2.7

An odd distribution of the scores. But it seems (if I may ignore that odd low score at the value 4) that the mission seems to be rated by the majority of the people between place 2 - 6. Not bad for a not very normal mission. :-)

Sword correlates highly with 'Escape' (.17 *) (huh, guess why... ;-) ). And highly negative with 'Bonehoard' (-.19 **), 'Lost City' (-.17 *), 'RTC' (-.14 *), 'Bedfellows' (-.15 *). All those correlations are not very high, but nevertheless significantly. And so I refuse to interprete these correlations any further.

No other correlation was significant.

Comments

Short Summary

It is funny. Whatever the one loves, dislikes the other from the bottom of his heart. I have put the different comments in the same lines... They were mostly: 'I loved the mazes, but I hated the stinky normal floors' vs. 'I loved the normal floors, but I hated the stinky weird tunnels.' Well. You can't make it right, I think.

The positive comments praised the weirdness of the place, its difficulty, its mad feeling.

The negative comments said the opposite stuff.

Positive Comments

Scary.
Confusing.
High replayability value.
Tougher guards.
Wonderful level design in the deeper floors.
'ACE!!! Absolutely the biz!! Loved every minute!'
'Looking Glass level design at its most creative.'
Lots of options to deal with the guards.
'Architecture so scary that I had to stop playing for a couple of times.'
Good combination of 'town' and 'dungeon' aspects.
Great sound effects (giggling and music).
'Best level design I've ever seen.'
The mazes. - The normal floors.
The non linearity.
'Really cool level, hard and mysterious.'
The cutscenes before and after.
The sword was a really good prize for the job.
The weird stairs in the nothing.
'LSD flashback.'

Negative Comments

Too weird. Too surrealistic.
'Good overall, but Constantine's house makes him look more like an LSD fiend than a woodland god.'
'Decent for exploring but can get a little tedious.'
Too difficult to find the sword.
The guards have no real personality. Too few NPC - NPC interactions.
'Why did Garrett wear tap shoes?'
Too easy. - Too difficult.
The mazes. - The normal floors.
The guards were too tough.
Easy to get get lost.
Too big.
'Would have liked to find the laughing person.'
The loot is too well hidden.
The grey key is too well hidden.
'Some of the traps are bit strange.'

Some personal comments

Hey. Time and place for my own odd tales from the crypt. *g

Sword took me more than 5 hours to finish in the first time. And then it took even more time to find all the loot, and to find a way to solve it without dealing any damage. I dislike that guard in the eastern 1rst floor, because he is used to find me as soon as I have entered the SE room. And he is tough and well trained. Usually, he eliminates my few hitpoints in some very few seconds. But well.. This mansion is difficult, and weird. And I love it for being so.

And yes, I love that odd giggling. It made my eyes tear and my head ache in the first time. Not to mention my paranoia - the main reason why I needed 5 hours to finish the mission. Now it has changed: I am intending to put the giggling sound on some comouters, as error-sounds, maybe. And I learned to giggle in that way myself, to scare my friends with it. Odd, huh?