Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Wipeout 3

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 02:11, 14 August 2008 [1].

---

Wipeout 3

Nominator(s): David Fuchs

Continuing the fine tradition of nominating video games I played in my formative years, I now present Wipeout 3. It's gone through a peer review and I copyedited it once myself, so hopefully spelling and grammar aren't going to be a huge issue. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 18:03, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• Seems now's the season for racing games, eh...
• Shouldn't the series article be at Wipeout (series)?
• "in an effort to create what a Psygnosis staff member called "a believable future"" - quote = ref needed.
• "Wipeout's soundtrack is composed..." - Wipeout or Wipeout 3? (throughout) (also "Wip3out track listing"..., same in reception table)
• No including aggregate scores in the review box?
• The last paragraph doesn't really fit in a "reception" section....

Yeah, that's all I found. Did some copyediting too, prose is generally good. —Giggy 03:52, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

• The Wipeout series article is neither here nor there for the FAC... :P I've gone through all instances of Wipeout and appended -3 to them to avoid confusion, and added the quote ref to the lead. As to aggregate scores, I didn't put them in because at my last FAC, a reviewer complained about using the scores in the body prose and then repeating them on the side (I have no opinion either way.) As to the last paragraph... it kinda serves to sum up and finish the article, but I really can't think of anywhere better than the reception; it talks about the next video game in the series, and so is more of a bookend then anything else. (I guess it's sort of my writer's signature element, I guess.) But it seems kinda pointless to put it in its own section; I guess if you have any suggestions?. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 11:47, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

  Techincally true, but something to take note of (re. series article)...

  I'd rather see the aggregate scores in the table than the prose if we're going to have one but not the other. The table seems more "aggregate-ive"...

  I tried renaming the reception section ([2]) so hopefully that solves the last para issue - any objections to that? —Giggy 12:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

None at all. I'll go ahead and add back in the scores if it bothers you :) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 12:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm feeling much less bothered now :) Support. —Giggy 14:01, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments - Sources are still good from the PR, the links all worked according to the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:32, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Provisional support - Looks quite good to me, but keep in mind this is my first video game review. Here is my series of quibbles.

• "was released in Europe and North America in September of 1999." Unneeded word.
• Gameplay: "Other weapons are used offensively; craft can use rockets, missiles and mines to attempt to disable their competitors." Some oddities here. How about "Offensive weapons are also avaliable; each craft can use rockets, missiles and mines to attempt to disable its competitors." I also don't like "to attempt to", but hopefully you can come up with something better. If you use this wording, remove also from the next sentence.
• "top three finishing craft; each craft..." Craft is redundant here. I notice a lot of crafts in Gameplay; is it possible to change a few of these.
• Sound: "focused on bringing together music early on in the game's development cycle." Again, removing an excess word would make the writing tighter.
• Special Edition: I'm worried that tracks could be confusion because we just finished talking about the music soundtrack. I would reverse the use of tracks and courses here.
• Reception and legacy: "and the title was named the 92nd best game by the publication in 2007's "IGN's Top 100 Games"." I thought IGN was a website. Usually the term publication is reserved for printed sources. I'm also not thrilled with having back-to-back apostrophes; see if the 2007 part can be placed earlier in the sentence.
• "The Designer Republic's style was consistently praised as helping making the racing locales seem real..." Grammar issue here. I think you mean "helping to make the racing locales seem real..."
• References out of order: [14][4][24]. What puzzles me is that the newspaper article mentioned is the one out of order. Why wouldn't this come first?
• Link The Times.
• "been expecting much more from the sequel;" Is the semi-colon correct? I was thinking this could be a colon.
• "Alistair Wallace of Gamasutra, in a retrospective on the Wipeout 3 games..." I looked at the link, and this is incorrect. The retrospective is mostly about Wipeout 2097, although other games in the series, including this one, are mentioned.
• While I'm here, the New York Times article (ref 2) is avaliable online. Just search for Wipeout 3 on the NYT site.

Most of it looks fine, but I'd like to see these fixed before I fully support. Giants2008 (17-14) 20:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Note that David Fuchs said he resolved the issues here. I left one issue unstruck, but that's not enough to prevent my full support. Giants2008 (17-14) 00:58, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Fixed that one too (forgot about it :P) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 01:22, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

NitpickComment: You may also want to fix the randomly placed closing quotation marks throughout the article. Those that end by a period, place all of them either before or after it. « ₣M₣ » 23:34, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

There is a reason for that: unless it's the full quotation, punctuation goes outside the marks. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 02:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments on images

• Image:Wipeout3.png - I'm confused by this sentence in the fair use rationale: The image is not of lower resolution than the original cover. Copies made from it will be of superior quality, and could be used as artwork on illegal copies of this video game. - Isn't the image supposed to be of lower resolution and prevent illegal copying? Awadewit (talk) 14:08, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Huh. I think the license I copied and modified was vandalized or something... I fixed the rationale. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 22:09, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Please check the rest of the parts of the rationale. Looking closely at them, I think they all have been vandalized. Awadewit (talk) 22:48, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, they were (and that's why i say we semi image pages, because I've never seen a constructive edit from anons on them...) I fixed it up; the other image used has proper tags. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 02:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks good now. Awadewit (talk) 22:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Not thrilled with the prose

• "and design for in-game menus and race courses, in an effort to create what a Psygnosis staff member called"—Can "in an effort" be removed?
• "upon release"—on?
• "would be released"—can't it be just plain and simple: "was released"?
• There's an awful lot of "which". Some are easy to replace, like "Scattered across each raceway are weapon grids, which bestow random power-ups or items." Just make it "grids that". Audit throughout.
• "for a short period of time"—think of a way of removing two words?
• "Offensive weapons are also available; craft can use rockets, missiles and mines to disable competitors. Players can also use an auto-pilot power-up to safely coast through difficult turns." Which "also" do you want to get rid of?
• "The default game mode awards medals to"—hyphen somewhere to help the poor readers? The ensuing para is excellent, except that one word needs to be removed.

I think it needs a good massage. Tony (talk) 11:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Done all the above, including the removal of the 'which' instances. To clarify, why exactly is 'which' bad, so I don't make the same mistakes in the future (English musta' glossed over that bit, all I know is MS Word yips at me about it.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 13:59, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments

As expected, this was a good read David. I noticed a few minor issues that I was hoping you could look at before supporting though.

• I noticed Giggy's comments above and have some related comments:
  • Minor issue, not a deal breaker: I too am not a fan of aggregate scores—or any scores really—used in prose. With them in the table, I see no real reason to include them in the prose. I don't see it a problem to use the ref to support the reception being positive though.
  • The last paragraph of the "Reception and legacy" section does seem a bit out of place. On a similar note, the "Special Edition" section seems awfully small for it to have its own section. Perhaps combine the two small parts into a "Re-release and sequel" section to serve as a bookend for the article.
• In the lead, it mentions the release in 1999, then describes the gameplay, then switches to the re-release. This seems disjointed to me and I think it would flow better if the gameplay and re-release sentences were switched.
• Is there any other info about the commercial performance of the game? The current information is kind of bare minimum.
• Question: Why are Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout XL both wikilinked when they go to the same article. Should the Wipeout XL be renamed to Wipeout 2097 to avoid confusion?
• The prose looks good after the copy editing. Nothing really stood out as bad to me. The flow of the "Reception and legacy" section seemed a bit off to me. Not sure what it is, maybe the order of some content. I don't really have any solution in mind though.

This is a good article that is very close to FA quality. I'll check back later. Keep up the good work. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 16:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC))

I swapped around some of the content, and merged in the Special edition with sequels at the end, and referred to 2097 exclusively. As for critical performance, that it was a "disappointment" was all that I could find; all the other sales information I was able to find was for more recent entries in the series. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 20:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

• Support: The recent changes tipped the scale for me. Though I think the article still has some minor room for improvement here and there. But I still believe it meets criteria in its current form. Good work David. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 20:35, 12 August 2008 (UTC))

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.