scotth266 said:
Therumancer said:
I point this out because as time goes on I'm becoming increasingly irritated to hearing how something "reviewed well" despite outrage from the fans. Perhaps the most epic example of this being "Mass Effect 3". If a reviewer doesn't get what the big deal is, and his reviews and criticisms reflect this, and he might outright say "I don't understand the big deal" I increasingly feel that's a sign that someone doesn't belong reviewing.
"Their opinions suck, mine are right, they should quit."
What a load. It is amazing how fanboys cry about how some game didn't fit up to their notions of what the game should be, so the reviewers were paid off/are bad at their jobs. Here's a concept: perhaps they thought the game was good? Maybe they thought that this is a decent Devil May Cry game after all?
Many reviewers praised Mass Effect 3 while noting that the ending wasn't all that great. Many have praised this new DMC game, while also pointing out its flaws. A childish amount of swearing, boring antagonist, combat in later levels can be boring compared to early sections where you have more options... all of these things were said in incredibly positive reviews about the game. Positive reviewers haven't blinded themselves to DMC's flaws: they're just willing to try something new, whereas a lot of the people bitching in this thread are the sort to bury their heads in the sand because they didn't get exactly what they wanted.
Honestly, I might buy the game full-price after having seen all the fanboy tears of rage flying around the forums. They're bloody delicious and I could use a decent hack-and-slash, even though I don't necessarily like the political themes I've seen from the game's trailers.
There is more to it than your considering is my point. When your dealing with an established franchise or series the point of continueing it is to create more of the same, that's the point, people liked it, so you give them more. If you change what the product is, and then claim it's the same thing, that's an issue. A huge issue in gaming, and media in general, is one of brand identity, where they try and pass off anything they want to try and do as being part of an existing series, when it really shouldn't be. Expanding on something and adding new features to an existing game is fine, but when your altering everything from the look and backstory of characters, to the way the game plays, to reducing the number of options, that's a problem when you decide to slap a label on it and say "this is part of an established franchise".
The thing is with DMC is that it's not being presented as just a modern beat em up with swords and guns, it's being called a "Devil May Cry" game, and the vaguely similar protaganist with a few carried over story elements (resembling a knockoff of a popular character trying to avoid a law suit that we'd see in other mediums), does not make it a "Devil May Cry" game. By being part of that franchise and series it should be reviewed entirely within the scope of the series up until that point, and failing at the basics invalidates anything else it might accomplish along the way.
There wouldn't be an issue with DMC if they had started a new franchise and not called it "Devil May Cry", and not tried to say this protaganist is Dante.
When it comes to reviewers, understand these guys are supposed to be professionals. An encyclopediac knowledge of games, their history, and evolution up until this point, and detailed knowlege about the series a game is part of (when it applies) is exactly why these guys are pros, and they warrent a pay check and a platform. Your looking to a professional reviewer for a greater depth of knowlege and perspective than simply asking some fanboy, or even your typical hardcore gamer.
Changing major series elements but otherwise lionizing and rating a game highly because of the things it manages to do well is simply incompetant behavior, and why reviewers are increasingly called sell outs. The pressure is because someone rating Mass Effect 3 highly despite the acknowleged problems is contrary to what these people are supposed to stand for. If you don't have the basics right, including the ending, how good the gameplay you stack onto that turd is becomes irrelevent. A game about vomiting and eating your own vomit might control really well and do out to simulate what it does perfectly, but it still sucks because at the end of the day it's still a game about eating your own vomit.
Now, I want to give one other point here which I think seems to be missed by some of the other people responding as well, even positive ones. We're discussing reviewers NOT critics, there are substantially differant at their core. A critic is a guy who simply knows (or think he knows) something about a subject matter, sometimes he might even know a whole lot, who can phrase his opinions in an entertaining way and gets a platform because of it. A REVIEWER is someone of a much higher order who takes this to a professional extreme and is supposed to have such incredible knowlege of the subject matter and such time invested in his opinions that he can represent an actual standard. I suppose it hasn't come up much in gaming media yet, but it's a big deal in other venues. Critics are basically a dime a dozen, any newspaper can have one, but real reviewers are a much bigger deal. Critics come and go based on the popularity of their schtick and their audience can turn on them at a moment's notice (the ones that endure a long time can be quite special though), Reviewers operate in a way where regardless of what you might think of them what they say carries weight due to their knowlege and the way they arrive at their conclusions. Want someone's opinion ask a Critic, want to know what someone actually is, see a reviewer.
You'll notice that both Bob Chipman and Yahtzee have gone out of their way to say in the past that they are critics and not reviewers. There is a reason for that distinction, and I've even defended some of what Bob's said before (even if I didn't nessicarly agree with it) on those grounds.
The thing is that a lot of the sources doing these ratings, contributing to metascores, and the like, present themselves as reviewers, and wind up carrying a lot more weight than they probably should. On a lot of the major sites for example they will say a "game review of X" when all they did was have a critic give their opinion, oftentimes without much real backround or grounding in the subject. Dismissing issues that should be extremely important to the product as a whole (and remember that's what it is, the gameplay isn't the only reason why someone buys a game with a "Devil May Cry" label, the label carries specific IP weight and expectations, and when it fails to meet them the product as itself fails. It's like buying a silk brush and getting a camel hair brush sold as a silk brush, it might be a perfectly servicible brush, and even better in some things, but it's not what you paid for, and the guys selling it lied in saying it was something it wasn't... thus the product deserves to be slammed and have the BBB crawling all over them.. this DOES apply to IPs though it has yet to get to the point where it's taken seriously, and I see reviewers as being the guys that have to work towards seeing that happen to end a lot of the corperate label-slapping stupidity we see like has happened with other products).
When you get down to it a lot of people who are capable of being reviewers and even started that way have degenerated into mere critics, which is part of the problem. It wouldn't be so maddening if you weren't dealing with people that have substantial platforms who really should know better. What's worse is that I think reviews have gotten sloppy and lazy, where you hear people, both critics and reviewers, talking about how they "don't have the time to put hundreds of hours into games" and "have a life", or whatever other excuse for simply not doing the job they are paid to do properly and making the kinds of mistakes a professional from either camp should never make. The bottom line is that it's not supposed to be fun, it's work, your getting paid, people come and read what you have to say because you immerse yourself in the kind of dedication they can't or won't... or simply put if your a reviewer in paticular as long as you have that platform and audience and a paycheck for it, your pretty much a slave to the subject of your reviews and that audience. If you burn out and can't do it, then it's time to step down.... and oddly there have been some wierd tales written by writers and such who have moonlighted as reviewers or critics who in understanding that have produced freaky crap about what if it manifested literally. Or in some cases slammed their audiences for being ungrateful due to the amount of time they put in (but for that to have meaning, first you have to do it right, and generally critics can't get away with that).
Such are my thoughts, and a further explanation...
