Therumancer said:
Arcticflame said:
Therumancer said:
I'm not parroting anyone's opinions though, all I'm doing is pointing out that there is a negative reception. The point here being that rather than acting like there is something wrong with the people for making the complaints, perhaps when you have this strong of a negative reaction, you should simply accept that there is something wrong with the game.
The point here being that just because a game is getting a bad user review, does not mean it's being "metabombed" for some trivial reason. Especially seeing as the whole "metabombing" concern has been recent, due to a couple of high profile games getting tanked in user reception, despite the groups that are considered to be responsible for it having been out there for a long time, and having never gotten this kind of noticible reaction.
There isn't though, it was metabombed, if you followed the user scores like I did, as soon as the game was unlocked for user reviewing, it went straight to a user score of 3-5, fluctuating around wildly. It stayed like this before people could possible have finished the game, and people who certainly had never played the game were jumping on the bandwagon with the reviews, as none of it made any sense, page on page of people prattling on about day one dlc when they clearly had no idea what was going on.
Yesterday it's score was 7.2, now it's score is 7.9, this is because the actual people who have played and finished the game are finishing around now, reviewing it, and bringing the score up to what people actually think, I think if you take out the day one troll bombs, the user score would be around a 9.
If you note, the user score for Dragon age 2 started low, and has
stayed low
There was certainly some bombing going on there, but there were legitimate grievances for it. As much as I liked Dragon Age 2, I certainly see the flaws that the lowest common denominator are whining about on that one.
.
Well, we'll see where the ratings even out as. I think the first "portal" was more of a phenomena than "Dragon Age" was, and as such I think the rating has become a user warzone of sorts, because there are doubtlessly people flocking to the metaratings just to give it perfect reviews to offset the alleged "bombing".
I don't doubt that plenty of people did have the day 1 DLC figure into their rating, and were quite blunt about it (and let's be honest, when something annoys you, it's wise to make that clear). However arguements about how the ratings were too fast for people to finish the game are rather ridiculous, after all you can tell pretty quick if you like a game or not, and if you don't like a game your not going to finish it. The guy who plays for an hour or two and decides "wow, I really don't like this, and am not going to finish it, this sucks" has every right to rate the game accordingly, that is after all the whole point of the ratings.
It will be interesting to see how things turn out in the end, but right now I do tend to think that as shocking as it is, Valve has finally made a game that isn't being well received.
*points to critics' score of 95* That's not well-recieved?
I understand the point you're trying to make, and it's a very good, legitimate one, but I wouldn't apply it to this particular game. Using your Dragon Age 2 example, let's comapre the two games. Dragon Age started low and STAYED low; at time of writing this post, it sits at a user score of 4.5. Portal 2, on the other hand, started low, sure, but then slowly climbed up as people who actually played through the entire game finished it and came on to make their statements. It is currently sitting at an 8.0 user score, clearly indicating that the intital wave of trolls with their 0 scores was a minority that quickly settled down. If there really was a fundamental problem with the game that users wanted to make a statement about, the score would have stayed low, similar to the statement made by the Dragon Age 2 reviews. As it stands, the users seem to like it quite a bit- an 8 is nothing to take lightly. Your point about the blind fanboys stands, but there are clearly enough people liking and enjoying the game enough that the metascore has jumped almost 4 whole points since Day 1- blind fanboyism is not enough to attribute for such a jump. People must really enjoy it. Regarding your statement that it is not well recieved- do critics simply not count, then, too? Anyone who says that all critics are "bought off" by the game industry is simply spouting nonsense. A lot of game critics are people who have jobs that don't pay fantastically, but do what they do because they are people just like you and me who love what they do and want to share news and opinions about video games and what they can do for society. Critics don't just LIKE Portal 2- they ADORE it. A 95 is nearly impossible for a game to get, so for a game to be so univerally adored, it clearly had to have been positively recieved in some way. Moving away from Metacritic, we find more positive user reception- the GameInformer.com User Score is currently sitting at a 9.5, and the IGN readers' score is a 9.2. Yet more positive reception- only Metacritc got the bombing. I smell trolls!
Also, if you take some time to actually read the user reviews, the zero reviews make points that are simply fundamentally wrong. Some gripes are legitimate, and I can understand that not everyone would like the game, but some statements, like the idea that it is a rushed console port, are simply inaccurate and are misinformation that might decieve someone into having the wrong opinion of a game that deserves to be played and experienced. Other points might be debatable, so here are my positions. Regarding the DLC issue, I honestly didn't even notice that the DLC existed in the game until this firestorm happened. The DLC does not affect your experience whatsoever, and you can play through the entire game without ever even noticing that it's there, let alone being prompted to buy it. Make a stand about DLC if you want, but Portal 2 is not the game to do it on. Pick something else.
Regarding the length, I find it very hard to believe that the game can be finished in 4-5 hours- When I hit the 4.5 hour mark, I was nowhere near done with the game (I had been on Chapter 6 and hadn't played a second of co-op yet). Plus, to those who say that it's only 5 hours- would you rather have a stuffed, overpadded experience drawn out to 20 hours with a bunch of filler that wastes time? One of the things I love about this game is that so far, there has not been one second of wasted time. Everything in the game is honed to a point of perfection and is there for a purpose or as part of the immersive world that the game creates- nothing is wasted or superficial. I'd take 5 hours of perfection over 20 hours of boring padding any day of the week, thank you.
I know not all of this pertains to your post, but the point that I'm trying to make to you is that Portal 2 is not a game that deserves the Metabashing that it's getting in any way. Since you haven't tried the game yet, I don't want your opinion of it to be colored by this, as what I have played is an absolutely fantastic experience that I would recommend to almost anyone. Don't let firestorms like this color your opinion of a game- Pick it up for yourself and get the experience firsthand. I know I'm just one humble person in the vast seas of the interwebs, but in my personal opinion, Portal 2 is great, great, GREAT game and deserves to be remembered for the wonderful experience that it brings to players, not some stupid DLC-based firestorming.
