Halo 4 gets a 2/10...

[RedDeadFred]

Tom Chick uses the 1-10 scale. If you are a fan of the 7-10 scale, please stick to IGN.

He hated the game, he scored it accordingly, he said what he didn't like about it. G'night folks! We're done here.

I'll just set this right here: http://ca.ign.com/articles/2009/02/12/action-girlz-racing-review

BTW, I'm not actually a fan of IGN. They are pretty inconsistent with their review quality and depth but you were practically asking for me to do a quick Google search of this.

 

[AstylahAthrys]

Peh. His poor attempt at shock and trolling doesn't phase me. I'm not walking into Halo 4 expecting a masterpiece, but I'll burn my Halo books and sell all my Halo swag if it's a 2/10. Nearly did that with Assassin's Creed Revelations, which I would have given it a 6/10.

I don't care what this one dude says. I'm still getting this game and going to enjoy it.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Oh gee, 1 reviewer gives a game a bad score. The end of the world is near!

I don't look at game reviews anymore; I haven't for years. Because the reviewers can not be trusted. There are mostly unprofessional, biased and sometimes even corrupt. There are a few exceptions, mostly the independent reviewers, e.g. hobbyist.

I can definitely relate. I tend to very casually read professional reviews, pay some attention to hobbyist blogs, and then wait until a Let's Play or two hits the Tube. Once I can see someone playing, I can have a reasonably correct assumption of what this game will feel like to me.

Either that, or I wait for one of my buds to play it, I want for his verdict and then make my decision based on that.

 

[Meatspinner]

Is this gonna be a new trend on the escapist? People get mad at some reviewer for not liking the things they like then post a link of the offender to rally moral support?

 

[ZehMadScientist]

Reminds me of the Last Airbender movie. Those who've seen the original animation thought it sucked arse. Those who haven't thought it was okay (from what I hear around me, anyway >.>)

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/last_airbender/

Was one of the most universally reviled films in recent memory. It's in Ecks vs Sever territory.

I suppose my friends have no taste then. I knew it.

 

[perkl]

Is this gonna be a new trend on the escapist? People get mad at some reviewer for not liking the things they like then post a link of the offender to rally moral support?

Beats the eternal listmaking. At least there's one interesting link in the whole thread.

 

[ResonanceGames]

Tom Chick uses the 1-10 scale. If you are a fan of the 7-10 scale, please stick to IGN.

He hated the game, he scored it accordingly, he said what he didn't like about it. G'night folks! We're done here.

I'll just set this right here: http://ca.ign.com/articles/2009/02/12/action-girlz-racing-review

BTW, I'm not actually a fan of IGN. They are pretty inconsistent with their review quality and depth but you were practically asking for me to do a quick Google search of this.

Oh, you got me. Clearly I meant that every single review ever done by IGN rested in the 7-10 category and was not making a general and half-jesting statement about their overall use of grading scales.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Calm your tits, Bloated. I wasn't the one complaining about the writing, I was just informing the person I quoted on what was happening in the thread.

Well I offer the same rebuttal to them, then. No one in this thread is actually upset about "the writing". I see no complaints about syntax or sentence structure or flow. I see a lot of whining about a 2/10, though.

He could write the same review with prose so beautiful it made grown men weep with joy, and if the final score was 2/10 this thread would exist in more or less exactly the same form it does now.

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

Are you sure this review doesn't come from Pitchfork?

 

[Twilight_guy]

That strikes me as the kind of review where your 1 is not a horrendously broken game like E.T or something but instead is a mediocre game. These kinds of reviews really need to use negative numbers because if they ever saw a bad game it'd break their whole score system.

 

[Iron Criterion]

A 2/10 score really stands out on Metacritic so my review will get more traffic (oh wait, that's my assumption not his written reasoning)

No, you're quite right. This reviewer is clearly just fishing for controversy to make a name for himself. It's a pretty childish act of iconoclasm and not nearly as impressive as he probably thinks it is.

Edge gave Halo 4 an 8, having given the previous five main games a 10, 9, 10, 9, 9 respectively (I think) and to my mind that speaks volumes more than some biased troll review that criticises the lack of innovation and simultaneously moans about anything that's changed since Halo 3/Reach/CE.

See, I'd be glad to see a genuine review give Halo 4 a low or average score; simply because no game, no matter its prestige, should automatically get top end scores. I like to see popular games series put through their paces.

 

[Twilight_guy]

That strikes me as the kind of review where your 1 is not a horrendously broken game like E.T or something but instead is a mediocre game. These kinds of reviews really need to use negative numbers because if they ever saw a bad game it'd break their whole score system.

Not really. They could just put: 0/5- the game is broken/just that bad.

But you see the problem is how do they judge games that fall below mediocre. If an average game is a 1 and a broken game is a 0 then how do you score the many many levels between those two that are usually the 1-4 range. Do you give them fractions? Isn't that deceiving since there is as much of a range between those fraction as for the proceeding integer numbers? Do you just say that its a logarithmic scale? Would most viewers even know what that means? I just think its dumb.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Tom Chick uses the 1-10 scale. If you are a fan of the 7-10 scale, please stick to IGN.

He hated the game, he scored it accordingly, he said what he didn't like about it. G'night folks! We're done here.

I'll just set this right here: http://ca.ign.com/articles/2009/02/12/action-girlz-racing-review

BTW, I'm not actually a fan of IGN. They are pretty inconsistent with their review quality and depth but you were practically asking for me to do a quick Google search of this.

Oh, you got me. Clearly I meant that every single review ever done by IGN rested in the 7-10 category and was not making a general and half-jesting statement about their overall use of grading scales.

I'm bad at reading sarcasm over the internet

 

[The Comfy Chair]

People are allowed to dislike things...

I probably would have been mad about this kind of thing when i was 12, only could afford to have one or two games outside of Christmas at best and only ever one console. At that age you have to be CERTAIN that EVERYONE likes the game you like otherwise you'll be the one with the 'dud' game and no-one will talk to you at school, laughing at you for liking the 'bad' game. When you grow up you learn to not give a damn (sometimes).

If you like halo 4 (pre-emptively i might add) then why does it matter to you that some guy with a keyboard didn't? I'm not a massive fan of playing FPS games on console whatsoever (but i will make an exception for the halo series, since i do like the universe, it's the only reason my 360 is still hanging on it there after i started playing on PC in 2008), and i think CoD is a steaming pile o' junk now. There are some of my opinions, if you don't agree with them, that's fine, you're allowed to think so. It's as easy as that.

That guy is also allowed to (potentially) disagree with halo 4 when i play it. I don't care if he personally didn't like it, the only thing i care about with my entertainment is if I like it!

 

[Warachia]

The only people who are overreacting are people like you who don't bother to read a forum before commenting.
They are discussing a review, they are not crying or whining about it, they are looking at the points he made and giving their opinions on these points, since when was that taboo? Looking at the later posts, it seems to be a little hijacked by people who think an opinion can't be discussed.

They are discussing it only because the reviewer gave the game a 2/10. If he gave it a 8+, no one would have felt the need to discuss it, regardless of whether or not it was a poorly written review. This whole ordeal is biased. No, I just think it's pointless to 'review a review'. There are always going to be review(er)s out there you don't agree with. And there are always going to be trolls out there.

Why does it matter why they are discussing the review? They are not reviewing his review, they are discussing his review, and what you seem to be saying is we can't talk about reviews, at all, which is idiotic, yes, there are always reviews I don't agree with, as well as trolls, but why are you saying we can't talk about them?

 

[Naeras]

Why the hell do people make a deal out of this, link to his review, and complain that he's "just doing it for traffic"? Guys, I hope you realize you're helping the guy get that "trolling traffic"?

I just needed to point that out. I have zero interest in the Halo in the first place, and don't see why people get their egoes hurt when someone doesn't enjoy what they enjoy.

 

[Spartan448]

I personally take my reviews from very few sources. Admittedly, most of them are from the Escapist. But most of my judgement on a game is based on the trailer and past experiences with the game. If the previous games are good and the trailer seems interesting, I'll go for it regardless, then decide wether I agree or disagree with the reviewers (I personally thought FFXIII was a GOOD game). If it doesn't seem all that great, I'll check the reviews first, and if they really say things like 'the box didn't actually contain a game, it literally contained boxed defecation', then I'll avoid it.

The only way in my opinion to be able to healthily criticque games it to play a wide variety of good and bad games. Some of the bad ones might have a lot of redeeming features that could be improved upon, and an overall good game might have some serious flaw. But in order to understand what makes a good or bad game, you have to play a little of both.

That way you don't turn into the 12-year old COD player reviewing Half-Life 2 on Metacritic going "no iron sights qq no perks qq no multiplayer qq i know it's 2012 and the game was made in 2004, but they should update the graphics in a game they made 8 years ago because qq and it must be bad because the developer's name isn't activision or treyarch qq"

And that was a copy-paste of an actual review I read on Metacritic of Half-life 2

 

[Tony2077]

people why won't you just enjoy what you enjoy and leave it at that. i can't wait for tomorrow i want to play this

 

[II2]

I think the real question here, as it was meant to be felt, is, "WHO would say such a thing"

Drop a red review on metacritic and watch your site's traffic figures spike... Those who don't like Halo might even enjoy a vicious laugh and stay around to see what other reviews you have.

/cynic

Like others said, yes, it's a numerically unfair review on account of the subject being a mechanically sound game of undeniable technical quality and polish, regardless of personal tastes. It's the first outing of Halo by a new company, so sure, they'll stick offer what's known as what's new with subtle tweaks and introductions to the overall formula. I figure it will be enjoyable, with that in mind.

PS: This guy gave Waking Mars a 5/5, so fuck his opinions, they're ALL wrong.

 

[chadachada123]

I covered this, and to OP, this qualifies to your (thankfully intelligent) response as well.
Fair enough, it was written as a "canon" source.

It's still HUGELY stupid and egotistical to expect us to buy everything with the Halo logo slapped on it to fill their pockets so we can know what's going on...

If they DID cover this in-game, instead of just throwing it in and screwing all casual fans instead of brand hungry gits, good for them.

I do think the AI life-span is dumb, but that's not the point. The point ALSO isn't that it was "in the books first." It's HOW they did it.

For the record, I've only played Halo 2, and left when I discovered it was an over-hyped, sludge through mediocre town. That doesn't mean that Halo gets a free pass on bad writing/ideas/implementation of said ideas because it's a AAA (for some reason) game that I don't like.

I'd agree to this, but I've seen little evidence of poor implementation or confusion. I haven't read your entire conversation with the OP, so maybe it has been covered already. My apologies if that's the case.

Unless 343i did something REALLY stupid, I'd imagine it would play just like earlier Halos, where the story is relatively contained and little is explained in-game. For example, the Halo books (and by extension the Halo Wikia) explain a lot about the Flood, why there are no Grunt Flood forms, etc, but this information isn't essential for understanding what the hell is going on in-game, and would take a huge amount of time to make a cutscene for it or would otherwise be really boring to read while playing a freaking game.

As long as they include a sentence along the lines of "Cortana is reaching the end of her life as an AI" somewhere in Halo 4, I see a good implementation, with no need to buy any books or other material. Like the Codex entries in ME, the reasons why AI entities have a seven-year lifespan are not at all important, since almost any other series would hand-wave it with "because science."

If they DON'T include at least that much, then yeah, string 'em up.