You make another game after ending a story arc, you're gonna have a bad time. It';s like French-Frying when you're supposed to Pizza.
Halo 4 gets a 2/10...
- Thread starter RedDeadFred
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I don't know if this has been adressed already but Tom Chick does a 5 star scale. Not a 10.RedDeadFred said:
Edit:
It's also worth noting that the scale employed by Chick runs like this: [http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/our-ratings-system/]
All the people who bang on about it should read that. In this scale a game is not broken with a single star. He just hated it. That's vastly different and shifts the conversation. This is not and never was about an objective analyses of graphics and sound and whatever else boring criteria you people seem to like. This is about how Tom Chick feels about the game.
Conversely, if you absolutely orgasm at the idea of a new game in the series, you probably shouldn't be reviewing it either.yourbeliefs said:
The only thing you can be totally objective about is if the sound is clear or muffled, if the graphics are high res or low res, and if the game is stable or not(even that's pushing it because he may have been lucky and experienced few in a buggy game). The problem becomes, you can't justify your score doing that. Imagine if Tom did that, he stated the graphics, sound quality and bugginess, then gave it a 1 out of 5. Truth is you cannot review a title objectively, because it's impossible to justify the score at that point.Athinira said:
I love Mount and Blade warband for example, if I reviewed it normally I would talk about how the combat feels solid and the lack of story actually helps, but someone else may feel the exact opposite, so it's subjective. I would give the game a high score, justified by all the things about the game I said I liked. Objectively however, graphics are outdated, sound design is iffy(good sounds, but very little variation) and it's still pretty buggy(though very few gameplay bugs). If I did that and gave it the same score, no one would understand why I gave it the score I did.
Games must be reviewed subject to a reviewers opinions and biases, because the review text needs to justify the score, not to mention the fact that no one wants to read a review that says nothing about whether or not a game is fun to play.
And Mass Effect is about to French Fry right into a tree.Owen Robertson said:
Though I personally don't care about Halo's story arc too much. The entire game could be devoid of dialog and cinematics so long as I'm killing aliens in surreal environments.
On the other hand, changing the music of a game like Halo could conceivably kill it.
Hmm. Too be honest. I kind of like his rating system. He hated it (he gave it 1/5 which for some reason I automatically called 2/10 in the thread) which is understandable because you're not going to like every big game that comes out. It just gives a much broader rating spectrum.teh_gunslinger said:
I made sure I could easily add & remove categories and still get 10. I could even have up to 10 subcategories for each if I like. Here's another example.s69-5 said:
Gameplay 8; Mechanics 8 (10)
Visual 6.5; Aesthetic 2.2; Quality 1.8; Other 2.5 (3.3)
Sound 6; Sound Design 4; Music 2 (5)
Overall 6.8
I think it's an important distinction that kinda got lost in the frey.RedDeadFred said:
For what it's worth, I don't particularly like Tom Chick. I like his style but I often don't agree with his reviews.
It's just important to keep in mind how he writes. And frankly I'm not sure why MetaCritic includes him. They completely mangle his range of stars in converting them to a x/10 system and they frequently sic fanboys on to Qt3, as was seen with his Max Payne 3 review.
I've looked at a lot of his reviews and to put it nicely the guy is one of the shittiest critics out there. He's entitled to his opinion but hes just not very good at what he does to be honest. I'm not going to get up in arms about it but there is little denying this guy is a bad critic, and not just for this either.
Oh look, the same person who gave Deus Ex : Human Revolution a 2/10 and gave Lollipop Chainsaw a 3/10. Bunch of rubbish that website is.
1) He gave them a 1 out of 5, you can't just act like it's the same when it isn't.DisgruntledOwl said:
2) He is allowed to have an opinion. Seriously, is the fact that one guy may not have enjoyed a game so foreign to you that when you finally see it you just have to act like he's the devil or something? He has an opinion, he stated it, if you don't like it, then maybe you should try figuring out why he didn't like it, not call him an idiot.
They're reviewing creative works, not toasters. You can only be objective so far as you aren't being bought off. You cannot review an aspect of a creative endeavour 'objectively' because if you don't like it, you just don't fucking like it. There's no getting around that.Athinira said:
wow. 10 pages about a guy not enjoying a Halo game.
Btw, was it true that Halo 4 was about Corinna (sp?) having breast cancer, and it ending with master chef crying?
Btw, was it true that Halo 4 was about Corinna (sp?) having breast cancer, and it ending with master chef crying?
Despite what most people think, in journalism, objectivity is considered synonymous with staying neutral, and therefore doing an objective review is as simple as making unbiased statements, meaning that you either leave your own perspective on things out of the equation or bring in multiple perspectives and give them equal weight and background so the reader/viewer can form their own opinion (the latter is close to impossible for humans however and is very sensitive in how it is posted, see two paragraphs below). As mentioned, not everyone assigns scores to reviews, sometimes for this very reason.charge52 said:
That's the entire definition of the difference between subjective and objective journalism: whether or not the writer is (even uncounsciously) persuading people towards his own (or another predetermined) viewpoint. An objective review is all about giving people descriptions that they can form their own opinion based upon.
This can manifest in many ways. Most people will look at the content of the material for subjectivity, but even the method and location of publicizing the material or the decision to do so can be considered subjective journalism. As an example, if i decided to write a book about Bill Clintons affair, then even if everything i wrote in this book was 100% facts and i didn't at any point display any opinions in the book, the mere decision to write a book about a man cheating on his wife could be considered subjective because it would still be condemning his act on the basis that's it's an unacceptable social norm.
Game reviews are luckily more simple than that, and if posted on a rather neutral site/location, they can qualify just fine for objective journalism. If I want to review a shooter, and i explain that it took me 15 hours to complete, i explain about the weapons, i explain about how the action is paced, i explain how the enemy AI behaves, i explain if i encountered any bugs or trouble, than that's a perfect valid basis for people to make an opinion or not whether it's a shooter for them. Some people will consider 15 hours too short, some will consider it adequate etc. Note that I'm not saying that the expectations the review creates will match reality, because that is determined by how they interpret my review since everything is subject to interpretation, even facts. That's not the fault of the reviewer however, but rather a side effect of the simple fact that were all different and will make off with different experiences of the same thing.
This is Metacritic's fault for featuring Tom's reviews in the first place. I've always thought the man is a complete idiot, and I don't even like Halo. That said, he's entitled to his views, and it's not his job to worry about the Metascore. It's Metacritic who should exercise some discretion when choosing which critics to feature. Unlike film, which is far more dominated by pure opinion, there are aspects of game criticism where it has become standard practice to exercise a degree of impartiality. I realize the man is tenured and shit, but the grading scale he uses simply has no place in an aggregated score where literally every other critic grades based on a different scale and standard. That is to say, if a game performs proficiently, is up to industry standard in most aspects (graphics, controls, sound, AI, etc.), and has no truly glaring drawbacks (extremely short length, questionable DLC practice, etc.), it should generally at least earn a 5/10. I've not heard of a single prominent game critic (aside from this guy) that doesn't go off of that standard (though obviously 7/10 is the more typical "average" score). Metacritic obviously integrates this view into their site, as we can see that their scoring brackets coincide with the aforementioned grading scale. I also don't care if he uses a "star" system, that just goes to show how much more poorly his reviews mesh with the others.
That would still be subjective, as you would have stated bugs or trouble you experienced, how long it took you to finish the game. As you said, to be unbiased you need to either remove your perspective, or bring in multiple other perspectives. You can't do the first, and the latter will still be subjective because it will feature multiple people's subjective opinions.Athinira said:
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but most people who get reviews from specific people or sites get them generally from people whose opinions they agree with. No one follows IGN or Gamespot because their reviews offer "unbiased facts", but because they value their opinion. You can write objective articles about games yes, but not reviews.
Here is a challenge to you, write an unbiased/objective review, and we will see if you actually can, since you seem to think it is so easy.
You still aren't getting it.charge52 said:
That everyone is going to experience things differently is given. We can't change that, we are different people, playing the game differently on different computers and at different time schedules. Hell, two playthroughs from the same person are also likely to be differently timed. Yes each playthrough is subjective. You're basically arguing that it's my job as a reviewer to figure out how you are going to like the game, which it isn't.
The point of objective journalism is to give people a (non-biased) point of comparison so they can form their OWN opinion or conclusions, where subjective journalism attempts to persuade people to accept an opinion (or direction) and push them towards a preferred outcome. That's the entire difference right there, and the point is whether or not i can relay my playthrough objectively. I can't tell or predict how long it's going to take you to complete, say, Mass Effect 3, even if i have played the game myself. I can't tell you whether it feels too long, too short, too boring or too average either if i want to stay objective. I can, however, tell you that it took me 80 hours including all the DLC and doing a completionist run on the highest difficulty with me dying and reloading on average of 7 times per mission and that this was about the same difficulty (death rate) i also had on hardest difficulty in ME2.
If i say the above, I'm not asking you to take the 80 hour duration for granted using the same settings as me. Rather, what I'm asking you to do is use the data i just provided you to make a point of comparison using your own skills, your own past experiences (for example, having played ME2 yourself on same difficulty as me and having a similar death rate) and the amount of DLC you have compared to me to try figuring out how long it's going to take you to complete the game. I'm not trying to persuade you to believe something. I'm trying to give you the tools to create your own expectations, in this case about how long ME3 is going to last for you.
Yes my data is subjective, but you already know that, so you're expected to take that into account when you draw your own conclusion. If i told you i could run 10 miles in 50 minutes and that I'm a world class runner, then you already know that unless you are also a world-class runner then you can't do that. I'm still relaying my objective experience to you though, and can make a calculation from there and say "Okay, if i assume i can run at 50% of a world-class runners capacity, i can probably run 10 miles in 1 hour and 40 minutes then".
As long as you don't understand what objective journalism is, that's a rather moot point.