Halo Reach Perfect 10! WTF?

[Gralian]

You can't simultaneously call a game perfect and say it has a bad story. THAT IS NOT LOGICAL!

Untrue. Reviewers slagged off Mario Galaxy 2 for the same shitty tired story of "Bowser kidnaps Peach" but that was still hailed as 'perfect'.

Hardly surprising. But what pisses me off isn't that they rate it a perfect. It's that the fanboys froth at the mouth and the trolls froth at the mouth at the prospect of trolling the fanboys.

Say what you want about the series; there's a reason it sells well and it's not all entirely down to an established fanbase. It's a well-made product and it deserves recognition for it. Where i would disagree with a high score is, say, FFXIII which was not a well-made product (with the exception of graphical presentation) because of a convoluted story (on which RPGs rely on to carry the narrative and experience) and extreme linearity. In essence, Bungie refined what made the series successful instead of deviating like XIII and that is why it is being praised. You can't fault a Halo game for being Halo, because that's the franchise. If you don't like the franchise, you're not going to like the game.

 

[ALuckyChance]

Or that they liked the games? Who cares what the critic thinks and how do you know that it is mediocre if you have yet to play it yet. You can complain about it all you want, I'll be playing it on Tuesday and forming my own opinion on it.

The thing is, a perfect 10 is supposed to indicate, well, perfect. The main point of his post was saying that IGN is contradictory in terms of review scores, which is something we probably all know.

 

[Irridium]

Halo Reach: 10/10 according to IGN

"IGN"

There's your problem.

Honestly, I know reviews are opinions and whatnot, but if you say the story's not that good, then give it a perfect 10, your WRONG!

Reviews do not work like that. I hope that MS money package was worth the dignity, respect, and credibility. Or what little was left anyway.

 

[Eren Murtaugh]

Or that they liked the games? Who cares what the critic thinks and how do you know that it is mediocre if you have yet to play it yet. You can complain about it all you want, I'll be playing it on Tuesday and forming my own opinion on it.

Congrats you got first post, and completely missed the point. I admitted as much in my post that I hadn't played the game and as such had no idea about the veracity of the reviewer's opinion. I would never take a review of anything at face value but I just think its criminal that people can give the impression that a game is utterly, ultimately, world shatteringly good when an apparently major aspect of visual narrative media is neglected, and is admitted to be as much in the review which awards a perfect score.

Dude. Completely agreeable statement, and very well thought out. Gotta say, it's crap like this that pushed me away from Halo in the first place. Also, the Godfather IS good, but can we stop using it as the "be all-end all" of movie perfection?

hehe yeah I know the Godfather is THE goto film in just about every argument about filmaking, I was just trying to illustrate my point with an example that people might recognise. But tbh I don't believe we've had a game (and correct me if I'm wrong) that has as wide critical and artistic consensus as the Godfather (with the exception of Citizen Kane perhaps)

I think you meant movie, not game, but yeah, very few films have reached the critical massiveness of Godfather, but dude. Watch the movie "M". I promise you'll never EVER look at cinema the same again.

P.S. If it doesn't have Peter Lorre in it, it;s the wrong film.

 

[Diligent]

I think all these review sites need to change the way they rate things.
A perfect 10 needs to be a flawlessly fun game like nothing we've seen before: a total game changer.
Too many sites are willing to call a game perfect or even 9/10 when in the review itself they can point out some sort of flaw.
Somehow, people look at 6/10 and say "well it's not at least 9/10, so it must be pretty bad".
It won't happen, but it would be neat if people would shift their expectations so a 6 or 7 is still considered decent, and not a number to fanboy rage over.

Ratings are stupid anyway. I'm not close to a Halo fan, but it's pretty certain that as a gamer I'm going to end up trying Reach, and I can form my own opinion about it then.

 

[agentmaine]

Maybe you should re-read that review, it isn't given a 10/10
If you knew how to read you would understand that they gave it a 9.5/10 BECAUSE the story was imperfect. They like the gameplay and they like the multiplayer enough to forgive an imperfect story. Next time you point your need for attention at unwarrented 10/10's, make sure it is ACTUALLY a 10/10 review you are whining about

 

[Agayek]

Or that they liked the games? Who cares what the critic thinks and how do you know that it is mediocre if you have yet to play it yet. You can complain about it all you want, I'll be playing it on Tuesday and forming my own opinion on it.

I think the OP is more commenting on the hypocrisy, for lack of a better word, inherent in giving a perfect score to a game, and then on the same page saying "it has faults X, Y and Z". If it has faults, it's not perfect. Thus, it should not receive a perfect score.

I happen to agree with that. It strikes me as very weird to say "It's perfect! But only if you ignore it's flaws!".

Plus the whole "Oh it's just a shooter, it doesn't need a sensible story." That just grinds my gears, since compelling stories are the primary reason I play video games.

Having just beat the campaign, it's easily the best campaign (and the best-told story) of the Halo franchise. Make of that what you will.

 

[Legendairy314]

Don't they have a rating system where they have to use Increments of .5s? For all we know that was a 9.6 in their eyes but the system forcibly bumped it up to 10.0. Also, people's opinions of perfect are so different in this day and age that I really don't see the point to argue with someone about it.

 

[Evil_Weevil]

Or that they liked the games? Who cares what the critic thinks and how do you know that it is mediocre if you have yet to play it yet. You can complain about it all you want, I'll be playing it on Tuesday and forming my own opinion on it.

Congrats you got first post, and completely missed the point. I admitted as much in my post that I hadn't played the game and as such had no idea about the veracity of the reviewer's opinion. I would never take a review of anything at face value but I just think its criminal that people can give the impression that a game is utterly, ultimately, world shatteringly good when an apparently major aspect of visual narrative media is neglected, and is admitted to be as much in the review which awards a perfect score.

Dude. Completely agreeable statement, and very well thought out. Gotta say, it's crap like this that pushed me away from Halo in the first place. Also, the Godfather IS good, but can we stop using it as the "be all-end all" of movie perfection?

hehe yeah I know the Godfather is THE goto film in just about every argument about filmaking, I was just trying to illustrate my point with an example that people might recognise. But tbh I don't believe we've had a game (and correct me if I'm wrong) that has as wide critical and artistic consensus as the Godfather (with the exception of Citizen Kane perhaps)

I think you meant movie, not game, but yeah, very few films have reached the critical massiveness of Godfather, but dude. Watch the movie "M". I promise you'll never EVER look at cinema the same again.

P.S. If it doesn't have Peter Lorre in it, it;s the wrong film.

You speak much sense, but no, I meant game as I was trying to point out that no videogame released has had the same level of critical and artistic appreciation AND the pop cultural recognition as a film like TGF

 

[manythings]

Or that they liked the games? Who cares what the critic thinks and how do you know that it is mediocre if you have yet to play it yet. You can complain about it all you want, I'll be playing it on Tuesday and forming my own opinion on it.

He spent 2 paragraphs talking about how shit and pretentious the story is and the cast of really boring, bog-standard "gun men", that doesn't sound like a perfect 10 to me. Surely that kind of thing costs a point or two? Crumby story and bad characters ruin immersion for me.

 

[The Austin]

Having just beat the campaign, it's easily the best campaign (and the best-told story) of the Halo franchise. Make of that what you will.

Wait, you guys get early copies? I didn't know that The Escapist was that well known in the industry. O_O

OP: Dude, who cares? It's Halo, just because the writing sucks doesn't mean it's not good. This isn't BioShock for f*cks' sake.

 

[Evil_Weevil]

Maybe you should re-read that review, it isn't given a 10/10
If you knew how to read you would understand that they gave it a 9.5/10 BECAUSE the story was imperfect. They like the gameplay and they like the multiplayer enough to forgive an imperfect story. Next time you point your need for attention at unwarrented 10/10's, make sure it is ACTUALLY a 10/10 review you are whining about

Sorry, but if you look to the right of the USA based IGN review of Halo reach you will notice the UK site awarded it 10/10. Being a UK citizen, I am automatically redirected to the UK version. I'm tempted to give you the old "door.use it" but to be fair I didn't make clear that i was referring to the UK version

 

[deleted20220820]

DELETED

 

[Eren Murtaugh]

Or that they liked the games? Who cares what the critic thinks and how do you know that it is mediocre if you have yet to play it yet. You can complain about it all you want, I'll be playing it on Tuesday and forming my own opinion on it.

Congrats you got first post, and completely missed the point. I admitted as much in my post that I hadn't played the game and as such had no idea about the veracity of the reviewer's opinion. I would never take a review of anything at face value but I just think its criminal that people can give the impression that a game is utterly, ultimately, world shatteringly good when an apparently major aspect of visual narrative media is neglected, and is admitted to be as much in the review which awards a perfect score.

Dude. Completely agreeable statement, and very well thought out. Gotta say, it's crap like this that pushed me away from Halo in the first place. Also, the Godfather IS good, but can we stop using it as the "be all-end all" of movie perfection?

hehe yeah I know the Godfather is THE goto film in just about every argument about filmaking, I was just trying to illustrate my point with an example that people might recognise. But tbh I don't believe we've had a game (and correct me if I'm wrong) that has as wide critical and artistic consensus as the Godfather (with the exception of Citizen Kane perhaps)

I think you meant movie, not game, but yeah, very few films have reached the critical massiveness of Godfather, but dude. Watch the movie "M". I promise you'll never EVER look at cinema the same again.

P.S. If it doesn't have Peter Lorre in it, it;s the wrong film.

You speak much sense, but no, I meant game as I was trying to point out that no videogame released has had the same level of critical and artistic appreciation AND the pop cultural recognition as a film like TGF

OH! Gotcha. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

[Erana]

Its IGN.
They're hype drones. If you're relying on them to decide what games to buy, you might as well give Gamestop your credit card number and tell 'em to sign you up for every pre-order ever.

Will Reach be perfect? No; no game is perfect.
It all comes down to if you like it or not, and that is personal opinion.

 

[Agayek]

Don't they have a rating system where they have to use Increments of .5s? For all we know that was a 9.6 in their eyes but the system forcibly bumped it up to 10.0. Also, people's opinions of perfect are so different in this day and age that I really don't see the point to argue with someone about it.

To be fair to the rating system, with something as subjective as rating a game, it's nigh impossible to distinguish between a 9.5 and a 9.6 or whatever. There's like 5 "states" of appreciation/rating for things: 1) It's terrible, 2) It's bad but there's worse, 3) Meh, 'salright, 4) It's good, but there's better, and 5) It's great. Everything fits somewhere in those 5 states, and the structure of the human mind makes codifying them any more specifically more or less an exercise in futility. You can do it, but for the most part you're just making up numbers.

 

[Thedayrecker]

You can't simultaneously call a game perfect and say it has a bad story. THAT IS NOT LOGICAL!

/win.

What do expect? Go to IGN and look for Halo ads. Add the number of ads to the amount of hype, and you can figure out the score it's going to get.

 

[StriderShinryu]

The thing is, a perfect 10 is supposed to indicate, well, perfect.

Actually, if you look at IGN UK's review chart 10/10 is not "Perfect" it's "Masterful." Most review sources that use a numeric rating scale don't consider a 5/5, 10/10, etc. "perfect" as there would pretty much never be anything that received such a score.

 

[Agayek]

You know what they say, you cant spell IGNorant without IGN.

Its like them to do something like this and I've long ago disregarded their reviews.

Actually, I've found that most IGN reviews are pretty solid. They're definitely biased for games with as much hype/popularity as a Halo title, so I'm not going to argue that, but for the lesser known stuff they're usually spot on.

 

[Swifteye]

Having just beat the campaign, it's easily the best campaign (and the best-told story) of the Halo franchise. Make of that what you will.

I say it's a 9 or 8. After all a perfect ten means it's pefect and if the story is complete stock then that's a big enough hole to prevent perfection.