Zontar said:
undeadsuitor said:
But you didn't play "Life is Strange". You played episode one of an entire story.
And so did the people singing its praises. That doesn't change the fact that for two full months it was the entire game, and that every episodic story driven game should be able to catch your attention (to say nothing of demonstrating halfway decent quality) in its opening.
So? If someone says they find the game to be great, based on the available content at that time, how does that invalidate their opinion?
Zontar said:
That's what you're harping on? I didn't say that that was the case, I said if there was ever an argument to be made that that happened in the industry (outside of the times it was caught red handed) this game would be an example of why people feel that happens. Even if someone enjoyed the game I can't possibly understand how they hell it got the level of praise it got.
Because people found the game far more personally engaging and emotionally moving than you did obviously. I can't possibly understand how you think the fact that you don't get why the game was good to some people, implies that it's somehow not good. You didn't like it, fine, lots of people (myself included) loved it a great deal. Is it a perfect game? No, not at all. Is it a game that I enjoyed playing, and had real emotional reactions to? Yes it is, in fact that's why I love the game. It made me actually give a shit about what was happening to the characters. I was emotionally invested in their problems, and wanted to try and help them. Very few games actually make me get emotionally invested, and, very few games are able to capture (at least some) aspects of what it was like to be a teenager. My teenage years are decades ago, but I recognize people from LiS from my highschool days. Chloe is in fact, a disturbingly accurate hybrid of 2 girls that were very close to me, in tone and mannerism. I knew guys like the jocks and girls like the rich bitches. Some of the dialogue was dated to a more modern era of teens, but in a lot of ways, it was universal in how youth is. One scene in particular, where if Max goes outside and sits on the swing in Chloe's backyard, you hear her and Chloe as little kids, talking about the crazy things they're going to do when they grow up. Space pirates, and queens of the solar system, and other goofy, and far fetched things. I have had those exact kinds of conversations with my closest friends when I was young. Bottom line, the game wasn't perfect, but as you so clearly stated, that doesn't mean it's not good, or can't be someone's favorite game. If your issue is the games rating, well that's the only way people can express their love of something in a metric way. So yeah, the scores might be inflated, based on simple fan enjoyment of the game, but that's what you get with metric systems. It's still a good game for many people, not you obviously, and that's fine.
Zontar said:
My favourite game in the world is one that only has a 63% on metacritic, and while I love the game to death I wouldn't give it more then a 7.5 if I was being generous and more likely just slap a 7 on it and be done with it due to my understanding that while I love it enough to sink 500 hours into a single save file it's not actually that great of a game.
Life is Strange got a reaction that seems in line with Arkham Knight getting 9s and 10s despite not even being playable.
Except is
is playable, and it is a complete game now. Though since it was episodic by design, I don't really consider that a problem against the game. Sure, we might debate the quality of the story now that it's complete, and I personally wasn't overly thrilled with the ending, but I also saw it coming. Hell, even the developer of the game said that the ending might not be great, citing how time travel stories tend to have messy endings, you know, due to all that time travel paradoxing and plot holes because of it. But that's just a problem with time travel stories. They are inherently messy, and never make sense if you sit down and pull at all the plot threads. Only if they are a closed time loop do they even remotely make sense, but this wasn't a closed loop story. So yeah, it's not a great ending. That doesn't remove the fact that I felt genuine anxiety and fear at the end of episode 2, based on how the climax builds up. How, even though I was pretty confident I could resolve that event in a good way, I was still worried. Which is a rare event in games, to make me actually feel emotions for the pixelated people. So yeah, it's a good game, you didn't like it, but that doesn't mean it's not a good game. Because like you said, a game doesn't have to be perfect, to be beloved by players, given you like a game that's only a 7.5 at best.