It wasn't THAT bad!

Karma168

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Nov 7, 2010
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Whenever we read/hear/watch an opinion piece on a film/game we haven't personally viewed yet we often base our opinion of that film on the piece. However if we eventually do decide to watch/play it we find we have a different view than the one we formed based on that initial review.

So pretty straight forward - is there a film/book/game you've read reviews of before buying, formed an opinion on that media only to watch/read/play it and find you have a completely different view?

For me a good example is the Green Lantern movie. Wasn't that fussed about seeing it anyway - was a dvd movie, not a cinema movie - but after watching the MovieBob review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/3557-Green-Lantern] and all the other threads/posts about how god awful the film was I decided it wasn't even worth the dvd.

The other day it was on a movies channel and I decided what the hell; watched it and all I could think at the end was "meh". Don't get me wrong this movie is not 'great', and nowhere near the quality of the Marvel movies, but it's not the steaming turd people had made it out to be. The action scenes were passable, the CGI was ok (actually worked quite well for the suit in my opinion) and the story, while not Iron Man quality, did the job. Maybe I wasn't as invested as a GL fan would be but this film was at worst a typical action movie.
 

Prime_Hunter_H01

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Dec 20, 2011
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My friend says that I am weird being "Meh, its good enough" for Neon Genesis Evangelion.

He is on the side that hates it and he has only ever met people that hate it, and mostly you hear the ones who hold it as the best thing ever and the ones who thing it is the worst pile of shit. I think the first neutral responses I have seen were on this site during those few Critical Misses.

I like it enough and i can forgive the many problems with its characters, mostly because I can dissect anything and in my mind focus on whats good and forgive whats bad.

So already altering the main topic i will always counter with, "It's not THAT good" and "It's not THAT bad."

It is not some gem of anime that any fan must see, nor is even close to one of the worst examples of anime.
 

Norithics

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Jul 4, 2013
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I find that I almost never agree with anybody on movies. I'm not celebrity obsessed, so I never actually know the actors' names and thus I can only judge them on their acting abilities within the film. Also, though I know of and understand tropes, I can watch a movie without checking off a mental list of the ones used in it... all of which puts me perpendicular to practically everybody I know.

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence was a good example of a video game I personally loved but was panned. Sure, it shows its age now, but at the time it was very decent. Lords of Shadow was much in that same vein, and the common byline of "LOL GODOFWAR" was especially funny because LoI had done all those battle mechanics before GoW was even a thing. So it was more like Castlevania ripped off Castlevania.
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
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Maybe Deadpool and Lollipop Chainsaw?

Right off the bat they'll be pretty polarizing to anybody who plays them just because of the sense of humor they use, which will either have people like me laughing our heads off or people not like me rolling their eyes and scoffing about how they're trying too hard. Add in the fact that they're both pretty short (though honestly, for a spectacle hack&slash game five-six hours is about how long it takes before they start wearing out their welcome on single play-throughs so I don't know why that always seems to be such a sticking point) and both do the same sort of light attack/heavy attack/ranged attack trifecta that third-person action games always have, and it's pretty much a perfect combination for everyone to look at it and go "Meh."

Otherwise, there aren't many things I've read the reviews of before trying myself and found that I ended up liking it where the reviewer didn't. More like I hold the contradictory opinion to the mob mentality of people who would be getting enraged over something in an internet forum (such as Mass Effect, Diablo, or Star Wars). So... you know... that's always fun.
 

Tanis

The Last Albino
Aug 30, 2010
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GOD HAND:
Reviews, at least when they first started coming out, were REALLY harsh on the game.

Yet, it's one of my favorite games on the PS2.
 

Total LOLige

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Jul 17, 2009
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The Doom film. It really wasn't that bad of a film, there was some good actiony bits and face it Karl Urban is the ultimate badass. Disclaimer: I have never played any of the doom games, so maybe my opinion would be different if I had.

I also liked the Max Payne film, sure it butchered the Max Payne story a bit but it was a nice film with some cool effects.
 

AD-Stu

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Oct 13, 2011
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Harry Potter was probably my biggest about face - not because the reviews and opinions I'd heard of it were bad per se (quite the contrary), but everything I'd heard about it had convinced me it wasn't something I'd be interested in.

Oops. Started reading the books just to kill some time about the time that Half Blood Prince was released and by the time I'd caught up I was as champing at the bit for Deathly Hallows as any other fan of the series. I think we even ended up with two copies of the final book, because the copy we ordered online hadn't arrived before we were due to get on a plane for a week's holiday, and I didn't want to wait that long to read it so I picked up another copy at the airport :p
 

piinyouri

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Mar 18, 2012
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I have this all over the place with games.

I've stated multiple times before that I greatly enjoyed Too Human and Two Worlds, but another universally hated game I liked was Might and Magic 9.
This may have to do with it being one of the first M&M's I played and I got it for like 3 bucks out of a bargain rack in the checkout of a grocery store. (I miss those bins...)

Some other examples:
Hellgate London
Far Cry 2
Quest 64 (It just started being fun once I realized WATER MAGIC WATER MAGIC WATER MAGIC)
Thief Deadly Shadows (I absolutely love this game. I can;'t find much fault at all with it)
Deus Ex Invisible War (First DE game I played. Now I will agree the game is as buggy as you've heard and then some. I've never even been able to beat the console version because it will ALWAYS lock up in a loading screen somewhere and corrupt the save. Still, when it worked, I had a blast.)
 

MysticSlayer

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Apr 14, 2013
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The Echo (2008). I heard almost nothing but negative things about it before watching it. While it made pretty much every mistake a film could make in terms of lighting, acting, and pacing, I still enjoyed the film and watch it pretty much every chance I get.

There was also Mass Effect 3. While I had issues with virtually everything others had issues with, I didn't think it was as bad as people claimed and actually enjoyed most of it. Mostly, I view it as just a game that had a lot of great ideas but didn't implement them as well as they could have been.

Bleach. Regardless of its many fans, there were a few serious anime fans that wrote incredibly scathing reviews of it and generally painted its audience as just a bunch of dumb teenagers that had only ever seen the show without watching "real anime". For some reason, I accepted that position, which is odd for me to do when people take their hate as far as those people did. It also didn't help that my friends who loved it could only complain about how it was going downhill. I eventually decided to watch some episodes, and while I'm not in a rush to watch the ones I haven't gotten to yet (too many other shows I enjoy more), it is still a decently enjoyable show to watch every once in a while.
 

Kolby Jack

Come at me scrublord, I'm ripped
Apr 29, 2011
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Karma168 said:
Whenever we read/hear/watch an opinion piece on a film/game we haven't personally viewed yet we often base our opinion of that film on the piece. However if we eventually do decide to watch/play it we find we have a different view than the one we formed based on that initial review.

So pretty straight forward - is there a film/book/game you've read reviews of before buying, formed an opinion on that media only to watch/read/play it and find you have a completely different view?

For me a good example is the Green Lantern movie. Wasn't that fussed about seeing it anyway - was a dvd movie, not a cinema movie - but after watching the MovieBob review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/3557-Green-Lantern] and all the other threads/posts about how god awful the film was I decided it wasn't even worth the dvd.

The other day it was on a movies channel and I decided what the hell; watched it and all I could think at the end was "meh". Don't get me wrong this movie is not 'great', and nowhere near the quality of the Marvel movies, but it's not the steaming turd people had made it out to be. The action scenes were passable, the CGI was ok (actually worked quite well for the suit in my opinion) and the story, while not Iron Man quality, did the job. Maybe I wasn't as invested as a GL fan would be but this film was at worst a typical action movie.
That's exactly what I went through too. Heard all the bile spewing about Green lantern, decided to just completely pass on it. I like GL, but he's not really top-of-the-list for me. Then I saw the movie (with no commercials) on I think TNT or some channel and decided to see what the fuss was about. Maybe it's because I had such low expectations going in, but I actually thought it was ok. A solid C+. It certainly could have been better, but I can't really understand the pure hatred people like Moviebob have for it. Then again, I still haven't seen The Amazing Spider-man (I'm not a Spider-fan), but I can already tell that Moviebob's extreme hatred of it is unjustified.
 

Tono Makt

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Mar 24, 2012
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Sucker Punch.

Yes, that movie. That hated, pilloried, reviled movie by Zach Snyder. With the girls in skimpy clothing fighting like ninja's, and trying to call it "Empowerment".

It wasn't that bad.
 

Furioso

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Jun 16, 2009
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Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. Yup, I went there............... I like making crazy cars and stuff, ok!? It's fun!
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
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Tono Makt said:
Sucker Punch.

Yes, that movie. That hated, pilloried, reviled movie by Zach Snyder. With the girls in skimpy clothing fighting like ninja's, and trying to call it "Empowerment".

It wasn't that bad.
Apparently I'm just totally asexual, because I watched it, thought the story was overdone, the action was excellent and the music was awesome, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. And then I read reviews that said it was terrible because the girls were underdressed, something that I hadn't even noticed. At all. For all I remember, they could have been in burkhas.
 

Kingjackl

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Nov 18, 2009
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I got that feeling with the first Michael Bay Transformers films. I know a lot of people in the real world liked it, but the way I've seen people going on about it within the 'Moviebob' sphere of the internet, you'd think it was the coming of the Antichrist. I thought it was an alright summer blockbuster.

Other things? Mass Effect 3's ending springs to mind; I get why people were upset, I just can't sympathise since I thought it was just a bit of harmless silliness. I also enjoyed the Amazing Spiderman movie and most of the Call of Duty games.
 

scorptatious

The Resident Team ICO Fanboy
May 14, 2009
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Well I've recently seen The Lone Ranger, and I actually found it to be pretty good. Not great, but I didn't found anything too wrong with it.

Apparently though, everyone else seems to hate this movie, Movie Bob in particular seems to absolutely despise it. Saying that one scene at the end was flipping off fans of the old show.

My dad, who was a fan of the original show, saw the movie with me, and did you know what he did when he saw that scene? He laughed! He enjoyed the movie overall.

I guess he and I just have really bad taste in movies. :/
Tanis said:
GOD HAND:
Reviews, at least when they first started coming out, were REALLY harsh on the game.

Yet, it's one of my favorite games on the PS2.
I saw an LP of the game, and it does look very good.

I mean c'mon, anything with a POISONOUS CHIHUAHUA has to be good right?
 

Azaraxzealot

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Dec 1, 2009
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Fable 3 and Crackdown 2. I have no CLUE as to why people hate them. Youd think no one ACTUALLY played the games or they're spoiled by good games so much that they honestly can not tell what a bad game is anymore, so any game that even comes in a smidgen too low of their expectations is automatically the most horrible thing ever. And judging from Disqus comments, they upvote anyone who says either one sucked.
 

Ihateregistering1

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Mar 30, 2011
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This is why I can't watch MovieBob reviews anymore. If you don't like a movie, cool, got it, you're a critic, I'm here to listen to YOUR opinion of it, but so many of his reviews reek of a "I hated it, and if you like it you're a moron and/or terrible human being" attitude (see his review of "Fast Five" for a good example).
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
19,568
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Ponyo

It's a bit of an odd duck, but I never really understood why this was so generally hated. I found it a fun little movie despite being slightly weird around the edges.
 

Tsun Tzu

Feuer! Sperrfeuer! Los!
Legacy
Jul 19, 2010
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Hunted: The Demon's Forge...

Near universally canned in reviews, but, hell, I enjoyed it enough to finish the game.
 

nymz

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Apr 1, 2010
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The Simpsons Skateboarding is my favourite skating game. It is also the only one I have played. Reviews aren't happy about it though.