Jim Sterling reviewed Zelda BOTW today, then angry comments exploded, site down multiple times...

[Fappy]

Fucking babies. These people will never change.

 

[Xan Krieger]

Those people would hate me then because I don't believe there's ever been a good Legend of Zelda game until they get a protagonist who isn't an elf. Elves are bitches and never worth anything, maybe if they had a hero who was good I'd play them. That said I've been loving the rage, it's not often we get to see people try to outzealot other groups (see also No Man's Sky).

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Is it always this bad in games media? Is it a Zelda thing? Are these just kids?

To answer these questions in order:
Sadly yes, no, and no.
No, these types of reactions are the result of the more extreme members of a fandom that cannot tolerate any perceived slight against their precious entertainment property. It's absolute utter insanity and sadly far too common.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Jesus christ, people like this are actually fucking stupid and have nothing satisfying in their pathetic lives, don't they? Cunts

 

[pookie101]

the identity of alot of these people revolves around their fandom.. either zelda and/or nintendo so anything that puts that in a negative light personally insults them hence the vicious responses.

that said seriously.. go outside... without your switch

 

[Casual Shinji]

Is it always this bad in games media? Is it a Zelda thing? Are these just kids?

I think it's a combination of that and the fact that Jim Sterling has had a bit of a bone to pick with Nintendo for the past couple of months, which I guess makes people assume this being the reason he was more harsh to it than most other review sites.

Jim can on occasion have quite a dissenting opinion on certain games, like when he praised the inferior inFAMOUS: Second Son as being the best in the franchise. But in times like those I just do what every normal person should and shake my cane at the screen and continue on with my day. This review also got a bit of an eyebrow crease from me, but yeah, that's it. Though some people want to throw an impotent tantrum, I guess.

 

[peabuddie]

Reviewer doesn't give a game 100/10 Game of the Century, unstable fanboys go apeshit. In other news, water is wet.

Sadly, this is nothing new. It's the culmination of decades of blind brand loyalty by insecure fans and unscrupulous review outlets giving fellatios to publishers.

Wow, what a bunch of idiots. Why would they even care? Does a review that they don't agree with somehow diminish their enjoyment of the game, or their opinion of it?

You know what, now that I said it I think it actually does. This kind of behavior is not that different from how people refuse to accept that an idea, opinion or a situation is bad just because it's from the political party that they agree with, or that it's good just because it's proposed by the opposing political party. Most people are stupid and therefore they are prone to being dogmatic about something.

I've noticed the trend in gaming as a whole. metacritic use to have some weight for me now it's ridiculous. Every single game is 10/10! Which leads to 0/0 from others trying to balance the ridiculousness of 10/10's. There cannot be THAT many games that are perfect. 10/10 is perfect! The perfect game is rare. It's an overall loss of reason, logic and the ability to be objective that seems to rule western society. Emotion is everything. "I played this game 1 hour and it's the greatest game ever made!" 10/10!

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

How old are these people? I mean really? Because I see no reality in which anyone above the age of 14 could throw such a hissy fit over such a thing.

I've never been able to understand fanboyism, or even the capacity for such. I'm not a very passionate person about anything, which is perhaps why I've never been interested in team sports or getting invested in some franchise. Where does this mentality come from? Is it a remnant of a more primitive mind, a frantic search for a tribe to belong to? And when that tribe, even thinks of something that could be perceived as a threat, they flip shit? And even then I'd refer to my first paragraph in this post. It's infantile beyond belief. Get a fucking job, hippies! Or if you're still in school, do your fucking homework and shut up.

I'm actually rather glad that most things I liked as a kid were ultimately a) not very good to begin with or b) ended in time to not stagnate and make me into one of these monsters, or c) things I outgrew. The Pok?mon anime wasn't very good, Animaniacs ended almost 2 decades ago, Lord of the Rings was 3 films and done, and my parents were good enough to not let me overindulge myself in Star Wars paraphernalia. Unlike many people it seems, I'm able to let things go, or be satisfied with them as they are. The LOTR films haven't gone anywhere, they're still on my shelf, fantastic as ever, aging like fine wine.

 

[Yoshi178]

pretty silly that 79/81 reviews can all be a mixture of 10/10 and 9.5/10 scores and how they can all suddenly be undermined by 2 measly reviews to bring the score down a point.
that said 97/100 is still an incredible score to have on metacritic. Nintendo should be proud regardless.



also this gives a clear explanation on the scores LOL

Slant Magazine even gave No Man's Sky a 4.5/5 stars review. funny that. XD

http://www.slantmagazine.com/games/review/no-mans-sky

 

[Zhukov]

that said 97/100 is still an incredible score to have on metacritic. Nintendo should be proud regardless.

Wait, it's only a 97 now?

Well, that means it's officially, demonstrably, objectively worse than Grand theft Auto 4.

Rockstar beats Nintendo forever! It's official! Metacritic says so!

No wonder Jim's review has the Nintendo fanboys tearfully howling with impotent rage.

 

[BrawlMan]

Wow, what a bunch of idiots. Why would they even care? Does a review that they don't agree with somehow diminish their enjoyment of the game, or their opinion of it?

You know what, now that I said it I think it actually does. This kind of behavior is not that different from how people refuse to accept that an idea, opinion or a situation is bad just because it's from the political party that they agree with, or that it's good just because it's proposed by the opposing political party. Most people are stupid and therefore they are prone to being dogmatic about something.

Because some people are that insecure about silly things. If I freaked over every review that gave poor score to a game I loved or a title I hated, then I would be dead by now from stress. Paraphrasing Yahtzee, if you enjoy a game, then other peoples differing opinions should not bother you.

Most people can't afford to buy and play every game, either because of time, money, or both, so they have to make choices about what they play, and they want to feel like they made the right choice. So it's not enough for the game that they picked to be good, it also has to be THE BEST. If they didn't pick the best choice then they made the wrong choice, and if they're wrong then they're stupid, and they can't be stupid, they're not going to let some reviewer tell them they're stupid!

And that's why these review scores matter to people, even though that kind of thinking is utterly ridiculous.

I can't afford the luxury to play every game either, so I know to pick (or usually pre-order a game early in advance) I know I am going to play. The worse that can happen is me cancelling my pre-order, if I don't like what I can see. Besides not every game comes out great as expected. I sucks, but I am not going to ruin other peoples' day just because of differing opinion. I'll respectfully disagree, but call out bullshit if a reviewer intentionally leaves out information to just for click-baiting. Or if it's obvious that reviewer only played a few hours of the game and based their opinion off that. I.E, IGN's review of God Hand. If those fans or gamers don't like it, then they need either quit playing games altogether or just suck it up and get over themselves. Either way, I agree with everything you mentioned.

Jim could have given it a 9.999 and there are people who would have bitched about it.

Slightly unrelated, but I remember Adam Sessler once commenting on how stupid he found those types of scores, partly because he would see people argue that a game that got a 9.8 was better than one that got a 9.6 like those fractions of points mean anything.

By 2009 or so, I realized how pointless professional review scores can be. Granted, it did not take much; what with whatever bullcrap IGN, GameSpot, Game Spy, and certain other sites were pulling off over the mid 2000s. Though Sessler is guilty of practicing the point difference in his early career. Back before X-Play, the show was called GameSpot TV (and then Extended Play before dropping it to just X) and they did scores on a 10 point scale. There reviews frequently had stuff with .5, .75, or .25. They eventually dropped the decimals when the show became X-play, because Adam and Morrigan (Kate Batello was long gone by that point) realized how stupid this was. That said, they were known for giving low scores over decent or good games for petty reasons when it was X-Play. Adam himself had problems with certain games and lowering scores, because of "content", or him not being able to beat one section due to being "too hard". Basically, his God of War Ascension review. And I don't even like God of War, and felt he was too harsh on the game, and was blaming it on his inadequacies. Plus there was the tirade of him and almost every other "professional" reviewer bitching about the Bros Before Hoes achievement. All I had to say was "*****, where was this 'morality' back when God of War first started, or all the praising you gave to the GTA series". I lost a lot of respect for him after that. Sorry for getting a bit off topic there

 

[babinro]

That's unfortunate.

Jim's site has been attacked before due to his PERSONAL OPINION on games and all it results in is yet another week or so of videos where he talks about it while taking jabs at the game.

I respect Jim's opinion as a game critique but as a human being Jim is flawed. He responds to childish behavior with his own childish behavior time and time again. It's bad and for me it really huts his content. That's the true downside of this fanboy attack.

I'd like to blame fanboys for this but lets face it, Jim KNEW there would be a backlash. He even made a video mocking fanboy backlash BEFORE his review came out. Here's hoping Jim treats this like a mature adult for a change and doesn't let the event negatively impact his videos for the next little while.

Note: I haven't played Zelda as I've been tired of open world games for a long time now...regardless of how amazing they are praised I find myself regretting the purchase. My response has nothing to do with the review or review score itself because this game was not something I was in the market for to begin with.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

7 means good but sadly you cannot rate nintendo or sony games less than 10. especially nintendo kiddy rehash games like zelda/mario. Best games of all times are just 80s on metacritic.

 

[lionsprey]

well im not surprised really. but i don't get why nintendo fanboys care what Jim says. i mean the guy really doesn't like nintendo, even if the game was perfect and worth 10 out of 10 he wouldn't give it that.

 

[Raddra]

There's something wrong with many nintendo fans. They take a cult mentality to the whole thing.

 

[Imre Csete]

It's not like he didn't clickbait fans on Destructoid with lulz worthy review scores before.

 

[Kaimax]

Is it always this bad in games media? Is it a Zelda thing? Are these just kids?

I think it's a combination of that and the fact that Jim Sterling has had a bit of a bone to pick with Nintendo for the past couple of months, which I guess makes people assume this being the reason he was more harsh to it than most other review sites.

Jim can on occasion have quite a dissenting opinion on certain games, like when he praised the inferior inFAMOUS: Second Son as being the best in the franchise. But in times like those I just do what every normal person should and shake my cane at the screen and continue on with my day. This review also got a bit of an eyebrow crease from me, but yeah, that's it. Though some people want to throw an impotent tantrum, I guess.

His score for Zelda BOTW is honestly quite weird, when he gave Nioh, a new IP from Koei Tecmo which at surface level is a Soulsbourne game a perfect 10/10.

Using that score as comparison, Zelda's 7/10 feels like he judged the game way harsher than usual. He also gave Horizon Zero Dawn a 95/100 (site still down, had to use metacritic's score).

 

[Eric the Orange]

It's not like he didn't clickbait fans on Destructoid with lulz worthy review scores before.

Clickbait is kind of a meaningless term on a site that gains nothing from "clicks".

 

[Exley97_v1legacy]

ITT: People immediately blaming ?fans' when a rather big game critic releases a critique of a game that is heavily marketed. Instead of, you know, the most logical issue being server overload due to too much traffic. Or as most call it, the website servers can't handle the influx of people wanting to read his critique. Nah, must be the fault of the ?fans'.

And yet, the hatedom is brushed under the rug. So tell me folks, what makes you believe it was ?fans' that were magically DDosing the site instead of members of the hatedom doing this?

I don't know exactly how The Twitters work so I apologize in advance if there is an easier way to share this but I think most people believe it's a DDoS because Jim Fucking Sterling Son is the one who said it was a DDoS.

https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/841054860921491456

To add to that, the Zelda subreddit is pretty salty about his review;

https://www.reddit.com/r/zelda/comments/5yzmvt/jim_sterlings_zelda_breath_of_the_wild_review_710/?st=j07g2777&sh=cd0c01fc

https://www.reddit.com/r/zelda/comments/5z0xr0/botw_breath_of_the_wild_dropped_from_a_98_to_a_97/

...So yeah, it's probably a safe assumption that the "lunatic fringe" of the Zelda fanbase is to blame.

I'll throw this in for good measure -- Sterling uses Cloudflare for hosting, and despite occasional flaps (like Cloudbleed) they are extremely good at what they do, and they're generally able to tell a malicious DDoS from an accidental DDoS generated by higher than normal demand for the site. I don't think Cloudflare would tell Sterling it was a DDoS attack if it was a simply a traffic spike.

 

[Varrick]

Is it always this bad in games media? Is it a Zelda thing? Are these just kids?

I think it's a combination of that and the fact that Jim Sterling has had a bit of a bone to pick with Nintendo for the past couple of months, which I guess makes people assume this being the reason he was more harsh to it than most other review sites.

Jim can on occasion have quite a dissenting opinion on certain games, like when he praised the inferior inFAMOUS: Second Son as being the best in the franchise. But in times like those I just do what every normal person should and shake my cane at the screen and continue on with my day. This review also got a bit of an eyebrow crease from me, but yeah, that's it. Though some people want to throw an impotent tantrum, I guess.

His score for Zelda BOTW is honestly quite weird, when he gave Nioh, a new IP from Koei Tecmo which at surface level is a Soulsbourne game a perfect 10/10.

Using that score as comparison, Zelda's 7/10 feels like he judged the game way harsher than usual. He also gave Horizon Zero Dawn a 95/100 (site still down, had to use metacritic's score).

I think some of that might have to do with certain design choices. For example, Zelda has a stamina bar and breakable weapons. Both of these, especially the stamina gauge, are things Jim is known to really hate in games. Horizon does not have a stamina gauge or breakable weapons, so right there might be a couple of reasons why Horizon was rated higher to Jim personally.