Glademaster said:
So you first in another post you basically say that Metacritic is pointless and irrelevant for a different reason and then say it is irrelevant for people expressing their opinion? That doesn't really make sense to me and also you are accusing me of doing so in the way you write your post just saying you aren't and then phrasing it the way you do makes about as much sense as saying "No offence but you are the biggest and most arrogant **** on the planet nay the whole of the great expanse of time and space." You could have easily said that they are idiots for review bombing and them, they are, their opinion are all acceptable instead of the you which does look like an accusation.
First: Metacritic is useless, because it aggregates subjective opinions. I did not like Black Ops for instance. It appears you did not either. Some people did. One of my friends loved the game to death. To put my view of the game as a 5/10 and his view of a 9/10 together does not tell us what the game is: it compromises both of our tastes.
To find out if I would like the game, I would find a reviewer with similar tastes to mine, and read his review. For instance, I often read "Wot I think" on Rock Paper Shotgun, or the reviews (and watch, of course) by Susan Arendt and Yahtzee on the escapist. By averaging all reviews, we end up with a mess, a compromise of the worst sort. I don't have a problem with people expressing their opinion. I question opinions, and I welcome you to question mine. That's not the point. Opinions are individual and subjective, you can't average them out to say what the average person will think: artistic tastes are wildly subjective, with a great deviance to their spread.
Glademaster said:
Just putting that out there before I properly reply to your post.
Why do people still pay attention to Metacritic? It's crowdsourcing of the worst kind, and while, as a nerdy maths sort, taking averages and polling aggregates seems like a good idea, trying to objectively scale subjective ratings of a subjective subject is pointless and stupid.
I really have no idea what you mean by BO going with old style play it was just CoD 4 in Vietnam with some slight additions that were no more than an expansion of old lean should even need to be mentioned as it should have never come out. Community features that we already have through other better means in the game does not justify it as a sequel or a spin off why would it? They weren't exactly ground breaking, unique or highly polished existing ideas.
Here, I would agree. It was very similar to CoD 4. Just like Starcraft 2 was just Starcraft with new units and textures. And Age of Empires 2 was just AoE 1 in the middle ages with some new units and "reskined" old ones. I dislike the claims of similarity, because, when it all comes down to it, most games are dreadfully similar, especially AAA ones. And when you start comparing them in genre: It becomes a mess. I could call Battlefield CoD with vehicles, or I could call Shogun 2, Civilisation with instanced tactical fights. I'm not diametrically opposed to your position: I agree, the games are similar. But at the same time, it's not simply a retread, or an expansion, which I'll detail further in a moment.
Glademaster said:
They've taken the same game and added a couple of killstreaks, weapons, 5ish new weapon types and a short campaign. It did not add to or provide any new experiences or ideas than any of the games that played before it as the last game to have some truly fresh features was WaW as stuff like throwing knives/tomahawks were already mods. All it did was expand slightly on previous concepts like killstreaks and weapons and added new maps. The only really new weapons I can actually think of are the Ballistic knife and Crossbow actually as all others were done before in other games.
No. It was not truly original. Nothing is. Mods are not the game, so the inclusion of throwing knives and what have you is original, but to MW2, while in BO, it is simply a retread of that. The campaign was dreadfully short, and pretty bad, but it was original: A new story, new characters, and cringeworthy voice over from an Australian playing someone from Alaska. Charming. On to the next bit, the maps were all new, and take a significant amount of effort to make. This can't be ignored. I still think the game is overpriced, but claims that nothing was done are wasteful. If you've done, or seen, any graphic design, you'll realise that to create these spaces takes a lot of time. All the other weapons were done in previous games? Nonsense. They were unique and different. But in essence, since they're all just a fire rate, a recoil stat, an ammo counter, and what have you, I'm willing to concede that no weapon in an FPS with a conventional effect is original. The AUG is indistinguishable from the Heavy's machine gun in TF2, bar the stat differences. I don't really care about the originality: A gun that shoots unicorns which turn into butterflies regenerating enemy health is original, but not necessarily fun (Although a gun that shoots unicorns would be funny).
Glademaster said:
So lets see "new" community features, 2 new weapons, slightly expanded oversaturated concepts and new maps and a campaign. I got more than that in Battle For Middle Earth 2 expansion were I got at least 3 new units for every race, a new race, maps and a new campaign. I don't see why it isn't a big stretch to say I think that BO is a medium-big expansion.
"New"? The series had not used things like the theatre mode, custom icons, or the playercard system previously. That makes them the definition of new. Of course, the only significant task is creating the theatre mode, and the rest is simple, but it is original. New maps, already gone over. I could mention new models for all the characters and weapons, which does take time, but that's pointless.
The real issue is, we have different definitions of expansion. I believe an expansion is a property which can run in-engine of the parent game, without compromising the working of that game, using most of the same resources and adding new features, or campaigns, or whatever. Case in point: Age of Empires expansions. At some point, this becomes technically impossible. Games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Black Ops could not adequately run in their predecessors system, that said, they do cost quite a bit for their content. Now on to my final point: I don't think Black Ops is an expansion pack- but it is overpriced. It took two years to make, it has a short singleplayer campaign, even for a shooter, and the multiplayer is certainly not as difficult to make as the singleplayer. It shouldn't cost the user as much to buy. I'd argue that series like Call of Duty would be a great thing, if they cost half the price. At their current price, they're hard to justify, but if they were priced similarly to an expansion pack, at around half price or less than a AAA release, the gradual improvements to gameplay and additions to the story would add up, and people would not care. Kind of like Valve's plan for episodic gaming (Where is episode 3????). It's the same reason I don't by the DLC for these games: I can't justify paying the amount for the content. These truly are expansion packs, but in this case, their worth is overstated by the price. I've almost reached the same point with the individual games themselves.
But this still doesn't detract from my point: Game reviews review the individual product. In the case of say, Black Ops, it isn't bad because it takes little work to make in comparison with a completely new property, or because it's a sequel, or because it contributes to cash grab sequels. It's bad because it's short, it's a bit ugly, it's not quite as fun as its competitors. For the price it cost, it's quite thin. You can get a specific ideal across in a review, as long as that ideal is pertinent to the quality of the game. If the game is bad, it gets a bad score: Being short, uninteresting, poorly made, etc, all are things which a reviewer should mention. But if say, Activision released Call of Duty 7 (I don't know what the official numbering is up to anymore), and it was actually just Call of Duty 4: Then it should get the same review score as Call of Duty 4-that's how an opinion should be formed. The point is, at the point where you've found a functionally identical product, your written review would also mention that it's the same game. It should be frowned on, and the correct way of protesting these things, is to not buy the game. It still has no bearing on the review score.
