Reviewers jumping on the hype train

[Evilsausage]

I expect a review variance on a say FPS even if all the reviewers were hardcore FPS players. I think the hardcore players are even harder on "their" games than other players. The opening post of this thread was about Diablo 3. I very much doubt the hardcore Diablo player community would end up rating Diablo 3 at 88. Like I said, most of the time people disagree with each other.

I don't know. From my experience reviewers with similar tastes rate games in similar ways. Also, the hardcore games of certain games in particular are often the odd ducks. They'll spend hundreds of hours on a game and stumble on the smallest details most players won't notice.

In the case of Diablo 3 it wheren't exacly small bugs.
Even if the reviewers didn't rate it on lots of hours played, Diablo 3 didn't exacly offer a great story either.
Usually ARPGs is based on the fun of looting, but that can't be it either...since D3 had a horrible loot system at start. Horrible Epic items and overall really bad chance to get decent loot.
So what was it based on? First of Diablo 3 wasn't all bad i have to admit, pretty fun at slaughtering mobs, most likey they guessed Diablo 3 would offer more in the end game(which they had not played yet). Sadly it didn't, all its flaws became very noticable.
My guess D3 had not been so highly praised if it had not been so hyped. Reviewers based the game on what they thought it would be (it was after all Blizzard) and ignored many warning signs.

This also become very noticable later on. Look at the console version, its usually seen as the better version.
Direct Control system which works nicely, no Online DRM, no auction house etc...Yet its rated lower then the PC version.
As if the reviewers at that Point already knows its not so fantastic, even if its technically better then the PC version.


Personally I Think a reviewer should atleast try to look a bit deeper when reviewing things. If Reviewers fail with having similar oppinions then what the buyers have. Then they are missleading and does their job poorly.
Note I don't blame single reviewers for giving D3 a good score, but it becomes weird when most of them does. Which highly goes against what many think.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I don't know. From my experience reviewers with similar tastes rate games in similar ways. Also, the hardcore games of certain games in particular are often the odd ducks. They'll spend hundreds of hours on a game and stumble on the smallest details most players won't notice.

As a hardcore TPS player, I would tear Uncharted apart with its unsound TPS mechanics whereas a casual shooter gamer probably wouldn't. Stuff like no camera sensitivity option (in all 3 Uncharteds) is a huge no-no for any shooter (thus you can't aim in the manner you would like, which is rather important) plus Uncharted's camera is so sluggish, circle for both roll and cover has never work (context sensitive controls never do), Uncharted does not have a proper shoulder swap (you can't aim initially off your left shoulder), etc. Now, I would still give Uncharted a positive review but an 8/10 is like the highest I'm going to go because of such simple mistakes. Those mechanical issues don't impact single player that much but they make MP nearly unplayable (playing against AI and humans are two very different things). That's pretty much what I mean about players that specialize in a genre being more critical. Seriously, the no camera sensitivity option in a shooter just shouldn't be done, that should be in Uncharted reviews but it's not.

Most mediums don't have fans that care about intricate rating systems, they'll just use simple systems like 1-5 stars, where 3 stars will still mean average.

As for you other example, that doesn't quite work. In school they are students. The ones who are good enough go on to be doctors, the bad ones who failed their exams do not.

3 stars is still better for average than 7/10.

I was saying if all you needed to pass and become a doctor was scoring 50% in classes and on tests, there'd be a lot of bad doctors.

I too think people were a bit too easily impressed by that game, but in the case of Final Fantasy XIII it may have had a lot to do with the context. While there were other Japanese RPG available when Final Fantasy XIII was released, it was Final Fantasy XIII that showed that the genre could compete in the big league. The game felt very next-gen, which was something people had been waiting for for years.

On the other, while many critisms are valid, Final Fantasy XIII did do many things right and I'm not surprised most reviewers enjoyed the game as much as they did.

FFXIII wasn't even the best JRPG that came out on its day of release. Resonance of Fate released the same day, great marketing decision Sega!!!

The discussions were much lighter back when the internet wasn't much of a thing, but even back then I saw letters in magazines written by gamers who disagreed with scores. I remember one magazine having a page for reader reviews. The advent of aggregator sites certainly escalated things, though.

You're always going to have readers complain about reviews regardless of what you are reviewing, you can't give in to "re-doing" a review or giving higher scores to other games.

I want to move this discussion further along by asking you: how would you improve gaming journalism while keeping in mind the (very) limited resources of websites and magazines?

I think there should be far more analysis of games vs the shooting is good so this shooter is a good game. We've come to the point that a developer competently making a shooter is a given most of the time. Naughty Dog made a decent shooter with the 1st Uncharted their first try, Bioware (an RPG dev) made a competent TPS with Mass Effect 2 and 3. Think back to how poor TPSs were before PS3/360, they were quite abysmal and usually were dependent on a lock-on mechanic instead of free-aim because the aiming sucked. A game like Syphon Filter on PS1 had bad aiming, even though it was good for its time, I still knew aiming could be much improved. I even played the original cover TPS, Winback, TPSs have come so far. It was actually RE4 that caused quite an improvement in 3rd-person shooting vs an actual TPS. I think a shooter just being good at shooting is no longer anything special, it's a given really. I think how good everything else from writing to level design should have far more importance than whether the gameplay is functional. I think aesthetics should take priority over graphical fidelity in regards to how good a game looks. I'm playing Shadow of Mordor now and it's pretty enjoyable but I kinda feel its combat is an exact copy of Batman and it doesn't feel like a fresh experience, I wouldn't mind seeing a reviewer spend a large chunk of the review analyzing that aspect. Batman has a good story going for it, boss fights, and better stealth; Shadow of Mordor really just has the combat which gets old due to it being not as fresh and being basically the only thing the game has to offer whereas combat in Batman is spaced out so it doesn't get old as fast. Stuff like how the Joker teeth were a guide for where the player was supposed to go in Arkham Asylum was great design choice instead of having an arrow point the player in the right direction. Greg Tito found the characters to be so bad in GTAV that he basically took off 3 points for that, which I love to see. Max Payne 3 is one of the worst games I've ever played because I hated the writing, the asthetics, and also the TPS mechanics (I'm stickler for TPS mechanics). Even if the shooting was better, I still would've had a bad experience. Max Payne 3's shooting did shine in close quarters combat but the level design had you in ranged combat so often. I think many of Jim Sterling's reviews were great from Batman Arkham Origins (tiny changes to a great system can "break" it for you) to Assassin's Creed 2 where he hated the change in structure (much like me) from the 1st game. How Yahtzee analyzes horror games is a good example as well.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Answer to BloatedGuppy

Dude, if you're going to respond to me, use the quote function. Otherwise it looks like you're trying to have a debate with someone who can't answer back.

Ohh so the reason can only be because of those damn people down voting things without a valid reason.

Because a tangible majority of metacritic scores are skewed to 10's or 1's, full of unsubstantiated bile or day one praise, there is very little to nothing of value in the final score. Anyone supporting it is simply doing so because it re-affirms an existing confirmation bias. Scores in general are a worthless metric of quality. User scores doubly so.

Blizzard has a very loyal fanbase and is a big name in the industry so ofc it will sell. But Diablo 3 sold 6.5 million copies the first week while Ros sold 2,7 million. Thats about 65% less.

Yep. Which is perfectly in keeping with normal sales drops for expansion packs.

Here's a list of the best selling games of all time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games

What a flop.

I never said the 3.9 user review was fair, just that it showed a different side that wasn't so fantastic about the game. Btw do you think 8.9 is a fair avrage rating?

In the universe of 7-10 rating scores for games? Eh, it's not far off. In an actual world where we use the entire 1-10? Maybe a 5 at launch if you take Error 37 into account? Game had a LOT of problems.

Seen many threads on the internet mentioning what a dissapointment it was. Even Forbes listed it as one of the most dissapointing games of 2012.

Confirmation bias. You view those threads as accurate sources, whilst hand-waving positive reviews as biased or incomplete. Everyone has their own personal disappointments. Go down that list of the top selling games of all time. I bet you could start a thread on what a trainwreck/disappointment ANY of them were, and have a chorus of people chiming in.

I have done a couple Heroics and no it isn't really hard. Nothing like BCs heroics before they nerfed it.

Yeah because Heroics aren't hard. They're CASUAL content. Most people were geared and through them in a week. So congratulations, you did casual content meant for casual players and then shit-talked the game on the internet for being too simplified and easy. Hey guys, I beat DOTA 2 easy bots. Game is for nubs.

Yeah im sure there is challange at Mythic but its will just be same area now a third time with more people. Its already kinda boring doing things doing over and over.

So because you don't find the challenging content interesting, it doesn't exist, right?

I never said I had solid facts behind it to begin with.

If you don't have solid facts to substantiate a claim, don't make the claim. Forum nattering is and has always been profoundly useless as a source of information. Idiots on forums have been foretelling the imminent death of the game SINCE VANILLA.

Here's a Penny Arcade rant about the forums from 2005:

Spoiler

There was some sort of roiling tempest on the WoW boards, something about GM abuse, or maybe a gamemaster was just a member of a guild when he was off work, or maybe it wasn?t a gamemaster at all but just a Blizzard employee, or some other scenario completely inextricable from the noise all forums generate. I could not reconstruct the trajectory of the complaint, though it has been suggested that a person did something bad, which (obviously!) I?m opposed to.

In any case, real gamemaster abuse looks like this. If you are cowering and afraid, prostrate and shoeless on the cobblestones in Stormwind, some kind of abuse has occurred. That is how you will know.

Those Goddamn forums are an unceasing wall of useless jungle sounds. While we?re on the topic.

Fuck only knows what?s going on in there. Every class specific board has its own cadre of misunderstood prophets, leading their /signatories to a statistically equitable promised land. Each profession crawls toward a unique doom which only they can perceive! That is why it is critical that their grim revelations be bumped at fifteen minute intervals, lest their potent visions lose rank to fresher jeremiads.

Perhaps it is true that outside my awareness, mathematical proofs of my deficiencies throb wetly. It would not surprise me. My official proclamation is as follows: they are allowed to fix each profession?s debilitating and potentially imaginary bugaboos after they get their server downtime and performance under control. I?ve never played a game where the servers were more stable when it was a beta, but eventually the novelty of that fact ceases being delightful. Whimsy recedes and the amount on the monthly bill seems to rise off the paper like braille, growing in stature.

Still think the fucking forums are a quality source of information?

Funny how you defend the professional reviewers as long they praise the game even though most of them haven't gotten near end game content. But im not allowed to criticize what I have seen so far.

Defend the reviewers? Show me a specific review, and I'll tell you whether I think it's worth anything or not. We're discussing your "review", which so far has been 50% "I did a heroic dungeon" and 50% "Some people on the forums are unhappy".

Mages are trash, probably the worst they have ever been in WoWs history. Really bad survivabilty and horrible damage. Let me guess im not allowed to say that, since I don't have the full arena set? Look up the mage forum and see how satisfied they are.

Ah yes. The MAGE FORUM.

I have nothing against hard Pvp content. But if the pvp in itself isn't that fun due to less skills, insane health pools and a bad class i see no reason to do it. I might later with some better gear. But right now its too little about skill and too much about what class you have.

Said unskilled people since the beginning of time. Do you know what other competitive PvP games have heard that same complaint? If you guessed "all of them" you win a prize. And I'm not shit talking you, I'm not particularly skilled either. Which is why I don't carp about how "it's not skill based" when I lose.

But your free to list any major new features i might have missed. Good luck with that btw

Why would I take the time to do that when A) you've already indicated you won't be receptive and B) I have absolutely no interest in whether or not you like WoD or any desire to change your mind about it. We're not debating the quality of the game. We're debating how many of your criticisms have been formed out of purest ass-pull.

But at that time there where at least alot that felt new.

So the game no longer feels new to you, therefore it "lacks content", "is lazy", has "sucky" new features, and is rapidly shedding players because some yahoo said so on the forums and you found it utterly convincing. This, in a nutshell, is why user reviews are hot garbage and cannot be relied on for anything. You are making my argument for me so much more eloquently than I could ever hope to make it myself.

Once again never said user reviews are better. But most games with a low user score usually is flawed in some way.

All games are flawed in some way.

Something the majority of professional reviews rarely bring up.

I don't think I've ever read a professional review that didn't touch on at least one flaw. Do a great many professional reviews fellate their subjects? Absolutely. Are their a mountain of issues with them, and the industry in general? Absolutely. But professional reviews don't say "I couldn't log in on the first day...0/10" and have that stand as their score for the game for the rest of time. How helpful is that review to someone buying a month later? A year later?

 

[Smigglebops]

I just wanna say that not all user reviews are garbage, but as for metacritic user reviews... Those are just plain bad. If anything, at least professional reviewers can write coherent sentences and usually expound upon their opinions rather than just "This game is shit, 1/10 would not play again"- dudebroguy99

 

[NPC009]

In the case of Diablo 3 it wheren't exacly small bugs.
Even if the reviewers didn't rate it on lots of hours played, Diablo 3 didn't exacly offer a great story either.
Usually ARPGs is based on the fun of looting, but that can't be it either...since D3 had a horrible loot system at start. Horrible Epic items and overall really bad chance to get decent loot.
So what was it based on? First of Diablo 3 wasn't all bad i have to admit, pretty fun at slaughtering mobs, most likey they guessed Diablo 3 would offer more in the end game(which they had not played yet). Sadly it didn't, all its flaws became very noticable.
My guess D3 had not been so highly praised if it had not been so hyped. Reviewers based the game on what they thought it would be (it was after all Blizzard) and ignored many warning signs.

No, I don't think it's hype exactly. Hype is something you shape through marketing, this may very well have been genuine excitement. You know how I said editors tend to put fans of series/genres on games? There's a very decent change most of the Diablo 3 reviewers were fans of the series and just really glad to have a new installment and enjoyed nearly every minute of it, flaws be damned. They were excited, just like many other people. Normally you'd see one of two who were heavily disappointed, but I guess Blizzard lucked out on the reviewer lottery. It happens.

I have to admit, though that I have no idea how D3 was reviewed. Blizzard may have provided a seperate server for beta players and reviewers, keeping tight control over the max amount of people logging in and playing. And then normal players get to the regular servers - all at once - and experience a something a lot less smooth. But this is just guessing on my part. Didn't work for a mag/site that covers PC games at the time it came out, so I can't check with coleagues.

Personally I Think a reviewer should atleast try to look a bit deeper when reviewing things. If Reviewers fail with having similar oppinions then what the buyers have. Then they are missleading and does their job poorly.
Note I don't blame single reviewers for giving D3 a good score, but it becomes weird when most of them does. Which highly goes against what many think.

Of course they should. But please remember many of us aren't paid nearly enough to do so. We have to make a living, too. Throw in strict deadlines and asshole publishers (in case of the largest franchises), and... yeah. It's not a good situation.

 

[NPC009]

As a hardcore TPS player, I would tear Uncharted apart with its unsound TPS mechanics whereas a casual shooter gamer probably wouldn't. Stuff like no camera sensitivity option (in all 3 Uncharteds) is a huge no-no for any shooter (thus you can't aim in the manner you would like, which is rather important) plus Uncharted's camera is so sluggish, circle for both roll and cover has never work (context sensitive controls never do), Uncharted does not have a proper shoulder swap (you can't aim initially off your left shoulder), etc. Now, I would still give Uncharted a positive review but an 8/10 is like the highest I'm going to go because of such simple mistakes. Those mechanical issues don't impact single player that much but they make MP nearly unplayable (playing against AI and humans are two very different things). That's pretty much what I mean about players that specialize in a genre being more critical. Seriously, the no camera sensitivity option in a shooter just shouldn't be done, that should be in Uncharted reviews but it's not.

Yes, we do tend to notice small things, but at the same time we're writing for a fairly broad audience: pretty much any gamer that's interested in it. Since the amount of space we get is limited, we have to ask ourselves which of those things are most relevant to our readers. Something like that camera may not make the cut, because the reviewer assumes readers are familiar with unmovable cameras and didn't find that the camera noticebly impacted the game.

But, hey, for all I know Sony played the asshole card and made reviewers come offer to the office, had them play the game there and didn't give them much time with the MP, forcing them to base most of the review on the singleplayer. That is something that happens. I honestly don't know if its the case here, but it could be.

(And I understand why websites/magazines would send their reviewers to something like that. Having a review up on releaseday is very important nowadays, because the reviews of triple A titles attract a lot of readers. Reviewing a retail copy and publishing the review a week after everyone else means sacrificing a lot of traffic.)

3 stars is still better for average than 7/10.

But can you prove 7 is the avarage? I mean, I know it looks that way, but I think that has a lot to do with the games being reviewed.

I was saying if all you needed to pass and become a doctor was scoring 50% in classes and on tests, there'd be a lot of bad doctors.

And that's why you have to score 55% or 60%. And these scores don't rate doctors, they rate students. Someone who scraped by in med school but did pass every test and evaluation is qualified to be a doctor. He's the worst of the best.

Actually, that is close to games. Scores rate games, but most people won't play anything under a 55 or 60. The games with the low scores fail. The game that do get 55-60s are also the worst of the best.

FFXIII wasn't even the best JRPG that came out on its day of release. Resonance of Fate released the same day, great marketing decision Sega!!!

Sega is one of those companies I'll never understand... (I liked RoF, too. It felt much more coherent than FFXIII.)

You're always going to have readers complain about reviews regardless of what you are reviewing, you can't give in to "re-doing" a review or giving higher scores to other games.

Yep, especially when many the complaints come from people who haven't even played the game. They see some quirky thing they've never heard of before see a higher score than some game they like and flip.

I do like the idea of second opinions, though, if only to get it through to some of those thick skulls that opinions are a thing and that they can vary from person to person.

I think there should be far more analysis of games vs the shooting is good so this shooter is a good game. We've come to the point that a developer competently making a shooter is a given most of the time. Naughty Dog made a decent shooter with the 1st Uncharted their first try, Bioware (an RPG dev) made a competent TPS with Mass Effect 2 and 3. Think back to how poor TPSs were before PS3/360, they were quite abysmal and usually were dependent on a lock-on mechanic instead of free-aim because the aiming sucked. A game like Syphon Filter on PS1 had bad aiming, even though it was good for its time, I still knew aiming could be much improved. I even played the original cover TPS, Winback, TPSs have come so far. It was actually RE4 that caused quite an improvement in 3rd-person shooting vs an actual TPS. I think a shooter just being good at shooting is no longer anything special, it's a given really.

That's true. Making a decent game is not much of an accomplishment anymore, meaning there's more room to appreciate the things that actually make a game good. I think it would be hard to rate a game by focusing so much on mechanics, though. It's incredibly hard for a developer to make something that's special everyway you look at it. Few have the resources, knowledge and skills to make something like that. So what developers do is they aim for 'adequate' in some departments while making sure the game truly shines in others.

The Elder Scrolls worlds would be good example: they don't look all that special. You may even call them ugly compared to other games, but the worlds are huge and before you know it you're paying more attention to the quest being given that the ugly textures on the quest giver's face.

I think how good everything else from writing to level design should have far more importance than whether the gameplay is functional. I think aesthetics should take priority over graphical fidelity in regards to how good a game looks. I'm playing Shadow of Mordor now and it's pretty enjoyable but I kinda feel its combat is an exact copy of Batman and it doesn't feel like a fresh experience, I wouldn't mind seeing a reviewer spend a large chunk of the review analyzing that aspect.

And that's a tricky part. When the amount of space is limited, what can you as a reviewers spend on comparisons, knowing that not all your readers will have played the game you're talking about? Plus, familiarity means different things to different people. To some it makes a game feel old, while others like that they'll quickly get a hang of the game.

But in the case of Shadow of Mordor it would be which to refer to other games. Examples can be very helpful when you're telling your readers to imagine a game they've only seen screenshots and trailers of.

Greg Tito found the characters to be so bad in GTAV that he basically took off 3 points for that, which I love to see. Max Payne 3 is one of the worst games I've ever played because I hated the writing, the asthetics, and also the TPS mechanics (I'm stickler for TPS mechanics). Even if the shooting was better, I still would've had a bad experience. Max Payne 3's shooting did shine in close quarters combat but the level design had you in ranged combat so often. I think many of Jim Sterling's reviews were great from Batman Arkham Origins (tiny changes to a great system can "break" it for you) to Assassin's Creed 2 where he hated the change in structure (much like me) from the 1st game. How Yahtzee analyzes horror games is a good example as well.

Those are the types of reviews I like as well. Reviewers that just sum up what they thought of parts of the game as if it's a paint by number thing are boring. I want to read about what a reviewer loved/hated about a game and why. I want to taste the disappointment, disgust, excitement and passion through the text! That's how I try to write my reviews as well.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

It's because reviews are subjective waffle to drive sales...they aren't really about giving an accurate representation of a game. I seem to recall in the early 90's there was a big thing about payed for reviews and even now things are much the same. The sad thing is that people require biased opinions from talentless nobodies to make their mind up for them because modern humans have been progressively brainwashed by advertising into believing that hyped things have more value (as opposed to the reality which is opposite).

 

[NPC009]

It's because reviews are subjective waffle to drive sales...they aren't really about giving an accurate representation of a game. I seem to recall in the early 90's there was a big thing about payed for reviews and even now things are much the same. The sad thing is that people require biased opinions from talentless nobodies to make their mind up for them because modern humans have been progressively brainwashed by advertising into believing that hyped things have more value (as opposed to the reality which is opposite).

You must a be popular at parties...

Frankly, if reviews were about boosting sales on behalf of the publisher I'd be eating a little more than potatoes and veggies tonight.

 

[Evilsausage]

Answer to BloatedGuppy

Dude, if you're going to respond to me, use the quote function. Otherwise it looks like you're trying to have a debate with someone who can't answer back.

Okay

1. Yup there is usually alot of 10s and 1s. But together you get a average score which can tell something about the games quality. Unlike many professional reviewes which in many cases are too nice with their rating.
There are plenty of games at Metacritic which has both high user and professional reviews. That is usually a sign the game is be good.

2. Yes im sure Blizzard made alot of money on D3. But you fail to get it, the reason I call it a flop is because its the first Blizzard game that I and many others concider a dissapointment.
Blizzard has been able to get a large loyal playerbase just because they have been know to deliver top notch stuff...
Also lets not forget Its first 10 million copies is more based on Diablo 2s success and how hyped its sequal was.
The real question is how excited how excited fans will be for future Diablo games...
Reaper of souls total sales seems to be about 1/3 of Diablo 3s sales, not exacly fantastic with such a massive marketing campaign.
Diablo 2s expansion sold more then 50% of Diablo 2s sales.

3. Good for you that you liked the game.

4. Why would it be more bias and less accurate then the professional reviewes you defend? Anyway it was just one example of many people being dissapointed with Diablo 3.
Okay gonna use the Phantom Menace referance again. You can find people complain about Lord of the Rings triology, but overall its well liked by most people. While Phantom Menace is seen as a dissapointment by alot larger ratio.
Your free to like Diablo 3 as much you want but your delusional if you think it wasn't conciderd a dissapointment to many others.

5. Thanks you, you just mentioned another reason WoD lacks end game content. Back in the day you usually needed to be atleast a bit careful even with normal instances. Now even "Heroics" are supposed to be casual and isn't even supposed to be a challange? How the fuck is that good game design? Thats just a massive snoozefest until you get to the supposed real endgame...yeah its a total mystery why im already bored.

6. Nope im sure it exist and that it can even be a bit fun. But two raids that you can go through over and over in different difficulties is hardly enough to blow my mind. Like many others im not a Hardcore raider so doubt i will spend much time with it. Its 2015 and people are fine with no more new end game content? We pay near 50 euro for a expansion + a subscription fee every month, with all the money they are making i think its fair to call them lazy.

7. My source of information was from my own experiance, me and many of my friends have already gotten bored of this expansion even though it is called "the best WoW expansion" by many Reviewers. Which I thought was odd, since to me it was: "meh...well atleast it wasn't about Pandas". As for the thread, yes its just a thread, never said it was truth...just my personal oppinon that I wouldn't be surprised if it was true.
Its not like your claim about the Star Wars prequels losing substationaly more viewers in ratio to what RoS lost to D3 was based on any fact either.

8. Since when was this thread about me giving a review of a game? I only gave reasons to why I thought some games where overrated and by looking at the user reviewes many others where also not as impressed.
Funny how you expect a full scale review in a forum discussion while you at the same time don't even name any examples of new things WoD brought to WoW franchise. Yeah I told you it was hard....

Why should I show a specific review when then the whole thread is about the overall missleading reviews and review scores from the professional reviewers. Showing one random review would add nothing for anyone of us.

9 & 10
People has also since the beginning of time said: "L2P" to any complaints about classes they don't play themselves.
I remember back in Vanilla at one point when Hunters where hilariously OP. Insane dps and Rogues had no ways to get in stealth if they had hunters mark on them and it lasted like 60 secs and you could instantly refresh it.
I happend to be a hunter back then and I even managed to kill a level 60 rogue at level 44. Ofc all Hunters said L2P noob Rogues.
When frost bolts take ages to cast and deal 10k dmg vs targets with 250-500k HP well then its kinda silly, no deep freeze, poor burst dps, bad level 100 talents etc...Yeah I think its safe to say Mages suck in PvP.
But yeah sure you know better, afterall you seen a few do the Arena...Fantastic argument there.

11. I have listed reasons to why I don't like WoD(and Diablo 3). Does WoD offer alot of new content we haven't seen before? Nope don't think so and you haven't proved otherwise. Has WoD alot end game content? Like 2 raids right? in several difficulties, yup that sure is fantastic implement after 10 years of WoW with plenty of similar raids.
Btw I never said WoD was shit, but atm I think I have far more valid points why WoD is overrated then what you have to defend it.

12. Umm no, If a game don't bother to implement enough new stuff. Well then it just feels like your doing same shit over and over. Its like eating the same dish over and over just with a different sauce. This is why many criticize Call of Duty and Assassins Creed constant stream of games that many times lack enough new content.
Burning Crusade Introduced completly new stuff like better quests, Arena, Heroics, World PVP zones, flying mounts, two races and overall much more content(Instances and Raids as just as an example). So yes think its fair to call it Lazy to introduce so little new after so many years.
I also gave reasons as to why the Garrison system was "sucky" which is once again more then you have.

13. Yes all games have flaws. But some games have bigger flaws then others.
Like I have said earlier... there are plenty of games out there without low/mediocre user rating on metacritic. You just seem to be such a Blizzard fanboy that you can't accept that many don't share your vision of games like WoD and D3.

14.
Actually the online DRM and its issues was one of the main reasons Sim City 5 got a low score. Bashing EA for its online DRM seems to be easier for reviewers to do.
But yes I agree those user reviews suck, just like all those who gave it a 10 only for the reason to counter those negative reviews. But even if we ignore those for a moment. D3 got pretty mediocre user review score long after the launch aswell, so did the console version and RoS.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Why would it be more bias and less accurate then the professional reviewes you defend?

What professional review did I defend? Quote me.

Your free to like Diablo 3 as much you want but your delusional if you think it wasn't conciderd a dissapointment to many others.

I said I'd give a 5-6 out of 10. Clearly I'm over the moon about it.

Now even "Heroics" are supposed to be casual and isn't even supposed to be a challange? How the fuck is that good game design?

Character progression is faster than it was during Burning Crusade. If you outgear content, that content becomes easier. Shocking, I know.

Its 2015 and people are fine with no more new end game content? We pay near 50 euro for a expansion + a subscription fee every month, with all the money they are making i think its fair to call them lazy.

Eschewing progression raiding and PvP entirely, taking only first shot content into account, there is somewhere on the scale of 150-300 hours of content in WoD, which is typical for an MMO expansion. Clearly your argument is that 150-300 hours of content for a full price game is "lazy" and worthy of contempt.

7. My source of information was from my own experiance, me and many of my friends have already gotten bored of this expansion even though it is called "the best WoW expansion" by many Reviewers. Which I thought was odd, since to me it was: "meh...well atleast it wasn't about Pandas". As for the thread, yes its just a thread, never said it was truth...just my personal oppinon that I wouldn't be surprised if it was true.

Its not like your claim about the Star Wars prequels losing substationaly more viewers in ratio to what RoS lost to D3 was based on any fact either.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

#1 Star Wars
#12 Empire Strikes Back
#15 Return of the Jedi
#17 Phantom Menace
#60 Revenge of the Sith
#87 Attack of the Clones

http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1946-over-20-million-sales-for-diablo-iii-and-reaper-of-souls

The Diablo III franchise has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, including sales across all platforms for the base Diablo III and the Reaper of Souls expansion. As detailed in the recent Blizzard Activision Q2 2014 earnings report, the expansion pack continues to be the best-selling PC game to date in 2014.

That was of mid-2014. We don't know current sales numbers, need Blizz to release another financials. It sold 2.7 million in its first week.

Just...stop. It's getting ridiculous.

Funny how you expect a full scale review in a forum discussion while you at the same time don't even name any examples of new things WoD brought to WoW franchise. Yeah I told you it was hard....

And I told you it was a waste of time. Hey dude, I HATE coconut. Absolutely loathe the shit. Quick, give me thirty reasons to like it. Good luck convincing me! Tee hee! It totally won't be a waste of your time!

People has also since the beginning of time said: "L2P" to any complaints about classes they don't play themselves.
I remember back in Vanilla at one point when Hunters where hilariously OP. Insane dps and Rogues had no ways to get in stealth if they had hunters mark on them and it lasted like 60 secs and you could instantly refresh it.
I happend to be a hunter back then and I even managed to kill a level 60 rogue at level 44. Ofc all Hunters said L2P noob Rogues.
When frost bolts take ages to cast and deal 10k dmg vs targets with 250-500k HP well then its kinda silly, no deep freeze, poor burst dps, bad level 100 talents etc...Yeah I think its safe to say Mages suck in PvP.

Yes, it's safe to say sucking in PvP is definitely the problem we've identified here.

But yeah sure you know better, afterall you seen a few do the Arena...Fantastic argument there.

Mid-tier class. Not a "few". Mid-tier.

Btw I never said WoD was shit, but atm I think I have far more valid points why WoD is overrated then what you have to defend it.

You have subjective opinions, which seem utterly convincing to you, as they are your opinions. That you find this to be a shattering revelation is, frankly, kind of distressing.

Burning Crusade Introduced completly new stuff like better quests

Better how? Still just quests dude.

Arena

PvP in a smaller battleground.

Heroics

Same dungeon, slightly higher difficulty. Already dismissed by you as not real content.

World PVP zones

World PvP was around since Tarren Mill vs Southshore.

two races

Races are not content.

Instances and Raids as just as an example

Easy instances, one raid at at launch.

See? See how fun this is? Now, should I bother to do the same thing with WoD so you can engage in similar hand-waving?

I also gave reasons as to why the Garrison system was "sucky" which is once again more then you have.

Why would I take the time? I'm not going to convince you of anything. I don't give a shit if you like the game or not. I don't need to convince others of it, as it's sold well and is thriving. What benefit is there to me? I'm criticizing your horribly substantiated arguments, not debating the merits of WoW with you.

You just seem to be such a Blizzard fanboy that you can't accept that many don't share your vision of games like WoD and D3.

There it is. Took you a while. I think you're talking out of your ass, so I'm a "fanboy". It's not your barely coherent world-salad argumentation that's the problem here. It's that I wurve Blizzard.

Actually the online DRM and its issues was one of the main reasons Sim City 5 got a low score.

One of. Did you play SimCity? If you did, you know the functional problems went bone deep. It was a lot more than just "hard to get online". "Hard to get online" comprises about 95% of metacritic user scores though, god bless them.

But yes I agree those user reviews suck, just like all those who gave it a 10 only for the reason to counter those negative reviews.

There you go. User reviews suck. Pass it on.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Yes, we do tend to notice small things, but at the same time we're writing for a fairly broad audience: pretty much any gamer that's interested in it. Since the amount of space we get is limited, we have to ask ourselves which of those things are most relevant to our readers. Something like that camera may not make the cut, because the reviewer assumes readers are familiar with unmovable cameras and didn't find that the camera noticebly impacted the game.

But, hey, for all I know Sony played the asshole card and made reviewers come offer to the office, had them play the game there and didn't give them much time with the MP, forcing them to base most of the review on the singleplayer. That is something that happens. I honestly don't know if its the case here, but it could be.

(And I understand why websites/magazines would send their reviewers to something like that. Having a review up on releaseday is very important nowadays, because the reviews of triple A titles attract a lot of readers. Reviewing a retail copy and publishing the review a week after everyone else means sacrificing a lot of traffic.)

The no camera sensitivity option isn't a small thing, it's a major thing in a shooter. You aim with the free look camera in a TPS, thus if you can't change its sensitivity, you can't adjust the camera to your aiming preference (aiming is really important in a shooter). I don't even recall another 3rd-person game that doesn't have a camera sensitivity option, shooter or not. The first thing I do in every game is invert y, up the camera sensitivity, and change the audio levels (as music and sound effects are mixed way too high).

Shoulder swapping is very important in a TPS as well. If there isn't a proper shoulder swap, someone moving to their left is at an automatic disadvantage vs an enemy player coming from the opposite direction. I shouldn't lose a gunfight because of the game. The shoulder swap is more of an MP issue but still an issue in single player.

The camera thing should be in every review regardless of the circumstances of how the reviewer played the game. Single player controls do dictate how good an MP can be. If the controls aren't there in single player, they aren't going to be there for MP either and controls are much more important in MP; small control issues become major headaches in MP. I can instantly tell from playing single player whether the MP will be garbage or not just based on the control scheme. I TPS that I LOVE that wouldn't work well in MP is Vanquish from controls to you can't alter time in MP, yet everyone was wanting the game to have MP.

But can you prove 7 is the avarage? I mean, I know it looks that way, but I think that has a lot to do with the games being reviewed.

I could probably prove it, that would take a lot of time. Even the under-the-radar games get well over 5 most of the time like say Atelier Rorona, which you mentioned before is at a 65; stuff like Nier and Resonance of Fate get well over a 5 as well. Basically, it's not just the AAA games. It really only seems like the bottom of the barrel shovel-ware, bad licensed games (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is at a 49), and those not-done Steam games ever score below a 5 (I don't even know if they are on Metacritic).

That's true. Making a decent game is not much of an accomplishment anymore, meaning there's more room to appreciate the things that actually make a game good. I think it would be hard to rate a game by focusing so much on mechanics, though. It's incredibly hard for a developer to make something that's special everyway you look at it. Few have the resources, knowledge and skills to make something like that. So what developers do is they aim for 'adequate' in some departments while making sure the game truly shines in others.

The Elder Scrolls worlds would be good example: they don't look all that special. You may even call them ugly compared to other games, but the worlds are huge and before you know it you're paying more attention to the quest being given that the ugly textures on the quest giver's face.

It depends on the game I feel. A game like Bayonetta or DMC has the best hack and slash gameplay out there, the gameplay can carry those games to being good, even great, all by itself. Whereas say God of War has to nail everything IMO as its combat is nothing special (just basically gets the job done). I loved the 1st God of War because everything else was nailed from presentation to graphics to story (simple but well done). Whereas, in the sequels, the combat stayed of approximately the same quality (getting the job done) while the story and everything else went to shit (except graphics) so in my opinion, they are bad games because God of War's combat cannot carry the game.

I think how good everything else from writing to level design should have far more importance than whether the gameplay is functional. I think aesthetics should take priority over graphical fidelity in regards to how good a game looks. I'm playing Shadow of Mordor now and it's pretty enjoyable but I kinda feel its combat is an exact copy of Batman and it doesn't feel like a fresh experience, I wouldn't mind seeing a reviewer spend a large chunk of the review analyzing that aspect.

And that's a tricky part. When the amount of space is limited, what can you as a reviewers spend on comparisons, knowing that not all your readers will have played the game you're talking about? Plus, familiarity means different things to different people. To some it makes a game feel old, while others like that they'll quickly get a hang of the game.

But in the case of Shadow of Mordor it would be which to refer to other games. Examples can be very helpful when you're telling your readers to imagine a game they've only seen screenshots and trailers of.

You don't have to have a lengthy analysis to get your point across, I'm sure there's plenty of room for this in any review:

"Shadow of Mordor has basically the same combat system as the Batman Arkham games; you press square to attack, triangle to counter, X to vault enemies, and circle to stun. Certain types of enemies need to be stunned first so it's not just a button masher. You get special moves like being able to one-hit kill enemies if you build you combo high enough. The combat won't feel fresh to anyone that's played the Batman Arkham games as the combat is almost literally the same, even down to the upgrades and special attacks being the same. The combat can be very enjoyable but it also gets repetitive as it doesn't have the depth of a better hack and slash game like Bayonetta. The Batman games spaced out the combat sections much more by having dedicated stealth sections, better exploration, and a better story. SoM has really just the combat to offer the player so it becomes repetitive faster due to constant fighting while being a system you've probably already had a go at."

I want to read about what a reviewer loved/hated about a game and why. I want to taste the disappointment, disgust, excitement and passion through the text! That's how I try to write my reviews as well.

Pretty much this. The stuff the reviewer hates or loves should weight heavily into the score, which I don't think happens very often.

 

[Sarge034]

Maybe it's just my mathemathical tendencies, but when I imagine 'let them fall where they will' I imagine the bean machine/Galton board ^_^'

And hey, bell curves can be adjusted. For instance: the avarage IQ is being kept at 100 despite people getting smarter.

Lol, it's actually the analytical part of me that's so comfortable with the static scale and perhaps a Galton board isn't such a bad way to describe it. You would have the objective data acting as the first half of the pegs deciding on what general area the game will fall into, and the second half would be subjective opinions that would fine tune the placement.

And yeah, I know bell curves can be adjusted I just don't like how they warp data in general. I know why we have to use that type of system in reviews, as we don't have defined bounds (1 or 10... although ET The Extra Terrestrial is damn close to a 1 XD), and as such things need to be able to be relative to each other. It's just a really complicated situation.

Systems like that have their own weaknesses. They portray games as being the sum of several aspects instead of the whole product it is. Another problem is that not all aspects are equally important in every game (you don't play Tetris for its story or a visual novel for its gameplay), which may result in subscores that don't reflect the overall quality of the game. Lastly, there may not be a clear line between two aspects. For instance, in a rhythm game the music could be seen as part of the gameplay.

Oh, I agree completely that the system has it's own flaws. My thoughts were that if we had that system and a written review instead of just one number and a written review it could present a better picture of the game. Take Tetris for example, if we just used the single or multi-numeric system what do we know? It's a 9/10, a classic? It's story is 0/10, controls 9/10, music 8/10? The written review is there to add clarity, to define those numbers. Yeah, Tetris' story is 0/10, but only because Tetris has no story nor does it need one. Now take Destiny; controls 9/10, music 8/10, story 5-6/10. A low story score in Destiny would raise a few eyebrows because it was advertised as being story driven. That being said it certainly didn't deserve the 6/10 I'm seeing most places now, especially if CoD got a 9/10. I would say that a game is most certainly the sum of it's parts. I've played games where just one part be it music, voice acting, controls, ect have just ruined the experience for me. As for your example about the rhythm game. I personally would define the music as simply being music because I think gameplay is more the quality of execution of game mechanics. Or it could be a catch all overview of the reviewer's enjoyment of the gameplay if there is already a game mechanics/controls section. After all, the person playing the game becomes just as important of a factor as anything else because this is an interactive media.

Sorry if it sounds a bit scattered, I'm having trouble converting my thoughts into words. :/

One 'thank you' for the compliment and another for keeping this discussion civil and interesting. I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am

No problem! I absolutely love discussing different sides to stuff so long as there is civil and intelligent conversation. Can never learn or grow as a person if you close yourself to other points of view after all.

 

[Evilsausage]

What professional review did I defend? Quote me.

The whole debate has been about user and professional reviews. Since you mainly focused on talking how user reviews suck you come of as defening the other type of reviewes.

I said I'd give a 5-6 out of 10. Clearly I'm over the moon about it?

Did not read that, then how your choosing to not agree many users are dissapointed with it?

Character progression is faster than it was during Burning Crusade. If you outgear content, that content becomes easier. Shocking, I know.

Yup which means that alot of content will be completed faster. Leaving like 2 raids in different difficulties to be the endgame where you finally is supposed to get a challange i guess. Yeah thats clearly great game design and enough to make WoD deserve to be called "the best WoW expansion".

Eschewing progression raiding and PvP entirely, taking only first shot content into account, there is somewhere on the scale of 150-300 hours of content in WoD, which is typical for an MMO expansion. Clearly your argument is that 150-300 hours of content for a full price game is "lazy" and worthy of contempt.

Haven't ignored PvP entirely, doing BGs and might do some Arena.
Maybe you could get 150-300 hours of content, but is it good content? Doing two raids over and over can be fun for some i guess. But I don't Think its too much to ask that you get some more end game options after 5 WoW expansions.

#1 Star Wars
#12 Empire Strikes Back
#15 Return of the Jedi
#17 Phantom Menace
#60 Revenge of the Sith
#87 Attack of the Clones

That was of mid-2014. We don't know current sales numbers, need Blizz to release another financials. It sold 2.7 million in its first week.

Just...stop. It's getting ridiculous.

Attack of the Clones total box office earned about 40% less then Menace and Revenge of the Sith only less then 20%. Which isn't at all bigger drop then what D3-RoS have with its 70% drop to D3.

Yes you have mentioned it sold 2.7 in its first week. Diablo 3 and it expansion has sold about 20 million together impressive number. Not gonna argue with that, like I never said it flopped financially.
Still RoS sold less then 1/3 of D3 which isn't a great ratio even for an expansion. Especially not for a Blizzard expansion.
The reason why I called it a "flopp" in the first Place wasn't to talk about its sales. It was a dissapointment to many despite what the professional Reviews said. Blizzard has Three major franchises that up to that Point has pretty much been universally praised by fans and reviewers. So now today when Diablo 3 is seen as let down by many, Blizzard has lost some of it once spotless reputation. Thats why I compared it with the Star Wars prequels.
And even today long after Reaper of souls which did fix some things, the game is still fail to provide with enough content to keep (most)fans satisfied in the same way Diablo 2 did for more then 10 years.

Hey dude, I HATE coconut. Absolutely loathe the shit. Quick, give me thirty reasons to like it. Good luck convincing me! Tee hee! It totally won't be a waste of your time!

I Think its more like Hey this coconut is not at all as fantastic as people claim and i have tasted many Before that where tastier. Here are a few reasons.....
Then your like: Oh no you are wrong, this one is the boss. The End.

Yes, it's safe to say sucking in PvP is definitely the problem we've identified here.
Mid-tier class. Not a "few". Mid-tier.

This isn't like Counter Strike where the learning curve for PvP success is massive. Mages are just so shit especially in any 1v1 against most classes. They can be decent when in a big group as support but I see no fun when some class can roflstomp me without even trying.
I have played frost Death Knight on a friends acount btw and even though im a total noob with DK, its lightyears better(we both got about the same gear).
Good to hear there are some in the Arena, maybe there is hope once you get full Arena gear. Still don't buy into claims that mages are fine. You most likely haven't even played them.

You have subjective opinions, which seem utterly convincing to you, as they are your opinions. That you find this to be a shattering revelation is, frankly, kind of distressing.

Ofc its subjective its my personal oppinion just like all those reviewers that say WoD is the best shit evah.
Atleast I have listed reasons as to why I think its overrated.

A. Barely any real new additions to WoW that we haven't seen Before (except for garrison, which I have stated why I dislike it).

B. Limited endgame content, you said it yourself Heroics are causal and are done fast, same with getting the first BG gear. Whats left isn't exacly much, no real effort into comming up with new ideas that could increase its longevity.

C. Dull PvP, Less skills, Health pools are too high, remarkably badly balanced even though it technically shouldn't be.


I had a pretty nice levling experiance(even though it was over pretty fast) and the new continent looked quite good.
But I don't see anything special about WoD. What exacly makes this expansion so fantastic?

Better how? Still just quests dude.

I was talking about things BC introduced that was a improvement over Vanilla. Better quests being one of the things.
Less quests that are about finding 20 feathers and overall just more variation. Stuff that is standard now, but which was a really nice addition when it came.

PvP in a smaller battleground.

So your saying Arena was a "meh" addition to the game? Yeah clearly nothing compared to the awsome companion system they introduced in WoD. Thats some exciting shit!
Arena was and still is a big part of WoWs endgame. With a ladder system unlike BGs.

Same dungeon, slightly higher difficulty. Already dismissed by you as not real content.

Never said it was no real content. Burning crusade had plenty of instances and Heroics where actually really challanging.
So you had alot more endgame content compared to what you have in WoDs Heroics.

World PvP was around since Tarren Mill vs Southshore.

I can't recall any real bonuses or encouragement for doing World PVP there but I could be wrong. The only reason i rememeber there was so much fighting there was because both Towns where quite close.
Burning Crusade had zones that gave various bonuses that helped your faction when doing Instances for example. Therefore encouraging World PvP.

Races are not content..

Ohh It isn't? New starting areas, new captial cities, New races with lore connected with the main story isn't new content? ^^

Easy instances, one raid at at launch.

Easy Instances? Normal difficult Instances where far more challanging then WoDs, same with the Heroics.
You also had more instances to do and they where longer, which equals more content.
It was quite a long time since I played BC but if i recall there where atleast Gruul, Mags, Karazhan and Serpentshrine Cavern at launch. Besides that more raids got added, to a total of 7.
Do you Think WoD will ever get close to that many raids? I doubt it, today it seems to be far less content updates, instead they start working on the next expansion.

Usually Sequels mean go bigger and better, but in WoWs case its the opposite. The only thing that gets bigger is the cost of the expansion packs.

See? See how fun this is? Now, should I bother to do the same thing with WoD so you can engage in similar hand-waving?

Why would I take the time? I'm not going to convince you of anything. I don't give a shit if you like the game or not. I don't need to convince others of it, as it's sold well and is thriving. What benefit is there to me? I'm criticizing your horribly substantiated arguments, not debating the merits of WoW with you.

Well I atleast bother comming with some decent arguments.

Why are you debating here in the first Place? If your gonna citiicize my arguments you should atleast have some arguments as to why WoD is a great expansion.

There it is. Took you a while. I think you're talking out of your ass, so I'm a "fanboy". It's not your barely coherent world-salad argumentation that's the problem here. It's that I wurve Blizzard.

Well for someone preaching about how bias everyone is, you certainly seem to defend things Blizzard do no matter what.

One of. Did you play SimCity? If you did, you know the functional problems went bone deep. It was a lot more than just "hard to get online". "Hard to get online" comprises about 95% of metacritic user scores though, god bless them.

Ofc I didn't play it, there atleast reviewers and fans dislikes was enough warning. Im sure it was worse then D3s problems at launch, still funny though how constant online requirment for D3 got a minmimal amount of criticizm in comparison.

There you go. User reviews suck. Pass it on.

I would say both user and professional Reviews are flawed in different ways. Still doesn't mean it can't be of some use.

 

[NPC009]

The no camera sensitivity option isn't a small thing, it's a major thing in a shooter. You aim with the free look camera in a TPS, thus if you can't change its sensitivity, you can't adjust the camera to your aiming preference (aiming is really important in a shooter). I don't even recall another 3rd-person game that doesn't have a camera sensitivity option, shooter or not. The first thing I do in every game is invert y, up the camera sensitivity, and change the audio levels (as music and sound effects are mixed way too high).

But Uncharted isn't jut a shooter. Can say I have much experience with the multiplayer, but the camera didn't really bother me during the storymode. The game is essentially guiding you through area's and there's little need for adjustments. Whether this is good game design or not is up for discussion, but I don't think the camera harmed that experience. Though, I imagine it's somewhat different in multiplayer.

Shoulder swapping is very important in a TPS as well. If there isn't a proper shoulder swap, someone moving to their left is at an automatic disadvantage vs an enemy player coming from the opposite direction. I shouldn't lose a gunfight because of the game. The shoulder swap is more of an MP issue but still an issue in single player.

True, but how much is this an actual issue and not, I don't know, a minor inconvience at worst?

I honestly don't know much about the Uncharted MP, but I do know how most people review. Since we need the to keep the review at a decent length we have to pick and choose what we write about. If there are more noteworthy things to be discussed, details will be tossed in favour of those. If we don't, the review will either be too long to be published or too long to keep the reader interested.

The camera thing should be in every review regardless of the circumstances of how the reviewer played the game. Single player controls do dictate how good an MP can be.

I think this may be a more personal than you think. You mentioned always adjusting the camera movements and such. Many people don't. Maybe you've grown used to a luxery.

I could probably prove it, that would take a lot of time. Even the under-the-radar games get well over 5 most of the time like say Atelier Rorona, which you mentioned before is at a 65; stuff like Nier and Resonance of Fate get well over a 5 as well. Basically, it's not just the AAA games. It really only seems like the bottom of the barrel shovel-ware, bad licensed games (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is at a 49), and those not-done Steam games ever score below a 5 (I don't even know if they are on Metacritic).

Personally I don't think it can be proven, because there are many games that are not/barely reviewed. You'd either have to assign those games yourself (not very objective) or do your calculations knowing you lack data.

As for the lower scores, if we think of 5.5-10 being varying degrees of good and 1-5.5 varying degrees of bad (like most sites do), you'll find many games that are rated as bad. Some might be absolutely terrible while others are more like a 'meh', but hey, there's room on the scale for that.

Last year I played several games that were (almost) bad. The With and the Hundred was a game that teetered on the edge of bad (53 on Metacritic). Mugen Souls Z (57) had very few redeeming qualities, but I guess that one was kinda fun in a mindnumbingly kind of way. There's probably others, but I kinda don't want to go digging through my memories (or computer folders).

It depends on the game I feel. A game like Bayonetta or DMC has the best hack and slash gameplay out there, the gameplay can carry those games to being good, even great, all by itself. Whereas say God of War has to nail everything IMO as its combat is nothing special (just basically gets the job done). I loved the 1st God of War because everything else was nailed from presentation to graphics to story (simple but well done). Whereas, in the sequels, the combat stayed of approximately the same quality (getting the job done) while the story and everything else went to shit (except graphics) so in my opinion, they are bad games because God of War's combat cannot carry the game.

That's why it's important to review games as they are and not compare them too much to other games or to some vague idea of what they could have been. If a game manages to make you forget its flaws, well, kudos.

You don't have to have a lengthy analysis to get your point across, I'm sure there's plenty of room for this in any review:

"Shadow of Mordor has basically the same combat system as the Batman Arkham games; you press square to attack, triangle to counter, X to vault enemies, and circle to stun. Certain types of enemies need to be stunned first so it's not just a button masher. You get special moves like being able to one-hit kill enemies if you build you combo high enough. The combat won't feel fresh to anyone that's played the Batman Arkham games as the combat is almost literally the same, even down to the upgrades and special attacks being the same. The combat can be very enjoyable but it also gets repetitive as it doesn't have the depth of a better hack and slash game like Bayonetta. The Batman games spaced out the combat sections much more by having dedicated stealth sections, better exploration, and a better story. SoM has really just the combat to offer the player so it becomes repetitive faster due to constant fighting while being a system you've probably already had a go at."

You'd be surprised. That right there is 173 words. Typical lengths for gamereviews are 500-1200 words, though a triple A title may get some extra space. So, in a worst case scenario, that's 1/3 of a review right there and all you've done is compare it to other games, while the reader probably wants to know what makes Shadow of Mordor Shadow of Mordor.

This is what makes writing good reviews so difficult: you need to be able to be informative and entertaining, describe the abstracts and give examples. Balancing everything can be real challenge

Pretty much this. The stuff the reviewer hates or loves should weight heavily into the score, which I don't think happens very often.

Maybe reviewers don't feel that strongly about games. When you've played hundreds of them is hard to hate a random bad one. They've seen better, they've seem worse - probably nothing to get worked up about. I often feel strongest about games that wasted their potential. For instance, I kinda really dig Ar Tonelico/Ar nosurge, because of the extensive world building, music and fun battle systems. The creators obviously worked hard on these games despite their budger restraints. But the games also have a knack for terribly annoying innuendo, incredibly boring dungeon design and badly written anime cliches. What could have been modern JRPG classics turn out to be pandering fanservice games again and again. Are these games bad? Well, no, they're pretty decent. I always have fun playing them and the scores reflect that, but all those missed opportunities... Compare that to random sucky licensed games where it's obvious nobody gave a *bleep*, and I just think 'well, if they don't care, I'm not going to spend any energy on caring either'.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

But Uncharted isn't jut a shooter. Can say I have much experience with the multiplayer, but the camera didn't really bother me during the storymode. The game is essentially guiding you through area's and there's little need for adjustments. Whether this is good game design or not is up for discussion, but I don't think the camera harmed that experience. Though, I imagine it's somewhat different in multiplayer.

Uncharted is a shooter even in single player. There's no exploration and there's a few puzzles that break up the shooting sections. God of War has more exploration and puzzles to break up the fighting than Uncharted, is it not a hack and slash then? No camera sensitivity option is a huge fail for a shooter.

Due to Uncharted's sluggish as hell camera whenever you have someone (whether AI or human opponent) shooting at you from your back, the 1st order of business is finding cover then turning the camera. Whereas in any other TPS, I can just turn the camera right around and fire back in less than a second. Hell in MGO, I could turn the camera around and headshot a player in less than a second that was shooting at my 6.

I can't do any of this stuff in Uncharted because of its sluggish camera:

Spoiler

I can't do very basic things I do in other TPSs because of Uncharted's sluggish camera. For example, at 4:29, 5:04, 6:45, 7:20, and 7:44 in the following video, I'm able to get all of those kills because I can turn the camera around much faster than Uncharted.

---

Shoulder swapping is very important in a TPS as well...

True, but how much is this an actual issue and not, I don't know, a minor inconvience at worst?

I honestly don't know much about the Uncharted MP, but I do know how most people review. Since we need the to keep the review at a decent length we have to pick and choose what we write about. If there are more noteworthy things to be discussed, details will be tossed in favour of those. If we don't, the review will either be too long to be published or too long to keep the reader interested.

This situation happens a lot in MP. You have your standard square/rectangular building. You are on the right of the building (your left shoulder is next to the wall) moving up to the corner, and an enemy is moving towards that same corner from the other direction (so he is on the left of building and his right shoulder is next to the wall). When you two meet at the same time and start shooting, you are at an inherent advantage because you want to aim off your right shoulder while whereas your opponent wants to aim off his left shoulder but can't. You should be able to aim off your right or left shoulder initially or going to your left is always disadvantageous solely due to the game's controls. In Uncharted, you have to aim over your right shoulder, THEN SWITCH to your left shoulder wasting precious time that your opponent does not need to waste to start shooting. That's not a very big issue in single player but huge in MP, which can be known just from playing single player (same thing with say Splinter Cell: Blacklist).

Spoiler

At 3:36, the following video demonstrates the importance of shoulder swapping in a TPS:

You don't have to explain in detail exactly how Uncharted's shoulder swap is an issue obviously. You can just say Uncharted's controls aren't very good in an online competitive environment. Hell, circle for cover and roll already makes MP extremely frustrating let alone the camera sensitivity or shoulder swap. Context sensitive controls ALWAYS suck and only get you killed.

I think this may be a more personal than you think. You mentioned always adjusting the camera movements and such. Many people don't. Maybe you've grown used to a luxery.

It's a necessity and as BASIC a feature can be, not a luxury. You SHOULD be able to aim in the manner you're comfortable with in a shooter, there's not one shooter I can think of besides Uncharted that doesn't have camera sensitivity.

Hell, every game SHOULD allow for a full remapping of the controls, it literally takes a couple minutes on the programming side, the menu would take longer than the programming. The only 2 games I played on PS3 with full control remapping were Borderlands 2 and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and I took full advantage and remapped most of the controls in both games. In NFS, the default was having the abilities tied to the d-pad so you'd have to take your hand (left thumb) off the steering wheel to deploy spike strips so I put all that stuff on the face buttons instead, the game played much better. I really loathe L3 for sprinting in FPSs, it ruins the left analog stick as well, thus I changed that in Borderlands 2.

Personally I don't think it can be proven, because there are many games that are not/barely reviewed. You'd either have to assign those games yourself (not very objective) or do your calculations knowing you lack data.

As for the lower scores, if we think of 5.5-10 being varying degrees of good and 1-5.5 varying degrees of bad (like most sites do), you'll find many games that are rated as bad. Some might be absolutely terrible while others are more like a 'meh', but hey, there's room on the scale for that.

Last year I played several games that were (almost) bad. The With and the Hundred was a game that teetered on the edge of bad (53 on Metacritic). Mugen Souls Z (57) had very few redeeming qualities, but I guess that one was kinda fun in a mindnumbingly kind of way. There's probably others, but I kinda don't want to go digging through my memories (or computer folders).

It can be easily proven games are scored very differently when compared to other mediums like movies, music, etc. Even Metacritic knows games are scored differently since 7/10 for a game is "mixed" whereas for anything else a 7/10 is "positive". There are LOTS movies that aren't reviewed either. You just don't give every Hollywood blockbuster a 5/10 or higher because it's far more competent than a shitty SyFy channel movie.

I think reviewers (including yourself) need to re-evaluate what a bad game is. It doesn't mean its unplayable or horrible. You know reviewing needs to change when a shitty licensed game (Amazing Spiderman 2) gets a 49, one point shy of average. Or when a love it/hate it game like FFXIII gets only 1 negative review. Movie critics will at times put a movie on their best of the year list while another critic puts it on the worst list, I think that's pretty awesome and I feel that same thing happens with games. I'd put games on my worst list that friends put on their best list.

That's why it's important to review games as they are and not compare them too much to other games or to some vague idea of what they could have been. If a game manages to make you forget its flaws, well, kudos.

If you have a game in a genre, you have to rate based on the best of its genre. Same thing happens in movies, a comic book movie is rated against what you feel is the best comic book movie, not as if everything exists in a vacuum. If you only seen one movie, it is the best movie you've seen as you have nothing to compare it against. Comparing is the thing makes reviewing possible IMO, you compare works to other works. The most important thing to a hack and slash game is the combat. Rating the combat of one hack and slash against the combat of the best combat in a hack and slash is what SHOULD be done. God of War has to succeed at EVERYTHING to be good because it's combat is average. The 1st God of War even had good puzzles. People make combo videos of DMC and Bayonetta, not God of War. The combat alone makes DMC/Bayo great, not so with God of War.

"Shadow of Mordor has basically the same combat system as the Batman Arkham games; you press square to attack, triangle to counter, X to vault enemies, and circle to stun. Certain types of enemies need to be stunned first so it's not just a button masher. You get special moves like being able to one-hit kill enemies if you build you combo high enough. The combat won't feel fresh to anyone that's played the Batman Arkham games as the combat is almost literally the same, even down to the upgrades and special attacks being the same. The combat can be very enjoyable but it also gets repetitive as it doesn't have the depth of a better hack and slash game like Bayonetta. The Batman games spaced out the combat sections much more by having dedicated stealth sections, better exploration, and a better story. SoM has really just the combat to offer the player so it becomes repetitive faster due to constant fighting while being a system you've probably already had a go at."

You'd be surprised. That right there is 173 words. Typical lengths for gamereviews are 500-1200 words, though a triple A title may get some extra space. So, in a worst case scenario, that's 1/3 of a review right there and all you've done is compare it to other games, while the reader probably wants to know what makes Shadow of Mordor Shadow of Mordor.

This is what makes writing good reviews so difficult: you need to be able to be informative and entertaining, describe the abstracts and give examples. Balancing everything can be real challenge

I explained the combat system WHILE comparing it to Batman; I explained what each button does, gave an example of a special move, and explained it's not just a button masher as different enemy types need different approaches. Most readers have most likely played Batman as well. Most people that read/subscribe to mags are enthusiasts of said subject. The only other thing you really need to talk about with Shadow of Mordor is the Nemesis system and I only used up a third of space so far.

Maybe reviewers don't feel that strongly about games. When you've played hundreds of them is hard to hate a random bad one. They've seen better, they've seem worse - probably nothing to get worked up about. I often feel strongest about games that wasted their potential. For instance, I kinda really dig Ar Tonelico/Ar nosurge, because of the extensive world building, music and fun battle systems. The creators obviously worked hard on these games despite their budger restraints. But the games also have a knack for terribly annoying innuendo, incredibly boring dungeon design and badly written anime cliches. What could have been modern JRPG classics turn out to be pandering fanservice games again and again. Are these games bad? Well, no, they're pretty decent. I always have fun playing them and the scores reflect that, but all those missed opportunities... Compare that to random sucky licensed games where it's obvious nobody gave a *bleep*, and I just think 'well, if they don't care, I'm not going to spend any energy on caring either'.

I was talking about what aspects of a game a reviewer loves/hates should weigh more into the score than it currently does. Not that they love/hate a game overall. Like Greg Tito hating the characters of GTAV weighed heavily into his score. You'd get more variance on scores if most reviewers did that.

 

[NPC009]

I have to admit I kinda got tired of the discussion, but just walking out seems kind of rude, so one last reply from me. Hope you don't mind

Uncharted is a shooter even in single player. There's no exploration and there's a few puzzles that break up the shooting sections. God of War has more exploration and puzzles to break up the fighting than Uncharted, is it not a hack and slash then? No camera sensitivity option is a huge fail for a shooter.

Well, that's (sadly) pretty typical for a modern action adventure. Developers want unique environments but not being able to reuse assets often means area's will be limited in size. To compensate developers aim for a linear but varied level design (first you're shooting, then you're running and jumping, after that a puzzle or two and so on), and they try to make it extra appealing by taking a more cinematic approach. Which usually means the camera is concerned with practical as well as cinematical angles. The action isn't just action, it's part of the narrative.

Again, my knowledge of Uncharted is limited and I didn't review any of the installments myself, but my guess is that reviewers (and players) in general liked the immersive experience Naughty Dog created with that cinematical approach and didn't really notice or care about the lack of finetuning in certain areas.

If that's the case, I do not think they were wrong. No game is perfect, but the ones that can hide their flaws the best come close.

Also, don't forget that Uncharted 2 came out over five years ago. Technologies improve, games age and our standards change. Back when the game was first released it was an amazing game, few other titles had come so close to creating an interactive movie. It's easy to nitpick its flaws now, but please don't play Captain Hindsight. Nobody likes that guy.

It can be easily proven games are scored very differently when compared to other mediums like movies, music, etc. Even Metacritic knows games are scored differently since 7/10 for a game is "mixed" whereas for anything else a 7/10 is "positive".

You know the scores on metacritic aren't always the scores review sites actually give, right? They convert everything to scores that fit on the scale of 0-100. For movie scores this mostly works, because many sites use a simple rating system like 1-5 stars. Gaming sites use a much greater variety of scales, and they are all converted outside of context. For instance, an 'A' rating equals a '100' on Metacritic while the site the review came from consider may an A merely a 90/100. So yeah, they are rated differently, but not in the way you think they are.

Be smart and don't attach too much value to a score that's simply a math trick within a vague context. Publishers would love it if you'd follow those aggregrated scores blindly, so don't play into their hands. Be a smart consumer, use aggregator sites to find reviews and view scores in their proper context.

There are LOTS movies that aren't reviewed either. You just don't give every Hollywood blockbuster a 5/10 or higher because it's far more competent than a shitty SyFy channel movie.

Hey, it's not as if only triple A games are reviewed. There's a lot of love for smaller games that are simply very entertaining, and a lot of hate for big games that don't even manage to do that.

I honestly don't understand your strong desire for a rating system that punishes any games that does not live up to your expectations. There's no good reason to want a 'low score quotum' or use 100% of the scale for, I don't know, 80% of the games out there. Yet that's what you seem want, to flip the assumed '7-10' scale around so it becomes a 1-7 scale.

I think reviewers (including yourself) need to re-evaluate what a bad game is. It doesn't mean its unplayable or horrible. You know reviewing needs to change when a shitty licensed game (Amazing Spiderman 2) gets a 49, one point shy of average. Or when a love it/hate it game like FFXIII gets only 1 negative review. Movie critics will at times put a movie on their best of the year list while another critic puts it on the worst list, I think that's pretty awesome and I feel that same thing happens with games. I'd put games on my worst list that friends put on their best list.

Hey, we know what shitty licensed games are, and there's a difference between 'your grandson probably won't hate you if you give this to him as a birthday present' and 'a kick in the nuts would have been a only slightly worse gift'. I played Superman 64. That's my 1/10. That truely was an unplayable and insulting mess of a game. If a game ends up playable but boring, it deserves a higher score than that.

And personally, I find the whole dramatically declaring a decent game the worst of the year/ever kind of childish. (But maybe that's just me being old.)

If you have a game in a genre, you have to rate based on the best of its genre. Same thing happens in movies, a comic book movie is rated against what you feel is the best comic book movie, not as if everything exists in a vacuum. If you only seen one movie, it is the best movie you've seen as you have nothing to compare it against. Comparing is the thing makes reviewing possible IMO, you compare works to other works. The most important thing to a hack and slash game is the combat. Rating the combat of one hack and slash against the combat of the best combat in a hack and slash is what SHOULD be done. God of War has to succeed at EVERYTHING to be good because it's combat is average. The 1st God of War even had good puzzles. People make combo videos of DMC and Bayonetta, not God of War. The combat alone makes DMC/Bayo great, not so with God of War.

That seems like a very narrow point of view. While there are plenty of cookiecutter games out there that stick to the confines of a genre, there are also many noteworthy titles that (try to) go beyond the boundaries. Viewing Thomas Was Alone or Journey as 'just a platformer' doesn't do these games justice. And Uncharted is not 'just a TPS'.

Of course games don't exist in a vacuum, but nobody can compare something to everything. And even if they could, it would only be a valid comparion for a very limited amount of time. New things are released every day, changing our perception of the medium.

Besides, comparisons have no value to the reader if they're unfamiliar with the titles the game is being compared to. While it would be dumb and insulting to view readers as a bunch of newbies, you can't expect them to have played everything. So you write about the game as it is right now, the way you're experiencing it, only comparing it to other games if you can't get a concept/opinion across otherwise.

I explained the combat system WHILE comparing it to Batman; I explained what each button does, gave an example of a special move, and explained it's not just a button masher as different enemy types need different approaches. Most readers have most likely played Batman as well. Most people that read/subscribe to mags are enthusiasts of said subject. The only other thing you really need to talk about with Shadow of Mordor is the Nemesis system and I only used up a third of space so far.

And to someone who hasn't played the games you're comparing it to that explanation wasn't very helpful. It wasn't very interesting to read either. The best reviewers need only words to let a gamer imagine what playing the game is like. It's difficult but it can be done

I was talking about what aspects of a game a reviewer loves/hates should weigh more into the score than it currently does. Not that they love/hate a game overall. Like Greg Tito hating the characters of GTAV weighed heavily into his score. You'd get more variance on scores if most reviewers did that.

But why is that needed? Good reviewers are open-minded and consider all aspects of the game before completing the review and assigning a score. Rating a game especially high or low because of a one (dis)like seems kind of petty.

Plus, it wouldn't even help readers all that much. Let's say you're browsing Metacritic for some reviews to read. After having read some with a high score ('The reviewers loved this game just because of a funny sidecharacters? That's stupid.'), you look for some lows. Turns out most of them did enjoy the game, but one reviewer didn't like the character designs very much and the other prefers really, really hates the actor who voiced the main character and both gave the game a 4/10 just because of that. Not helpful.

 

[Zydrate]

I just read multiple reviews, both professional and individual.

For example.

Shadow of Mordor was something I kept seeing on the Steam preorder rollout but never gave it a lot of attention because the screenshots made it look like a standard hack and slash.
Then it got released and started seeing reviews on both sides saying things like "Whoa this is surprisingly good" and "This is a splendid mix of Assassin's Creed and the Batman games". I haven't played the Batman games but I'm all about me some AC. So I got a coupon (helpfully linked from an Escapist article outlining several coupons), got it on sale a mere day or two after it was released, and have enjoyed it immensely since.

But I'm not sure this is the best example. Shadow of Mordor wasn't heavily hyped so I might just be musing for no reason.

My whole point is, I soak in reviews from multiple sources before making a decision.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I know you said you were tired of our discussion but I'd like you to at least reply to the just the 1st quote and reply as this has been my main point the whole time.

Gaming sites use a much greater variety of scales, and they are all converted outside of context. For instance, an 'A' rating equals a '100' on Metacritic while the site the review came from consider may an A merely a 90/100. So yeah, they are rated differently, but not in the way you think they are.

A game that literally gets a 7/10 on a gaming site is a 70/100 on Metacritic. Metacritic says that 7/10 review is "mixed" whereas if a movie gets a 7/10 it's a "positive" review. Even Metacritic realizes games are reviewed differently and classifies a 7/10 game review as "mixed". I'm not talking about review scores that don't convert over perfectly or anything like that. I don't understand how you can say games are reviewed no differently than other mediums. Not even Oscar winning Best Picture movies get average scores anywhere near games. For example, Argo won Best Picture in 2013 and it's average review score among critics is 8.4/10. It's unprecedented that any work of art from any medium averages something like a 95/100 except for a video game.

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Also, don't forget that Uncharted 2 came out over five years ago. Technologies improve, games age and our standards change. Back when the game was first released it was an amazing game, few other titles had come so close to creating an interactive movie. It's easy to nitpick its flaws now, but please don't play Captain Hindsight. Nobody likes that guy.

I played every Uncharted at release, no hindsight here. Uncharted 1 is a bad shooter, I actually got it before release as Sony actually let it release the weekend before for whatever reason. Uncharted 2's demo actually had to sell me on the game because of how bad the 1st one was. Uncharted has always had poor TPS mechanics whether you are looking at it now or when it released. Yes, Uncharted 2 is still a very good game, but averaging a 96 is a joke. Uncharted 3 had abysmal writing whether you played it at release or now, you can literally research Uncharted 3 and find for a fact it was rushed with a bunch of rewrites.

I honestly don't understand your strong desire for a rating system that punishes any games that does not live up to your expectations. There's no good reason to want a 'low score quotum' or use 100% of the scale for, I don't know, 80% of the games out there. Yet that's what you seem want, to flip the assumed '7-10' scale around so it becomes a 1-7 scale.

What are you talking about? All I've ever said is that I want games to be reviewed just like any other medium. 5 is fucking average. Average is not bad.

After having read some with a high score ('The reviewers loved this game just because of a funny sidecharacters? That's stupid.'), you look for some lows. Turns out most of them did enjoy the game, but one reviewer didn't like the character designs very much and the other prefers really, really hates the actor who voiced the main character and both gave the game a 4/10 just because of that. Not helpful.

Again, you're misinterpreting me. If you hate the writing of a game and it's story heavy like say Max Payne 3 or Final Fantasy XIII, then that greatly affects you're enjoyment of said game. That should weigh more heavily into a game's score. Bad dubbing is a reason some people don't play something like a JRPG whereas a game with little dialog, the voice acting doesn't impact your enjoyment much.