Skyrim Becomes First Western Game to Nail 40/40 Famitsu Review
- Thread starter Mike Kayatta
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Isn't that an improvement over most JRPG's usual system of Buff > Attack > Heal > Rebuff > Attack > Heal > Cont? Functionally it's the same, but practically XIII's battle system is more visually appealing/faster paced. Even the linearity is pretty standard. Most games try to pretend like it isn't all that linear, but many are. At least XIII is up front about it. Also, it's set up in such a way that grinding isn't necessary at all unless you want to do all of the post-game content.LilithSlave said:
Is Modern Warefare 3 a bad game? When you factor in it's similarity to it's predecessors and market oversaturation, sure, but on it's own merits? It looks rather solid. (I haven't played it myself)OutrageousEmu said:
Famitsu doesn't actually use one reviewer. Four seperate reviewers each play it independently, and give it there own score out of 10. These scores are all added together to give a total score out of 40. 40/40 means all four reviewers gave it a perfect score.CarlMinez said:
YEAH! 'MERICA, YOU DONE IT AGAIN!
Really only seventeen games have made 40/40 in 30 years, and Skyrim
EDIT: Meh, 85%?
Really only seventeen games have made 40/40 in 30 years, and Skyrim
Modern Warfare 3 doesn't deserve anything under a 90%. Its a solid game. Not original, but solid.OutrageousEmu said:
EDIT: Meh, 85%?
That first two are allegedly going to be fixed in the patch. The third I haven't heard of, sounds ridiculously annoying.Agayek said:
I haven't encountered them, partly cuz I haven't played on the PC. As I said, each player's experience will be different.
Still, when was the last time Bethesda published a game with this few game breaking bugs?
It kinda seems that you went into the game not wanting to like it. The game has to fit your idea of 'good' otherwise its crap. Sorry, but it makes your opinion hard to take seriously.Denariax said:
and it seems that you're just jumping from skyrim thread to skyrim thread trolling. This almost entirely negates your entire opinion. Honestly, if you don't like the game, then why do you keep going to other threads? Ostensibly just to complain about it?
It definitely varies by person, and the game is so huge that there really isn't a way to test everything in a reasonable amount of time, so as long as the game allows me to continue I really have no issues with the bugs. The only real problem I've ever had with it are the bugs that force me to use console commands to continue. The Forsworn Conspiracy chain in Markarth bugged out and the guards wouldn't arrest me, so I had to use console commands. Similarly, the opening quest for the Thieves' Guild bugged and Brynjolf stood around in the Riften market distracting everyone, even after the quest had been completed and he had just told me to meet him at the Ragged Flagon.GeorgW said:
Some people don't find any bugs, some do, there's really no way to tell, but it's really about par for the course for Bethesda games. From what I've read and my own experiences and that of my friends, it's no better or worse than Oblivion or Fallout 3.
Because I have fun ruining other peoples fun.chinangel said:
EDIT: That was mild sarcasm. Its not that I went into the game knowing I was going to hate it; I take at least an hour to rid myself of any previous thought I had about the game. I went into Duke Nukem really, really wanting to like it and didn't even end up buying the full game because of the demo. I went into Skyrim slightly skeptical, but hoping that if there were any mild problems that I noticed, that they could be fixed with playermade modifications. The problem isn't that there aren't small problems in gameplay, but major problems in the overall experience that detract from the experience as a whole. Heck, I thought I was going to hate Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but found it quite fun after the first mission.
Edited more info after the post, just a heads up.
But I'll put it here too.
"That was mild sarcasm. Its not that I went into the game knowing I was going to hate it; I take at least an hour to rid myself of any previous thought I had about the game. I went into Duke Nukem really, really wanting to like it and didn't even end up buying the full game because of the demo. I went into Skyrim slightly skeptical, but hoping that if there were any mild problems that I noticed, that they could be fixed with playermade modifications. The problem isn't that there aren't small problems in gameplay, but major problems in the overall experience that detract from the experience as a whole. Heck, I thought I was going to hate Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but found it quite fun after the first mission."
But I'll put it here too.
"That was mild sarcasm. Its not that I went into the game knowing I was going to hate it; I take at least an hour to rid myself of any previous thought I had about the game. I went into Duke Nukem really, really wanting to like it and didn't even end up buying the full game because of the demo. I went into Skyrim slightly skeptical, but hoping that if there were any mild problems that I noticed, that they could be fixed with playermade modifications. The problem isn't that there aren't small problems in gameplay, but major problems in the overall experience that detract from the experience as a whole. Heck, I thought I was going to hate Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but found it quite fun after the first mission."
Okay, why don't you take sequels and prequels into account? You don't read Return of the King and go, "Well they didn't explain anything. Who the fuck is Frodo and why does he have this ring?"Denariax said:
They don't have to explain everything because you were supposed to read them in order. If a game has a big fat 2 on the box odds are there is some content you're missing. Now some make an effort to clue you in but the fact of the matter is that a series is a series, as in a series of things with an order to them.
On to your next point about not knowing why you are doing what you are doing. It's a Role Playing Game. You do whatever you want to do. It's not scripted like most games; you choose how you want to act in any given situation. Why are you stealing brooms? The hell if I know that sounds like an odd thing to do. You have one and only one piece of preset info about yourself. You are Dragonborn. Why are you fighting dragons? You don't have to if you don't want to. I do it because it's fun and my character has accepted his fate. Your character may be different.
If you want to know more about the world then you can go find out. You can talk to people and ask questions. Explore in the hopes of finding people to answer your questions. Like you would and do in the real world.
It's not like other series in that your questions are answered in time. You learn about the Elder Scrolls as they become relevant to the plot, you learn why there are dragons and all that by playing the game. This is what makes the experience so immersive. Everything that happens in the plot happens to you. You witnessed the first dragon attack, you sought answers on who you are and what's going on. Your character has no preset knowledge of what's going on because you don't any knowledge of what's going on. You aren't guided down a set of hallways and you don't listen to your character's opinion of a situation. You choose where to go and you choose how you appraise things.
This is most likely why it fell flat for you. You said you liked Alice because it kept story and gameplay separate. This is counter-intuitive in gaming. Gaming allows you to, as a player, experience the story first hand. Why have a story in a game at all if it in no way reflects the gameplay? Why have gameplay at all if it doesn't enhance the story.
You're free to have your own preferences in gaming but saying that a game is bad for the reasons you have listed is short sighted and has no validity. It simply sounds like a bloated opinion of a game from someone who barely played it.
Again if you didn't like it then no, don't slog through it. But your opinion is not writ and being pretentious is not a good character trait.
While it is true that other Final Fantasy games, and RPGs in general, really, including wRPGs, are pretty linear and the non-linearity is an illusion, the lack of options is claustrophobic this time for many gamers. And more options in a game adds to gameplay. Allowing people distractions from a main objective and allowing them to do more things is a good thing.
In other Final Fantasy games, you were allowed to explore more areas(which allowed you to often find bonuses which helped on your linear objective), talk to more NPCs, engage in side quests constantly, and a great many other things. There was a constant reward to exploring, and the typical logic of them and most jRPGs have been, "to succeed and get all of the good stuff, do the exact opposite of what you're supposed to(within reason) and explore everywhere except where you're immediately supposed to go". Which isn't actually that different from Oblivion if you think about it, only that jRPGs tend to restrict the amount of areas you're allowed to in comparison, setting the game and exploration in stages much like classic action-adventure games and platformers(there are many bonuses in Zelda games, but you're not allowed to explore everywhere at one time, so therefor the exploration and options come in stages instead of one big unbroken stage/sandbox). In Oblivion, you're immediately supposed to go help out Martin, but you can do a great many other things, like join a Guild or even go to the Shivering Isles and get an amazing sword, first. Which means getting an amazing sword, before storming the first Oblivion gate.
And to tie that in to Skyrim, I think that a part of the reason the jRPG is in decline, much as I love it, is because that Final Fantasy, the franchise everyone unfortunately associates with the jRPG, failed to appease people with enough options.
A good jRPG is a lot like a good wRPG, in my opinion, and a good wRPG, is a lot like a good jRPG. Good ones from both in terms of pacing generally meet each other halfway in terms of pacing. You just get the most out of gameplay and what the focus of an RPG is supposed to be that way. RPGs are supposed to be multifaceted games. And Final Fantasy XIII isn't very multifaceted. Chrono Trigger is a very multi-faceted game where reactions of NPCs and many other things differ, depending on your actions. For instance, you can often do a lot of things and exploring, before completing your main objective. That's part of the fun. And you can get different endings, depending on your course of action. Also, you can choose(and this is spoiler territory, go play Chrono Trigger right now if you haven't), whether to break out of prison, be saved by Lucca, and whether you're actually chosen by the jury as guilty or not. And just like Oblivion, your actions everywhere in the world, and how you progress the story, will affect how NPCs everywhere talk about you. There are many other examples, but you don't get such a thing in Final Fantasy XIII, and I believe it suffers for it.
I do not believe, that Final Fantasy XIII is as bad as everyone makes it out to be, however, and deserves a lot of respect. Even more so, I think it's a terrible development that the term "jRPG" evokes laughter and scorn from many Westerners now. I'm getting awfully tired of the unwarrented condescension and even scorn not just jRPGs, but Japanese games in general get now. You almost get the feeling that many people within the Western world begrudgingly played and praised and played Japanese games because they couldn't possibly lie then and say that Japanese games were bad, and couldn't get away with it, because in that state of the gaming industry, Japanese games were fairly dominant, and it was pretty much impossible to consider yourself a fan of video gaming and not like a Japanese game or two. But now that Japanese games have started to lose face, and people can get away with it, it seems like thousands of people are jumping at the opportunity to be patriotic about video games as they are every other aspect of their lives and laugh it up about Asian made games. I can bet that the current state of the video game industry and which games by which ethnicities are more respected, has pleased a great many people.
And it's true. A lot of Westerners are looking down their noses as Western games and many Japanese companies know it. It's a part of all major video game magazines like Game Informer.
And I want jRPGs and Asian games in general to be more respected. Not just Japanese, I want to see more good games come out of Korea and China and for the "Korean grind fest" stigma to go away. But I'm not sure that I wholly disagree with the criticism leveled at Final Fantasy XIII.
I am certainly sympathetic to your claim, though.
In other Final Fantasy games, you were allowed to explore more areas(which allowed you to often find bonuses which helped on your linear objective), talk to more NPCs, engage in side quests constantly, and a great many other things. There was a constant reward to exploring, and the typical logic of them and most jRPGs have been, "to succeed and get all of the good stuff, do the exact opposite of what you're supposed to(within reason) and explore everywhere except where you're immediately supposed to go". Which isn't actually that different from Oblivion if you think about it, only that jRPGs tend to restrict the amount of areas you're allowed to in comparison, setting the game and exploration in stages much like classic action-adventure games and platformers(there are many bonuses in Zelda games, but you're not allowed to explore everywhere at one time, so therefor the exploration and options come in stages instead of one big unbroken stage/sandbox). In Oblivion, you're immediately supposed to go help out Martin, but you can do a great many other things, like join a Guild or even go to the Shivering Isles and get an amazing sword, first. Which means getting an amazing sword, before storming the first Oblivion gate.
And to tie that in to Skyrim, I think that a part of the reason the jRPG is in decline, much as I love it, is because that Final Fantasy, the franchise everyone unfortunately associates with the jRPG, failed to appease people with enough options.
A good jRPG is a lot like a good wRPG, in my opinion, and a good wRPG, is a lot like a good jRPG. Good ones from both in terms of pacing generally meet each other halfway in terms of pacing. You just get the most out of gameplay and what the focus of an RPG is supposed to be that way. RPGs are supposed to be multifaceted games. And Final Fantasy XIII isn't very multifaceted. Chrono Trigger is a very multi-faceted game where reactions of NPCs and many other things differ, depending on your actions. For instance, you can often do a lot of things and exploring, before completing your main objective. That's part of the fun. And you can get different endings, depending on your course of action. Also, you can choose(and this is spoiler territory, go play Chrono Trigger right now if you haven't), whether to break out of prison, be saved by Lucca, and whether you're actually chosen by the jury as guilty or not. And just like Oblivion, your actions everywhere in the world, and how you progress the story, will affect how NPCs everywhere talk about you. There are many other examples, but you don't get such a thing in Final Fantasy XIII, and I believe it suffers for it.
I do not believe, that Final Fantasy XIII is as bad as everyone makes it out to be, however, and deserves a lot of respect. Even more so, I think it's a terrible development that the term "jRPG" evokes laughter and scorn from many Westerners now. I'm getting awfully tired of the unwarrented condescension and even scorn not just jRPGs, but Japanese games in general get now. You almost get the feeling that many people within the Western world begrudgingly played and praised and played Japanese games because they couldn't possibly lie then and say that Japanese games were bad, and couldn't get away with it, because in that state of the gaming industry, Japanese games were fairly dominant, and it was pretty much impossible to consider yourself a fan of video gaming and not like a Japanese game or two. But now that Japanese games have started to lose face, and people can get away with it, it seems like thousands of people are jumping at the opportunity to be patriotic about video games as they are every other aspect of their lives and laugh it up about Asian made games. I can bet that the current state of the video game industry and which games by which ethnicities are more respected, has pleased a great many people.
And it's true. A lot of Westerners are looking down their noses as Western games and many Japanese companies know it. It's a part of all major video game magazines like Game Informer.
And I want jRPGs and Asian games in general to be more respected. Not just Japanese, I want to see more good games come out of Korea and China and for the "Korean grind fest" stigma to go away. But I'm not sure that I wholly disagree with the criticism leveled at Final Fantasy XIII.
I am certainly sympathetic to your claim, though.
I have played it. It's nothing special.Kopikatsu said:
Hypothetically, if Modern Warfare 3 was the only game I ever played, I'd elevate and hype the shit out of it. Of course, I can make the same argument for a great number of modern games, including any of MW3's B-list and C-list knockoffs. (Naivety and ignorance are precisely why shovelware games and knockoffs exist)
Standards and contexts change though. I started gaming in the early NES-era, and it's impossible to not compare experiences (we're thinking on the margin when we do so).
This is proved by the fact that in the absence of nostalgia, very few old games actually hold up today. Few games actually have "timeless" gameplay elements.
One can claim this is "unfair", and I'll tell them that they're dead wrong. It's perfectly fair to compare experiences and especially compare competing games, because that's how WE, the gamers, are supposed to force some variety into our selection.
The primary problem I'm going to pick at here, is that if a game cannot give any information in the first hour, it is not worth sticking around to get more out of it. If the game was given more choice than it gives, it would give you the choice to not be a Dragonborn. A lot of people would still choose it, but its not there to begin with. In Alice it kept them separate, but meaningful. And not as separate as I put them out to be.AugustFall said:
The problem in Skyrim, in the end, is that when it emphasizes story (As most RPG's are bound nearly by law to), it has to hold up on that before it can be held up on gameplay (Graphics don't count, this isn't an art studio.) And while someone would say that games aren't books, that's no longer the case because games become old without reason to do things. And Skyrim's story falls flat without any initial reasoning; being thrown directly into a carriage and being told "You're going to die now, kthnx" is not good story, regardless of what happens afterwards, and even regardless if they go back to explain it later a la FFXIII.
If something doesn't happen in the first hour of the game I usually stop playing. Like Heavy Rain. If the event seems forced onto the subject at hand (AKA, the dragon somehow finding you and freeing specifically you, nevermind that other bloke who just got decapitated), it seems just plain insulting to keep playing.
Now, in another game, Bioshock for example, you could say that your guy being the sole survivor was bad storytelling. But the problem here is, the confusion going into the game is subsided by it being a game based more on the immersion of gameplay rather than story. And because Skyrim emphasizes story, I can't consider it nearly 40/40, maybe more 10/40, as the story is just plain dumb.
And for the LotR thing; no. Isn't the same. In LotR you're expected to have read them in order, and in all honesty I consider it all one giant story anyways. Like Harry Potter. Except the writers got drunk around chapter 5.
Does anyone else not think that any game can possibly achieve a perfect score realistically? Sure, it's an amazing game, and I love the Elder Scrolls to bits, but seriously, nothing's perfect. That any game could be perfect to four seperate reviewers is kind of odd, to me at least. For a game to be perfect, it'd have to be doling out sexual favours and making me bacon sandwiches and cups of tea. It could also print money, that'd be nice too. But obviously, that's my perspective. To someone who is a vegetarian, that game would be imperfect. Is it really possible for anything to be perfect?