*LOL*Covarr said:Pink Apocalypse said:Oh really?Pink Apocalypse said:
P.S. Thanks
I can't wait to jump ship from the 360 to PS4 once ESO comes out. Is that better?
Sony's Yoshida Reacts to Less Than Stellar PS4 Reviews
- Thread starter roseofbattle
- Start date
I can't wait to jump ship from the 360 to PS4 once ESO comes out. Is that better?
Not to snip out the majority of your post, since you made a good point, but I'm a bit more alarmed by the trend in how we process reviews, where in flat-average and slightly-above average is now considered "low." Unless a new glut of reviews has rolled since the last time I looked about five minutes ago to push the scores down, Knack was sitting at a steady 50-something out of 100 and Shadow Fall in the 70s on MegaCritic.Nocturnus said:
I get that people were maybe expecting to be wowed by the first games of a new generation console, though why they'd expect that is a mystery to me because the first games of almost any console tend to be less than amazing, but this extends way beyond just the PS4 and into every system and format. When did average start to mean "bad" and better than average become "also bad?" I find it baffling that someone would even need to respond to critics standing up and proclaiming... "Yeah, it was alright." like it was some sort of crisis.
If Second Son was a launch title I would've been more excited, but as it stands I'll probably wait till Christmas till I grab a PS4 for all my next gen needs.
Let's take a moment to ponder what possible reviews Watch_Dogs could have had, and how those might have affected people's preconceptions about the PS4 launch.
Aaahhhh...
Aaahhhh...
This is why I'm waiting for Destiny. Can't really say I care about any of the launch titles and by the time Destiny comes out they should be ~$40. I'll probably get Killzone as well and whatever else looks cool. Watch_Dogs is strictly PC for me though.
I agree and its completely due to the fact that people want their reviews ASAP. The reviewers are a symptom to a much bigger problem. People are not patient to wait for a great review so most reviewers have to power through the holiday months in order to get the traffic they desire.Nocturnus said:
A few people are breaking that trend (angry Joe) and I salute them for that. However, it does take them a week or two after release date to have a complete in depth review.
Rushed console start leads to rushed reviews. no way!
to be honest if you think reviews are rushed you should have provided journalists with the games earlier! that way they would have had more time. but did you? no, so blame is on you, sony.
Lets take Civilization 4 for example. I have bought it, installed it on two computers and played it for 4 years, never once encountering a game breaking bug other than crash due to lack of memory on one of the computers (which was because it was way bellow minimum required specs, but the game ran, just slowly and crashed on very big maps occasionaly). As far as i cared to tell anyone, the game had no bugs i saw at all.
Then, after 4 years, i installed it on one of those two computers after reinstalling the OS. the game didnt even launch, once i managed to manually set it to windowed mode, the game launched, animations were messed up, soldiers mixed up in races, plenty of problems you could consider game breaking. i started to google for solution and found out that there were people that had said problems for those first 4 years. While it worked perfectly for me. I never did manage to get it back to perfect condition but it runs fine now.
So if a reviewer gets lucky like i was an it plays perfectly for him, there is no way for him to know it has game breaking bugs.
To adress your second point, every reviewer does not review every game. there is a reason there are strategy reviewers that do onyl strategy games for example. slower scope, deeper knowledge of genre. Obviuosly, small companies cant really afford that.
Youtube critics are same people like any other reviewer, and they get paid by viewcount, just like the companies on review sites. there is no fundamental difference other than venue of the showing.
to be honest if you think reviews are rushed you should have provided journalists with the games earlier! that way they would have had more time. but did you? no, so blame is on you, sony.
The problem with game breaking bugs are that they dont really exist for everyone.AzrealMaximillion said:
Lets take Civilization 4 for example. I have bought it, installed it on two computers and played it for 4 years, never once encountering a game breaking bug other than crash due to lack of memory on one of the computers (which was because it was way bellow minimum required specs, but the game ran, just slowly and crashed on very big maps occasionaly). As far as i cared to tell anyone, the game had no bugs i saw at all.
Then, after 4 years, i installed it on one of those two computers after reinstalling the OS. the game didnt even launch, once i managed to manually set it to windowed mode, the game launched, animations were messed up, soldiers mixed up in races, plenty of problems you could consider game breaking. i started to google for solution and found out that there were people that had said problems for those first 4 years. While it worked perfectly for me. I never did manage to get it back to perfect condition but it runs fine now.
So if a reviewer gets lucky like i was an it plays perfectly for him, there is no way for him to know it has game breaking bugs.
To adress your second point, every reviewer does not review every game. there is a reason there are strategy reviewers that do onyl strategy games for example. slower scope, deeper knowledge of genre. Obviuosly, small companies cant really afford that.
Youtube critics are same people like any other reviewer, and they get paid by viewcount, just like the companies on review sites. there is no fundamental difference other than venue of the showing.
To be fair your picking a different game in a different situation. The launch issues of Total War Rome are widespread enough that many YouTube reviewers, Angry Joe especially, have straight up said not to buy Rome 11 until Creative Assembly fixes the games many, many problems. Its not even just game breaking bugs, its also a poor interface and really poor AI that doesn't stack units and instead literally sends armies of 20 units at your base filled with 100+. There's also the many glitches like boats swimming through land.Strazdas said:
Civ 4's launch wasn't riddled with an absurd amount of bugs and as such isn't a very good comparison at all to this situation. This isn't the first time Creative Assembly has released a broken game and gotten high scores from the IGNs and such. Total War Empires had similar issues. If you played England when that game launched, no one would attack you due to the AI not knowing how to do naval transport. This was among many other bugs. Civilization 4 is actually regarded as the best in the Civ series so I'm wondering why you chose that game as a comparison to Rome 2.
You missed my point here. Think of how much time a strategy game would take to properly review. Probably upwards of 100+ hours. Not many gaming publications if at all have a reviewer for each genre of game. Look at this website as an example. The person who reviewed Total War Rome 2 also reviewed Battlefield 4, COD Ghosts and Pokemon X&Y. I don't think there's a website on the internet that has reviewers for certain genres.
And I also have to combat your point about how YouTube reviewers do things the same. They simply don't. And here's one major reason why. Most YouTube critics aren't registered on Metacritic. This is because a lot of them feel that Metacritic is causing a lot of problems in the gaming review world right now. A lot of consumers and publishers look to Metacritic scores as the end all be all rating of how good a game is. The problem is that you can't trust Metacritic's numbers due to the gaming review system being pretty much inefficient as well as decently corrupt.
I'd highly suggest watching this video(skip to 44:30) and listen to both Adam Sessler and TotalBiscuit describe in depth how Metacritic is a flawed system using Rome 2 as an example:
Also think of how much time properly reviewing a strategy game like Rome 2 would take. Probably at least 80-100 hours. Reviewers for publications do not have that amount of time as they aren't given review codes for games months in advance like the old days. They get the game a week in advance at most and have to speed through it or judge it based on a short amount of time they pleyed the game for. All the while playing other games.
YouTube reviewer have the luxury of not having deadlines, not having to put up a score in a lot of cases due to not being a part of Metacritic, and being able to make a long in-depth video showing gameplay instead of a 3 minute summary of an article.
All in all I'd have to say that there are very few gaming websites that are to be trusted when it comes to reviews due to the influence that publishers have on a lot of them. IGN and Gamespot especially. Even the Escapist's review ignore a lot of the negative aspects of games when reviewed. Total War Rome 2 got a 4/5 and that review glossed over the major bugs. Dragon Age 2 getting a 5/5 for its story while that article ignored the lazy job Bioware did trying to cash in on the sleeper hit DA:Origins.
There are YouTube reviewers that I don't trust at all don't get me wrong, but with them its more of them not looking at both the good and bad aspects of a game rather than having a publisher hand them swag and invite them to parties provided that are given a good score. Most YouTube reviewers also don't have a company telling them to score games a certain way or lose their job (Jeff Gesterman). If your score is registered on Metacritic and you're not on Giant Bomb or a select few others, your review is either based on 1 hour of gameplay or bought.
So I can see how easily the reviews for the PS4 launch titles could have been rushed considering we're in November, the busiest time for reviewers. I expect to see the worst reviews written during this time from major gaming publications.
Well thanks goodness there's a decent selection of games coming out and these 2 games don't represent a significant portion of the PS4's exclusive launch titles... Oh wait that's not true. Ah well at least you can still play your old games from previous playstations on.. oh wait that wasn't considered a priority either (yes I know PS3 compatibility will never happen but it wouldn't have killed sony to include PS2/PS1 compatibility).
You reap what you sow and if you sou underdeveloped consoles and overdeveloped/ expensive games you're gonna be left with a field of turd come harvest time.
You reap what you sow and if you sou underdeveloped consoles and overdeveloped/ expensive games you're gonna be left with a field of turd come harvest time.
Yes, the games are different, i merely wnated to illustrate the point that not all copies work identical and some may actually work without game breaking bugs. I mean it must have worked fine on SOME configuration if it passed QA right?AzrealMaximillion said:
I Do agree that broken game is sitll a broken game, but it is possible a reviewer got a copy that manaed to isntall without such bugs by pure chance, didnt start with England and didnt even notice this and just though england is conservative and didnt want to get involved in wars.
I picked Civ 4 due to my personal experience with it as i am a long time player and had many iterations of "this works and then after reinstall it doesnt" problems with it, while i havent played Rome 2, so i cant comment on that as i have no experience. It was merely to illustrate point and not to compare the two though.
Yes, some strategy games do indeed would take over 100 hours. and you have a point with smaller websites. I know that on IGN at least they do have people reviewing certain series, like a sequel would be reviewed by same person who reviewed the original and i notice same names on strategy games that i look up, so there is some specialization at least. and obviuosly different games requiring different time to review would really be a problem. However the "review based on 30 minutes" would not be a problem if, say, a game was given to the reviewers a month in advance. then they could review it at their own pace and if the game is bad, they would do few hours and see that game is bad, and if the game is good, they would continue to play (if only for their own enjoyment, since they got a month anyway) and if the game they though are good has bugs they would have time noticing.
Another problem here i see is there is just too many games. theres like what, 4 games coming out every day now? how much manpower you need to cover them all properly, and relative to that just how many clicks are you actually going to get from that?
the core mechanic of what people do here is play game, give tiher opinion of it. the difference is soem do it on website, some do it on youtube. they get paid for it.
I do agree with TotalBiscuit that "metacritic should die". i personally have opened the site 2 times in my life and do not use it. and even then, one of these times was just to get the total number of games released for PS3 in 2012 as metacritic seems to list all of games in reasonable manner. i will listen to the rest of the ideo... when i have time for that, but i do agree with TB quite often and think hes a very smart guy when it comes to PC gaming topic.
True, though fairly if i was a critic and they would give me soemthing like Rome 2 a week before id probably be playing it at expense of sleep even jut to play though everything, im kinda that obsessive. I dont review games, i dont think a single playtrough gives me enough knowledge to do so. Though i did wrte 4 reviews in the past, they werent something magical.
Well, If youtube revierwers want to review game at the time to effect main buying market it has deadlines. Scores are personal opinion really, i personally like scores but like Jim said, score is good but it is not equivalent to actual review. Noone is stopping review sites not bieng part of metacritic, as far as i know its voulantary.
Review sites are also allwoed to make long indepth videos, why they are not doing that.... oh wait, some of them are. they even do palytroughs with developers. This site doesnt of course, but its not the only one out there.
Things with reviews is that thier are subjective. the key to finding good review is not to find one that is objective, but the one that has same opinion that you have. For example Objectively War and Peace is quite shitty game. I love it. And i will defend a 10/10 for it. because i LOVED playing it. its still one of my move vivid memories.
Nice that you already know who is corrupt and who is lazy at their jobs. Certainly gives credit to your opinion. Would you say Jim Sterling is also bought because he gave COD:BO2 a 9/10? Or Deadly premonition 10/10 despite it being objectively shitty? Or would you look at his youtube channel where he explained why Deadly Premonition is just great despite its massive flaws and bugs?
Here's the thing with Jim that I have beef with, and to be fair I have beef with any reviewer that does this. Jim reviews games in a very one sided manner. He either speaks only on the good aspects of a game if he likes it, or only on the bad aspects if he doesn't.Strazdas said:
I personally think that while no, Jim Sterling isn't bought, as a reviewer he doesn't give a complete review of the games he reviews. This also leads to my almost immediate dismissal of the "reviews are subjective" argument as it is untrue. In a review the author is presenting not just their opinion. They are presenting their analysis of the game. They are supposed to convey what their reviewing in a complete fashion. Anything that shines light mostly on the negative or positive of the item under review is not to be taken seriously.
Here's an example, and a pretty famous one at that.
The infamous Assassin's Creed 2 review.
Jim Sterling gave that game a 4.5. a lot of people on Destructiod freaked the hell out. A lot of them were loud AssCreed fanboys, but there were legitimate criticisms of the review. One of which was it was written as more of an antagonistic soapbox on not liking Assassin's Creed rather than an actual review. Jim mentions subjective things he didn't like about the game and almost flat out didn't speak on any of the odjectional upgrades the game made upon its predecessor.
Jim didn't mention the fact that the had much more mission variety in the main game rather than AssCreed 1's 3 step repeat the whole game. There was also no mention on the expanded gameplay options that were available due to having more weapons, more skills learned over time, and many different side missions with different completion reward. He also didn't mention how AC2 was not only more graphically powerful game, but on how the world of the game was no longer a very stale environment. Instead Jim complained about how the fast travel wasn't good enough, how climbing was apparently too slow, how the there were 3 parts in mission branches that were instances of the player walking alongside an NPC engaging in dialogue. Point is he ignored the improvements that more AC2 objectively a better game than AC1 in his review.
In his COD BLOPS 2 review Jim praised the game mainly on its single player campaign not being the complete garbage that most modern military shooters find themselves in. Instead what Treyarch did was make COD fall more in line with just modern shooters in general. It had more than just people to shoot and on rails vehicle segments. There are more enemy types due to the game's story, but it does nothing to improve upon current FPS games and to be honest doesn't do what it does in its single player better than other modern FPS games. Its still a bog standard experience, which is fine, but praising it for not being the usual COD does very little if nothing about it is actually exemplary. Jim also didn't mention any negatives in his review. No talk of improvements on gameplay at all. No talk on how the multiplayer is still the same skinner box leveling mentality. The fact that destructible terrain is still a major joke compared to other games of its type. The fact that Blops 2 is dated to look at in the market its in is another point.
I think there is something to be said for a reviewer who can say that the game he hates to play still is a good game qualitatively. For example if someone absolutely hates the cyberpunk genre would still have to admit that Deus Ex Hum Revolution is a very good title instead of giving the whole game a negative review that focuses only on the bad boss fights because they hate cyberpunk.
Deadly Premonition is another example of Jim not talking about all of the aspects of the game. Doesn't really go into how it plays. He actually doesn't even get into the bugs. He praises the game for not being part of the norm for almost the entire review and slaps 10/10 on it because he liked it.
This is why I can't take review scores seriously. That score represents who that author felt about the game, not how objectively good the game is. A 10/10 is not your score for Deadly Premonition nor is it mine. And I enjoyed Deadly Premonition.(A lot of that has to do with being a fan of Twin Peaks) Another example for you. I loooooooooooooooooved the original State of Emergency. Probably more than Jim Strerling loooooooooooves Dynasty Warrior. I'd still never give SoE a 10/10 just because I liked it. That game is still stupidly flawed and those flaws need to be pointed out.
There's a reason people poo pooed the Escapist for adding the 5 star system.
At the end of the day a review is there to help customers buy something, and if it doesn't discuss negative or positive issues due to the author's love for, or hate of the game, the results are about the same as a bought review. Its why Jim Sterling is such a polarizing character in gaming media.
I just don't personally like reviews that are nothing but opinion because at the end of the day I still didn't get a fair assessment on a game I'm looking to spend money on. And if YouTube critics keep on getting subscribers in the numbers like TotalBiscuit, or Adam Sessler at Rev3 Games, gaming websites will be in big trouble. Its already happening at both IGN and Gamespot. Gaming websites need to either start policing each other on reviews or build their site around something other than reviews bringing in ad revenue because right now YouTube critics are crushing them and don't need big publishers handing them incentives to do so.
I give you 100% objective review, by the very same Jim Sterling:AzrealMaximillion said:
http://www.destructoid.com/100-objective-review-final-fantasy-xiii-179178.phtml
When a game has so many flaws that you cannot see the upsides due to it, flaws is what your going to talk about, same goes the other way around. Reviews in the end are still just reviewers opinion about the game. IF you want objectivity - read the manual.
I will have to disagree with you about AC2. In my (granted, subjective, because all opinions are) opinion, it was the worst game in the series. Its improvements over AC1 was not worth it compared to flaws it has introduced. Clearly, your opinion (also, subjective) are different. In this instance Jim agreed with me.
Every game has to be able to stand on signleplayer alone, unless it is a multiplayer only game. Therefore it is completely fair to review the singleplayer campaign. Now i have not played BLOPs so i dont know how much if what Jim said is true or not, but you seem to agree that it was different than the rest of CODs, therefore he was not wrong. and changing it is what the folks on the net were actually screaming for.
Yes, a reviewer who thinks a game is good if he hated to play it is being dishonest. there is more to say about it, but you already did in your last post. A person who hates cyberpunk genre should not be reviewing cyberpunk game. In such case we should say he does not know what hes talking about.
In his youtube videos Jim went more in depth of why he rated Deadly Premonition that high, and while granted that is not the review itself, he did made good points. Thing is, even being a technical disaster, the game is worth 10/10, because other aspects make up for it
Scores alone has never worked, and metacritic is best proof of its failure. What matters is what is actually said in the review - reviewers opinion. Scores however is something i personally support, because i like assigning number to everything. Though i admit the 5 start system is rather poor, not to mention that it is not even a 5 star system but a 4.5 star system really.
A review has never been a factor in my buying process. Its not there to make you buy a game. Its there for a reviewer to express his opinion about a game, and then based on that you can buy it or you may not, its up to you. Like i said - the key to reading reviews is to find reviewer you agree with, not reviewer that gives least opinions.
IF you dont like reviews that are opinions, then you dont like reviews. because reviews are opinions. There is no such thing as fair assesment of a game, unless you want technical numbers only. everything but technical stuff is subjective.