Yooka-Laylee reviews are coming out and thoughts are ...mixed

Blitsie

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Randomosity said:
Jim gave Aliens: Colonial Marines a 2.5/10 back in the day. Now I'm willing to admit that YL could be a turd, but worse than Colonial Marines? I don't buy it.
What is it with people and this backwards idea that every game is reviewed under the exact same criteria? Is it because the x out of 10 score is generally universal and, due to intelligence being a dump stat for right-handed mastery, they cant consider that how he reached that score for YL may be different to how he reached that score for Colonial Marines? Because I sure as hell don't think Sterling thought "well this doesn't let me shoot aliens like in Colonial Marines so I rate it lower" while giving his score.

Jesus, this is as bad as the "its only cosmetic" argument.
 

TrulyBritish

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Samtemdo8 said:
I am surprised the whole Jontron controversy with this game is not being factored here.

Jim could be giving the game 2 out of 10 to spite the game creators for what they did to Jontron?

But than again I would not know unless Jim himself admits he did. And I have yet to play the game myself but if I do it might be on PC.
That is very very unlikely, seeing as he wrote a whole article on how you tubers shouldn't be surprised when media/companies react to controversies about them.
http://www.thejimquisition.com/youtubers-say-the-darndest-things/
 

TrulyBritish

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Yoshi178 said:
I did support my opinion. I compared yooka Laylee and Zelda Jimquisition reviews with Persona 5, Horizon and Nier Jimquisition reviews.


I'm not going do full on in depth research to defend my opinion of Why I think Jim Sterlings a Sony Fanboy just to prove "nyah nyah I'm right and this is why your opinion is wrong" like people here were doing by doing things like compiling up a list of like 20 games and putting big red arrows next Laura Kate dales name just so you guys could shove it in my face, just how wrong I am and why I'm wrong.



This is a video games forum. Not a fucking history lesson. But anyway you guys go ahead, keep searching for new ways to show me why I'm wrong. Frankly I don't give a shit anymore. I'm going to work.
Do you not understand how debates/discussions work?
You provide evidence for your belief, then people can provide counter evidence for theirs.
You don't get to effectively stick your fingers in your ears against any counter arguments, admit that you can't be bothered to do any more research than is required to cherry pick for your own foregone conclusions and then pretend like you're being the rational one being bullied by others.
 

McElroy

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Phoenixmgs said:
What other art form is rated where 7 is average?
It's not like you don't know the answer to that and even why it's not the right question to ask. Video games are rated as toys, not art. Blockbuster movies often have this too.
 

shrekfan246

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TrulyBritish said:
Yoshi178 said:
I did support my opinion. I compared yooka Laylee and Zelda Jimquisition reviews with Persona 5, Horizon and Nier Jimquisition reviews.


I'm not going do full on in depth research to defend my opinion of Why I think Jim Sterlings a Sony Fanboy just to prove "nyah nyah I'm right and this is why your opinion is wrong" like people here were doing by doing things like compiling up a list of like 20 games and putting big red arrows next Laura Kate dales name just so you guys could shove it in my face, just how wrong I am and why I'm wrong.



This is a video games forum. Not a fucking history lesson. But anyway you guys go ahead, keep searching for new ways to show me why I'm wrong. Frankly I don't give a shit anymore. I'm going to work.
Do you not understand how debates/discussions work?
You provide evidence for your belief, then people can provide counter evidence for theirs.
You don't get to effectively stick your fingers in your ears against any counter arguments, admit that you can't be bothered to do any more research than is required to cherry pick for your own foregone conclusions and then pretend like you're being the rational one being bullied by others.
I mean, this is the internet, not a formal debate. There's nothing stopping people from doing that. I think the bigger part is that they shouldn't be quite so surprised when everyone else doesn't take them seriously.

gsilver said:
I know that it's kind of pointless to jump into this discussion as it's broken down as to the merits of individual reviewers, but if you actually read the reviews, they all pretty much complain about the same things. It's not like anyone's reporting a vastly different experience. It's just that the issues, which are there for everyone, bother people to a greater or lesser degree.

Personally, I could see the emptiness of some of the worlds get to me, but having not played it, I really can't say for sure.
I'll wait for the game to become available before making any kind of quality decision.

//Hopes that it's a game that I'll like
This is where I'm at. From the sounds of things people who either didn't like Banjo or liked it at the time but don't think it holds up won't like Yooka-Laylee, which... seems kinda reasonable to me. I never expected the game to be anything but Banjo, myself. There also seems to be a subset of people who really didn't like Banjo-Tooie hating Yooka-Laylee, which is interesting to me.

I still think both of the Banjo games are great, so just as long as it isn't Nuts & Bolts levels of "empty" I imagine I won't have too many issues with Yooka-Laylee.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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McElroy said:
Phoenixmgs said:
What other art form is rated where 7 is average?
It's not like you don't know the answer to that and even why it's not the right question to ask. Video games are rated as toys, not art. Blockbuster movies often have this too.
Video games aren't rated as toys, 7 being average is actually a rather recent developement for the medium. Blockbuster movies get trashed by critics if they suck like Bad Boys 2, Transformers, Batman v Superman, etc.
 

RaikuFA

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TrulyBritish said:
Elijin said:
I have a question!

Is the game functionally flawed or heavily broken? Or is this just a case that it turns out that as fond of our memories are of 3D platformers, in actual practice most of us have outgrown them?

That's what sticks out to me, because every piece of footage of this game I have seen has elected a 'Man that looks interesting, I would have been so into that 10 year ago, but I just cant work up the enthusiasm to go back to 3D platformers now.'
According to Jim, the former I guess. Common consensus seems to be it's just like Banjo Kazooie, with Jim saying that that's a bad thing because it has all the flaws of late 90's platforms with none of the improvements made since. It sounds like he doesn't particularly like BK in the first place though.
Some people seem to be having performance issues, but not to the extent that, say, Andromeda seems to be having.
Which is really sad cause he backed the game.
 

McElroy

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Phoenixmgs said:
McElroy said:
Phoenixmgs said:
What other art form is rated where 7 is average?
It's not like you don't know the answer to that and even why it's not the right question to ask. Video games are rated as toys, not art. Blockbuster movies often have this too.
Video games aren't rated as toys, 7 being average is actually a rather recent development for the medium. Blockbuster movies get trashed by critics if they suck like Bad Boys 2, Transformers, Batman v Superman, etc.
I think the difference in average scores definitely comes from that. You seem to be having the opposite opinion and I'll let you have it. However, the average blockbuster movie is expected to rate 6-7/10. You listed outliers. Heck, the average rating (RT's critics) for Revenge of the Fallen is 4/10 and that movie is just about the worst blockbuster I can think of. Though that is pretty trashed, I guess, tough to make sense of all these scores.

To elaborate, you say this on the previous page:
The fact that there is so much agreement among game reviewers of a game's "quality" is unprecedented for any kind of art form, and not only do games have to be games (gameplay, game mechanics, etc.), they also have to have the same story elements of a movie or book.
This illustrates a serious degree of separation between your and let's just say most other people's standards for game quality. No wonder the supposed scores differ too.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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McElroy said:
Phoenixmgs said:
McElroy said:
Phoenixmgs said:
What other art form is rated where 7 is average?
It's not like you don't know the answer to that and even why it's not the right question to ask. Video games are rated as toys, not art. Blockbuster movies often have this too.
Video games aren't rated as toys, 7 being average is actually a rather recent development for the medium. Blockbuster movies get trashed by critics if they suck like Bad Boys 2, Transformers, Batman v Superman, etc.
I think the difference in average scores definitely comes from that. You seem to be having the opposite opinion and I'll let you have it. However, the average blockbuster movie is expected to rate 6-7/10. You listed outliers. Heck, the average rating (RT's critics) for Revenge of the Fallen is 4/10 and that movie is just about the worst blockbuster I can think of. Though that is pretty trashed, I guess, tough to make sense of all these scores.

To elaborate, you say this on the previous page:
The fact that there is so much agreement among game reviewers of a game's "quality" is unprecedented for any kind of art form, and not only do games have to be games (gameplay, game mechanics, etc.), they also have to have the same story elements of a movie or book.
This illustrates a serious degree of separation between your and let's just say most other people's standards for game quality. No wonder the supposed scores differ too.
You rarely, if ever, really have movies that have a super extreme average rating because there's always critics that liked a movie most did not like and vice verse. For something to get like a 98 score (like games have gotten) literally just about every critic has to think it's the best thing since sliced bread. That type of agreement is nowhere to be found in anything but gaming. Same thing with the like/dislike, you'd really have to search to find a game IGN liked and Gamespot did not like or vice verse. Or when was the last time a game that was very well received by critics and gamers got a 78? Because Guardians of the Galaxy has an average score of 7.8 at RT.

Lots of gamers play games for the story though. RPGs are played usually in hopes for good story and characters like Mass Effect, Nier, Persona, etc. Some games like Telltale games are good or bad because of story quality alone. A game like MGS4 very much exists just to conclude its story. To say writing is not important to the quality of many games is just plain wrong. I'm sure lots people don't dig Kojima storylines so they will probably say MGS4 is a bad game, yet the game is sitting at 94. Where's the critics that don't like the writing and story bringing down the aggregate score? There's not a single mixed or negative review. I love MGS4 and dig its cheese but to think 82 people all thought the game was so great that the average score is 94 is literally impossible. You can also have very differing opinions on gameplay too; I can write paragraphs detailing how I feel Uncharted, GTA, Witcher 3, and more have just bad gameplay. There's barely any dissenting opinions in professional game reviews outside of very very few people like Jim Sterling. And most reviewers that you can find with different opinions aren't so-called "professional" reviewers like Yahtzee and several Youtube reviewers.
 

McElroy

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Phoenixmgs said:
Or when was the last time a game that was very well received by critics and gamers got a 78?
I love MGS4 and dig its cheese but to think 82 people all thought the game was so great that the average score is 94 is literally impossible.
That's the thing here. Wouldn't rating games as toys and not art easily explain this? What are the Steam store pages and backs of disc cases filled with? Feature-lists, promises of playtime, replay-value, and high-scores etc. A toy with a neat list of features that also delivers them at an affordable price is already a good toy.

I kinda get the frustration or whatever it is. For example, I personally think GotG is mediocre, 5/10, and exactly because it delivered on the promises of its trailer and follows a predictable formula with some recognizable faces - and voice(s) - it got those 7s and 8s. I don't mind games being reviewed as toys mainly because I treat them as such (a decent story is just an extra and so on) with few exceptions.
 

Yoshi178

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shrekfan246 said:
I mean, this is the internet, not a formal debate. There's nothing stopping people from doing that. I think the bigger part is that they shouldn't be quite so surprised when everyone else doesn't take them seriously.
oh trust me, this forum not taking me seriously doesn't surprise me AT ALL. the people on this forum have seemed to have a bug up it's ass for the longest time.

if i comment something that people here don't agree with like in this threads for instance, this forum will tear me to shreds and go ape shit at me just to hammer into me that i'm wrong and stupid or "retarded" as someone in this thread has already refereed to my opinion as.

and even if i'm not expressing an opinion about something that people disagree with. just doing something like making a simple thread about a game i'm excited for to try and start a discussion about it, there is just about always people here on this forum that have absolutely no interest in the game i'm excited for whatsoever, but will decide to come into my threads just to tell me "why this game/system is shit" and act like their opinion, in these case's thinking that the game i'm excited for is crap, is an extremely important opinion and like we should all pay attention to them and think the game is crap as well just because their opinion is oh so important, and everyone else's, including my own, isn't.




i'm really sick of the attitude by a lot of people on this forum to be quite honest. not talking about anyone here in particular, but just in general the attitude of people i find around this forum to be quite honest.
 

Casual Shinji

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Yoshi178 said:
i'm really sick of the attitude by a lot of people on this forum to be quite honest. not talking about anyone here in particular, but just in general the attitude of people i find around this forum to be quite honest.
You kinda bring that upon yourself I'm afraid. I've seen similar behaviour from you in threads about games or systems you obviously have no interest in just to go 'This game sucks' or 'This system has no games'. It's your right ofcourse, but then don't be surprised when people do the same in threads that you make.

You immediately jumped to calling someone a fanboy in this thread. And when multiple people explained/proved why he clearly isn't you decided to ignore it, because hey, that's just your opinion.

You get what you give on this forums.
 

MrJinks

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First off, I'll say that I backed the game at ?20 (on PC) so I haven't played it apart from the Toybox demo yet. That demo was limited but gave me an idea of how things like the jumps and physics generally would work, which seemed spot on. I'm not sure where the camera criticisms are coming from, other major games have shipped with camera control issues or other major issues such as not drawing the protaganist properly. I don't know, I hope YL is a nice surprise, it seems to snap into the right place quickly when you change direction in the Toybox.

As far as Jim Sterling's review is concerned, (if I do) I won't be watching it until I've played the game for a while at least since it seems to be a dramatic outlier in terms of score, which seems odd. I'm sure there'll be things I'd see changed, but I'm not letting him ruin it for me.

(edit: I should add that if I've helped to fund a game, I try to avoid the specifics of reviews generally until I've made up my own mind, so it's not just Jim)
 

Avnger

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MrJinks said:
First off, I'll say that I backed the game at ?20 (on PC) so I haven't played it apart from the Toybox demo yet. That demo was limited but gave me an idea of how things like the jumps and physics generally would work, which seemed spot on. I'm not sure where the camera criticisms are coming from, other major games have shipped with camera control issues or other major issues such as not drawing the protaganist properly. I don't know, I hope YL is a nice surprise, it seems to snap into the right place quickly when you change direction in the Toybox.

As far as Jim Sterling's review is concerned, (if I do) I won't be watching it until I've played the game for a while at least since it seems to be a dramatic outlier in terms of score, which seems odd. I'm sure there'll be things I'd see changed, but I'm not letting him ruin it for me.

(edit: I should add that if I've helped to fund a game, I try to avoid the specifics of reviews generally until I've made up my own mind, so it's not just Jim)
I would like to toss out there that Jim backed the game and played the Toybox as well. He has a video somewhere on youtube of him trying the demo out, and he seemed to love that version.
 

MrJinks

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Avnger said:
MrJinks said:
First off, I'll say that I backed the game at ?20 (on PC) so I haven't played it apart from the Toybox demo yet. That demo was limited but gave me an idea of how things like the jumps and physics generally would work, which seemed spot on. etc etc
I would like to toss out there that Jim backed the game and played the Toybox as well. He has a video somewhere on youtube of him trying the demo out, and he seemed to love that version.
I guess I'll find out Tuesday onward. If control was working fine in the Toybox, then surely they wouldn't ditch that and all I can imagine is that somehow level scale or design is hurting things.
 

Yoshi178

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Casual Shinji said:
Yoshi178 said:
i'm really sick of the attitude by a lot of people on this forum to be quite honest. not talking about anyone here in particular, but just in general the attitude of people i find around this forum to be quite honest.
You kinda bring that upon yourself I'm afraid. I've seen similar behaviour from you in threads about games or systems you obviously have no interest in just to go 'This game sucks' or 'This system has no games'. It's your right ofcourse, but then don't be surprised when people do the same in threads that you make.

You immediately jumped to calling someone a fanboy in this thread. And when multiple people explained/proved why he clearly isn't you decided to ignore it, because hey, that's just your opinion.

You get what you give on this forums.
called me out on it? more like jumped down my bloody throat and bombarded me with "you're wrong, prove it!" type comments even wanting me to do full on in depth research about Jim's entire history and dig up like like 20 or so games to compile a list of review scores that "support" my claim even further and more in depth despite the fact that i had already listed like 3 recent Playstation reviews from the Jimquisition website and compared them with the scores they Gave Yooka Laylee, and another game being Zelda.


hell someone even just asked me last page if i know how "debates/discussions" work? last i checked i didn't even know i was in a debate, i just said something and then got dragged into a massive debate because people disagree with the thing i said.




i've got better things to do than research the complete in depth history of Jim Sterling review scores and argue about him for pages upon pages on end. things you know like, go to work, have a social life, spend time with my family etc.
 

Tsun Tzu

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Yoshi178 said:
So.

I haven't read anything from you until this thread, so it's my first exposure.

Are you, as you come off, one of those militant console warrior types? Or was this thread just a bad first impression...?
 

Yoshi178

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LostGryphon said:
Yoshi178 said:
So.

I haven't read anything from you until this thread, so it's my first exposure.

Are you, as you come off, one of those militant console warrior types? Or was this thread just a bad first impression...?
people will tell you i am and yeah, i do have a passion for Nintendo games and have a preference for playing mostly Nintendo IPs.

however i appreciate all games and play quite alot of stuff on xbox as well. thinking about maybe buying a ps4 down the track though because while i used my 360 heaps i just about never touch my Xbox One because hardly anything on it interests me these days.
 

Joccaren

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Well, this has turned into a thread about Jim, so, fuck it.

In regards to his couple of most recent reviews, I'm finding him less of a reliable reviewer, and more like a Youtube amateur hour reviewer.

Lets look at Yooka Laylee. He doesn't like 90s style platformer collectathons. He buys a 90s style platformer collectathon, and his review is largely "2/10, its a 90s style platformer collectathon".
To me, this is just stupid. Why even bother reviewing something if you KNOW you're not going to like it going into it? It'd be like me playing Dynasty Warriors and giving it a 2/10 because it isn't a RTS game - and you can bet your ass he'd have a field day with someone attacking one of his favourite franchises for being what it was promised rather than something else that I wanted. He'd be saying it was stupid to review it as an RTS when its obviously not - yet its exactly what he has done.
Hell, he has done similar before - he rounds up all the 2/10 reviews for games from Metacritic and ridicules them for being out of touch. A lot of fanboy trolling, however he even ridicules the ones that just didn't enjoy a game and rate it really low for not enjoying it at all, for disagreeing with him. He doesn't get a defence for doing that same thing here.

Of course, he's entitled to his opinions, his opinions in this case are just worthless though. The review could honestly have been summed up as "I don't like 90s platformers, this is one".
Hell, IGN gave a more impartial review. Fucking IGN. That's a joke.

When it came to BotW, I can understand his criticisms a bit more. That said, he went too far in ignoring the merits of the game, which was evidenced in other episodes where he praises other games for doing the exact things BotW does, yet never mentioned for BotW. There was also a bit of expecting the game to be something else, rather than reviewing it on its own merits, but I can understand a small amount of that, and that's fair enough. His criticisms were mostly fair, though he seems to have missed a lot of the positives because of his focus on them.

Jim reviews games 100% by how much he enjoyed them - with his pre-play biases strongly impacting the scores. If before trying something he thinks its going to be bad, he's going to rate it poorly because of that rather than coming at it with a fresh mind. This is ok, however it means you cannot take him as a remotely reliable source of game quality or enjoyability. His analysis is often also simplistic or flawed, meaning there's minimal takeaway from it.

"But all reviews are subjective" I hear you say. To an extent, is the answer. I've heard "What other medium has an average 7/10 review score?", as if Jim giving a 2 is him fighting this trend. It isn't. He is perpetuating it. Games have relatively high review scores because reviewers review them almost solely on personal enjoyment, and most people tend to enjoy the games they play. Hence, high review scores. Jim doing exactly the same thing, but not liking a couple of games, isn't bucking the trend - its continuing it.
Counter question; When's the last time a respected movie critic reviewed a competently executed movie in a genre they didn't like a 2/10, because they didn't like the genre?
I'll sit and wait. The answer is, it doesn't.

And that's the difference between videogame reviews, and other reviews. Other reviews have actual critics; people who are literate in the medium they are reviewing, and provide a baseline objective review, with some subjectiveness sprinkled in. Even that subjectivity often comes down to how good the writing is, which is only partially subjective as there are again objective qualities people can base their reviews on.
When it comes to videogames, the majority of reviewers are illiterate. They don't understand game design theory, how things fit together, and the effect it has on the game. As a result of this, they can only give a review based on how they felt about the game, and that turns it from somewhat subjective, to fully subjective - as shown with Yooka Laylee. This is useless, unless your taste in games is exactly the same as the reviewer's.
And yeah, such hobbyist reviewers exist for movies and books and such too. However you ALSO have professional critics who know what they're talking about. Jim is considered the latter, whilst being very much the former. That's the problem.

And yes, it is a problem. It isn't just a slight "Well just find a reviewer you like" problem, it creates a huge level of inconsistency.

What were Jim's criticisms of Yooka Laylee?
-Simple Combat
-Poor level design
-Poor platforming controls
-Poorly written dialogue
-Poor voiceovers.

Score? 2/10.

Now lets look at Mass Effect Andromeda.
All of those points, except Simple Combat, apply. Platforming is even a pretty core part of the game, blocking of several areas until you complete a platforming puzzle and being required to finish the main story. Does he mention it though? No, of course not.
The game is also extremely buggy, and is a technical shitshow.

We get a 5/10 instead, because... ok?
For the same set of complaints, except bugginess being swapped for simple combat [With combat being a rather minor part of the game in question], we get hugely different review scores. In fact, prior to posting, he was contemplating even giving Andromeda a 7, despite he himself believing it was nowhere near as good as Zelda, which he also gave a 7.

Am I saying he should have reviewed Andromeda lower? No, I think 5-7 is a far range for it. Yooka Laylee, however, from all I've heard, also sits in that range, if not higher.

The scores are entirely arbitrary and utterly inconsistent. You literally cannot tell the quality or enjoyment of a game from them, as they change based on how you're feeling the day you review the game. Today a 7 means great, tomorrow it means average.

This is why a baseline level of objectiveness in reviews is useful, and expected in all mediums outside of games.
And people do do these kinds of objective analysis of games - they just don't write reviews. Numerous people will break down what makes a game tick, why some things are fun, why others aren't, because they're literate in game design. But again, they don't actually review the games, because that's not their focus. Their focus is on increasing game literacy, using examples.

Were reviewers to learn from videos such as this, some basic game design literacy, they would be able to both enjoy games more in general, being able to actually play games better and thus derive more enjoyment from them, rather than stubbornly sticking to a skillset from their favourite genre even when it doesn't apply, but also review games better, stating why some systems don't work at a design level, and why some do.
Throw in some writing literacy, and screenplay literacy, and hell, you'd have a good reviewer who could tell you how well designed something is and how it all fits together - and that does, for games at least, directly correlate to how enjoyable a game tends to be for its target audience. Throw in some subjective "I like/dislike this genre, and I don't/do enjoy this game" to keep the exact same quality of subjectiveness in reviews we have now, and you'd see average review scores plummet to 5-6, extremist review scores disappear for the most part outside of exceptionally good or bad games, and reviews become useful for everyone.