The Nature of Reviews (ME, GTA4, TH etc)

[DrJay24]

http://api.seesmic.com/#/video/bC3G2bh7jy/watch

some of these reviews seem to have scores that don't agree with their text or are inconsistant with other previous review scores.

Some have scores are higher than the text would indicate, do you only complain when it's one way? Either look at the average or just rent the game and make your informed choice. Railing on against the man in defense of Too Human is kind of fruitless.

You could always read Warcrow's post if you want the opinion of someone who is not part of the media and has paid his own money to play it.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

The reviews aren't as bad as you think they are.

Metacritic is currently at 68 out of 100

68\100 is at best medicore.

 

[eastmen]

68\100 is at best medicore.

way to miss out on all the other scores.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's the metacritic score, and as an average it is low. But these average scores never tell the whole picture - I've played enough low-scoring games and enjoyed them to know the points average isn't the be-all-and-end-all of deciding whether a game is worth having or not. The score shows mostly if the game could be better or not. Too Human could be much better. That doesn't stop it being fun for those on the same wavelength as it though.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

way to miss out on all the other scores.

Good games don't have 68 on the Metacritic. This game clearly has so many issues, that reach much further than the "goes through the floor" which is the only the thing you seemed to have noticed. It's pretty clear that this is only suitable for big fans of the genre, who are willing to look past its rather major flaws.

 

[Kittonwy]

The reviews aren't as bad as you think they are.




It seems to me some people like x-play loved it and some loathed it like gamespy. Most however thought it was an average game. A lot of people had complaints like the character falling through the stage , however this happens in big games like GTA4 and it didn't stop it from getting 10s. The main problem is just looking at scores instead of whats said , many of them talked about its faults but still talked about enough that seemed enjyoable to me. One of the biggest complaints was the camera which can be fixed , another was the game was to short , however others that have played it further like Ars technica (from what i read he has played it the furthest) say it that the spawns change as you level up and go through the game again , places that had no battles now have them and other places open up that you didn't see before.

When you have gamespot and 1UP all loathing it, it's one thing, when you have GAMEINFORMER, a mag which tends to give out 7s ans 8s like they're nothing give this game a 6.75, and gamespy which also tends to be quite soft on reviews, it's a problem, there's really no way to spin this. It's especially alarming when Dyack went on 1UP so many times and 1UP still gave Too Human such a putrid score. I don't know about you but when a game is getting 2.5/5, 5.5/10, 6.75/10 and a C-, I tend to stay the heck away from it, one site/mag might be wrong, but FOUR? Those scores aren't even decent by any stretch of the imagination.

Why cares if x-play loved it? I'm sure you do but seriously? Have you ever trusted x-play before this? When did ARS TECHNICA ever become a reliable source of game reviews?

Too Human isn't even remotely in the same league as GTAIV, GTAIV had so many things going for it to counter any occasional glitch it might have, for Too Human, the occasional glitch isn't the main problem, I don't even think the camera was the main problem, the actual game is, it's simply not doing anything special, it doesn't do anything particularly well, you can look at some games and see that there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went into it, because you can SEE the attention to details, all those cool little things that they would imagine the player might catch. I simply didn't see any during my experience with the demo and from just about every video they've released, things just looked sloppy, like they were taped together, almost as sloppy as their E306 build, if I'm in charge of first-party publishing, after seeing the E306 demo I would have simply redlighted the project.

 

[eastmen]

When you have gamespot and 1UP all loathing it, it's one thing, when you have GAMEINFORMER, a mag which tends to give out 7s ans 8s like they're nothing give this game a 6.75, and gamespy which also tends to be quite soft on reviews, it's a problem, there's really no way to spin this. It's especially alarming when Dyack went on 1UP so many times and 1UP still gave Too Human such a putrid score. I don't know about you but when a game is getting 2.5/5, 5.5/10, 6.75/10 and a C-, I tend to stay the heck away from it, one site/mag might be wrong, but FOUR? Those scores aren't even decent by any stretch of the imagination.

IGN: 7.8 out of 10 (review can be read here)
Game Pro: 4.0 out of 5 (review can be read here)
Ars Technica: Buy (review can be read here)
NZGamer.com: 7.5 out of 10 (review can be read here)
Games Magazine (Greece): 93 out of 100
Neo+ Magazine (Poland): 8.5 out of 10
Gameplayer: 7 out of 10 (review can be read here
X-Play: 4 out of 5 (review can be watched here)

All these guys are saying its at least a 70. Which to me is a good , although not great game.

The Ars Technia review was really good and presents a fun game with flaws. That wont stop me from playing the game.

Why cares if x-play loved it? I'm sure you do but seriously? Have you ever trusted x-play before this? When did ARS TECHNICA ever become a reliable source of game reviews?

Considering the person played it past level 25 and talked about things no other review talked about shows me they actually spent time playing it. Meanwhile 1up posted what amounted to a blog that made little sense.

Too Human isn't even remotely in the same league as GTAIV, GTAIV had so many things going for it to counter any occasional glitch it might have, for Too Human, the occasional glitch isn't the main problem, I don't even think the camera was the main problem, the actual game is, it's simply not doing anything special, it doesn't do anything particularly well, you can look at some games and see that there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went into it, because you can SEE the attention to details, all those cool little things that they would imagine the player might catch. I simply didn't see any during my experience with the demo and from just about every video they've released, things just looked sloppy, like they were taped together, almost as sloppy as their E306 build, if I'm in charge of first-party publishing, after seeing the E306 demo I would have simply redlighted the project.

I'm telling you from the limited amount of time I played GTA4 it did not live up to the scores it was given , while too human surpased the scores given. These are personal opinions and you can see that not every game will be everything given. I don't think too human is a tripple a game , however it seems to me that its a c+ to a B- game adn that is good enough since there are so few games of this kind on the consoles.

 

[scooby_dooby]

An honest question: are there people surprised at the reviews? Based on the previews and whatnot the game has had issue after issue pointed out and the media has been all over the place. The reviews aren't surprising; that TH wasn't shelved and SK didn't move onto something else in 2006 after the entire UE3 fiasco is what is surprising. That said rumors are this had high pre-orders.

I expected the game to get 'good' reviews, like ~8, I knew it was going to have problems, the combat was problematic etc but it seemed to have good elements ging for it as well, so some reviews are quite surprising to me, like a 5.5 from Gamespot?? 5.5 is horrible in today's ranking scheme...I didn't really expect scores that low!

 

[scooby_dooby]

When did ARS TECHNICA ever become a reliable source of game reviews?

I think his reviews are among the best you can get nowadays. His reviews tend to be well written, in depth and give you a good solid overview of all the aspects of the game.

Compared to the drivel that 1UP produces with their 4 paragraph reviews it's in a whole different league.

In the end, he says it's a good game, not great not excellent, so it's not really that far out there, 'good' tends to be be 7-8, metacritic average is 69%.

 

[Kittonwy]

IGN: 7.8 out of 10 (review can be read here)
Game Pro: 4.0 out of 5 (review can be read here)
Ars Technica: Buy (review can be read here)
NZGamer.com: 7.5 out of 10 (review can be read here)
Games Magazine (Greece): 93 out of 100
Neo+ Magazine (Poland): 8.5 out of 10
Gameplayer: 7 out of 10 (review can be read here
X-Play: 4 out of 5 (review can be watched here)

All these guys are saying its at least a 70. Which to me is a good , although not great game.

The Ars Technia review was really good and presents a fun game with flaws. That wont stop me from playing the game.

Why don't you include the maxim score in there while you're at it?

Considering the person played it past level 25 and talked about things no other review talked about shows me they actually spent time playing it. Meanwhile 1up posted what amounted to a blog that made little sense.

Actually the 1UP review was short but it hit on most of the points, they also did a video review of it and the point wasn't that it was shit-broken, but it just wasn't fun to play, obviously 1UP wasn't the only site that panned the game, Gamespy, Gamespot, Eurogamer and GameInformer all did and their reviews were longer.

I'm telling you from the limited amount of time I played GTA4 it did not live up to the scores it was given , while too human surpased the scores given. These are personal opinions and you can see that not every game will be everything given. I don't think too human is a tripple a game , however it seems to me that its a c+ to a B- game adn that is good enough since there are so few games of this kind on the consoles.

GTA4 got 9s and 10s and had to live up to 9s and 10s, Too Human got 6s and 7s and some 5s, even a mediocre game can live up to a 5, it's not THAT hard. Not sure why you think there are few games of this kind on consoles, there are few games like GTAIV on consoles, Too Human is basically a mediocre action game padded with loot, there are plenty of action games that are way better already on the market, games like DMC4, NG2, God of War 2, and all of those offer character development/upgrades, better combat and better level designs, not sure why all of a sudden a game getting 6s and 7s and some 5s would be "good enough", personally I wouldn't pony up $60 even if it's the only game of its kind if it's in fact as crappy as the major sites have described.

 

[Kittonwy]

I think his reviews are among the best you can get nowadays. His reviews tend to be well written, in depth and give you a good solid overview of all the aspects of the game.

Compared to the drivel that 1UP produces with their 4 paragraph reviews it's in a whole different league.

In the end, he says it's a good game, not great not excellent, so it's not really that far out there, 'good' tends to be be 7-8, metacritic average is 69%.

Frankly the Ars Technica review was written more like one of those drawn-out fan reviews that I can find on gamefaqs.

The point of the review isn't to explain the game in detail or to give the background, but to discuss the merits and flaws as succinctly as possible, in as few words as possible, meaning I don't want to read through 3-4 pages of stuff to find out whether the game is good or bad and why, just give me the gist of it, I don't need an essay on loot or how I need to be a fan of norse mythology to truly understand the game.

I think it's almost more important that the reviewer knows what is a good game and what isn't, Giancarlo has been around for a long time and even from the video review you can tell he was frustrated with the game, maybe Giancarlo didn't articulate it in a lengthy-enough manner, maybe that's because he wrote for mags where you don't do 3-4 pages so your site can have 3-4 pages of ads, what he did was he did highlight all the problems the game had in as few words as he can, he didn't give you a lengthy background, he didn't spend a page trying to praise the game or defend the game, he just went right to the problems and called them out. But he wasn't the only reviewer out there giving the game a low score and you can get more detailed reviews from those other sites as well, all of them highlighted the same problems. The point of the review isn't to give you 3-4 pages to read through but to let you know whether a game is good or not and tell you why, to make life simple for you.

 

[DrJay24]

'good' tends to be be 7-8, metacritic average is 69%.

So I guess it's not good?

 

[AlphaWolf]

Frankly the Ars Technica review was written more like one of those drawn-out fan reviews that I can find on gamefaqs.

The point of the review isn't to explain the game in detail or to give the background, but to discuss the merits and flaws as succinctly as possible, in as few words as possible, meaning I don't want to read through 3-4 pages of stuff to find out whether the game is good or bad and why, just give me the gist of it, I don't need an essay on loot or how I need to be a fan of norse mythology to truly understand the game.

No the point of the review is to inform people such that they know whether they want to buy it or not. Sadly Ars doesn't put a number there for the kids with ADD or the reading impaired.

I think it's almost more important that the reviewer knows what is a good game and what isn't, Giancarlo has been around for a long time and even from the video review you can tell he was frustrated with the game, maybe Giancarlo didn't articulate it in a lengthy-enough manner, maybe that's because he wrote for mags where you don't do 3-4 pages so your site can have 3-4 pages of ads, what he did was he did highlight all the problems the game had in as few words as he can, he didn't give you a lengthy background, he didn't spend a page trying to praise the game or defend the game, he just went right to the problems and called them out. But he wasn't the only reviewer out there giving the game a low score and you can get more detailed reviews from those other sites as well, all of them highlighted the same problems. The point of the review isn't to give you 3-4 pages to read through but to let you know whether a game is good or not and tell you why, to make life simple for you.

I found the 1up review to be written like crap (and I assumed by someone who can't play his way out of a paper bag), but that's my just opinion. It's pretty obvious he didn't like the controls, but they were fine for me the aerial attacks aren't that hard. Perhaps giancarlo should stick to face rolling a kb. I can't imagine what he'd do with a game that was actually difficult to control.

I'll probably wait to pick this one up (on sale), but it looks like the coop will carry enough play to make it worthwhile for me.

 

[Kittonwy]

No the point of the review is to inform people such that they know whether they want to buy it or not. Sadly Ars doesn't put a number there for the kids with ADD or the reading impaired.

Frankly you don't need a 3-page long-winded review to tell someone whether the game is worth a buy or not, do you? Wouldn't you rather have someone let you know whether the game is worth PLAYING first?

I found the 1up review to be written like crap (and I assumed by someone who can't play his way out of a paper bag), but that's my just opinion. It's pretty obvious he didn't like the controls, but they were fine for me the aerial attacks aren't that hard. Perhaps giancarlo should stick to face rolling a kb. I can't imagine what he'd do with a game that was actually difficult to control.

I'll probably wait to pick this one up (on sale), but it looks like the coop will carry enough play to make it worthwhile for me.

It's not like Giancarlo is new, he's been reviewing for ziff for years and I'm sure he can play his way out of a paperbag. Having watched the video review, it was clear that Giancarlo did not find the controls difficult, right stick combat was simply a poor implementation, his point was that you can pretty much get away with doing the basic stuff. I don't think 1UP's problem with the game was that it wasn't functional, because it was, or that it didn't try to do various things, because it did, it just did none of it well. It's not like it's hard to do mid-air combos in the demo either, it just never felt exciting or rewarding at all whatsoever. It's like jumping on top of that giant hammer troll and stabbing it in the head, that was supposed to be something that was exhilarating and exciting but it simply wasn't.

The enemy variety was not there, the attack variety was not there, with character and weapon growth you want to be always anticipating the next level so you can get that really cool skill, or that special weapon that you'll be hanging onto, that combination of character level + special weapon just to be able to survive in that next dungeon, that was clearly not what I've been getting from the reviews, weapons and armor were simply throwaways, with a game like DMC the player feels excited when he gets cool skills like inferno or air raid, or even stuff like high time/stinger/air hike, with NG it's Izuno Drop/Flying Swallow, the player is always anticipating getting the next weapon off of a boss battle, what I find strange is that all the progress the action genre has made over the last seven years simply got thrown out the window and somehow standards have to be lowered for this game.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Frankly you don't need a 3-page long-winded review to tell someone whether the game is worth a buy or not, do you? Wouldn't you rather have someone let you know whether the game is worth PLAYING first?

If you're so pressed for time reading that you can't manage to read 3 whole pages maybe you should just skip to the conclusion. You'll never get that 5 minutes back!

I'm not going to bother going any more into giancarlo's review, I don't really care how long he's been there. On the internet longevity in no way implies quality.

 

[Vic]

No the point of the review is to inform people such that they know whether they want to buy it or not. Sadly Ars doesn't put a number there for the kids with ADD or the reading impaired.
.

What like the vast majority of websites and publications?

The purpose of a review is say whether or not a game is good. Subjectivity is subjectivity, but who the hell wants to play a a bad game whether they are fans of the genre/developer/story etc or not..?

 

[AlphaWolf]

What like the vast majority of websites and publications?

Are you suggesting that in order for the information to be disseminated it needs to quantified with a numerical value?

The purpose of a review is say whether or not a game is good. Subjectivity is subjectivity, but who the hell wants to play a a bad game whether they are fans of the genre/developer/story etc or not..?

So you're saying its a bad game based on the ars review, the 1up review, or a mean of numerical values posted at metacritic? I learn a lot more about a game from reading the review than looking at a number, because it lets me know if perhaps the author had issues that I don't consider relevant (or that I consider outright wrong, ie 1up control issues) etc. Because how people may interpret reviews is entirely subjective as well.

 

[Vic]

No I'm the purpose of a review is pretty obvious.

How can a review say whether you want to buy a game? Too many intangibles for that. It can only say whether the reviewers consider the game to be good, bad or average.

 

[PARANOiA]

Good games don't have 68 on the Metacritic.

I actually disagree with this. Two of the games I have put tonnes of time into this generation have been scored as low as Too Human on Metacritic.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/earthdefenseforce2017?q=2017
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/projectsylpheed

I've spent more time on each of the above than I did with GTAIV purely for the fun factor. There's no measure of subjectivity, of course, and I think TH looks pretty average based on the reviews. The only reason I'd possibly pick it up is if the gaming community hails it as a load of fun - that's the same way I found EDF and Sylpheed.

Not to say Metacritic is irrelevant, but you can't say "Good games don't have low metacritic scores" as if it's that easy. All IMO of course.

 

[scooby_dooby]

So I guess it's not good?

That's up to you to decide. What I said was that Ars was not far off from the metacritic average.