General gaming discussion

Penn · 04-08-2020 2:40pm

The Phantom Pain wrote: »

Interesting video by Alanah Pierce, former iGN worker, about the "Too Much Water" meme. She's not the first person to make such a video explaining to people who clearly did not watch the actual review that it was simply a poorly worded conclusion. The irony is originally the con was supposed to be "type imbalance" but the editor thought that would be too complicated for IGN readers to understand lol

Had never heard (or completely ignored) of the Too Much Water thing, but that video seems entirely fair and reasonable.

Robert ninja · 05-08-2020 8:35am

Fans seemed to think the review was bad even without the water meme. This is Kallie "Why are all the zombies white" Plagge after all.

Retr0gamer · 05-08-2020 9:02am

Ruby and Sapphire are supposedly very disappointing pokemon entries.

What they really need to explain is the God Hand review. No excuses there.

gizmo · 05-08-2020 11:14am

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Ruby and Sapphire are supposedly very disappointing pokemon entries.

What they really need to explain is the God Hand review. No excuses there.

Isn't it obvious? It's because IGN are nitpicking and biased.

Also this.

Retr0gamer · 05-08-2020 11:19am

But God Hand shouldn't need a defense. It's the greatest game ever and yet it obtains that title not with a strong moral message, gut wrenching story or stunning visuals. It's so good that it's obtains that titles while being just a game about punching people.

05-08-2020 11:22am

Don't make me play it for the 5th time

05-08-2020 11:22am

It's arguable that IGNs bull**** was the cause and reason for a company going bankrupt.

gizmo · 05-08-2020 11:24am

Retr0gamer wrote: »

But God Hand shouldn't need a defense. It's the greatest game ever and yet it obtains that title not with a strong moral message, gut wrenching story or stunning visuals. It's so good that it's obtains that titles while being just a game about punching people.

pixelburp · 05-08-2020 11:37am

Had never even heard of "too much water", but nothing about it surprises; only film comes close to the obsession by the media's fans in assigning empirical value to some marks out of ten. And even then it's mostly as an attempt to reduce conversation to asinine "85% critics score, the movie was rubbish therefore all critics are dumb"; whereas "gamers" seem to have bloody conniptions if some outlet reviews their favourite game wrong. Heck IIRC Jim Sterling stills gets dog-piled for a 7/10 he never even actually gave.

I wonder is it because so many games' own mechanics come down to being a case of number crunching; that the instilled behaviour to doggedly obsess over degrees of numerical difference has leaked into the review sphere.

quokula · 05-08-2020 11:49am

pixelburp wrote: »

Had never even heard of "too much water", but nothing about it surprises; only film comes close to the obsession by the media's fans in assigning empirical value to some marks out of ten. And even then it's mostly as an attempt to reduce conversation to asinine "85% critics score, the movie was rubbish therefore all critics are dumb"; whereas "gamers" seem to have bloody conniptions if some outlet reviews their favourite game wrong. Heck IIRC Jim Sterling stills gets dog-piled for a 7/10 he never even actually gave.

I wonder is it because so many games' own mechanics come down to being a case of number crunching; that the instilled behaviour to doggedly obsess over degrees of numerical difference has leaked into the review sphere.

I think it's just a tiny minority of people making a lot of noise.

pixelburp · 05-08-2020 11:51am

quokula wrote: »

I think it's just a tiny minority of people making a lot of noise.

Of course. Don't think it's "tiny" but obviously the vast majority of gamers just game. The true silent majority in any circumstance are those happily getting on with it. Doesn't make the noise made any less prevalent a clamour that follows the Gaming Media around and begs the question why. Why does (a subset of) gamers get so irrationally and vocally hostile over 7/10 for some random game by an outlet. It's a weird issue of validation.

Retr0gamer · 05-08-2020 1:05pm

It's a weird fandom thing where you get people pinning themselves to the fact an unreleased game will be amazing then defend it and in someways make themselves like it as they've decided they will like it beforehand. Sure I've done it myself but not to a degree some people on the internet take it too. Made myself love suikoden 3 as I was looking forward to it so much before admitting to myself it disappointing.

There was also a culture where a lot of games would get around the same review score. Put different reviewers have different tastes and preferences. You will often get a wide range of opinions in film reviews but in videogames, how dare you buck the trend and dare question that a hotly anticipated game can be less than perfect.

Often times the backlash against reviewers going against the grain usually pans out that it retrospect the reviewer was right where other reviewers got swept up in the hype cycle. It's happened a lot lately with the likes of Bioshock Infinite, MGS4, Fallout 4, Horizon Zero Dawn etc. And even in the case of the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn it's more the reviewer saying it's a perfectly good enjoyable but doesn't do anything new. Not exactly a bad review but the vitriol the some 'gamers' see over a number is insane.

gimli2112 · 05-08-2020 1:16pm

I loved HZD and Days Gone both of which came in for criticism but they're just my style of game, I also love COD (god help me)
I do tend to bristle when people criticise them but generally hold fire as they are not for everyone and not perfect. There's plenty of highly regarded games I just don't like and tend to try not to criticse them, unless it's an abomination like TLOU2

Retr0gamer · 05-08-2020 1:19pm

There's a difference between criticism and saying it's utter scutter. And people tend to be hyperbolic on the internet. Except with Bioshock infinite which is utter scutter.

OptimusTractor · 05-08-2020 3:16pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

There's a difference between criticism and saying it's utter scutter. And people tend to be hyperbolic on the internet. Except with Bioshock infinite which is utter scutter.

It's my favourite Bioshock game..... so far.......

*ducks for cover*

Greyfox · 05-08-2020 3:19pm

The Phantom Pain wrote: »

I think it's validation but I remember a video from where she states the reason why game scores are so high are that most AAA games are decent because... they're AAA so it's a given that the scores are nothing less than a 8/10. When it's anything below that it means the game has legitimate problems.

In that video one of the things she mentions is the fact that there's loads of 5/10 and below games out there but you don't see reviews for them because there not worth reviewing as they are better described as shovelware. It's always worth checking out reviews of AAA games as complete disasters like fallout 76 dont happen that often.

Fanboys not been able to accept criticism of a series they love is always going to happen, I've been there myself where it was only when I completed the game I realised the critisism was valid. Silly comments where people cant back up what there saying should be ignored but sadly instead of this they generate clickbate articles.

Liamalone · 05-08-2020 4:29pm

I'd never heard of God Hand, I want to play it right now! Anything like it on xbox?

Retr0gamer · 05-08-2020 4:31pm

Liamalone wrote: »

I'd never heard of God Hand, I want to play it right now! Anything like it on xbox?

Unfortunately there's nothing else like it at all.

Not for everyone either. The ranking system pisses a lot of people off and there's a steep learning curve. Basically the better you do at the game the harder it becomes.

johnny_ultimate · 05-08-2020 4:35pm

There’s no game that should be immune to a scathing review, even ones that are well liked and confident. If a review is robustly argued and genuine any range of opinion from ‘best game ever’ to ‘**** sandwich’ is valid.

That AAA games generally achieve a baseline of technical competence and playability shouldn’t be enough to guarantee good to great reviews. If a game falls flat on its arse in its grand intentions despite being a technical marvel... then it deserves a scathing review. ‘7/10’ being widely considered a catastrophic score for these games is farcical. Nothing is a sacred cow when the opinion is argued with conviction.

RDR2, for example, is clearly a 2/10 game

Greyfox · 05-08-2020 6:38pm

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

That AAA games generally achieve a baseline of technical competence and playability shouldn’t be enough to guarantee good to great reviews. If a game falls flat on its arse in its grand intentions despite being a technical marvel... then it deserves a scathing review. ‘7/10’ being widely considered a catastrophic score for these games is farcical. Nothing is a sacred cow when the opinion is argued with conviction.

I gave up on RDR2 after a few hours. The controls are too fiddely and it had lots of tedious horse riding. I'd still say anything less than 6/10 is unfair. It has a beautiful world, the dialogue between characters is really good and some of the missions in between the tedium were fun. A review should be one person's honest opinion but the truth is most gamers want reviewers to be objective as well.

johnny_ultimate · 05-08-2020 7:10pm

Greyfox wrote: »

A review should be one person's honest opinion but

There’s can be no room for buts here: a review should be person’s honest opinion by its very definition

Being contrarian for the sake of it is silly, and such critics discussing any medium can be spotted a mile away. But there is no game - no matter how much you or I or even 99% of people love it - that somebody doesn’t truly, passionately dislike and are able to articulately make their case why that is so.

Objectivity is a nonsense when it comes to one individual’s assessment of a game. Sure, you draw on the observable reality of a game to come to a conclusion, but that personal conclusion will always and should always vary from person to person. I would say the gaming community as an amorphous whole has a uniquely immature outlook on how reviews function... but look at superhero fans or Taylor Swift fans to see how critics are dogpiled there too for being anything less than rabidly enthusiastic. It’s tremendously silly, and dragging discussions about these things into the gutter.

pixelburp · 05-08-2020 7:38pm

The "objective review" is a myth. And even if some professional writer took it upon themselves to write an objective review, it'd be the dryest read imaginable, every perceived nuance of the game stripped away into asinine abstracts. The whole point of a game is to make you feel - empowered, exhilarated, scared, etc - you can't review a medium inherently built upon feeling from an objective point of view. That's literally contradictory.

05-08-2020 7:45pm

Liamalone wrote: »

I'd never heard of God Hand, I want to play it right now! Anything like it on xbox?

You can download it digitally but unfortunately only on PS3

Or physical copy for PS2

Also if you have a PC there are other methods

Robert ninja · 05-08-2020 7:49pm

You can have passion and still show a bit of objectivity. The main thing is to just get the right person for it. Pretending objectivity doesn't exist or that it ought not to is just what the absolute state of modern game journalists want so they can have zero standards. Going back to IGN, remember their now deleted football manager review where the dude thought it was terrible because it was a management game? Just avoid that malarkey. Get people who are into and know a genre like racing sims to review racing sims. Otherwise you get people going in with agendas and irrelevant opinions where the review becomes completely useless to anyone who is actually a potential customer of said game. Reviewers and the sites they come from seem to really struggle with a lot of genres, too. Nobody who plays games like Tekken for example gives a shyte about anything reviewers say because they're often terrible and generally not into fighting games. They seek out user feedback in forums or pro players' opinions. Overall the antiquity of traditional written reviews with arbitrary scores is more obvious with each passing year.

I've linked this a few times but it keeps coming up so here's my favourite video on this point

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1humObzdVA

Retr0gamer · 05-08-2020 7:52pm

Likewise don't get a super fan either to review a game. See the god awful God of War review by Easy Allies by a self proclaimed super fan. There's needs to be a bit of cynicism.

one armed dwarf · 05-08-2020 9:35pm

Nah,a super fan's perspective can be interesting just as much as an outsider. WRT IGN as example their reviewer for DMC5 was a pro at the games and made some cool videos around release showing people how to play at high levels on Dante must Die mode, which was cool and unusual for a reviewer. You don't really get that perspective often with mainstream criticism for a niche hardcore game.

But people really have to cop on and stop acting like each reviewer is supposed to speak to them specifically. Whether a game is getting high praise or torn apart. Not everyone is coming from the same PoV for these titles

johnny_ultimate · 05-08-2020 10:10pm

pixelburp wrote: »

The "objective review" is a myth. And even if some professional writer took it upon themselves to write an objective review, it'd be the dryest read imaginable, every perceived nuance of the game stripped away into asinine abstracts. The whole point of a game is to make you feel - empowered, exhilarated, scared, etc - you can't review a medium inherently built upon feeling from an objective point of view. That's literally contradictory.

My view is that a lot of this comes from a perspective of games as 'products'. You can fairly objectively review a new smartphone - unless you're *really* keen about industrial design, it's a purely functional item. Games aren't that - no more than a film or a song is. Just as a film review isn't a factual breakdown of the tech specs, nor should a game review be that - they're so much better and more interesting. But the idea of them as primarily products was certainly encouraged by game sites that used to have cold-hearted numerical breakdowns like 'graphics / sound / lasting value'.

Saying that, there are probably a few exceptions. I think some games - especially in the sim category - lean hard into the functional space as opposed to the artistic one. Not that there isn't a place for these games - I'm surprisingly excited to boot up MS Flight Simulator in a few weeks - and of course some of the technological wizardry behind them is stunning on an artistic level. But I think those lend themselves to a very particular type of factual analysis as they offer a distinct type of experience. And there will always of course be a place for detailed, robust reviews of a game's tech or mechanics. But yeah, when it comes to most modern games, the 'objective review' is a pure oxymoron.

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