It's not. Frogacuda keeps saying "it's not that bad", but he doesn't explain why. The fact that they don't let you publish a review at the same date depending on the score means it really IS "that bad".
Your mom loves it
I apologize in advance for I am but a layman, to me that doesn't sound that different than taking select people you think will be receptive behind closed doors at E3...Originally Posted by Frogacuda
Midnight Rider
It's not. Frogacuda keeps saying "it's not that bad", but he doesn't explain why. The fact that they don't let you publish a review at the same date depending on the score means it really IS "that bad".
master of the dark hado
Personally I think the whole score/grade thing should just be dropped from every website. I'd prefer just having well written reviews. Something that really let me know what the writer thought of the game, instead of some arbitrary 8, or B- applied to it. I know I personally see far too many reviews that read one way, and then the review score is the opposite. Beyond that though, its just some random value, that has absolutely no reference point.
I'd also like to see more consistency, specially from magazines. I'm kind of tired of reading a review, and then 6 months later the same magazine is on the opposite side of the fence. Prime example was Enter the Matrix, literally every major review outlet gave that steaming pile of horse shit a 9 or a 10, and then laughed about how awful it was 6 months later. It's asinine, and to me, just makes the reviewers look like easily swayed dipshits who don't have opinions of their own.
Bring back the diversity of back in the day. By this I mean in the taste of the reviewers. I remember one of the things I loved about Gamefan back in the day, was how you had reviewers for different genres. You had the guys who LOVED fighting games review them, and the sports guys review sports games. It seems today that at most of the major publications/sites every reviewer is the same god damn dude bro gamer, who wants to play 2 maybe 3 genres and everything else just sucks. Why the fuck would you get the guy who hates fighting games to review a King of Fighters game? It's just plain retarded.
Get rid of the god damn fanboys. Let's not act like everyone doesn't have a bit of a bias, because we all do, it's human nature. I can understand and don't mind a bit of it. When you have shit like the dude from 1up who goes "The only thing bad about Gears of War 2 is that it's TOO good" is when it's reached a point of just being ridiculous and silly. It makes me not take any review from them seriously from that point on. It would also help to drop the whole causual/core argument bullshit. They're all video games, you people are paid to review video games, stop acting like its some refined french wine that the uninitiated just wouldn't appreciate because they're casual, and review the damn games.
To me though that's just in dealing with the reviews. That's not even touching on the greater iceberg of so called "journalists" who can't bother to do things like fact checking, or investigating and just spew what ever bullshit like it's fact. It'd be nice to read interviews that didn't just ask the same bullshit questions every other interview does.
As an aside, I just want to say Retro Gamer is probably the best magazine out there right now.
I really like GamesTM, a sister mag of Retro Gamer. Their reviews are well written without being overly grandoise like Edge. Although they do have a final grade attach to it like every other mag, at least they are fairly consistent with their opinions over time.
Even at it's most closed, TNL was always able to get into E3, and TNL is neither a big site, nor one that is known to be overly fanboyish or positive. They were largely weeding out useless people who really didn't belong because they had no readership and no credibility. I actually liked small E3, it was much easier to get shit done. Almaci was there those years too, by the way.Once a game is out, it's out. These deals generally only affect maybe one or two of the hundreds of reviews for a game, and you know by the timing which ones are suspect. It's also debatable to what extent getting a review out a few days early is even worth selling out your publication to if you weren't going to be positive anyway.
Last edited by Frogacuda; 13 Dec 2011 at 01:35 AM.
That's two mother references nick!
THANK YOU. This is a far more pressing concern to me as a writer. Not just from the writers, but the apparent lack of interest in these concerns from the management at these publications.
Real talk: I've never even played it.
But every generation there are a few (hundred) games which receive almost perfect scores across the board in spite of being kind of shitty games, objectively speaking. GTA IV is another one I can think of.
It's not just a few bad apples, it's literally almost every games site. And they are no better than a machine that assigns arbitrary numbers to things for people to yell about.
The fact that you would even use objective in the same sentence as a quality assessment proves you are just a complete and utter ass. It's literally psychotic to think that there even is such a thing as objectively good or bad.
It's shocking to me how narcissistic we've become. To the point where you literally can't even accept that people sincerely enjoyed a game you didn't.
Let me be emphatic: You are the problem.
Last edited by Frogacuda; 15 Dec 2011 at 07:58 PM.
Your mom loves it
To me it feels like nobody does anything all they do is sit around and wait for the publishers to drop shit on their lap. Nobody investigates or use contacts everyone either runs the same story or just report on someone else's story...
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