Video Game Reviews are a Joke

[nitnit]

I've talked about this a little bit in other threads, but this pretty much sums it all up:

http://www.n4g.com/ps3/News-470886.aspx


While the guy's english is a little shakey, the main points can easily be understood. Basically, whenever a fairly prominent game reviewer gives a game a low score, there's a chance the publisher will try to punish them by blacklisting them or other means.

What's that mean for us? Well, only the "giants" can really speak their minds (IGN) but even they are being paid an immense amount of money for advertising so it's unlikely they're going to say much ill about the AAA titles.

(I suppose this also means that only smaller game sites that review games after their release who have no big publishing advertisers can really say whatever they want.  

[pathetic_negi_magician]

Case in point... Game Informer.

Sure, I agree with the scores most of the time. But some factors are just way off-base.

FFXIII- They said the story is linear but didn't go into detail. And they even said it didn't matter in the end because the gameplay is that awesome. >_>  

[KaosHunter]

It's really quite sad that this can happen. If the general consensus is that your game sucks, quit whining and make a better game next time. Don't throw a fit and start tossing threats at every reviewer who gave you a bad score. What happend to the good old days when you could actually believe what a reviewer said without having to worry who's got hands in his pockets?  

[Cybylt]

Reviewers go into a cycle now that the internet is their main source of gaining readers as opposed to magazines.

-First they'll hype a game to hell and back.
-Then half will say it sucks to get higher traffic.
-The other half will disagree and give the game max/near max scores for traffic as well.

Finally, once nobody cares about traffic anymore, people will actually give relatively unbiased reviews.  

[The Ginger Dude]

But in our modern soceity, that will never happen stare  

[Haratio TaFotter]

Since the big business with Metal Gear Solid 4 awhile ago, its really made me reconsider game reviews in general. This whole blacklisting thing is news to me, but I still think its all stupid.

Also, not taking sides on anything, but whenever review-related s**t seems to hit the fan, its always seems to be tied to something exclusively for a Sony console. Just saying.  

[Cybylt]

Haratio TaFotter

Since the big business with Metal Gear Solid 4 awhile ago, its really made me reconsider game reviews in general. This whole blacklisting thing is news to me, but I still think its all stupid.

Also, not taking sides on anything, but whenever review-related s**t seems to hit the fan, its always seems to be tied to something exclusively for a Sony console. Just saying.

Because Sony likes to hype up their stuff more and has a much more (negatively) responding fanbase. Like I said, it brings more traffic.  

[Haratio TaFotter]

Cybylt

Haratio TaFotter

Since the big business with Metal Gear Solid 4 awhile ago, its really made me reconsider game reviews in general. This whole blacklisting thing is news to me, but I still think its all stupid.

Also, not taking sides on anything, but whenever review-related s**t seems to hit the fan, its always seems to be tied to something exclusively for a Sony console. Just saying.

Because Sony likes to hype up their stuff more and has a much more (negatively) responding fanbase. Like I said, it brings more traffic.

I was thinking it was more along the lines that they needed good reviews for hyped up games because their console has kinda tanked for the last couple years, but what you've said makes sense.  

[The Ginger Dude]

Only game that was truly good for the ps3, that had a good fanbase coming in, Was Uncharted 2, Boom ninja  

[Cybylt]

I prefer Demon's Souls. That game was practically the reason I own the console now. Though I think my PS3 murdered my 360 since it stopped working shortly after I bought my slim.

I have no interest in getting Uncharted, or Killzone, or God of War. Conversely I've owned both Xbox and 360 and have never owned a Halo game, and dislike Gears of War.  

[nitnit]

Hello good sir, might I direct you to the PC? It is home to actual RPGs, and you might enjoy them.  

[AlexxRedd]

Yeah, reviews that tell you anything about the game are getting harder and harder to come by. I trusted Game Informer more than most back in the day. Recently it's getting harder to take even them seriously anymore! Sometimes I don't even think they are trying to tell you anything about the game, like X-Play; they just give you thier own personal biases and leave it at that. "I hate this type!" "I'm bad at this so it's no fun!" I mean, they say it with a little more eloquence, but it's the same thing in the end.

On top of that, can anyone tell me where this "JRPG" term came from? Seems like a lot of RPGs I grew up with are now under this "JRPG" term as if it explains everything. I've seen it used for a ton of different RPGs...is it now any and all RPGs that come from Japan? Doesn't make much sense, since it's a terrible way to label a genre. If we just called everything by what country it comes from we wouldn't know a thing about it.  

[Cybylt]

nitnit

Hello good sir, might I direct you to the PC? It is home to actual RPGs, and you might enjoy them.

For me, the best RPGs are Shin Megami Tensei and Monster Hunter. So aside from Frontier and Imagine, they have nothing of these series on the PC. The best shooter is Battlefield, particularly Bad Company which is designed as a console shooter. Aside from that I don't like keyboard and mouse controls and I don't want to have to pay for an upgrade every other month to make whatever newest games I want look as good and run as smooth as their console version.

Couple that with rampant piracy and PC gaming will become a thing of the past.


To Alexx:


JRPG - Japanese Role-Playing Game. Exactly what it says in the name, an rpg made by a japanese company. Just like a WRPG is any made in Europe or North America and MMORPG is any MMO with RPG gameplay.

Thing is within each type of RPG they have their own cliches, norms and identified systems.

Quote:

JRPG = an angsty teenager with god awful hair stuggling with groundless and poorly defined emotional problems through chapters of text boxes.
WRPG = three hours of beating wolves to death in the rain in order to grab a handful of low-grade magical crap that you'll only sell a few minutes later.

-"generic gamer"

Role Playing Games following a style popularized by Japanese developers. These games can be differentiated from Western RPGs by having most of the following points:

-Created in Japan (or, more recently, China, Taiwan, or South Korea), and translated into English (hopefully).
-Generally found on consoles rather than a PC.
-Tend to follow linear plots, with less of a Wide Open Sandbox setting.
-The player usually controls a party of predesigned characters. The player is offered a choice of what characters to use, but not the option of designing his own protagonists.
-The party members are usually written into the plot, rather than blank slates.
-The lack of flexibility in character customization or nonlinear gameplay allows a more detailed and involving story. Hopefully.
-Later games tend to have one or more elaborate, minigame-like "systems" (such as the License Grid in Final Fantasy XII) that allow skill and ability customization.
-Random Encounters are a common gameplay element.
-Turn-based combat is also prominent.