77 on Metacritic????

[pinkrobot_pb]

No apparently we should be looking at it from a game journalism point of view. But in that regard, a 77 just tells me that probably not enough money changed hands.

[AiManiaTrophyhuntres]

2 hours ago, phantomfear9494 said:

For me, I do think Metacritic is a valid way of vetting games, and I think people who think review scores don't matter shouldn't minimize it for those whom it helps.

 

I don't think people should EXCLUSIVELY look at reviews scores, but it does considerably formulate my opinion regarding whether I get a game on launch or wait.  Metacritic averages everything out and does take out anomalies, so the general reception you get back is pretty consistent and representative of the game's quality.  There are a few instances where I strongly disagree (for example, I think Wolfenstein 2: TNC is far weaker than TNO and TOB in almost every regard but got 10% higher), but I very rarely completely disagree with a score.   Unless its a series or game I'm emotionally invested in (so, Metro I'll get if its a 60 or 95%) if I am interested two standard AAA games, and one got an 85% and one got a 75%, I will probably get the one with less flaw, bugs, glitches or narrative miscues.      As such, I bought Spiderman and am waiting until I have no backlog to put up Shadow.   It's different when people have a bare minimum (i.e. will play anything 80+, but will never touch a 79- game.  That's just too black and white for me).

 

As someone who works 40 hours and is in grad school, my time is pretty valuable, so I don't want to waste it on a below-par game.  Metacritic removes a great degree of the bias, and helps inform based on the consensus themes > 1 persons rant or orgy of praise. 

 

 

 

This is admirable, but not really representative of most people.  I know a lot of people whose opinion is partially influenced by reviews, and thats not a bad thing.  It's okay to have an interest in something, but see objective flaws in a game from commercial reception and think "oh, ok well I'll hold off then".  Reviews (aside from cases of day one embargos) allow for consumers to receive information on the quality of their game before it comes out.  Why not use it? 

 

If its a series I adore (BioShock, Wolfenstein, Far Cry) etc. I agree I will still enjoy it more than the norm, because of my style and will get it anyway like you say. However I'd say though that the majority of people are reasonably impartial to the majority of the games that come out.  Most people I know would see a standard AAA and see whether its good or bad before buying.  If you've got a lot of disposable income, or take advantage of sales, I suppose this becomes less of an issue. 

 

While this might be true for ppl who share the opinion of a majority I don't understand, I saw the way companies use this to meet the interest of potential customers especially when the game don't deliver what ppl are searching for.

When I tought marketing is a cool thing I worked in the sector and what I learned, well I didn't like it. having a background here is no fun anymore, so maybe thats why I tend to be hard on everything that can be abused.

Whatever, critics of ppl you don't know you should take with a pinch of salt.

I still need information like you said, to decide which game I put my time and effort in since I work like everyone else (hopefully) but I use different channels, and I prefer to inform ppl about alternative ways, with imo more helpfull information than the personal opinion of ppl who might not see the things like the reader.

 

Oh and obviously I know all the ppl who doesn't use this kind of review und you know all the ppl who only use this way of gathering information? fun fact. I guess tunnelision is a thing and we should start a poll on both sides  

 

Edited September 11, 2018 by Ai-ds_low

[milanbarca82]

I'm a fan of the series so I bought it, never cared for the reviews.  Besides, some of the reviewers do not even complete the games they are reviewing and some of them lower the score for the most ridiculous reasons e.g. not enough representation of certain groups of people, the main character being a white savior, the game's dark soul like difficulty...etc.  lol.

Edited September 12, 2018 by milanbarca82

[PhantomFear94]

19 hours ago, Ai-ds_low said:

Whatever, critics of ppl you don't know you should take with a pinch of salt.

 

 

I agree with this 100% if nothing else.  I don't think anyone should entirely formulate their opinion on reviews as taste is subjective.   

Something not necessarily pertinent to this comment, but in general, I think people are missing that gaming taste and quality are different things. I believe there is a point where I don't think you can say a video game is bad, more or less objectively. 

 

Bloodborne is objectively brilliant by virtually any critical standard.  It's not really arguable, because the mechanics, gameplay etc. for that genre and what it was trying to achieve is mind-blowing and was pretty revolutionary.  It would have been very difficult for it to have been done better in 2015.  As such, I don't think its possible to really argue that Bloodborne is a bad game, I wouldn't take it seriously.  However, reviews can't hope to interpret your taste, and because of my tastes, I don't personally enjoy it that much. Instead, I recognize it as a very good game that wasn't for me.   In my opinion, anyone who refutes its quality just doesn't understand game development.  Similarly, Mafia III got very mixed reviews, but I really liked it because of emotional connection to the series and narrative strengths.  However, critical reception was 100% valid; it was repetitive, buggy and the gameplay was boring.  There are parts of Mafia III which are objectively inferior to many other games of such type on the market. 

 

So are reviews perfect? Clearly not.  But Metacritic takes the extremes out of it and generally leaves you with (usually) agreed perspectives, criticisms, and strengths.  What % or amount of consideration one decides upon to weight between taste and consensus objectivity derived from its quality is personal, but is a resource I and most people I know use.  

Edited September 12, 2018 by phantomfear9494

[AiManiaTrophyhuntres]

2 hours ago, phantomfear9494 said:

Something not necessarily pertinent to this comment, but in general, I think people are missing that gaming taste and quality are different things. I believe there is a point where I don't think you can say a video game is bad, more or less objectively. 

This is what I totally agree with.

 

2 hours ago, phantomfear9494 said:

 I don't personally enjoy it that much. Instead, I recognize it as a very good game that wasn't for me.   In my opinion, anyone who refutes its quality just doesn't understand game development.  

 

And this is the important thing most ppl who like to write reviews just don't understand. Which makes me sad....

[DrBloodmoney]

I think what people are missing when thinking about critics - and why I don’t much care about Metacritic - is that you aren’t supposed to take a random assortment of reviews as gospel - you are meant to find certain critics you respect and see what they have to say.

 

In film, for example, I regularly listen to Mark Kermode, and I value his reviews, even though I probably agree with 50% of his opinions at most. What’s important is that I know what he likes, what he doesn’t, and where our tastes allign and deviate.

 

For games, I tend to go to Giant Bomb - there are guys there I know have very different tastes to me, and some who I know have some similar tastes. I know that if this guy likes X game in X genre, that means I might like it, but this other guy is way more into Y genre than me, so I should consider that when listeing to his opinion on X game, etc etc etc.

 

Sure, if a game has a metacritic score below 40 it is most likely objectively bad is probably true, but the idea that there is a game out there that will hit 100% on metacritic and is therefore the perfect game for everyone is just silly.

[JPageMartin36]

Given that most of the more sceptical reviews I've read drift into that "it offers nothing new/doesn't innovate/doesn't move the genre forward" school of lazy journalism, I think most of the pre-order brigade can rest easy.

Edited September 13, 2018 by JPageMartin36

[Infected Elite]

On 10/09/2018 at 0:20 PM, SnowNinjaRaccoon said:

Indeed. Rise with some cool new mechanics, less combat, more challenge tombs. I was a big fan of Rise and this one isn't worse than Rise was.

I just platinum spiderman. story was way too predictable but I was gonna finally start Dragon Quest 11. BUT since TR is out tmrw. I'll be playing that instead. should be fun.

[FireFoxie]

I don't take Metacritic too seriously, they literally take anything off the internet that has a score whether it comes from somewhere creditable or not. Well, let's be honest here most gaming sites like IGN, GameSpot, or Game Informer aren't really trustworthy anymore and personally for me haven't been so in a very long time. Lately some critics write their reviews with some political agenda and are filled with SJW nonsense.

 

I also don't pay attention to the player reviews on Metacritc either considering most of them go from one extreme to the other. Most of them are usually either written by a delusional fanboy or a troll. Plus, it's not too hard on there to spam reviews to manipulate the game's percentage into either a green or red score making the player reviews kinda of unreliable. 

 

The only time I take the critic reviews to heart on there is if the score is in the red. Other than that, I usually try to base whether I want to play a game or not on my own judgement through footage of the game or download a demo if possible. If I really need to hear some feed back about a game there are a few YouTubers like Colin Moriarty that I tune into. 

 

I've played SOTTR and from my own personal experience, it's amazing. Even though it's not prefect, I'd rate it a lot higher than 78. I'm glad I don't really pay attention to the scores on metacritic cause I'd have missed out on some great games other wise. 

Edited September 14, 2018 by FireFoxie

[SuzyRed]

I love it so far.

[Quink666]

Why is games not rated the same as most movies. Where 5 or 50 is average. Seems like an average game on Metacritic need 70. 

 

In my book a 77 rounded up to 8 is a great game. Dont think i'll rate this Tomb Raider an 8 when im done with it though. So far it seems more like a solid 6.5 which is still a good game.

 

And if want good reviews dont turn to metacritic turn to youtubers like ACG. He does amazing reviews and doesn't score it 1-10 but instead he uses Buy - Wait for Sale - Rent - Never Touch. Much better then the normal scoring.

Edited September 15, 2018 by Quink666