General gaming discussion

Dave_The_Sheep

Surely 5 should be average.

Retr0gamer

5 would upset the publishers paying you for a good review.

J. Marston

Anything below an 8 is the drizzling shíts in internet land.

pixelburp

There's little more perverse than the raging fits review scores seem to cause in gaming, I've never understood why or how an 8/10 from an outlet causes hate mail sent to the reviewer...

Potential-Monke

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Kingdom Hearts was never good.

I have the HD collection (the one with 6 games) and my mate keeps telling me that they're brilliant as he was bitterly disappointed by the story in 3. I fired it up, and got to the section where you're about to meet Donald and Goofy for the first time in a town, then I started Control and forgot all about it.

He warned me that it's vomit inducing 'Friendship saves everything' narrative throughout, and i think that may put me off...

Robert ninja

Haven't used number system to gauge a game for years now. It tells me nothing. Then again mainstream reviews are embarrassingly bad. I prefer going through a couple of short user reviews and watching a bit of raw gameplay (again from users).

Gotta be the 3rd time I link this

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

Retr0gamer

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I have the HD collection (the one with 6 games) and my mate keeps telling me that they're brilliant as he was bitterly disappointed by the story in 3. I fired it up, and got to the section where you're about to meet Donald and Goofy for the first time in a town, then I started Control and forgot all about it.

He warned me that it's vomit inducing 'Friendship saves everything' narrative throughout, and i think that may put me off...

It's not even the story. The gameplay is gash. Only good one is the psp one which is fun.

I firmly believe people that love KH either played it when they were young impressionable and dumb or never even played them.

awec

The rating system goes from 0-10, where 0-7 means it's really a steaming pile of ****, 8 means decent, 9 means good and 10 means very good.

Varik

Be better if they just went with words rather than numbers.

Amazing, Great, Good, good but flawed, ect.

Robert ninja

Varik wrote: »

Be better if they just went with words rather than numbers.

Even without numbers their methods still don't take into account the audience the game is made for. Simulator games (driving, military etc) often get oddly written reviews from staff who aren't into it, don't understand it or are outright bad at them which makes it useless to people actually interested in that niche who wouldn't even be basing decisions off such legacy reviews.

Updates, balancing, seasons, competitive aspects, expansions, bugfixes, micro-transactions, long-term play experience, DRM, post-launch changes and online population; legacy reviews have been horribly behind the times addressing these things because their business model and writing format are still focused on being the first to review things with industry embargoes.

They're still sort of stuck writing as if everything's a single player offline game while weirdly having an attitude that such types of games are old hat. Then if there's any political or sexual content the author likes/doesn't like we see those kinds of games get either unnecessary praise or lower than average scores where they'll go out of their way to personally condemn it. The whole thing's a crapshoot.

Varik wrote: »

Amazing, Great, Good, good but flawed, ect.

If there's any score I want a quick reference to in order to save time or quickly filter out bad games then the only honest one is the binary score. Is it worth playing out of the unfathomable amount of games these days? Yay or nay. Because that's really the only choice the user has at the end of the day. If I want more information then sites like IGN are the last place I (or most gamers for that matter) would want to go to.

CatInABox

Robert ninja wrote: »

Even without numbers their methods still don't take into account the audience the game is made for. Simulator games (driving, military etc) often get oddly written reviews from staff who aren't into it, don't understand it or are outright bad at them which makes it useless to people actually interested in that niche who wouldn't even be basing decisions off such legacy reviews.

So what you're saying is that instead of writing their review for a niche market that wouldn't be reading their review anyway, they wrote their review for a broader, more general, audience?

That doesn't seem like too bad a thing to me.

ERG89

After they give the worst mainline Pokemon game a higher score than their GOTY I think the number system is the least of IGN's worries when it comes to their review system.

Optimalprimerib

IGN were rating games 8.7, 9.3 etc so all they are doing is removing the decimal point.

gizmo

Mostly TL;DR

iLikeWaffles

Optimalprimerib wrote: »

IGN were rating games 8.7, 9.3 etc so all they are doing is removing the decimal point.

Or rounding it to give the appearance of less precision. I'd buy a game rated 9 before i'd buy a game rated 8.7!

_Godot_

I've a 12 euro voucher for cex to spend, I'd like to buy an Assassin's Creed game for the PS3, and I haven't play one yet. The local cex has Assassin's Creed 1, 2 and 3, Black Flag and Revelations. If I only bought one, which one should I get?

Jordan 199

_Godot_ wrote: »

I've a 12 euro voucher for cex to spend, I'd like to buy an Assassin's Creed game for the PS3, and I haven't play one yet. The local cex has Assassin's Creed 1, 2 and 3, Black Flag and Revelations. If I only bought one, which one should I get?

Black Flag.

2 and then the 2 others involving Ezio. Then stop playing AC games until Odyssey and you'll be as up to date as the rest of us.

johnny_ultimate

The Phantom Pain wrote: »

Or better yet Buy at full price, wait for sale etc like ACG does because that's how human beings actually talk to each other when recommending things. How good a game is is best explained by its purchase value, not some random number.

I'm not a fan of review scores at all (and I'm not a fan of IGN in general), but I'd take them over 'buy / don't buy' criteria. I'm really fussy about reviews, granted, and believe their main worth is always to offer a critical appraisal of whatever's being reviewed. Advising a vast audience whether to buy or not buy a game is a fool's errand (it works much better when you're chatting with friends), so a reviewer is best off properly digging into a game and articulating their personal response to it in an interesting, well-argued way. That's how reviews have always worked, and the reader can make their decision accordingly based on what has been argued.

This is also wrapped up in far too much of the conversation about games being about them as 'products' in the first place - loot boxes, pre-order bonuses, subscription plans, DLC, sales etc... You don't get that in the discussions about any other medium really. But games are far, far more interesting than mere products, and deserve to be written about in a much more interesting way - something a well-written review will always do. It's a good thing we've moved away from the once dominant 'graphics/music/gameplay/lasting appeal' method of reviewing games.

Grumpypants

Back in my day reviewers played the game and then told you about that game's different aspects. Graphics, mechanics, story etc.

Once you knew it was well made, you could use your own cop on to decide if that was a game that would suit your personality, style, interests.

It was a good system.

Penn

Grumpypants wrote: »

Back in my day reviewers played the game and then told you about that game's different aspects. Graphics, mechanics, story etc.

Once you knew it was well made, you could use your own cop on to decide if that was a game that would suit your personality, style, interests.

It was a good system.

That's it though, people are talking about IGNs final review score when surely what's most important is the actual review itself where the reviewer discusses the game. Whatever metric they use to rank the game at the end is largely irrelevant.

Zero-Cool

I like the ACG reviews, shows gameplay talks about different areas, mechanics, etc with no spoilers. Gives me a sense if I'd like a game or not. Too many 'top' reviewers like IGN, Gamespot, etc manage to spoil bits of the game while managing to input their 'woke' Bollox.

3 of my favourite things this year were Days Gone (6.5 ign), Death Stranding (6.8 ign) and The Witcher on Netflix (6.5 ign). If i had gone by those scores, i wouldn't have played/watched any of those so **** IGN. Saying that, most 'pro' critics hammered those 3 in reviews so it's more a modern journalist issue i think where negative articles gets the clicks and if you complain, then you are just a defensive fanboy.

They also gave Outer Wilds 8.4 which in their new format would be an 8. I don't give a **** about what your opinion is, that is a 9 or 10 game. Nothing would justify it enough to be below 9

Dyr

Grumpypants wrote: »

Back in my day reviewers played the game and then told you about that game's different aspects. Graphics, mechanics, story etc.

Once you knew it was well made, you could use your own cop on to decide if that was a game that would suit your personality, style, interests.

It was a good system.

Thankfully we know have a system were the reviewer lets you know how the game makes them feel about Boris becoming PM or whatever wankery they have a bee in their bonnet about today.

pixelburp

It's the manner in which the scores have been weaponised by companies that annoys me most; maybe they don't do it anymore or was never that common, but locking employees' bonus (read, living) pay to aggregator scores is just wicked IMO.

Gamers might impotently rage over their favourite game getting a 8/10 but there's a non zero chance some artist hasn't got their full pay cheque cos of that "low" score.

ERG89

Penn wrote: »

That's it though, people are talking about IGNs final review score when surely what's most important is the actual review itself where the reviewer discusses the game. Whatever metric they use to rank the game at the end is largely irrelevant.

People take the piss of their reviews now for a reason. Stuff like; too much water & makes you feel like <insert protagonist or joke> are memes due to their work.

They had the plagiarism issue also, their ****e review of Prey where they couldn't get their code to work so they gave it a 4 & then they re-reviewed it, some of their reviews of games like DOOM, God Hands, Evolve & Alien Isolation are borderline comedy for being so wide of the mark.
They really seem a bit lost at times now; the whole "gruff white male protagonist" with Days Gone & the faux anger they tried so hard to generate about Modern Warfare at E3 last year were not balanced journalism or anything to generate a needed conversation.

Arcadeheroes

I don't often read IGNs reviews , but this is more or less the reason I do not like IGN

https://ie.ign.com/articles/2018/05/07/opinion-how-god-of-war-made-me-a-better-father

This column may be an opinion piece , but it reeks with Click-Bait.
If you are taking father advice from Kratos , I have to question your sanity just a little. :pac:

OptimusTractor

Arcadeheroes wrote: »

I don't often read IGNs reviews , but this is more or less the reason I do not like IGN

https://ie.ign.com/articles/2018/05/07/opinion-how-god-of-war-made-me-a-better-father

This column may be an opinion piece , but it reeks with Click-Bait.
If you are taking father advice from Kratos , I have to question your sanity just a little. :pac:

Might as well write an article about how CoD has taught him to tank a grenade.