The Hot Topic Returns

[DANGERMAN]

I've thought of a couple of others. Maneater, which I probably would have knocked marks off too for the performance, I think it crashed a lot, but I loved that game. It's just a very simple fun experience 

 

The Order 1886 too. As a game there's very little wrong with it other than there just not being enough of it. It needed longer combat encounters and more of them, which again is why I'd have marked it down, but it's definitely better than it's reputation 

[shinymcshine]

Dead Island - pretty solid 7/10 game but inexplicably Edge game it a 3/10.

 

Don't know if they just got a rogue broken review copy, but it always seems out of step with the rest.

 

 

[shinymcshine]

Conversely I'll never forgive all those 9/10 reviews that "The Return of the Obra Dinn" gathered up - wasted a good few, mostly unenjoyable, hours of my life buying then playing on that one before regretting it ever since.

 

Fair enough it tried something new in terms of presentation and gameplay - but for me it was neither fun or that engaging. 

 

Likewise I'm still not convinced those high marks for BG3 were ever really justified.

 

So as a player I feel harshly done to after those positive review scores....

[one-armed dwarf]

The Edge quote there sounds pretty explicable tbh 🤔

 

I don't know, this is something I try not to get too fussed up about. I think we have to allow for games which are doing cool things that don't have the broad appeal that lets them have high review scores. That's the thing with games versus other media I feel, cause they're such a larger investment of time that it's basically impossible for games without broad appeal to have high scores on metacritic and that appeal isn't inextricably linked with its overall quality and we get hung up on this way more than we should. Vice versa just cause a game has 90s doesn't mean you will like it anymore than it than Avengers Endgame being the most successful film ever making it also the greatest film ever

[Nag]

1 hour ago, shinymcshine said:

Dead Island - pretty solid 7/10 game but inexplicably Edge game it a 3/10.

 

Yeah... that was disgusting... there's also Ign's review of Alien Isolation which is straight up laughable. 

[Maf]

For some reason Asura’s Wrath only has a 70 on Metacritic

[Maryokutai]

Totally agree with Darksiders 3 and Venetica. Those scores are so far off the mark that you might think critics played a completely different game and I find it hard to explain these two in particular with people just having different tastes. Then again Deck13's titles might just be on my wavelength, considering I also really enjoyed Atlas Fallen and that is in the 60s on Metacritic, too.

 

Another +1 for Alien: Isolation, which got some abysmal scores in the US mostly, for some reason. Thankfully its reputation has shifted towards it being widely perceived as excellent nowadays.

 

Those are really the big outliers that made me raise an eyebrow though. Others like Mirror's Edge Catalyst or Remember Me I enjoyed quite a bit more than their scores suggest, but depending on your preferences I can see why you'd only consider them 7s.

[mfnick]

1 hour ago, Maf said:

For some reason Asura’s Wrath only has a 70 on Metacritic

Holy shit! That’s another then. Easily a high 8. Personally it’s a 9/10 though. Adore it. 

[HandsomeDead]

This definitely makes me think of a bunch of Japanese games in the 360 era but that's probably tied to what Dwarf said and them having teething problems with Unreal 3 because proprietary engines were becoming less feasible.

 

But there's also the problem of outlets and audiences wanting homogeneity in the reviews so anything outside of that can get screwed over.

 

So Nier always comes to mind.  I've not really followed the reviews of more recent games, nothing sticks out.

[mfnick]

22 minutes ago, HandsomeDead said:

I've not really followed the reviews of more recent games, nothing sticks out.

Recent reviews would usually the opposite to this weeks topic. I’d say games are much more likely to be overrated than under these days. Look how many games have scored 9-10/10 in the last 5-10 years that nobody actually gives a fuck about. Or they even have the same outlets slagging them off later. There’s loads. 

[spatular]

The best shmup, ketsui, doesn’t even have a metacritic page.

[one-armed dwarf]

39 minutes ago, mfnick said:

Look how many games have scored 9-10/10 in the last 5-10 years that nobody actually gives a fuck about.

Which games though? There might be a few on here who gave a fuck about them. Like, look at how polarised we get on here about RDRII, FFVII Rebirth, Stellar Blade.

 

What I don't love about this particular topic is it feels a bit like pretentiousness to me at times, like us taking our own taste as the standard to disqualify other people's tastes. We all do it a bit, I certainly have at times, but I think it sucks

 

My favorite game has a 70 on metacritic, I dunno, I don't care about that

[shinymcshine]

7 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

What I don't love about this particular topic is it feels a bit like pretentiousness to me at times, like us taking our own taste as the standard to disqualify other people's tastes.

 

Isn't that the essence of the discussion - where it feels like a reviewer has done exactly that in the first place - rather than reflecting a wider more objective opinion - although the issue with Metacritic is the entire focus becomes on the score rather than the supporting narrative (esp. where 7/10 has become the acceptable industry 'minimum')?

[Maryokutai]

A polarising game shouldn't get 9+ score though, by definition. It should naturally find its place at around what is considered an average score, which I suppose is 7 these days. I think in that sense the scores for Nier make total sense because for some people it was the second coming of Christ, for others it was a dysfunctional clusterfuck.

 

But you sometimes do get the feeling that outlets seem to favour the 'second coming of Christ' outcome for certain games like RDR2, though whether that comes from a place of expectation fulfillment towards readership or a high-horse mentality of showing appreciation for more arthouse games that won't click with someone who prefers to distribute headshots in COD, who knows. 

 

I don't even want to take myself out of that equation. Whenever I go on a Sayonara Wild Hearts crusade a tiny bit of me is convinced that anyone who doesn't like it is an uncultured swine. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't think a (good) reviewer does anything other than submit their own subjective take on a game and trust the reader to make their own judgements by contrasting or combining it with what others say. It's why sometimes you have trusted outlets cause you might align with them more often and vice versa.

 

A review I remember reading is one in the defunct PLAY magazine about Call of Duty World at War, which savaged it not for its gameplay mechanics but its corny jingoism, I guess at this point CoD was becoming more and more integrated into what you might call a military-entertainment complex. But people got pissed off at the guy who wrote it for not talking about those mechanics and talking about the things that mattered to him personally. But what else is a review other than a personal reaction which shapes your whole perspective on the product? If people want to know about the shooting, IGN and gamespot exist

 

I think metacritic has damaged the way we think about reviews and criticism in general, it makes perfect sense for games like Nier and Dead Island to get 5s and 8s.

[HandsomeDead]

A while back I was browsing Rotten Tomatoes and came across a review for a movie I liked (can't remember what) and there was this brutal review of it that was, frankly, a guy just being a hater.  He wrote for some American local city newspaper.  But reading his other stuff, hating other films I liked, I looked to what he did like and it was interesting stuff.  The guy was a prick, the kind that wouldn't stop at thinking Marvel ruined cinema but it was Spielberg.  I think this kind of dissent should be much more normal.  Alien Isolation getting a 3/10 shouldn't be the big deal that it was but something that all games should get as you'll never please everyone but there's this assumption they should, or at least every reviewer should be pleased.  

 

It's part of why I struggle answering the question because I don't read many reviews, you read one you've pretty much read them all, outside of the ones I know and like hearing from.

[Sly Reflex]

The only time I read reviews now are steam user reviews. And generally I only use those to see if the game runs well enough. Usually have to skip over the copy pasta meme reviews to find the good stuff. "Good" being the word doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

 

In general now anything that has insane reviews I generally ignore now. Nothing ever lives up to the hype anymore. It's best to ignore it.

[Nag]

1 hour ago, HandsomeDead said:

Alien Isolation getting a 3/10 shouldn't be the big deal that it was but something that all games should get as you'll never please everyone but there's this assumption they should

 

I kind've disagree with this... 3 to me says borderline broken which Isolation plainly isn't. You can't score a game on preference in my opinion otherwise I'd give every Mario game ever a 2. 😉

[one-armed dwarf]

But how do you score a game then, if not by preference?

 

Are you objectively wrong for not liking Alan Wake II and FFVII Rebirth as much as I do? Vice versa with Silent Hill II Remake and Stellar Blade.

 

We should have a hot topic where we submit short but snotty reviews for critically acclaimed games that will outrage each other, I think that would be fun 🤔

 

edit I think one big reason why this topic gets my panties up in a bunch is it reminds me of how we argue about BOTW getting high reviews just cause it's a Nintendo game or whatever 

[Nag]

OK... maybe opinion was a bad choice of words but you plainly wouldn't get someone who detests driving sims to review the next Gran Turismo game.