Raven's Cry - Review @ GameSpot

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Well seems Gamespot has posted the next very negative review for Raven's Cry this week as they give the game a 1/10, and call it broken & offensive at the same time.

All of the other complaints that can be levied against Raven's Cry are legion, but you can force yourself to soldier through them if you really want to, although I pity anyone who voluntarily spends any time with this game. What truly puts Raven's Cry in the pantheon of the worst games of all time is that story progression can easily become totally impossible. After slugging through 17 hours of the game, a bug in a story portion of the game—where there was only one way back to the overworld out of the labyrinthine temple I'd been exploring—crashed my computer over and over again at the same point. I turned the game off, came back a couple of hours later, and tried again. The game crashed again. And I'd had enough.

It's not hard to say whether it's worse that Raven's Cry is so broken or that it's full of so much offensive material; the offensive material is worse. But the fact is that either of these things is more than enough for a rational person to avoid playing it. The game is unfinished, a chore when you can play it, and full of disgusting vitriol aimed at women and people of color.
I thought IGN had the worst review seems I was wrong.

More information.
 
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Well I'm tired and I have been up all night. So I'm sorry it's fixed now.:blush:
 
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Well, as I said in my preview, the game is very nasty, adult and offensive. I guess that's kind of the point. Christopher Raven is not a friendly pirate like Greg or the loveable goons of the pirate camp in Gothic 2: Night of the Raven. :D

No, this guy is nasty. So keep that in mind before diving in. :)
 
So it's sort of GTA of pirate games? :p
 
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I'll copypaste what I wrote on Steam about this "review".

This reviewer obviously never played the game. Assuming he is talking about the release version:


1. "Constant crashes, including a bug which kills all game progress"

2. "Frame rate is choppier than the seas your ship sails on"

This is not Raven's Cry I played.
What goddamned crashes is he talking about? It can be Fallout 3, it can be Lords of the Fallen, but not RC. RC never crashed on me and there were no FPS drops at all (although I have to admit I've instantly disabled consoley motion blur - maybe that's what caused problems in his case, but that's his problem if he's after console on PC).
Or he played the game on a toaster and not on a proper PC maybe? What's he doing in review business then?
I've managed to successfully finish the game. Sure, there was a gamestopper - in a sidequest. Big deal. You reload and don't go for an irrelevant quest. It's not like Skyrim where even today the main story has two nevepatched gamestoppers.



3. Rampant racism, sexism, and homophobia

First of all, there is no racism anywhere in the game. You're playing a white hero who's parents were killed and you were raised by a black guy. This guy appears here and there, you also help slaves and ex-slaves during the game course. Again, I suspect this gamespotter never played Raven's Cry. Even more, the best carpenter in the game is chinese. Okay, I guess making a chinese NPC that's better in something than others is - racist.

On account of sexism, again, the guy didn't play the game. Whores, whoring and whorehouses exist even today in ports. When a man spends months at the sea… You know how the story goes. Is that something negative? In any case I'm failing to see what is sexist in the game. Oh, Hanging Willy? Hell why did he play the game after he saw that spot then? Right, he didn't. Play the game.

Finally about homophobia. And it's not existing in the game.
The story happens in times where same sex relations were outlawed. But your hero, while not into that stuff, actually HELPS a male whore to get a decent job in a whorehouse instead of selling "services" on the street and risking his life. That's homophobia? To someone it might be, to me, it's not.
(note: the conclusion on this where the guy says thanks for making his life less miserable was cut out with the patch but it feels like a nonintentional bug)

I'm saying this Gamespot guy never played the game and is now falsifying stuff to justify his 1/10.
But even if the game actually contained sexism, racism and homophobia, hell why should players care for politics and political corectness in games? This is mature game, not kindergarden stuff!



4. Combat is broken at worst and button-mashing tedium at best

Combat is not broken.
It's ground trashmobs AI that has a bug and locks in defensive state which those who actually played the game including me already reported. Since they get locked into defending, to kill them you'll go buttonmashing ofc.
But minibosses AI, ranged mobs AI and sea battles combat is not broken at all. I wonder how he sunk ships with that buttonmashing he's talking about. But then again, as I've said, that Gamespot guy didn't play the game. Obviously.



5. Stilted voice acting makes community theater seem like the Royal Shakespeare Company

Sorry, I'm playing games for fun. I'm not searching for voiceacting masterpieces. If I did, I'd go listen to some radio drama.




This gamespot review is a work of a blatant liar who didn't play the game but sucked things out of his pinky.
There is however something good from it. I can use it as a proof that Gamespot is nothing but a duffer.



Also, on this:
So it's sort of GTA of pirate games? :p
No. This game didn't came on consoles first. It came first on PC and has a proper inventory.
 
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Sorry for doublepost… Is it me or…
But… If I'm seeing it right that's user review, like those metacritic user reviews, not actual gamespot staff review? I'm now confused.
 
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I usually like Gamespot, considering it's a mainstream site, but that review is a travesty and the reviewer should be fired for incompetence. I mean that.
 
I haven't read the full review (and don't plan to really), but why do you say that Dart? I mean, what I've read about the game and the state it was in at release for 60 bucks sounds pretty abhorrent to me. So if there isn't any outright lies or deliberate slander, what's wrong with a punishing review? Isn't it good for the consumer to be warned about broken games?
 
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I haven't read the full review (and don't plan to really), but why do you say that Dart? I mean, what I've read about the game and the state it was in at release for 60 bucks sounds pretty abhorrent to me. So if there isn't any outright lies or deliberate slander, what's wrong with a punishing review? Isn't it good for the consumer to be warned about broken games?

Maybe you should just read the review. ;)

It's very obvious this person allowed his personal feelings about some of the in-game material to affect his review score rather than just concentrating on the actual game.

Besides that, the score itself is just ridiculous. I've seen enough of Raven's Cry to know that there's no realistic way it's actually a 1/10.
 
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I see. Never mind then, sounds like a fair criticism of the review.

I like some of the gamespot staff, and for a mainstream site, they typically are fair with indie games or lesser known titles. Some of the writers do get a tad overzealous about their "being offended" stance.

Don't get me wrong, if a reviewer finds something offensive, and it might be informative for consumers to know about this content, then it's great to mention. But it shouldn't completely lead to a bad review on that merit alone.

Raven's Cry still seems like quite the turd though.
 
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I'll copypaste what I wrote on Steam about this "review".
Also, on this:

No. This game didn't came on consoles first. It came first on PC and has a proper inventory.
I didn't read the review, it was a joke on what Fluent said about Raven being a nasty/viscous guy. ;)

@DArtagnan it must be one offensive review.
 
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Are we sure it's not really just a big pile of shite?
 
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That depends if you'll trust me (played through the whole game twice already, not a single crash prepatch nor postpatch) or that gamespot reviewer.
It's not a masterpiece, but definetly not a disaster critics claim it to be.

My suggestion is if you didn't buy the game yet, and have second thoughts, it's best to play it safe. The game will get discounted sooner or later and will get also patched in the meantime. It's not, also suggested by critics, 500+ bugs galore. It does have it's bugs, but nothing extraordinary or never seen elsewhere. Besides do you honestly believe, a bug nitpicker: me, would not notice if something was utterly broken bug-o-rama? Some of those bugs are so hilarious a few of us asked developer not to fix them. Here's one, happens only on one spot so it's unclear if it's really a bug or an "easter egg", developer didn't say.

pic2.jpg

And write a note please, a note that I want to hear your opinion once you play and finish it. I honestly want to know as there is no other game with such low metacritic aggro I actualy like. Honestly because of this, I wonder if I made a mistake not buying some games I was interested in just because of their low metacritic percent.
 
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Even the beta version I played didn't have many bugs, except for one show-stopper that I promptly reported and it was fixed. Other than that I played for around 8 hours or so without any signs of any crazy bugs.

There is no way the game is a 1/10 game. That's absurd. As I said before, I'd give it a 5 or 6/10 just based on the beta I played without proper voice acting. With voices properly implemented, it would be a fun, highly offensive and rude pirate game. :)
 
Fair enough. Trouble is, I've got such a pile of promising games to get through, that even if this deserves a 6/10 rather than a 1/10, I'm very unlikely to get round to it.

I don't like this new trend of bashing games for their political incorrectness, though. If you want to make a game in which you are the most horrible, racist, bloodthirsty slavetader of the 18th century, why should that reflect on its score? It's not a standard that would be applied to books or films.
 
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Agreed, Ripper.

I'm saying it's a 6/10 WITHOUT proper voice acting and storytelling. With those features added, the score is higher, but I was still hoping for more world interactivity than the level that was currently present. That would be my only real criticism based on the bit I played. Had the world had a level of Risen interactivity, the game would have really had a better sense of exploration.

That said, maybe it opens up more after the first few hours. joxer Would you have a better idea of all that.
 
Dunno what to say. Luckily there is no slave trading in the game (while historically there should be) otherwise that gamespot reviewer would probably put 0/10. ;)

On the exploration part, no, forget it. No exploration. Bad exploration. Don't do, exploration. Don't buy the game for exploration, you'll get disappointed. It's not a part of this game. Could have been, dunno why it's scrapped. Maybe gets added by modders as there are enough resources (landmass) for that.
But I can't evaluate the game for things it doesn't contain and then slap 1/10 saying "no exploration, no multiplayer, no children, no… airplanes = It sux!". :)
 
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Yeah...I did convey my thoughts to the developers about the lack of exploration, but I think the game is to be enjoyed in a different way than a game like Risen. We should be playing this game for the narrative and storytelling, as it's more of a story-heavy RPG.

joxer, How does the storytelling and narrative look in the final game? It had some bright spots in the beta I played. I liked the cutscene with the ghost ship. Thought that was quite awesome, really.
 
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