Dhruin
SasqWatch
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I think as much for marketing purposes as anything else. The original poster was essentially dismissing the game as console crap. Are you suggesting that quote endorses that point of view?
*snip
I think as much for marketing purposes as anything else. The original poster was essentially dismissing the game as console crap. Are you suggesting that quote endorses that point of view?
This gives a clearer picture. At the start of the 360's life, its scores were clustered higher and more tightly than Xbox reviews were at any point, but that didn't last beyond the first year. Its current spread resembles historical patterns. And reviewers of 360 games don't appear to have been more liberal with scores in the 90s. This is only two of the six consoles, but it's not unreasonable to conclude that game scores are not currently trending upward.How many years? Are you just referring to "high-scoring" games, or all of them? Dropped into this graph, Bioshock would look less like the culmination of an upward trend than a ridiculous outlier, but I'm not sure exactly which scores you think are being inflated. Can you be more specific?
OMG!!! I'm like so excited I peed my pants. Hello bioshock/oblivion games, good bye rpgs!!!
From what I see, what is gathering a lot of attention is the graphics. I might have peed my pants, but we'll see if this game is a game, and not just a pretty screensaver.
They are both console games first and foremost.
Scores that high can not be deserved. It's a conceptual impossibility.
I think the issue is that a lot of gaming journalists have moved to a conceptual level where 10/10 represents "game of the year," not "this game is flawless."
If nobody can ever get the highest score, all that does is make the second-highest score the highest score in reality.
If nobody can ever get the highest score, all that does is make the second-highest score the highest score in reality.
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Nope, it's not. First of all I don't think linearity is inherent to that genre. There is no natural law or necessity to make a shooter linear. Second I give a damn about genre - genre boundaries are straight from hell. If I play a game I'm not thinking, "Was this a good rpg?" or, "Was this a good shooter?" - I'm thinking, "Was this a good game?" I'm tired that flawed design is constantly defended by bringing in genre as an argument - it isn't one. If you think that linearity is an inherent part of the genre, I tell you it's time to break some genre boundaries then.Linearity may be a design flaw for (a certain type) of RPGs, but you can't say that for shooters. Linearity is inherent to most of that genre. That you don't like that (and therefore most shooters) doesnt make it a flaw. That there are indeed non-llinear shooters, doesn't mean that linearity is necessarily a design flaw either. Its a design decision. You can certainly strive to make a "perfect" linear shooter (like Half life, or maybe this Bioshock) just as well as you can try to make a perfect platformer, arcade fighting game, and ping pong simulation, etc. Its silly to ask for every game to incorporate your preferred design, or expect review scores to take into account that it cant be played in everyones preferred manner.
First, if a site posts what their ratings mean, (with a 5/5 being a milestone of it’s time to some degree or other) and person misinterprets that meaning, to mean it’s a perfect game, then it’s the person’s fault not the review site.
This gives a clearer picture. At the start of the 360's life, its scores were clustered higher and more tightly than Xbox reviews were at any point, but that didn't last beyond the first year. Its current spread resembles historical patterns. And reviewers of 360 games don't appear to have been more liberal with scores in the 90s. This is only two of the six consoles, but it's not unreasonable to conclude that game scores are not currently trending upward.
If nobody can ever get the highest score, all that does is make the second-highest score the highest score in reality.
Second, game reviewers are faced with the same problem as any tech reviewers: a moving baseline.
So, assuming that someone does come out with an "outstanding" game, and assuming that reviewers attempt to treat their scores this way, I don't think it's impossible for it to (legitimately) score very high among very many reviewers.
Besides, I don't directly care why game reviewers are so incompetent, I care that they are. It's not my job to figure out the why and fix it, that's theirs.
I actually find most game reviews I read are pretty useful and give a fairly good idea of what to expect in the game
I used to agree. Until the past few years, culminating in Oblivion. It was like my experience in playing Oblivion was diametrically opposed to what reviewers were writing. I simply could not possibly identify the game I was playing based on the reviews I read, it was like they were reviewing a completely different game.
There's a lot of incompetence out there in the gaming media. Too much, if you ask me, which harms the status of gaming towards the actual, serious media indirectly. Real journalists just chuckle when they see the way gaming journalists operate.
Oblivion was one game that disappointed me too, badly, and the reasons it disappointed were not apparent in the reviews I read. So you have a point there. Still, the fact remains that Oblivion *does* do a great many things very well, it *was* first out of the gate doing these things well, and many if not most gamers *do* appreciate precisely these things (and are not bothered by the things that bothered me).
IMO it's not quite gross incompetence to get caught in the hype, be wowed by the obviously well-done things, and miss some or even most of them.
"Real journalists" chuckle when they see any specialty press "journalists" operate. Specialty journalists are enthusiasts first, journalists second. That's just the way things are, and that's why it should be taken with a grain of salt.
linearity is a flaw, games are not books or movies. If I want linearity, I read a book or watch a movie. A videogame however that is linear is simply crippled that's all.
I'm glad you're not head of all game development.
..."console first and foremost" biases towards a poor port.
You make a a shooter with kick ass gfx but basicaly no content other than killing enemies in various ways you'll get a 10/10. You make a rpg with decent gfx and tons of content and you'll get 6/10, 7/10 if you're lucky.