Portal is the game of the year

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Asher
Sounds to me like you'd make a great PC game reviewer -- completely oblivious to what makes games, well, fun.

Then why do you spend so much time posting scores assigned by, you know, game reviewers? Or is just PC game reviewers who are oblivious to what makes games fun, while console game reviewers are not? Do magazines and websites actually assign different folks to review games by platform, rather than genre?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Asher
Should it be the other way around, considering the list of great games is dominated by Nintendo games?

Fixed.

[Asher]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Then why do you spend so much time posting scores assigned by, you know, game reviewers? Or is just PC game reviewers who are oblivious to what makes games fun, while console game reviewers are not? Do magazines and websites actually assign different folks to review games by platform, rather than genre?

It's just PC Game reviewers in general.

And yes, it's typically done by platform...

[snoopy369]

Perhaps you don't like the style of games that are typically made for the PC

That said, I think most game reviewers are ... not all there Mostly because they generally don't know how to write, it's not a well enough paid position to get good talent... and for some odd reason not that many english majors play computer games

[Solver]

A much bigger problem is when reviewers don't get to spend time with the game. You can't put a review of most games together if you've only had it for 2 days. And the other problem is when reviewers have to review games from genres that they don't like / appreciate. Rarely a problem on the biggest review sites, but it's silly when a hardcore strategy fan is reviewing a racing game, etc.

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by Asher



Half-Life (1) was good.

Half-Life (2) is bad.

Halo 1/2/3 are good.

Why is HL2 bad? Because the pace was too slow, the plot couldn't get me interested, EP1 had EXCESSIVE amounts of "plot" given how boring it was, all of the "puzzles" involved using the physics system to solve, etc. Gabe Newell is a bit of a child in a lot of ways, he gets fixated on one aspect of something and beats it to death.

Originally posted by Solver
A much bigger problem is when reviewers don't get to spend time with the game. You can't put a review of most games together if you've only had it for 2 days.

qft

because of this, we get travesties like civ3 and civ4 getting almost exactly the same scores upon their respective releases.

or Black & White scoring top 5% of all review scores.

[Solver]

Call to Power illustrates the problem even better. There's not really a single sensible review of it (or the sequel) from major sites. It's fun how most reviews praise the AI in CtP2, even though the game shipped before the AI was completed and it does - literally - often play worse than the Civ1 AI.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Solver is one of the best mannered and most helpful people here, IMHO. I would suggest that calling him a liar because he clarified what he meant hardly makes you look mature. If you think thats advancing intellectual honesty, well ....

I think Solver is more than used to gentle () teasing from me.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Fixed.

Poorly, since that's false.

[Kuciwalker]

I'm convinced there just aren't any reviewers who know anything about Civ, apart from the fact that if they don't give it a good rating the fanbase will eat them alive.

[Solver]

Nah, there are reviewers who know Civ, more or less. And no I'm not taking about myself But there the problem is that Civ is complex, so you need even more time to make a good review for it. You need weeks of playtime. Which just isn't plausible for a site that needs to put many reviews online and can't afford to have a reviewer play the same game for a month.

I think reviews such as the IGN ones of Civ (I'm talking Civ4 + xps specifically) are generally as good as Civ reviews can be from sites/reviewers that don't specialize in Civ.

But Civ isn't the only game to suffer from crappy reviews, unfortunately. Oh, I also remembered the problem of screenshots now, for an example, look at any review of Company of Heroes or World in Conflict.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I think Solver is more than used to gentle () teasing from me.

And we'll see about that

[Ninot]

Desktop Tower Defense, GotY!

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Solver
Call to Power illustrates the problem even better. There's not really a single sensible review of it (or the sequel) from major sites. It's fun how most reviews praise the AI in CtP2, even though the game shipped before the AI was completed and it does - literally - often play worse than the Civ1 AI.

They couldn't face playing the game so they made the reviews up. True story dat.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Poorly, since that's false.

ah, I misread DC - dreamcast as being a Nintendo system - you must forgive my ignorance of old consoles - and yeah, I know if even if it was 5 games out of 10, 50% is not more than half.

still 4 out of 10 for all the games, and 4 out of 9 for the console games, is compelling.

If you think that data is relevant to showing the importance of console games vs PC games, one must also see Nintendo as the leading console platform. If its NOT a useful metric for showing Nintendos lead, than its also not a useful metric for evaluating consoles in general vs PC's.