Aliens Vs Predator Studio Complains About 3 Bad Reviews

[Chipperz]

If you discount those poor reviews AvP is averaging high for us.

ya don't say....

that's probably the dumbest statement i've ever read.

To be frank, if these are the reviews I'm thinking of, they complained that the Predator relied too much on stealth and the Alien was too fast.

If these reviewers think that makes a game about fast Aliens fighting stealthy Predators BAD, then they probably need complaining about, especially if they're making a significant dent in review averages.

If people think there are fundamental problems with the gameplay, such as those things you mentioned, then it's an accurate review. Problems somebody else had with the game. To discount those reviews is just ridiculous. As someone else said, it's like taking a math exam, and saying "Well I passed, if you don't count the answers I got wrong."

...Are you seriously saying that complaining about Predators turning invisible is a valid complaint? He's saying that if you discount the people who don't know what they're talking about, you get a better idea of how the game actually is. It's less like the exam and more like, say, one of those talent shows that have invaded the TV - If two voice coaches and a writer for Heat are judging, is it fair that a fantastic singer doesn't get unanimous approval because the writer thinks they're too fat?

Because I'm sure this example is going to get jumped on, I don't think AvP was perfect and deserves unanimous 100% perfect ratings, but I do think that complaining because the different races play the way they're meant to is pretty much proof these people didn't know what they were talking about.

 

[Whispering Death]

Any multiplayer PC game should have dedicated servers and a server browser. If they don't have both, I don't buy.

Left4Dead2 is the only time I've broken that rule and it's a PAIN IN THE ASS to get games together, find a server that doesn't have 300 ping, and doesn't have tons of mods on it.

By 1998 games realized they should have server browsers and dedicated servers. I'm amazed at the collective game developer community's ability to regress all the way back to 1996-era-thinking.

 

[Treblaine]

What an idiotic thing to say.

You can't just exclude the review you don't like and still talk about "average"

What you could do if you had literally hundreds of reviews is exclude a few outliers but that would go both ways, the odd extremely high score would be as likely to excluded as a very low score. There is a mathematical way of determining what is an outlier.

I disagree. There are reviews and then there is stupidity taking up bandwidth. When a supposed review site uses thier scores to draw in traffic there is a problem. OMG they gave GTA4 a 5 quick to thier forums so we can tell them what dicks they are. When a game gets bashed for being linear and yet another linear game gets praised to the high heavens it isn't a review. It is an ad promoting the site which reported it. These critics are supposed to be our voice. Unfortunately this power has seem to have gone to some heads.

Well that is a call that no one has any right to make, whether metacritic or the developer or publisher, there is no way of proving conclusively that sites are "low scoring for traffic" or if that really is their honest journalistic opinion so there is no way you can start arbitrarily excluding reviews.

If ANY review scores are to be excluded then there has to be hard and fast rules that can be applied to all games (preferably via mathematical method) so as not to introduce bias.

I think you seem to be missing the distinction between "good games that have the RIGHT AMOUNT of linearity" and "bad games that have too much linearity" and so on. Like when they say "it's too linear" that doesn't mean they hate all linear games, it's like saying "that meal was too salty" and then scoffing if they ever ask for salt on another dish. And second guessing every publication (not every pub has the same critic for every review) looking for contradiction is madness and cannot and will not ever work.

"These critics are supposed to be our voice."

No.

Forums are our voice if anything, we are fully able and willing to cite out own opinions and I don't think any game journalists seem themselves as voices of the gaming community, the point of critics is an ADVISORY role to inform and provide insight on the myriad of games out there. They speak TO gamers, not speak FOR us.

One thing you and Rebellion are going to have to accept is that people are entitled to their opinions even if they are radically different from the modal (most common) response.

 

[Treblaine]

...Are you seriously saying that complaining about Predators turning invisible is a valid complaint?

Is there a possibility that we are just completely misinterpreting the criticism?

Perhaps they are not annoyed that the predators CAN turns invisible, rather that HOW the cloaking mechanic works makes the game unbalanced and less enjoyable. For example there is so much variation in how a cloaking mechanism might work such as what attacks are possible while cloaked, how stable is it, how long does cloak last/take to recharge and how visible is the predator actually when cloaked?

All of these are important issues in making a balanced and enjoyable game and sometimes it is not advisable to stick to the exact letter of the movies so as to "teak" the cloak mechanism to make a fun game.

There has the be challenge and reward to using cloak, it has to be vital in order to hunt the Marines yet at the same time using it must not make the game then too easy.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

...Are you seriously saying that complaining about Predators turning invisible is a valid complaint?

Is there a possibility that we are just completely misinterpreting the criticism?

Perhaps they are not annoyed that the predators CAN turns invisible, rather that HOW the cloaking mechanic works makes the game unbalanced and less enjoyable. For example there is so much variation in how a cloaking mechanism might work such as what attacks are possible while cloaked, how stable is it, how long does cloak last/take to recharge and how visible is the predator actually when cloaked?

All of these are important issues in making a balanced and enjoyable game and sometimes it is not advisable to stick to the exact letter of the movies so as to "teak" the cloak mechanism to make a fun game.

There has the be challenge and reward to using cloak, it has to be vital in order to hunt the Marines yet at the same time using it must not make the game then too easy.

All attacks make the cloak drop instantly, except those made with the Discus and the Combi Stick. Cloak doesn't make you super invisible though, if enemies have an idea of where you are they'll start shooting, and if they tag you and see blood they'll know that ripply thing is you and your as good as uncloaked. Still, just killing everything with the combistick is more or less how to steamroll through the last two levels.

 

[squid5580]

What an idiotic thing to say.

You can't just exclude the review you don't like and still talk about "average"

What you could do if you had literally hundreds of reviews is exclude a few outliers but that would go both ways, the odd extremely high score would be as likely to excluded as a very low score. There is a mathematical way of determining what is an outlier.

I disagree. There are reviews and then there is stupidity taking up bandwidth. When a supposed review site uses thier scores to draw in traffic there is a problem. OMG they gave GTA4 a 5 quick to thier forums so we can tell them what dicks they are. When a game gets bashed for being linear and yet another linear game gets praised to the high heavens it isn't a review. It is an ad promoting the site which reported it. These critics are supposed to be our voice. Unfortunately this power has seem to have gone to some heads.

Well that is a call that no one has any right to make, whether metacritic or the developer or publisher, there is no way of proving conclusively that sites are "low scoring for traffic" or if that really is their honest journalistic opinion so there is no way you can start arbitrarily excluding reviews.

If ANY review scores are to be excluded then there has to be hard and fast rules that can be applied to all games (preferably via mathematical method) so as not to introduce bias.

I think you seem to be missing the distinction between "good games that have the RIGHT AMOUNT of linearity" and "bad games that have too much linearity" and so on. Like when they say "it's too linear" that doesn't mean they hate all linear games, it's like saying "that meal was too salty" and then scoffing if they ever ask for salt on another dish. And second guessing every publication (not every pub has the same critic for every review) looking for contradiction is madness and cannot and will not ever work.

"These critics are supposed to be our voice."

No.

Forums are our voice if anything, we are fully able and willing to cite out own opinions and I don't think any game journalists seem themselves as voices of the gaming community, the point of critics is an ADVISORY role to inform and provide insight on the myriad of games out there. They speak TO gamers, not speak FOR us.

One thing you and Rebellion are going to have to accept is that people are entitled to their opinions even if they are radically different from the modal (most common) response.

Sure there is. Look past the number and read the review. Are the critiques valid or is it just some comparison to another game that did things differently?

Forums are our voice to ourselves. Nothing more. You can't expect a dev to follow every thread about thier game. Even on thier own boards. They have more important things to do like make games. Do you think someone from Rebellion is following this thread? I doubt it. And if they are they aren't doing it in any official capacity. And thank god for that. We would never see a game again if they did listen to us. Not to mention all the trolling and spam they would have to filter through first.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Those reviews were right, the game is shit.

Worst fucking online I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. Single-player, a little too brief and bland.

 

[Sneaklemming]

It's actually odd.. AvP has some issues alright, but after reading thru those "shitty reviews" it really does seem strange that the reviewers have missed all the "bad points" that even the better reviews pointed out... and yet the reasons that they cite as being bad, are sometimes exactly the reasons that other reviewers cite as being reasons for scoring the game high!

I'm not a critic, so I can't tell if this is because AvP is a niche shooter, or if the reviewers who scored the game high/low are bad reviewers...

boggles the mind sometimes... and its usually why I ignore movie/music reviewers, because often they simply inject their personal opinions into a review, which to me seems wrong...

 

[Therumancer]

The reviews I've been heaing from other gamers are mixed, ranging from "it's okay" to "OMG this is horrible, kill it with fire!". I can't think of one person who bought it (not my cup of tea) who has said it was an unqualified "good game" never mind an "awesome" one.

With the way reviews work today I am pretty much convinced that it's mostly about money, I mean heck we had the whole "Kane and Lynch Fiasco", a 250 million dollar ad budget for Modern Warfare 2, and other things.

That said, I might feel some sympathy for the company if I felt that it was totally a matter of them not paying off the US reviewers well enough, however in this case I think they just created a below average game, and simply didn't pay ridiculous amounts of money in turd polish.

I suspect that the high UK reviews might be largely because it's a UK game in this case. Similar to the nationalism in game reviews between the US and Japan.

 

[deleted_scifidownbeat]

DELETED

 

[Jennacide]

Yeah, we're a bigshot developer so we can ***** about bad reviews! Wait, no, we're Rebellion, didn't learn anything from what Monolith did to make AvP2 better than our crappy installment, and we're gonna whine about it.

In a day of too many shooters and a lot of mundane ones like the recent Wolfenstien, they found a way to completely disappoint by slapping a half assed coat of pain and blood onto an old franchise without offering anything new to the formula.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Silly Americans and their harsh reviews.

Besides that, the game was always going to be fan service (whether it succeeded or not) with small numbers of newcomers joining the fray. Of course it's only going to get average reviews.

However, there are some pretty stupid reviews on the game, literally picking on things that are fundamental to what makes a predator or alien a god damn predator or alien. There is also no merit in taking aim at graphics as a major issue in a review unless it has detrimental affects on the gameplay.

The game is fun, others do fun better, but few current gen games do fun with aliens and predators, hence why it's win for me.

 

[Captain Blackout]

If you discount those poor reviews AvP is averaging high for us.

ya don't say....

that's probably the dumbest statement i've ever read.

I was just thinking the same thing, "WW2 was a good war if you discount all the haters." How stupid can you ge-IF I HAVE TO KILL YOU SHEPARD I WILL.

Who the fuck is commanding posters minds and what do I have to do to kill them?

OT: To channel a valley girl for a moment, I can so totally see so many perspectives here. I love AvP classic, and it seems pretty fucked up and broken. AvP will need development to get better, and that will get harder with poorly thought out bad reviews. On the other hand, having a company man from rebellion point this out just comes across as incredibly stupid. Maybe they should consider ninja-style PR to help their own asses out while not looking stupid doing it?

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

cue TF2 Heavy- "Whaaaaa! Cry some more!"

This guys mad about 3 bad reviews. It is a movie game, so I'd be happy with that. And why is there advertisement EVERYWHERE for the stupid game? I'm saving my pennys for real games, like BFBC2 and Metro 2033!

 

[MetalGenocide]

Another notch in the wall of stupid developer statements being stupid.

 

[misfit119]

So wait. Wait, wait, wait.

They take AvP Gold, add in some things from AvP2 (a game that I LOVE but was critically bashed) and add in some things that seem to be an attempt to connect it to the AvP movies (which we know were hugely popular, right?) and then they whine when it gets a FEW bad reviews? Seriously? I've always held the Brits in a slightly higher regard than that. I thought their game developers were smarter and less knee jerk stupid than that.

And it's dumb too. You make a game that's going to appeal to a niche group and then are surprised when it doesn't appeal to everyone? What the hell?! This is some grade A whining right here.

Especially when the controls are messed up. That Alien moves way too damn fast for a console shooter and it doesn't help that they still haven't fixed the finnicky wall crawling. Plus the multi-player, what's supposed to be a big selling point, is terrible, fairly imbalanced and it has no real staying power compared to other games on the market.

All this and I'm actually a fan of the game. Stupid people. Ruining my day before it's even begun. This is what the internet does.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

I was pleasantly surprised by it too. The Predator is fucking sick.

 

[Rainboq]

Those of you saying "you can't disregard scores" are aware that disregarding outliers is pretty common in statistical analysis, because it whacks out the data, right?

This game has been reviewed dozens of times, with most scores falling between 65-85%. those three scores are WILDLY out of synch with the rest of the reviews the game has recieved, and DO artificially drag down the average. They aren't representative of the general opinion of the game.

In that case, it's totally reasonable to ignore them to get a better look at how the game is being critically recieved.

-m

HURRAH FOR MATHEMATICS!

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I was anticipating this game so much because I loved AVP gold, then I played the demo.

The Alien is like a an ADD kid, can't sit still. When he turns around he see's his own tail which is distracting from anything behind him. There is a noticeable pause in running when you switch from floor to wall to ceiling. So if you are on the ceiling and go through a hole to the floor above you are stuck while your idiot toon does his seizure animation. The jumping is not responsive and the whole sprint button is a joke. Why the hell would the alien ever NOT be sprinting? In multiplayer a marine can backpedal as fast as an alien can run toward him, but he has a gun. The attacks are so imprecise it takes 4 tries to knock out a light, and not that it helps because the alien has perfect night vision so he doesn't know what is dark and what isn't. And the whole "get close and press E to hump someone to death" system needs to be thrown out.

The vision modes of the AVP Gold were much more innovative.

Maybe I'll get this one when it drops to 20 or less but it isn't not worth 50 or 60.