Lamest excuse for a negetive point in reviews

[Sky Captanio]

"The story is too complicated!"

Just 'cause you're too big a spanner to understand it, doesn't mean it's bad.

 

[Imat]

IGN will always have the stupidest criticisms. I hate seeing "framerate issues" as a criticism. That's your hardware, not the game doing that. Unless you're online, then it could be lag.

That's not entirely correct. First of all, I'll go ahead and assume a company like IGN can afford to give their reviewers the latest and greatest hardware on the market, so I doubt it comes down to their compy. They are also required to have a rather fast internet connection, or even multiple connections, seeing as how they are a largely internet based company. So I doubt it comes down to their internet either.

As a final point, there are plenty of games with bugs/glitches which run slowly due to code and not due to user fault.

Most of the ones for Halo

"It never did anything to change fps's"

If you honest believe that then you're are so ignorant it hurts. Vehicles, regenerating shields, strong weapons at the start of the game, the first decent console fps, got people to stop saying "that game is a doom clone" now it's a "Halo clone" and there are more reasons but I am keeping this short

Halo did not create vehicles in FPS gaming. They may have been the first to propose that any old soldier can flip an entire tank with his bare hands, but they certainly did not introduce vehicles into the genre.

Interesting fact: Half-Life was released on the PS2. Even more interesting: This occurred a full year before Halo was released.

Personally I don't like Halo's regenerating shields. But I can't argue that they didn't originate with Halo, and I don't speak for everybody, much to my chagrin. And I personally still call FPS's Doom clones, but that's an extreme generalization used to push buttons.

 

[Captain Pirate]

Xbox World 360, a magazine I (still very much) trust and always month, I think gave their Halo Reach review an unfair criticism. The reviewer kept saying it was lacking, and 'flawed', and how the characters are easily forgettable and how it seemed to him like just a lot of big battles.
To me, it seems like he wasn't paying attention.
Sure, the characters, Jorge and at a stretch Kat excluded were a bit weak, but forgettable entirely? I shit you not, he says "There were these six guys whose names I can't remember - the girl was good with computers and there was a guy with a skull on his helmet - and that had a lot of fights for no apparent reason."
Sorry, what?
There is plenty of reason, even past the reason that, Oh, the whole game is about a huge battle defending a PLANET. That's reason enough, but there is a whole flow of logic to it.
<spoiler=SPOILERS and wall of text>: They go to try and reconnect a relay station, and discover the Covenant on Reach. They then proceed to travel to ONI Sword Base to defend it. Simple enough, they don't want the aliens taking their intel. Then they go on a scouting mission, find Covenant, plant a bomb and discover an invasion fleet already on the planet. Next mission is the daytime, and they launch a big attack on the invasion fleet. Huge battle ensues, during which a massssiiiivve spaceship appears.

They retake a spaceship launch facility and plan to destroy the ship by cutting it in half with a slipspace bomb. Go into space because your character can fly the ships, get on big ship, get it near other bigger ship, bomb gets damaged, Jorge stays behind to detonate it, detonates, takes out both enemy ships. Lots of other huge ships arrive via slipspace for full planetary invasion of Reach.

Six is launched out of the ship, and uses re-entry pack to get back to ground. Lands near New Alexandria, large city of Reach. Enters solo, helps soldiers, kills Covenant, reuinites with Commander of squad, with help from Kat takes out Covenant radio jammers so they can use radios again. Covenant start glassing city, and while running Kat is shot at the end from a random Covenant sniper. Remaining four are deployed to the old (and now destroyed) Sword Base to destory it, preventing any Covenant from taking it's secrets. Break in, and with help from an unknown AI find secret passage to Dr Halsey's secret lab, which shows an enormous Forerunner structure.

Halsey wants the team to defend her while she downloads the last of the structure's data, and they do so. After, it is revealed she downloaded it onto Cortana, and Cortana chose Noble Six as her guardian. New mission is given to take it to the Pillar of Autumn. Jun is sent to protect Halsey. Last three go to drop off Cortana, to Pillar, and so to the Chief, thus saving the universe. En route Carter is fatally shot, and Emile and Six jump out to safety. They get to the Pillar of Autumn, at the loss of Carter, who crashes his Pelican into a Scarab so the two left can pass. While defending the Pillar of Autumn, Emile is killed by Elites while on a heavy cannon. Six takes over the cannon.

After defending the ship from a enemy Covenant cruiser, Captain Keyes himself comes to take Cortana, and takes it, Six staying behind to defend Reach. Pillar of Autumn takes off, setting the scene for the events of 1-3.
Six stays behind, kills as many Covenant as he can but is ultimately overrun, and dies.
Reach is lost.

See, it all has reason. Sorry I got carried away here, just wanted to get it off my chest... [/spoiler]

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who saw the simple reason behind the missions, and remembers all the characters very, very clearly. Best Halo characters yet in my opinion.
I still love the magazine, just not that one reviewer as much. Should've just payed attention to the, frankly quite simple, storyline.

 

[Arawn.Chernobog]

Most of the ones for Halo

"It never did anything to change fps's"

If you honest believe that then you're are so ignorant it hurts. Vehicles, regenerating shields, strong weapons at the start of the game, the first decent console fps, got people to stop saying "that game is a doom clone" now it's a "Halo clone" and there are more reasons but I am keeping this short

All of those things were done by games before HALO and most were done better, Halo just scored a lucky hit as it was introduced during a generation shift and scored with a market of people who had not played FPSs or games in general before.

Sure they were done before Halo but Halo was the game that brought all these pieces together and implemented them almost perfectly in my opinion.

Or the first game that implemented them and got mainstream attention. (more likely)

 

[repeating integers]

Xbox World 360, a magazine I (still very much) trust and always month, I think gave their Halo Reach review an unfair criticism. The reviewer kept saying it was lacking, and 'flawed', and how the characters are easily forgettable and how it seemed to him like just a lot of big battles.
To me, it seems like he wasn't paying attention.
Sure, the characters, Jorge and at a stretch Kat excluded were a bit weak, but forgettable entirely? I shit you not, he says "There were these six guys whose names I can't remember - the girl was good with computers and there was a guy with a skull on his helmet - and that had a lot of fights for no apparent reason."
Sorry, what?
There is plenty of reason, even past the reason that, Oh, the whole game is about a huge battle defending a PLANET. That's reason enough, but there is a whole flow of logic to it.
<spoiler=SPOILERS and wall of text>: They go to try and reconnect a relay station, and discover the Covenant on Reach. They then proceed to travel to ONI Sword Base to defend it. Simple enough, they don't want the aliens taking their intel. Then they go on a scouting mission, find Covenant, plant a bomb and discover an invasion fleet already on the planet. Next mission is the daytime, and they launch a big attack on the invasion fleet. Huge battle ensues, during which a massssiiiivve spaceship appears.

They retake a spaceship launch facility and plan to destroy the ship by cutting it in half with a slipspace bomb. Go into space because your character can fly the ships, get on big ship, get it near other bigger ship, bomb gets damaged, Jorge stays behind to detonate it, detonates, takes out both enemy ships. Lots of other huge ships arrive via slipspace for full planetary invasion of Reach.

Six is launched out of the ship, and uses re-entry pack to get back to ground. Lands near New Alexandria, large city of Reach. Enters solo, helps soldiers, kills Covenant, reuinites with Commander of squad, with help from Kat takes out Covenant radio jammers so they can use radios again. Covenant start glassing city, and while running Kat is shot at the end from a random Covenant sniper. Remaining four are deployed to the old (and now destroyed) Sword Base to destory it, preventing any Covenant from taking it's secrets. Break in, and with help from an unknown AI find secret passage to Dr Halsey's secret lab, which shows an enormous Forerunner structure.

Halsey wants the team to defend her while she downloads the last of the structure's data, and they do so. After, it is revealed she downloaded it onto Cortana, and Cortana chose Noble Six as her guardian. New mission is given to take it to the Pillar of Autumn. Jun is sent to protect Halsey. Last three go to drop off Cortana, to Pillar, and so to the Chief, thus saving the universe. En route Carter is fatally shot, and Emile and Six jump out to safety. They get to the Pillar of Autumn, at the loss of Carter, who crashes his Pelican into a Scarab so the two left can pass. While defending the Pillar of Autumn, Emile is killed by Elites while on a heavy cannon. Six takes over the cannon.

After defending the ship from a enemy Covenant cruiser, Captain Keyes himself comes to take Cortana, and takes it, Six staying behind to defend Reach. Pillar of Autumn takes off, setting the scene for the events of 1-3.
Six stays behind, kills as many Covenant as he can but is ultimately overrun, and dies.
Reach is lost.

See, it all has reason. Sorry I got carried away here, just wanted to get it off my chest... [/spoiler]

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who saw the simple reason behind the missions, and remembers all the characters very, very clearly. Best Halo characters yet in my opinion.
I still love the magazine, just not that one reviewer as much. Should've just payed attention to the, frankly quite simple, storyline.

What overall score did he give it, out of interest? I only ever got one issue of Xbox magazine and it convinced me that Deus Ex: Human Revolution might be cool...

 

[Last Valiance]

Judging by the way most games are reviewed these days, "isn't halo" seems to knock off two or three points. Unless its a halo game, then its perfect tens all around

-snip-

halo did not do any of those things first. It simply used what other games were doing to prop up the limitations of console controls. Low weapons inventory to offset the lack of buttons, regenerating health so players wouldn't have to rely on dodgy move/look controls to heal. Cover so players wouldn't have to rely on dodgy move/look controls to avoid damage. Aim-assist so players wouldn't have to rely on dodgy move/look controls to inflict damage. Vehicles are just fluff, but tribes beat them to that as well... and did them better.

Basically, they made an okay console shooter by minimizing the amount the player had to play it. But because it was released to a completely captive audience (the portion of humanity that thought the xbox looked cool), bungie is now considered a high quality developer.

Everything about this post is wrong.

Not one of the things you have mentioned is anything to do with the supposed limitations the xbox controller (I'll give you auto-aim, although Halo's auto aim is so bad that all the good players turn it off anyway (especially when sniping; dear god that is irritating))
"Low weapons inventory to offset lack of buttons" Now, even on PC only games, more than two weapons is nearly unthinkable in a serious shooter. Do you honestly think that the reason why you can only carry two weapons is because it is absolutely impossible for a game to have a weapon-cycling system? Or something like GoW?
The reason the whole two-weapons thing was implemented was for a bit of realism and for better gameplay only.

Cover -- Halo doesn't even HAVE a cover system, and anyway, it's generally accepted that for motion console controls are actually superior. Have you even played the game?

WTF do motion controls have to do with healing? Seriously? Even if you were right about console controls being so vastly inferior to using a mouse, that really has NOTHING to do with healing. Like, AT ALL.

Nobody (intelligent) ever claimed that vehicles in shooters were invented by halo, but that doesn't mean Halo didn't do it well. Like, really well. Moving to third person was a gold idea.


Most of the thing Halo did they didn't invent, but they did them all together for the first time and better than anybody else had done before them. Halo: CE was an extremely important and intriguing game and anybody who says different doesn't know squat.
P.S, Bungie is a high quality developer: Like valve, in many ways their games aren't perfect (mostly bad graphics in certain instances for both), however they have a sense of humour, make great games with great replay value and listen to/love their community.

 

[The Rockerfly]

mega snip

I think I love you. For actually seeing it from another point of view and acknowledging that Halo was a good thing which no one else in this thread seems to understand

Arguing constantly against people about things they would criticise with their favourite games. Halo was good for the gaming world, the idiots who bought the shit clones are not

Easy

 

[illas]

Judging by the way most games are reviewed these days, "isn't halo" seems to knock off two or three points. Unless its a halo game, then its perfect tens all around

-snip-

halo did not do any of those things first. It simply used what other games were doing to prop up the limitations of console controls. Low weapons inventory to offset the lack of buttons, regenerating health so players wouldn't have to rely on dodgy move/look controls to heal. Cover so players wouldn't have to rely on dodgy move/look controls to avoid damage. Aim-assist so players wouldn't have to rely on dodgy move/look controls to inflict damage. Vehicles are just fluff, but tribes beat them to that as well... and did them better.

Basically, they made an okay console shooter by minimizing the amount the player had to play it. But because it was released to a completely captive audience (the portion of humanity that thought the xbox looked cool), bungie is now considered a high quality developer.

Seconded.

Thirded, although I would suggest that Bungie has a near Blizzard-like ability to polish a "good" game into appearing a "great" game.

OT: any criticism about a great game being too short. I would rather play a short, near-perfect game than a really good game which succumbs to padding and looses it's luster as a result. The addage "always leave them wanting more" holds true in videogames, too.

Average games that are a triumph of high production values over content are, of course, totally deserving of such criticism.

 

[repeating integers]

mega snip

I think I love you. For actually seeing it from another point of view and acknowledging that Halo was a good thing which no one else in this thread seems to understand

Arguing constantly against people about things they would criticise with their favourite games. Halo was good for the gaming world, the idiots who bought the shit clones are not

Easy

Well, thanks. Feels nice to be appreciated once in a while...

Now if only I could get everyone to listen to me when I say "GET HOMEWORLD DAMMIT!" .

 

[The Rockerfly]

Well, thanks. Feels nice to be appreciated once in a while...

Now if only I could get everyone to listen to me when I say "GET HOMEWORLD DAMMIT!" .

For you, anything

I shall search through steam and buy it tonight

 

[repeating integers]

Well, thanks. Feels nice to be appreciated once in a while...

Now if only I could get everyone to listen to me when I say "GET HOMEWORLD DAMMIT!" .

For you, anything

I shall search through steam and buy it tonight

It's not on steam apparently... You can get it dirt cheap from Amazon though. It's an 11 year old RTS, and I'm the biggest fanboy of it you will ever find anywhere.

 

[Captain Pirate]

What overall score did he give it, out of interest? I only ever got one issue of Xbox magazine and it convinced me that Deus Ex: Human Revolution might be cool...

90%.
Out of 100% of course.
He praised everything else as perfect. They have this thing of their top twelve high scoring games, Halo 3 is one of them, and they claim it's campaign is better than Reach's...
Simply for the huge mission variety in Reach I disagree.
And don't confuse Xbox World 360 with the Official Xbox 360 magazine, Official is terribly written and riddled with errors. They claimed the civilian Truck was the new Warthog once...
Fuck, they're the OFFICIAL guys.
Xbox World 360 however is amazing. Their puns... my god, the puns!


[small]Disclaimer: I was not just paid a tenner by the guys at Xbox World 360 to say this. Still, BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT. [/small]

 

[Rathands]

The Official Nintendo Magazine once did a 'nostalgic review' of Donkey Kong Country 3 because they felt its old score was too high. So they lowered its rating significantly by comparing it to games of today. That pissed me off no end.

 

[Mikester1290]

Most of the ones for Halo

"It never did anything to change fps's"

If you honest believe that then you're are so ignorant it hurts. Vehicles, regenerating shields, strong weapons at the start of the game, the first decent console fps, got people to stop saying "that game is a doom clone" now it's a "Halo clone" and there are more reasons but I am keeping this short

It didn't do any of those things first, nor did it do them as well as specific previous games.

What it did do was cater to the consoles failings and make shooters more forgiving in the process. It was presented as a very polished game incorporating the best ideas of the industry in one mass market friendly package, that was the marvel of Halo.

Some say Golden-eye proved consoles could do fps's but halo made them accessible and brought them into the mainstream. It didn't change FPS's but showed which features were going to appeal to the larger console market more.

What strong starting weapons are you referring to? the weapons are reasonably balanced but later weapons are better. The pistol was a waste of time, or would have been if it wasn't for the scope. Feels like they tried to balance the pistol and didn't realise how much a scope could be abused rather than the pistol being good.

The regenerating health,excluding the regenerating shields of the first game, was ham-fisted, unnecessary and pure cheese.
The vehicles just feel nasty and very unnatural and most other games FPS with vehicles were at least as good and often better.

Umm, the pistol was a waste of time?

Are you fucking kidding us? Proves how much you know. They were like a sniper rifle with the zoom compared to most other pistols.

As for what weapons at the begining of the game? Well you could pick up the alien rifles and sticky nades for a start, they were quite strong I thought.

O/T ^^^ now we know what the lamest critisism for a game is,

 

[Caradinist]

Look up NavGtr on youtube, and you will know the lamest excuses for negative points in reviews.

It beats all the others on here.

 

[ProtoChimp]

IGN will always have the stupidest criticisms. I hate seeing "framerate issues" as a criticism. That's your hardware, not the game doing that. Unless you're online, then it could be lag.

You want to see some blatant IGN bias, go watch their Sonic Unleashed and Sonic and the black knight reviews. Fair enough if you didn't like the game (too fast to control, werehog ripped of God of War, cheap ass levels sometimes, the worst final level in any game EVER and that is NOT a hyperbole) but they were so biased it was unreal. They complained about the final boss in Black knight but that wasn't even the final boss, I don't think they even PLAYED the game, their arguments made no sense at all. Not a single one. They also complained about stuff in Unleashed that they praised in other games like a simple upgrade system and being child freindly (come on they made the same arguments for Mario Galaxy except they were apparantly good in that game, why? Fuck if I know it's IGN they LIE in their reviews). They also intentionally played bad and died in very, VERY easy stages in the game to make it look cheap and too hard when it wasn't (apart from the Eggmanland level which they could have had a valid coplaint about but didn't mention at all when they should have if they wanted to make the game look bad). Don't think I'm a sonic fanboy (06 is a sin) but I just hate that most people don't give any sonic games a chance. Even Russ Pitts gave a biased Unleashed review. It would be like if they judged Halo: Reach and took away points for the fact that you don't play as the Cheif, or that you can be a girl

Spoiler

or that you make a heroic sacrifice.

 

[The Rockerfly]

It's not on steam apparently... You can get it dirt cheap from Amazon though. It's an 11 year old RTS, and I'm the biggest fanboy of it you will ever find anywhere.

Ah damn, I will buy a copy off of amazon £5 for this so that's pretty good even if it's not as good as you say it is

 

[leotime0]

'The pistol was a waste of time, or would have been if it wasn't for the scope'

Then... it wasn't a waste of time then, was it?

Got a Lame Excuse for a Positive Point, Orange Box. '5 games in one, excellent value.' No, one game thats five years old, two expansion packs, and two glorified tech demos. How about only charging for the new stuff Valve rather than charging us for stuff we've already bought?

wait what?
Team fortress 2 is not a Glorified tech demo, it was a full game at the time it was released with The Orange Box and has grown so much bigger since then.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

IGN will always have the stupidest criticisms. I hate seeing "framerate issues" as a criticism. That's your hardware, not the game doing that. Unless you're online, then it could be lag.

You want to see some blatant IGN bias, go watch their Sonic Unleashed and Sonic and the black knight reviews. Fair enough if you didn't like the game (too fast to control, werehog ripped of God of War, cheap ass levels sometimes, the worst final level in any game EVER and that is NOT a hyperbole) but they were so biased it was unreal. They complained about the final boss in Black knight but that wasn't even the final boss, I don't think they even PLAYED the game, their arguments made no sense at all. Not a single one. They also complained about stuff in Unleashed that they praised in other games like a simple upgrade system and being child freindly (come on they made the same arguments for Mario Galaxy except they were apparantly good in that game, why? Fuck if I know it's IGN they LIE in their reviews). They also intentionally played bad and died in very, VERY easy stages in the game to make it look cheap and too hard when it wasn't (apart from the Eggmanland level which they could have had a valid coplaint about but didn't mention at all when they should have if they wanted to make the game look bad). Don't think I'm a sonic fanboy (06 is a sin) but I just hate that most people don't give any sonic games a chance. Even Russ Pitts gave a biased Unleashed review. It would be like if they judged Halo: Reach and took away points for the fact that you don't play as the Cheif, or that you can be a girl

Spoiler

or that you make a heroic sacrifice.

I suck at Sonic games in general, so I can't judge the game based on that, but I agree. I have seen them destroy some Sonic games that were generally not bad, especially the ports to the 360 XBLA. IGN will always have the worst critisms because they make shit up. I mentioned the framerate issue thing becasue in the Reach review they said the loading screens had framerate issues. WTF? It's loading!