the fact of the matter is, the gaming public (and consumers in general) are promised things that are never delivered in the final product.
Fable for example, was a prime example of this - almost all the innovation promised when the game was announced was completely gone by the time the game shipped. So those who were waiting from the get go will ALWAYS be the most disappointed.
This doesn't mean that the gaming public is wrong, and noone can please everyone, so there will always be negative reviews, except for a few cases. The issue with multiplayer, is rarely "No Multiplayer", unless the game SCREAMS to be played multiplayer, like Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Most multiplayer complaints are just badly implemented multiplayer. Dark Sector for instance had 2 multiplayer modes, and one of them was just not fun at all for most of the people playing, especially the more players there were. So you had one multiplayer mode. People like multiplayer modes, the more you can give them, the better, so having 1 mode is almost inexcusable.
I don't think that most people write negative reviews to take a crack at a popular franchise. More often then not, I'd imagine that they just don't understand why it's so popular, because either they're not good at the game, or it doesn't appeal to what they like in video games. I hate sports games. So if the BEST Sports game came out, and EVERYONE was telling me to buy it, my review for it would be slanted with my bias of hating sports games, so bam, negative review.
Fable for example, was a prime example of this - almost all the innovation promised when the game was announced was completely gone by the time the game shipped. So those who were waiting from the get go will ALWAYS be the most disappointed.
This doesn't mean that the gaming public is wrong, and noone can please everyone, so there will always be negative reviews, except for a few cases. The issue with multiplayer, is rarely "No Multiplayer", unless the game SCREAMS to be played multiplayer, like Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Most multiplayer complaints are just badly implemented multiplayer. Dark Sector for instance had 2 multiplayer modes, and one of them was just not fun at all for most of the people playing, especially the more players there were. So you had one multiplayer mode. People like multiplayer modes, the more you can give them, the better, so having 1 mode is almost inexcusable.
I don't think that most people write negative reviews to take a crack at a popular franchise. More often then not, I'd imagine that they just don't understand why it's so popular, because either they're not good at the game, or it doesn't appeal to what they like in video games. I hate sports games. So if the BEST Sports game came out, and EVERYONE was telling me to buy it, my review for it would be slanted with my bias of hating sports games, so bam, negative review.
