TakeyB0y2 said:
I can honestly see that game not getting good reviews. To me it looks like it could be funny and quirky, but I've seen videos of the actual combat and gameplay, and it looks god-awfully boring.
Going by something Yahtzee said in his response video to angry SSBB fans, if you personally enjoy a game, then negative reviews shouldn't bother you.
If Yahtzee put scores on his review, he'd be a problem since he's an outlier on so many games and would wreck the curve on Metacritic. Yahtzee
wisely leaves off the score, so you have to actually watch his review, have him tell you about the game and decide based on that, and knowing his biases if it sounds good. This gives him the freedom to be a biased critic, and review games according to his biases without having to worry that, "Ok, I've given every fighting game ever, from
Tekken to
Street Fighter II a low review score no matter how polished, beautiful or deep it is. Do you think they'll fire me?"
Basically, there are two problems here:
1. Scores: I hate thumbs up/thumbs down; 5 out of 5; 10 out of 10; A to F; and percentages. Basically I hate number or grade based scores. (Secretly, I actually enjoy seeing those scores if I agree with them, "Yay that game I liked/hated was also liked/hated by a critic. My life has meaning!" However, intellectually I understand that they are a bad idea and very reductive. Also, yes I too can be a fanboy, so I understand that fanboyish grading systems are bad. A review should give you some insights into the impression a game/movie/book gave to someone else, not simply confirm your biases.)
They end up being lazy. Did you know that Roger Ebert gave Thumbs Down to
Blue Velvet? It's true and that score means, basically, "Never see this movie." It's more or less the same score he gave to
Porky's. Some people only get the "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down" part of the review, and they'll think
Blue Velvet==
Porky's If you actually watched his reviews though, you'd see the difference in the movies and might give a movie a chance that Ebert personally hated.
2. Metacritic: $60 is a huge amount of money to spend on a game. I got
Lollipop Chainsaw for $44.99 on sale. I didn't bother with reviews, because Suda hasn't disappointed me yet. He didn't disappoint me this time either.
But supposing I didn't respect Suda, or know anything about him? Well, I personally would carefully read reviews and figure out which one to buy, but I would probably start at someplace like Metacritic. We've reached a point where if people start reviewing games based on political biases, aesthetic biases, genre biases, etc, it's going to have an impact on sales. I read a review once that trashed
Bioshock without ever having played it because the author was an Objectivist and didn't like what he thought the game implied about his mentor's philosophy.
What's the solution? I'd say there isn't a problem with Tom Chick, exactly. He's an outlier weirdo (I mean that in the best sense of the word) who loves boring simulation games and was really upset when EA bought Origin because he wouldn't be getting really detailed
Jane's Combat Sims (he was particularly upset that the Navy Warthog game he was looking forward to was cancelled. Now, if I were to review this theoretical Warthog game that never got made, what's my likely score? (Score 1 - dead boring, but slightly better than getting a root canal).)
His review of
Europa Universalis: Rome [http://www.quartertothree.com/inhouse/news/411/] is something of a minor work of art. However, that tells me I can trust him on reviews of slow moving diplomacy type games, which I sadly don't have the patience for (and would score very low if someone were foolish enough to make me a professional game reviewer and required me to boil down games I played to a score). It also suggests to me that he wouldn't be my go to guy for mindless action or rhythm games (
Lollipop Chainsaw is about half/half I found the action fun but not particularly deep or complex. I didn't find the minigames as tedious as some, and I suggest that if you hated
Space Channel 5 or
Parappa the Rapper you will find a lot to hate in
Lollipop Chainsaw. (Contrariwise, if you loved those games you'll find the rhythm sections of
Lollipop Chainsaw to be fairly brisk and sort of fun but also amateur night.)
