Reviewers jumping on the hype train

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

But Uncharted isn't jut a shooter. Can say I have much experience with the multiplayer, but the camera didn't really bother me during the storymode. The game is essentially guiding you through area's and there's little need for adjustments. Whether this is good game design or not is up for discussion, but I don't think the camera harmed that experience. Though, I imagine it's somewhat different in multiplayer.

Uncharted is a shooter even in single player. There's no exploration and there's a few puzzles that break up the shooting sections. God of War has more exploration and puzzles to break up the fighting than Uncharted, is it not a hack and slash then? No camera sensitivity option is a huge fail for a shooter.

Due to Uncharted's sluggish as hell camera whenever you have someone (whether AI or human opponent) shooting at you from your back, the 1st order of business is finding cover then turning the camera. Whereas in any other TPS, I can just turn the camera right around and fire back in less than a second. Hell in MGO, I could turn the camera around and headshot a player in less than a second that was shooting at my 6.

I can't do any of this stuff in Uncharted because of its sluggish camera:

Spoiler

I can't do very basic things I do in other TPSs because of Uncharted's sluggish camera. For example, at 4:29, 5:04, 6:45, 7:20, and 7:44 in the following video, I'm able to get all of those kills because I can turn the camera around much faster than Uncharted.

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Shoulder swapping is very important in a TPS as well...

True, but how much is this an actual issue and not, I don't know, a minor inconvience at worst?

I honestly don't know much about the Uncharted MP, but I do know how most people review. Since we need the to keep the review at a decent length we have to pick and choose what we write about. If there are more noteworthy things to be discussed, details will be tossed in favour of those. If we don't, the review will either be too long to be published or too long to keep the reader interested.

This situation happens a lot in MP. You have your standard square/rectangular building. You are on the right of the building (your left shoulder is next to the wall) moving up to the corner, and an enemy is moving towards that same corner from the other direction (so he is on the left of building and his right shoulder is next to the wall). When you two meet at the same time and start shooting, you are at an inherent advantage because you want to aim off your right shoulder while whereas your opponent wants to aim off his left shoulder but can't. You should be able to aim off your right or left shoulder initially or going to your left is always disadvantageous solely due to the game's controls. In Uncharted, you have to aim over your right shoulder, THEN SWITCH to your left shoulder wasting precious time that your opponent does not need to waste to start shooting. That's not a very big issue in single player but huge in MP, which can be known just from playing single player (same thing with say Splinter Cell: Blacklist).

Spoiler

At 3:36, the following video demonstrates the importance of shoulder swapping in a TPS:

You don't have to explain in detail exactly how Uncharted's shoulder swap is an issue obviously. You can just say Uncharted's controls aren't very good in an online competitive environment. Hell, circle for cover and roll already makes MP extremely frustrating let alone the camera sensitivity or shoulder swap. Context sensitive controls ALWAYS suck and only get you killed.

I think this may be a more personal than you think. You mentioned always adjusting the camera movements and such. Many people don't. Maybe you've grown used to a luxery.

It's a necessity and as BASIC a feature can be, not a luxury. You SHOULD be able to aim in the manner you're comfortable with in a shooter, there's not one shooter I can think of besides Uncharted that doesn't have camera sensitivity.

Hell, every game SHOULD allow for a full remapping of the controls, it literally takes a couple minutes on the programming side, the menu would take longer than the programming. The only 2 games I played on PS3 with full control remapping were Borderlands 2 and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and I took full advantage and remapped most of the controls in both games. In NFS, the default was having the abilities tied to the d-pad so you'd have to take your hand (left thumb) off the steering wheel to deploy spike strips so I put all that stuff on the face buttons instead, the game played much better. I really loathe L3 for sprinting in FPSs, it ruins the left analog stick as well, thus I changed that in Borderlands 2.

Personally I don't think it can be proven, because there are many games that are not/barely reviewed. You'd either have to assign those games yourself (not very objective) or do your calculations knowing you lack data.

As for the lower scores, if we think of 5.5-10 being varying degrees of good and 1-5.5 varying degrees of bad (like most sites do), you'll find many games that are rated as bad. Some might be absolutely terrible while others are more like a 'meh', but hey, there's room on the scale for that.

Last year I played several games that were (almost) bad. The With and the Hundred was a game that teetered on the edge of bad (53 on Metacritic). Mugen Souls Z (57) had very few redeeming qualities, but I guess that one was kinda fun in a mindnumbingly kind of way. There's probably others, but I kinda don't want to go digging through my memories (or computer folders).

It can be easily proven games are scored very differently when compared to other mediums like movies, music, etc. Even Metacritic knows games are scored differently since 7/10 for a game is "mixed" whereas for anything else a 7/10 is "positive". There are LOTS movies that aren't reviewed either. You just don't give every Hollywood blockbuster a 5/10 or higher because it's far more competent than a shitty SyFy channel movie.

I think reviewers (including yourself) need to re-evaluate what a bad game is. It doesn't mean its unplayable or horrible. You know reviewing needs to change when a shitty licensed game (Amazing Spiderman 2) gets a 49, one point shy of average. Or when a love it/hate it game like FFXIII gets only 1 negative review. Movie critics will at times put a movie on their best of the year list while another critic puts it on the worst list, I think that's pretty awesome and I feel that same thing happens with games. I'd put games on my worst list that friends put on their best list.

That's why it's important to review games as they are and not compare them too much to other games or to some vague idea of what they could have been. If a game manages to make you forget its flaws, well, kudos.

If you have a game in a genre, you have to rate based on the best of its genre. Same thing happens in movies, a comic book movie is rated against what you feel is the best comic book movie, not as if everything exists in a vacuum. If you only seen one movie, it is the best movie you've seen as you have nothing to compare it against. Comparing is the thing makes reviewing possible IMO, you compare works to other works. The most important thing to a hack and slash game is the combat. Rating the combat of one hack and slash against the combat of the best combat in a hack and slash is what SHOULD be done. God of War has to succeed at EVERYTHING to be good because it's combat is average. The 1st God of War even had good puzzles. People make combo videos of DMC and Bayonetta, not God of War. The combat alone makes DMC/Bayo great, not so with God of War.

"Shadow of Mordor has basically the same combat system as the Batman Arkham games; you press square to attack, triangle to counter, X to vault enemies, and circle to stun. Certain types of enemies need to be stunned first so it's not just a button masher. You get special moves like being able to one-hit kill enemies if you build you combo high enough. The combat won't feel fresh to anyone that's played the Batman Arkham games as the combat is almost literally the same, even down to the upgrades and special attacks being the same. The combat can be very enjoyable but it also gets repetitive as it doesn't have the depth of a better hack and slash game like Bayonetta. The Batman games spaced out the combat sections much more by having dedicated stealth sections, better exploration, and a better story. SoM has really just the combat to offer the player so it becomes repetitive faster due to constant fighting while being a system you've probably already had a go at."

You'd be surprised. That right there is 173 words. Typical lengths for gamereviews are 500-1200 words, though a triple A title may get some extra space. So, in a worst case scenario, that's 1/3 of a review right there and all you've done is compare it to other games, while the reader probably wants to know what makes Shadow of Mordor Shadow of Mordor.

This is what makes writing good reviews so difficult: you need to be able to be informative and entertaining, describe the abstracts and give examples. Balancing everything can be real challenge

I explained the combat system WHILE comparing it to Batman; I explained what each button does, gave an example of a special move, and explained it's not just a button masher as different enemy types need different approaches. Most readers have most likely played Batman as well. Most people that read/subscribe to mags are enthusiasts of said subject. The only other thing you really need to talk about with Shadow of Mordor is the Nemesis system and I only used up a third of space so far.

Maybe reviewers don't feel that strongly about games. When you've played hundreds of them is hard to hate a random bad one. They've seen better, they've seem worse - probably nothing to get worked up about. I often feel strongest about games that wasted their potential. For instance, I kinda really dig Ar Tonelico/Ar nosurge, because of the extensive world building, music and fun battle systems. The creators obviously worked hard on these games despite their budger restraints. But the games also have a knack for terribly annoying innuendo, incredibly boring dungeon design and badly written anime cliches. What could have been modern JRPG classics turn out to be pandering fanservice games again and again. Are these games bad? Well, no, they're pretty decent. I always have fun playing them and the scores reflect that, but all those missed opportunities... Compare that to random sucky licensed games where it's obvious nobody gave a *bleep*, and I just think 'well, if they don't care, I'm not going to spend any energy on caring either'.

I was talking about what aspects of a game a reviewer loves/hates should weigh more into the score than it currently does. Not that they love/hate a game overall. Like Greg Tito hating the characters of GTAV weighed heavily into his score. You'd get more variance on scores if most reviewers did that.

 

[NPC009]

I have to admit I kinda got tired of the discussion, but just walking out seems kind of rude, so one last reply from me. Hope you don't mind

Uncharted is a shooter even in single player. There's no exploration and there's a few puzzles that break up the shooting sections. God of War has more exploration and puzzles to break up the fighting than Uncharted, is it not a hack and slash then? No camera sensitivity option is a huge fail for a shooter.

Well, that's (sadly) pretty typical for a modern action adventure. Developers want unique environments but not being able to reuse assets often means area's will be limited in size. To compensate developers aim for a linear but varied level design (first you're shooting, then you're running and jumping, after that a puzzle or two and so on), and they try to make it extra appealing by taking a more cinematic approach. Which usually means the camera is concerned with practical as well as cinematical angles. The action isn't just action, it's part of the narrative.

Again, my knowledge of Uncharted is limited and I didn't review any of the installments myself, but my guess is that reviewers (and players) in general liked the immersive experience Naughty Dog created with that cinematical approach and didn't really notice or care about the lack of finetuning in certain areas.

If that's the case, I do not think they were wrong. No game is perfect, but the ones that can hide their flaws the best come close.

Also, don't forget that Uncharted 2 came out over five years ago. Technologies improve, games age and our standards change. Back when the game was first released it was an amazing game, few other titles had come so close to creating an interactive movie. It's easy to nitpick its flaws now, but please don't play Captain Hindsight. Nobody likes that guy.

It can be easily proven games are scored very differently when compared to other mediums like movies, music, etc. Even Metacritic knows games are scored differently since 7/10 for a game is "mixed" whereas for anything else a 7/10 is "positive".

You know the scores on metacritic aren't always the scores review sites actually give, right? They convert everything to scores that fit on the scale of 0-100. For movie scores this mostly works, because many sites use a simple rating system like 1-5 stars. Gaming sites use a much greater variety of scales, and they are all converted outside of context. For instance, an 'A' rating equals a '100' on Metacritic while the site the review came from consider may an A merely a 90/100. So yeah, they are rated differently, but not in the way you think they are.

Be smart and don't attach too much value to a score that's simply a math trick within a vague context. Publishers would love it if you'd follow those aggregrated scores blindly, so don't play into their hands. Be a smart consumer, use aggregator sites to find reviews and view scores in their proper context.

There are LOTS movies that aren't reviewed either. You just don't give every Hollywood blockbuster a 5/10 or higher because it's far more competent than a shitty SyFy channel movie.

Hey, it's not as if only triple A games are reviewed. There's a lot of love for smaller games that are simply very entertaining, and a lot of hate for big games that don't even manage to do that.

I honestly don't understand your strong desire for a rating system that punishes any games that does not live up to your expectations. There's no good reason to want a 'low score quotum' or use 100% of the scale for, I don't know, 80% of the games out there. Yet that's what you seem want, to flip the assumed '7-10' scale around so it becomes a 1-7 scale.

I think reviewers (including yourself) need to re-evaluate what a bad game is. It doesn't mean its unplayable or horrible. You know reviewing needs to change when a shitty licensed game (Amazing Spiderman 2) gets a 49, one point shy of average. Or when a love it/hate it game like FFXIII gets only 1 negative review. Movie critics will at times put a movie on their best of the year list while another critic puts it on the worst list, I think that's pretty awesome and I feel that same thing happens with games. I'd put games on my worst list that friends put on their best list.

Hey, we know what shitty licensed games are, and there's a difference between 'your grandson probably won't hate you if you give this to him as a birthday present' and 'a kick in the nuts would have been a only slightly worse gift'. I played Superman 64. That's my 1/10. That truely was an unplayable and insulting mess of a game. If a game ends up playable but boring, it deserves a higher score than that.

And personally, I find the whole dramatically declaring a decent game the worst of the year/ever kind of childish. (But maybe that's just me being old.)

If you have a game in a genre, you have to rate based on the best of its genre. Same thing happens in movies, a comic book movie is rated against what you feel is the best comic book movie, not as if everything exists in a vacuum. If you only seen one movie, it is the best movie you've seen as you have nothing to compare it against. Comparing is the thing makes reviewing possible IMO, you compare works to other works. The most important thing to a hack and slash game is the combat. Rating the combat of one hack and slash against the combat of the best combat in a hack and slash is what SHOULD be done. God of War has to succeed at EVERYTHING to be good because it's combat is average. The 1st God of War even had good puzzles. People make combo videos of DMC and Bayonetta, not God of War. The combat alone makes DMC/Bayo great, not so with God of War.

That seems like a very narrow point of view. While there are plenty of cookiecutter games out there that stick to the confines of a genre, there are also many noteworthy titles that (try to) go beyond the boundaries. Viewing Thomas Was Alone or Journey as 'just a platformer' doesn't do these games justice. And Uncharted is not 'just a TPS'.

Of course games don't exist in a vacuum, but nobody can compare something to everything. And even if they could, it would only be a valid comparion for a very limited amount of time. New things are released every day, changing our perception of the medium.

Besides, comparisons have no value to the reader if they're unfamiliar with the titles the game is being compared to. While it would be dumb and insulting to view readers as a bunch of newbies, you can't expect them to have played everything. So you write about the game as it is right now, the way you're experiencing it, only comparing it to other games if you can't get a concept/opinion across otherwise.

I explained the combat system WHILE comparing it to Batman; I explained what each button does, gave an example of a special move, and explained it's not just a button masher as different enemy types need different approaches. Most readers have most likely played Batman as well. Most people that read/subscribe to mags are enthusiasts of said subject. The only other thing you really need to talk about with Shadow of Mordor is the Nemesis system and I only used up a third of space so far.

And to someone who hasn't played the games you're comparing it to that explanation wasn't very helpful. It wasn't very interesting to read either. The best reviewers need only words to let a gamer imagine what playing the game is like. It's difficult but it can be done

I was talking about what aspects of a game a reviewer loves/hates should weigh more into the score than it currently does. Not that they love/hate a game overall. Like Greg Tito hating the characters of GTAV weighed heavily into his score. You'd get more variance on scores if most reviewers did that.

But why is that needed? Good reviewers are open-minded and consider all aspects of the game before completing the review and assigning a score. Rating a game especially high or low because of a one (dis)like seems kind of petty.

Plus, it wouldn't even help readers all that much. Let's say you're browsing Metacritic for some reviews to read. After having read some with a high score ('The reviewers loved this game just because of a funny sidecharacters? That's stupid.'), you look for some lows. Turns out most of them did enjoy the game, but one reviewer didn't like the character designs very much and the other prefers really, really hates the actor who voiced the main character and both gave the game a 4/10 just because of that. Not helpful.

 

[Zydrate]

I just read multiple reviews, both professional and individual.

For example.

Shadow of Mordor was something I kept seeing on the Steam preorder rollout but never gave it a lot of attention because the screenshots made it look like a standard hack and slash.
Then it got released and started seeing reviews on both sides saying things like "Whoa this is surprisingly good" and "This is a splendid mix of Assassin's Creed and the Batman games". I haven't played the Batman games but I'm all about me some AC. So I got a coupon (helpfully linked from an Escapist article outlining several coupons), got it on sale a mere day or two after it was released, and have enjoyed it immensely since.

But I'm not sure this is the best example. Shadow of Mordor wasn't heavily hyped so I might just be musing for no reason.

My whole point is, I soak in reviews from multiple sources before making a decision.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I know you said you were tired of our discussion but I'd like you to at least reply to the just the 1st quote and reply as this has been my main point the whole time.

Gaming sites use a much greater variety of scales, and they are all converted outside of context. For instance, an 'A' rating equals a '100' on Metacritic while the site the review came from consider may an A merely a 90/100. So yeah, they are rated differently, but not in the way you think they are.

A game that literally gets a 7/10 on a gaming site is a 70/100 on Metacritic. Metacritic says that 7/10 review is "mixed" whereas if a movie gets a 7/10 it's a "positive" review. Even Metacritic realizes games are reviewed differently and classifies a 7/10 game review as "mixed". I'm not talking about review scores that don't convert over perfectly or anything like that. I don't understand how you can say games are reviewed no differently than other mediums. Not even Oscar winning Best Picture movies get average scores anywhere near games. For example, Argo won Best Picture in 2013 and it's average review score among critics is 8.4/10. It's unprecedented that any work of art from any medium averages something like a 95/100 except for a video game.

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Also, don't forget that Uncharted 2 came out over five years ago. Technologies improve, games age and our standards change. Back when the game was first released it was an amazing game, few other titles had come so close to creating an interactive movie. It's easy to nitpick its flaws now, but please don't play Captain Hindsight. Nobody likes that guy.

I played every Uncharted at release, no hindsight here. Uncharted 1 is a bad shooter, I actually got it before release as Sony actually let it release the weekend before for whatever reason. Uncharted 2's demo actually had to sell me on the game because of how bad the 1st one was. Uncharted has always had poor TPS mechanics whether you are looking at it now or when it released. Yes, Uncharted 2 is still a very good game, but averaging a 96 is a joke. Uncharted 3 had abysmal writing whether you played it at release or now, you can literally research Uncharted 3 and find for a fact it was rushed with a bunch of rewrites.

I honestly don't understand your strong desire for a rating system that punishes any games that does not live up to your expectations. There's no good reason to want a 'low score quotum' or use 100% of the scale for, I don't know, 80% of the games out there. Yet that's what you seem want, to flip the assumed '7-10' scale around so it becomes a 1-7 scale.

What are you talking about? All I've ever said is that I want games to be reviewed just like any other medium. 5 is fucking average. Average is not bad.

After having read some with a high score ('The reviewers loved this game just because of a funny sidecharacters? That's stupid.'), you look for some lows. Turns out most of them did enjoy the game, but one reviewer didn't like the character designs very much and the other prefers really, really hates the actor who voiced the main character and both gave the game a 4/10 just because of that. Not helpful.

Again, you're misinterpreting me. If you hate the writing of a game and it's story heavy like say Max Payne 3 or Final Fantasy XIII, then that greatly affects you're enjoyment of said game. That should weigh more heavily into a game's score. Bad dubbing is a reason some people don't play something like a JRPG whereas a game with little dialog, the voice acting doesn't impact your enjoyment much.