I'm a RPG player, and my favorites are JRPG. lately i'm getting quite confused about the many JRPG coming out on the x360, like: infinite undiscovery tales of vesperia the last remnant lost odissey i own only lost odissey, and i consider it a really good game and worth to be played by all rpg fans, but the critics votes just gave it 7- 7 1/2 - and rarely 8... infinite undiscovery got 6.5-7 and even some very lows. the last remnant 6.5-7 what i really can't understand it's the insane difference in the reviews from users. for example, the last remnant user reviews have a really strong prevalence of 8 and 9s... and the same is true to lost odissey... and such enormous differences are extremely widespread, expecially in rpgs... what sources do you use before buying? do you trust press, friends, or user reviews? what do you think makes such differences? fanboysm? poor reviewers? little time spent by reviewers on games? or just personal tastes? karsten
reviews are the result of an opinion, and opinions are subjective. They gave GTAIV a 10, I d give it a 7, it just doesn't click with me. Bottom line, don't look at the score, see the universal complaints and achievements of a game (bugs, control issues, camera issues etc) in order to get a feel of the title.
There was this invention called Demo that people used long, long ago. Of course it's not entirely extinct but it's not exactly mainstream either. Back in 8 and 16-bit era you could hardly go wrong with one of the key titles a system had, even with the absence of demos, and during 32-bit you occasionally had access to demos on mag CDs (not to mention the obligatory demos that came with PC mags). But nowadays with the amalgamation of genres and the resultant confusion it's becoming harder to decide. GTA4, to quantify it, is a 7/10 game for me. As is Fallout 3 which had poor combat and few endings, not to mention the tedium of it all. Mainstream reviews have always been a (profitable) joke. As Dan Hsu would tell you it's easy to influence so-called game journalists thanks to PR tactics and freebies. Which is why I don't bother reading them any more. Video reviews with actual gameplay critique are more credible for me. With movies it's not hard to find a critic with a taste like yours, but when it comes to gaming so many factors could influence "professional" reviewers (heh), and that's not even counting hype. There's always the independent criticism on Youtube and elsewhere of course.
If you mean user reviews on Metacritic, just ignore them. I'm pretty sure the staff there must pick out the most idiotic user reviews to post, because I've practically never seen one worth reading. Anyway, the videogame industry and the videogame journalism industry are incestuous bedfellows, and the various scandals over review tweaking, staff firings etc over the years have shown who's wearing the pants in the relationship. The alternative online is the screaming of the masses, though, so you just have to get what you can out of them. I certainly trust my mates over what I read online.
Ususally, if I check out what a games general opinion is, I usually look at the user rating at Gamespot or something. Gamespot's reviews are funky but they give a good pros and cons list, and there user score a lot of the time is what the game deserves. Sometimes. I played Infinite Undiscovery though, and my opinion is that it sucks. It's immensely boring and looks like they tried to make an offline MMORPG thing. I played a friends, he hates it as well. Lost Oddysey is fucking awesome, the end of the third disc kind of annoyed me and it has some technical quirks (really early Unreal Engine use) but it's still great looking and playing. Storyline has some intense moments in it. Definitely the best new RPG I've played. Last Remnant looks stupid to me, but I guess I'm not fair to it. I just saw it's Square Enix and I've read they failed with the Unreal Engine. It just looks boring. I think RPG's died after the PS era. Almost every RPG I played on PS2 just felt like a waste of time.
Last remnant looks interesting, kinda. Its one of the few JRPGs I know of thats on Windows and uses the Unreal engine. I watched gameplay videos of combat and to be honest It didn't look that fun. Maybe I'll have to try it before I knock it, though. As for reviews of RPGs go, it can be personal tastes, fanboyism, or a combo of the two, I think. A fanboy would give Disgaea 3 a 10/10 for example, even though lots of people think its a crappy rehash of a rehash of another game they've made. And on the opposite end, you could have a person whose just gotten sick of JRPGs or just hates them for whatever reason anyway. I don't think this is the case with professional reviewers, though. I'm not trying to bait anyone or cause crap, but I've noticed that IGNs review staff sometimes tend to praise every JRPG they review as the Holy Grail, at least the ones I've seen them reviewing, while Gamespot criticizes the same games IGN was reviewing, and where IGN gave them 9/10s or 8/10s, Gamespot gave them 8/10s, and 7/10s, and sometimes might give a game a 9/10 if it really deserves it or they thought it was fun. As for Infinite Discovery (stupid name, BTW), I remember someone on another foum simply stating this about it: "Mediocre JRPG #9001" I don't know if he hates all JRPGs or just thinks that there are tons of crappy JRPGs that get shoveled out by the truckload every year, but I really don't know many people that had anything good to say about it.
i usually just stick to the opinions of my friends. i know their tastes and if they say a game is good, then i'll try it out. they're almost always right.
Gamespot have a "reputation" for ranking games about a point lower than other sites. Those daring rebels! It's actually "Infinite Undiscovery" which is even more silly.
Yeah, I misspelled the title. Its really silly. I don't keep up with reviews on gaming sites, but I was basing mine on this NIS games. IGN gave them all 9.0s, and when Soul Nomad came out, they gave it a 7.0 for being too different. Gamespot gave those games progressively lower scores, but gave Soul Nomad a higher score for actually not being 100% rehash. Just something interesting I noticed between the two sites. As for Gamespot ranking games lower than on other sites, are you talking about overhyped games, and them giving games scores like, say 8.8 instead of 11.0? Or is it a ton of games? I know the guy who reviewed TP got fired over one of his reviews, eventually.
I've long since stopped paying any attention to Gamespot, but I know that they have a reputation for lower scores. The guy who did the Twilight Princess review was Jeff Gerstmann, who was fired a year or so ago for a highly critical video review of Kane and Lynch, a game that had seen massive adverts on Gamespot's site. There was nothing new about the action itself, the industry has long since been endemically corrupt (journalists are constantly passed down "advice" on "tone", and failure to comply means finding a new job), but it was kind of a high water mark of absurdity that Eidos decided they didn't even care if the public knew about their attempts to control the videogame press. The most amusing outcome was the flurry of people saying they'd never go to Gamespot again - they'd only go to IGN, now! Because obviously IGN are much better. Sigh.
Thats funny that people would flock to IGN, if what you say is true about Gamespot giving lower scores. I think the people that actually care about the score that a game has on gaming sites are kinda stupid, though. I remember WAAAAAY back in 2004, Halo 2 got a 92% on IGN instead of 100%, and this caused ALL KINDS of crap in their forums. I think 92% was the lowest score an actual gaming site gave Halo 2 at the time. And TPs score caused a ton of crap, too.
I think reviewing games on a range greater than 5 becomes meaningless. You can't quantify a subjective experience like that, it doesn't make sense. 1-5 gives you a basic idea about whether the game has problems, which is all a number can convey. Personally I'd rather do away with numbers altogether, but I appreciate the industry is bound up in it.
Forget about reviews in videogame magazines - especially if there is an advert of the game / publisher in the magazine or even on the front cover! The usual kiosk magazine depends on adverts and pubslisher support. I could tell you numerous and very interesting stories how publishers react on articles that they don't like or which "benefits" they want to see e.g. for an exclusive preview / first review. It's great fun if you've an independent magazine but i don't want to be ever again in another position. From my experience it's the same story with major videogame websites. And even small websites tend to be not independent - what article do you expect if "Mister PR-Manager" sends a rare press-kit + T-Shirt to an 16-years old fanboy? But videogame reviews are not always top-down regulated - buttom-up works too. I once wrote a preview of Zelda - The Twilight Princess, GameCube E3 version. I wrote that i was disappointed of this preview-version as it was not the uber-game that everyone was telling and expecting due to several reasons. I got many flaming E-Mails, telling me how dumb this article was and that Zelda will be the best game ever. I think i saw a magazine that made it even game of the year at that time. Must have been two weeks before Nintendo announced a major delay due to quality issues and the game released as soon as the Wii launch. See - it's not really great fun to be an editor. Best thing to do with a videogame is play it yourself.
Yes, 1-5 is the best system to use I think. I think the number thing is cool just because you can glance at it and get an idea.
As has been said before, reviews are the opinion of one person. Your best bet is to look at a number of reviews, if you want to use those as source. HOWEVER, it does depend what genre that person likes. Roleplay is a very difficult genre, because you have people who don't like it at all, people who like some and your hardcore RPGers who often have very high expectations. There are different types of RPG, of course. You get people who like turn-based RPGs and people who like constant action with no interruptions. So yes, it is a very personal choice and I would say that to know a game like that you have to: Ask a friend that you KNOW has similar tastes Find a reviewer that seems to have the same ideas as you Find a friend who has the game and ask to try it, or watch them Watch a video review (Youtube FTW!) Play a demo (magazine or download e.g. Xbox Live) Rent the game Ideally, download the demo on XBL (I guess PS3 has the same facility?) or rent it. The best critic to trust is YOURSELF! ;-) My friend is a BIG fan of RPGs. He got Infinite Undiscovery and said it was pretty poor - started off OK but became repetitive.
I want to try Last Remnant just because it's rated M. About the reviews, I remember reading a review for Lost Odyssey. The reviewer docked it some points because of "Metal Gear style sneaking" parts of the game. This does happen ONCE in the game VERY early in the game on the first disc. It seems silly to dock a game for about 3 mins of gameplay in a 60 hr RPG.
