AJ_Lethal

AJ_Lethal

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Re: Shigeru Miyamoto Explains His Belief That the Video Game Industry's "Creativity is Still Immature"

AJ_Lethal

@Yorumi I kinda agree with that, but remember that Nintendo is going through a generational change as we're speaking. Obviously the "new guys" will stick with the "old guard" ways for a while they find their own way.

As for Miyamoto - he has a quite poignant point: gaming is barely reaching puberty, it still has to fight for being recgonized as a legitimate medium.

Re: E3 2014: Hands On With Nintendo's New Online Shooter IP, Splatoon

AJ_Lethal

@Kirk Which are you talking about? JSF only got a sequel and recently a HD remake (because cult status) and Earthbound bombed at release, but it took 20 YEARS to resurface in the VC (because cult status).

Thing is: you can't say "X will/won't catch on" as a certainity, because you're (and me) are f-n human beings and we can be wrong. If you don't believe me read this list of examples: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItWillNeverCatchOn

Re: Review: Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)

AJ_Lethal

"So, this whole aggregating of scores, and using that as a more "objective" measure of how good a game really is, might seem like a relatively new thing that's damaging to the industry but I'm not convinced it really is to be honest."
In case you haven't bothered to read the links I provided:

<i>The sites Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, due to their system of deriving an overall score for a film out of all the available reviews, are often regarded as providing a definitive stamp of quality (or lack thereof). While this is more understandable than most examples, the fact remains that some people take it too far, and act as though liking a film scoring 33% on Rotten Tomatoes is empirically indefensible, despite the obvious logic that one third of professional film critics liked it.

-This has become particularly horrifying since actual video game companies are now incorporating metascores into their business practices; this includes awarding development teams bonuses based on metascores, and deciding on a target metascore before a game has started development, and perpetrators include publishers as major as Electronic Arts and Square Enix. It is no longer possible to pretend that Metacritic is harmless.

-A good example is Obsidian Entertainment. They had a deal with Bethesda that the last portion of Bethesda's payment for Fallout: New Vegas was based on reaching a certain Metacritic score. They missed it by one point, didn't get the payment, and were forced to lay off massive amounts of staff. The score they needed to reach? 85. They got an 84. Keep in mind, that is still an extremely high score and the game also went on to sell over 5 million copies. In other words, a best-selling game with massive critical praise still cost the studio money because of a review aggregate score.

-Metacritic also has its own problems since it attempts to take reviews from multiple competing sites with their own scoring systems and derive a numerical score out of their average. Some critics, such as Adam Sessler, have pointed out the problems with creating an average score out of a series of dissimilar scoring systems.

-This is most obvious when they try to base their numerical score on sites that use letter grades. The site can extrapolate anything from 50-80 out of a C.

-And, it's also had problems where thinking that disagreeing with the opinions and not finding it that great (or even thinking it was okay but still good) will have you hung from a tree, hangman style. Particular offenders for this include The Dark Knight and Toy Story 3.
The opposite happens with movies that readers expect to be horrible. When the scores for Disaster Movie and Jack and Jill moved from a zero to a two because of one positive review (although the scores were only a C+ and a 3/5, respectively), members commented within seconds, saying that the critic is an idiot, ruined it for everyone, etc.

-Metacritic has also shown bias and given strictly averaged tone review (5/10) a positive ranking (6/10) and the reverse. Making the site less honest.</i>
Still unconvinced?

"If you don't believe me by the way, then just have a wee browse though all these issues of Mean Machines and see how many 9+ (90+) scoring games were being released for the SNES each month and as I recall those scores were reflective of the media as a whole and I'm pretty sure that in the cases where those games have scored in the high 9s (90s) that you'd find similar 9+ (90+) scores in every gaming magazine of the time"

Nah, I still have some early '00s EGM (which I still hold in high regard because the Review Crew system) and GamePro mags and they were plenty of 5s, 6s, 7s and 8s, but nobody complained about the latter 2 like nowadays. Nowadays you see games getting 7s and 8s being avoided like the plague. The hell?

Not to mention reviewers are humans and humans might have distinct opinions.

"This is absolutely why I think a lot of Nintendo FANS are perfectly happy, or at least content, with basically everything that Nintendo has been doing for the last couple of generations when imo they really shouldn't be."
Translation: "I don't like Nintendo's recent output, and whoever likes it must be a complete tool of a peasant"

Please, don't come up like if you're some sort of benchmark of sorts people should follow. It's embarassing.

Re: Review: Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)

AJ_Lethal

@Kirk
"Well, when there's a universally 9+ (90+) game on metacritic and I too would score it a 9+ (90+) then it will be what I'm talking about regardless of whether you think that's just a bunch of opinions or whatever."

And why necessarily a 90+ score? Ain't an 85 or even an 80 enough to consider it a worthy purchase at least? And on top of that, a Metacritic score? Man, it's an aggregate site: put like 4-5 negative reviews in a bucket of 20 positive ones and watch the score plummet: it's exploitable. In fact, Metacritic in it's current form is harmful for everyone just because of that. Reviews aren't the gospel after all

Re: Review: Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)

AJ_Lethal

@Kirk:
"The thing I'm alluding too is that the chances are, when there's a game I finally consider a genuine 9+ contender all-round then I expect you'll see that reflected in metacritic too by virtue of the fact that there won't be a single review that goes lower than a 9 and most likely most of them will be quite a bit above a flat 9 even.

That's what I want, a proper indisputable 9+ game (by virtue of the fact absolutely no one, well any professional reviewer, has scored it any lower) that even I personally consider a genuine 9+ game, and I expect if you ever see such a first party game scoring as such on metacritic then that will likely be the game I'm talking about..."

I'm sorry, but it seems you are having a really bad case of 8.8-itis.. Not to mention you're leaving Metacritic to draw conclusions for you (instead of checking scores and reviews individually from each source available and then drawing your own conclusions), which is not exactly wise.

Heck, I would even drop a quote from Yahtzee Crosshaw (probably the most caustic man in gaming):
"Reviews are mostly formed by opinions, and if you really love something, then another person's opinion shouldn't matter."

Personally, I only care if the game is good or not: full stop; numbered scores are BS IMHO.