Sorry, you lost me. I’m not an FPS player. Can you be more specific and tie it into a GameSpot review? Thanks.
Lorini
Look. I’m going over the top, and I recognize that, with my response. I also recognize that it is often the mark of a poor author to claim that audience misunderstanding is the fault of the audience.
However, on the internets in particular, I have discovered that it often is not the author’s fault when multiple people “misunderstand.” Because it is often not people truly misunderstanding. Instead, everyone has a series of arguments in which they like to partake. They come up with their pat responses to typical questions and statements.
However, they then tend to try to boil down what was said into convenient categories so they can more easily and quickly respond. E.g. someone mentions “bad review,” out come the, “How can you say it was bad? It’s subjective.” Does not really matter what the person said; here comes the same blather about subjectivity, because it’s easy, it’s pat, and it scratches the itch to tee off with an argument on an area where one feels justified.
I never, ever said that the review was wrong (as in, the number was off) because BHG worked hard on the game. I never, ever said that they should have been given more points because they worked so hard. Go back, read it again, and you will not find that stated anywhere.
Yet that is what people are saying. That is a clear misstatement of what I wrote. You don’t understand why I’m a bit annoyed because people are haughtily responding to things that I didn’t even say? It has nothing to do with my text being confusing. It has everything to do with people assuming that’s what I would write.
It is my job to be clear for an audience that wants to read my actual text and attempt to understand it. It is not my job to write disclaimers for people who do not want to read my actual text, but instead assume ahead of time what I must be writing.
So maybe you could clarify?
You say that the rating is ridiculous and insulting to people who worked hard on a good game.
The rating is derived from the review, so I can easily infer that you think the review does the same - unless you think (as I do of Tom’s review) that the text and score don’t match. But you haven’t made that case.
Troy
He’s saying that Gamespot is wrong because their final mark is so far off the average, and I’m pointing out that Doom 3 (considered a fairly poor FPS once the hype faded) secured an average of 8.8, thus bringing into question the value of said average when being used as a judge of quality and the accuracy of your review.
Nope, I’m talking about the number. The rating alone. As I did clarify earlier, I don’t want to hear about the text. The number is wrong.
My only gripes with the story is mostly with the animators. The big epic opening of the gates to the lost Alin city was totally unerwhelming, but the absolute worst was the fist fight between the doge and Giconomo. That just made me cringe it was such an awful, cliche hollywood thing to do.
Overall the story was ‘meh’ not bad, not good. They could have made the cuotl good guys instead of bad guys which would have been much more intresting then the oh yea, a new map, a new villian faction… yawn.
How about this instead, the cuotl space ship crashes, these shards land all over the world causing havock, but the cuotl lands are most heavily impacted. As with the genie who went mad with the artifact, all these pieces are causing every province to go nuts due to the alien radation. The cuotl arrive and take on the guise of the gods of these people to integrate with them better. Then they are on a quest to conquer each territory and recover all this technology due to the complete havock its causing all over the world.
That would have been much more intresting to me. Also where was the doge then entire alin campeign? Why does he show up at that city? You spend the entire time searching for the city, and the doge apparently instantly locates it and knows your there the instant you get both keys.
Anyway…
One big complaint about the game asside from the multi player issues which come and go (monday custom matches worked fine, tuesday they didn’t), is the lack of numbers.
I want to know exactly how much each level of Zeal upgrades damage. I want to know exactly how much of a boost empowering gives. RoN gave us numbers. RoL doesn’t.
Ill need a voulenteer to help me find them. I need someone to run a large map multi player game with me. We can’t fight in this. The idea is we do not tech up at all. We conqure several cities (enough to max our research points). Then I get a sheet of paper, spawn one of every unit, and write down every stat. I also kill all my miners except from my largest mine. I write down how much power I get. How much energy I get.
Then I do one upgrade at a time and write down all stat changes for everything. Then I can see how much zeal does for every level. Then I can see how much empowering improves for every level of worship. Then I can see how much the sun god boosts sun units for every level he has.
Its going to be a huge pain in the ass, and I might have to do this more then once. It really sucks I do have to do this and the documentation / tool tips do not give me any hard numbers.
Are there any files I can parse to find out this info instead?
What I need to do this is either: A game with only one player, the ability to set up two games going with just one CD so I can install this on another computer, or a multi player game with someone who is willing to sit there for an hour and not do anything aggressive to me.
That I think a wrong rating, or a bad mark (wrongly given) in life generally, is even more insulting if you put in a lot of blood and sweat to create the thing that was wrongly graded? Because something that takes you a day to do that is misevaluated is less harmful or insulting than something that took three years?
Yes, I think that is generally true from the standpoint of the creator. I know I would be more upset when something that I put a ton of effort into was misrated (of course, “in my opinion;” it’s painful that we have to keep stating that) than something I whipped out in five minutes. Simply because I invested a lot more into the former. That is why it is more insulting to get it wrong when there are tons of hours that went into the project.
Is the number wrong because Brett’s text made the game sound better than the score, or just because you don’t like the score in general and couldn’t be bothered to read the text?
It sounds flippant, but are you just going “7.6 for a good game? Fuckers.” and not reading whether you agree with Brett’s findings in the text.
Maybe by you.
Yeah, those of us with taste knew it was a bad game as soon as we started playing.
And since I know this isn’t what Matt meant, I’ll just say: Neither you nor Angie will really dispute the fact that you are both very strange.
I was going to try and back you up, but you lost me here. I can understand your statement that writing a half-assed review is an insult to all the people who spent years working on a game. The reviewer doesn’t owe them a good review, but given the amount of effort put into the game, the reviewer should be expected to make a good faith effort in reviewing it. But that kind of disrespect comes out in the review text, where it becomes obvious that the reviewer didn’t play the game much, or didn’t bother to read the manual, or something. I’m not saying that’s what Toddy did, but from that perspective, I could justify the statement you made. But simply looking at the score and deciding that the number alone is an insult - I don’t understand that one. The amount of time the developers spent making a good game is irrelevant in that case - if a low number is an insult to a good game, then it’s an insult to all good games, because it’s just a number, and the only discrepancy is between the low number and the high quality of the game. The developer effort doesn’t enter into it.
I thought I was being very clear when I said the text does not matter; the score is what I have issue with. I made an entire post to that effect.
P.S. Not flippant; I understand you are asking nicely.
P.P.S. For others who have asked about the text, I think the text is off as well, or perhaps more appropriately, I think the focus of the evaluation in the text is strangely misguided for the general market for RTS games. That does not change the fact that I think the text is irrelevant to my point, and that my point stands alone. If you want to talk about the text, and make the text all important, don’t give a score. If you give a score, you need to get it right.
Before it comes up, let me also state that I am not suggesting that the reviewer did this out of malice, or some other internet conspiracy theory that he was out to screw anyone, taking kickbacks, etc.
I just think he got it wrong. Regardless of whether it was intentional, it was wrong. Just like when a doctor accidentally operates on the wrong body part, I’m not so concerned about whether it was intentional or not (unless I’m a criminal prosecutor). I’m just disappointed in the error.
P.S. This is all my opinion; such words do not reflect the mandate of God.
This is all my opinion, too. What we are disagreeing on is whether your opinion is a reasonable one. I assume that your opinion is based on reason and thought, hence the discussion. Where there is reason, there is hope for conversion. Except in P&R.
No game is churned out in “five minutes” (or even five days) except for maybe a Diner Dash clone. I’m reviewing a bad game now, and, even though it is mainly a rehash of other stuff, I can see the effort that went into it.
But I hope you appreciate that the idea that the rating stands independent of the text is stuff that makes reviewers go nuts. I mean, why bother writing it at all?
Say Brett gave it a nine, but spent the entire review talking about the campaign and how stirring it was. How the cutscenes were amazing, the love triangle beautifully crafted and the music soulful.
That woud be a bad review no matter what the score is. And I hope that BHG would be smart enough to agree. I’d rather have my work rewarded by thoughtful and considered conclusions than anything else.
Earlier this year, Bruce Shelley took Tom to task over his AoE3 review, saying that it was obviously a great game and that Tom’s score blew it (as did Bruce’s I assume). He gave little evidence (to my eye) beyond mass critical appeal and the millions of units shipped. For some reason this is coming to mind right now.
Troy
So how long until SlyFrog flips out and wishes doom and dishonor on all our houses before storming off into cyber la-la land never to return?
But I’m strange because I’m SO CLOSE to being normal. There’s always just one thing keeping me from fitting in.
For instance: I think Sir Mix-a-Lot spoke for a lot of people when he said “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” That’s normal, I think. How else could it have been such a hit? Obviously, there’s a lot of people out there that like big butts and they cannot lie. My problem is that I like big butts, yet I retain the ability to lie.
“Hey, Matt, you like big butts?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“Hell yeah, man. Hey, a bunch of us are going to see Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, want to go?”
“Yeah, OK. Ooh, wait, I can’t, I’ve got to, my girlfriend…yeah. I’ll catch it some other time.”
I have a friend who’s immortal. He likes big butts and he cannot die.
Along similar lines, it’s not my duty to please that booty, but I do consider myself a hobbyist.
Anyway, Doom 3 is a very good game, it’s just not your standard FPS.
I haven’t given my view on it one way or the other, as I’ve never played it, but if I created a topic about what people thought of Doom 3 on almost any forum, I will get post after post about boring map design, monster closets, patently artifical techniques used to scare you in a clumsy way (e.g. flashlight seperate item), the need to listen to dull logs to gain essential key codes, etc.
Overall, I would not come away with a good impression. Some people like it, there’s someone out there for every game after all, but the people liking it seem entirely in the minority and it strikes me that most reviewers simply got caught up in the hype, as has so often happened with big games.
No, I don’t understand that idea. It is fully possible to get one aspect right and the other wrong. I do not see why they are so necessarily interconnected in everyone’s mind. You can get the text right and blow the score (or vice versa). I can call you on the part you got wrong, while it is irrelevant to me that you got the other part right. What you may have gotten right is not the issue I am interested in discussing.
I also think reviewers who use scores hide their heads in the sand when they pretend that the score is not the most important feature. As I mentioned in my post using grading as an example. Yes, it’s nice that you gave lovely expository text; that’s cold comfort to a developer whose game is passed up based on a quick review of the score. I need the score to be at a certain level before I even begin to care about the text. I do not have time to try to find the diamonds in the rough; I want to find a solid game that is unabashedly good. The score is a first level filter for that purpose.
Perhaps it should not be that way, but it is. As they say, if "ifs and buts were candy and nuts . . . "
Unless you roll back the clocks a decade, in which case it becomes your standard 1996 FPS.
This is so totally the 7.9 of Qt3