While I disagree with Tom's low rating of Civ V, it is his opinion and I think your criticism of him is unfair. Take a look at Qt3's review history and you fill find plenty of 4 and 5 star reviews. Yes, there are low score reviews too, but there isn't anything wrong with using the entire scale. He also writes many articles about games that are not reviews that represent the games in a positive light. Tom states his reasons about why he comes to the conclusions he does, he just doesn't write ' this game sucks!'. We might not agree with his final conclusion, but as long as he states his reasons it seems fair.
I'm pretty sure Metacritic already knows about this site. But while you're playing watchdog, Neil, don't forget Gamerankings! Also:
To be fair, 16 reviews have been printed so far, 12 of them really positive, 3 luke warm, 1 hated. I generally prefer to believe 12 people than 1.
@Peter It is hard to argue for this game without actually playing the game so far, but of the 16 reviews I have seen this is by far the worst, and most are incredibly positive. Beyond that after reading the words of this review, it sounds like like a 3/5 than a 2/5, which is a huge difference
Honestly I think it's far more conspicuous that 16 individuals manage to gain roughly the same impression of something like this, than one guy managing to disagree with them.
The difference between 2/5 and 3/5, is that 2/5 is a thumbs down, and 3/5 is a thumbs up. Is someone having a difference of opinion really that unlikely? I can't even agree with myself on what to have for lunch sometimes. I'm sorry, but I can't help but think there's some kind of flawed reasoning behind that argument. If 16 people manage to share the same opinion, everyone who disagrees with them are wrong?
Generally I prefer to think that when you ask 16 people for an opinion, they won't all share the same one.
If you find that one reviewer's opinion generally reflects your own, then I can understand your decision; however, this is the only quite negative reaction to Gods and Kings I've come across. My original statement was really to suggest looking at the other reviews as well - but, of course, that is entirely your perogative. I didn't find Tom's review for the original Civ V reflective of my experience; for instance, I quite like the social policy set-up that Tom didn't. However, opinions vary and I do respect Tom's opinion - I just don't agree with him.
@Peter, my point exactly. If 15 people do share an opinion, at least to a point, and the 16th says the exact opposite, who do you believe. If 15/16 of people agree it generally means one of two things 1) they were bribed or 2) it is pretty accurate. I don't really see that much bribery going on, especially when I have yet to see a Civ 5 G&K ad on a website, so it seems like the 2nd one is more logical.
In your opinion, is it ever legitimate to give a high-profile game a bad review when others say it's good?
If 15 people wish really hard, will it fix the AI?
A 5 star rating system never translates well to a 100 point scale. It just doesn't and the fact is publishers base bonuses, etc. on meta scores, Is that the fault of Tom? No of course not. But it shows how broken of a system it is when they let ANY site that signs up be a part of this list. You have sites that are nothing more than blogs with a few paragraphs in a review (like some of the ones here) that get posted to metacritic with a completely ridiculous score that gets the most hits for obvious reasons.
If you want to be on metacritic a 10 point scale should be used because this game is NOT a 20 out of 100 which is what metacritic rates it as. That is ridiculous and at the level of atrocities like Duke Nukem Forever.
It is part of the reason G4TV recused itself of metacritic because Adam Sessler railed against the site about how ridiculous it is for 5 star scales, grade letter scales, etc. get converted into a 10 point rating. Of course ever since Sessler left the site went back to metacriitc. But the guy had the balls to tell the truth and tell metacritic his review scores do not reflect what he actually means. A 1 star isn't a 20%, a 2 star isn't a 40%, etc. What it looks like to me is Tom knows he is someone that gives a lot of games low ratings and knows he can get hits to this site if he does it to big games like Max Payne, Journey, Civ V, and a whole host of others. Sometimes his reviews take no effort and consist of a few paragraphs that do not explain anything about the game.
Neil, that's a fair point about most of his reviews seeming to take no effort.
Good to know that I don't need to waste any time and money on this expansion. The negative things listed in the review are exacty what made me stop playing Civ V, after sticking with it much too long because I really wanted to like it. I love the hexes and the new combat system, too bad the AI is so totally incapable of using them and that diplomacy sucks so badly.
The one thing I do not agree with is that religion should have a continuing importance even after a civilization has evolved into the modern world. Yes, religion is still important in some parts of the "rest of the world" today, but that's only because they are still, to use Civ terminology, still stuck in the medieval age, where religion still matters.
@Peter, If you are watching, let's say gymnastics and every judge gives the athlete scores between 8.0-9.0, and another judge gives her a 4.0, which are you going to believe is more representative of what she actually earned?
@amanda, there aren't many good turn based strategy games with decent AI. Total War's AI appears decent, but that is just because they cheat horribly sending armies at you out of the middle of nowhere. Previous civs got away with pretty bad AI because stack of doom made it a bit easier to program (ala just create a huge stack of units and send it at the enemy, or better yet just use it to defend). Other than that I can't think of a TBS game where the AI even appears decent. Can you?
There are many TBS games where a computer AI can beat good human players.
You are obviously not a Civ fan, so you need to keep your mouth shut.
Real Civ players love this game. The fact that your review is on metacritic is surprising.
You are small potatoes and flaky.
Civ 5/GK is the shit.
I wouldn't trust anyone holding up a number, unless they were able to tell me why they scored the way they did.Like I said before, I believe in arguments, not numbers. If 16 people think the same thing, it's still just an opinion. If a thousand people think the same thing, it's still just an opinion.If their words truly make sense to you, go with that, but I don't think you're doing yourself any favors by ignoring your own intuition in favor of supporting the majority. How did that athlete look to "you"?