Gods & Kings adds gods and spies instead of fixing Civilization V

It might be logical, but it strikes me as pretty naive to rely on that.

A review isn't an objective thing. The notion that 12 people would agree almost exactly on what to think and what to score, should be cause for concern, not trust.

If everybody rates Alvin and the Chipmunks a perfect 10, does that make you like it more?

But isn't the problem really with the numbers? I mean, I read a review to learn one thing: Is it good or not.

Beyond that, I just don't really care. Is it a playable 80 or a forgettable 80? And what distinguishes an 80 from being a 75? Why am I trying to convey an opinion through math?

Putting numbers on opinions doesn't make them better, or clearer. I respect the 5-scale for taking out the convenient middleground, but ultimately I think thumbs up/thumbs down is the only scale that makes sense.

Right a 5 star scale is fine but a site that uses it shouldn't be on metacritic because it makes no sense and doesn't convert into it. It makes no logical sense.

Do you really play this game?? :D

Neither does a percentage scale though. What distinguishes a 57% game from a 63% one? What use is that to anyone reading the review?

Rotten Tomatoes got it right by tallying reviews simply according to whether they were positive or not, and ignoring any kind of scale.

The problem is with Metacritic, not with any of the review formats.

Guys chill out, its his opinion. Whether you agree with it or not is subjective. At least respect it. I certainly don't base my buying decisions on tomchick. Good god; if I did so I might save some money each year.

Yeah, that's the thing about Tom. We don't always agree, but I always enjoy reading his reasoning for the disagreement.

Same here. It reminds me of a pretty great line:

"If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you".

Good question!How did you bring yourself to play that dumbed down,money grab and fundamentally broken crap?

Don't forget that the new 100 hp system can screw you units. I love how today a crossbowman of mine attacked an enemy warrior and the warrior did not come close to dieting in three hits, but was 2 eras of technology ahead. The 10 system let it die in one hit..10 was better, if they wanted to fix archers blowing up giant death robots, they could have just made certain units immune to ones from things like the ancient era or classical era, not put screwy hp in place. Besides I think your wrong about religion and espionage, they're a nice flavor, but I have only had it for a day..
Civ v=3 stars
Gods and Kings=1 star
Overall= 4/10 stars, or 2/5 stars

@Amanda Name me one where they can without cheating, because I have never played it. I suppose some modern chess games might fall into that category, but that really doesn't count. Other than that I have never played a TBS game where I would lose without the computer cheating or me making a series of dumb mistakes.

Oh, okay. So chess, checkers, reversi, xiangqi, etc., don't count as turn-based strategy games?

it comes down to this. how can you improve on a game that is tapped out. Jaws 1, 2,3,4? firaxis needs to pull Civ V from the shelves and call it a day. I can't imagine the game getting any fresher than CIV IV.

How about work on a new Alpha Centari??

The United States is stuck in the medieval age? That's news to me.

That's very weak reasoning, Amanda. There are AIs that play chess well not because they know how to play it, but because they use a giant data-base of different possible moves to do it. In fact last time I checked the best AI that plays on its own can't handle more than 7 game pieces. Civ is infinitely more complex than that.

On a side note, GalCiv 2 has some pretty good AI. Not perfect, but definitely good. It still doesn't need to cope a the complex 1UPT combat system though.

This review is so pathetically biased it hurts. While you were generally spot on when it came to vanilla, here you completely drop the ball. I could write a long list of inconstancies or how you deliberately choose to completely ignore many additions and changes the expansion brings, but I feel it will be wasted on you. The truth is you said in you Elemental review at launch that it's a better game . Elemental, a wonderful concept that was so completely broken it was literally barely playable, a game with such bad execution the devs themselves admitted they were way off with this one and apologized. And you compare it favourably to Civ V after last summer's patch. Ridiculous.

If anyone is interested in what the actual hardcore fans, the people who have been playing Civ for years, decades even, check this out:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/...

The fans are very happy with the expansion. I just chatted with MaDjinn, one of the most prominent Civ players, who also made a series of very detailed video overviews that just show how much Chick completely ignored. I'll paste his quote here:

G&K makes it worth switching from Civ 4 finally. It might not be as 'fully polished' (lol) as BTS (yet) but it's good now. The 'previewed' features are actually just the 'sales' features. A massive amount of work went into feature changes/bug fixes/etc for the base game as well. Espionage is still missing 'something', and there's still some combat issues to resolve, but it's something that can still be worked upon. A few tweaks and balance changes could help as well, but it's miles above V.

For me this is more than enough indication that the expansion is worth it. The Tom Chicks of this world can keep on hating, his review is pretty heavily criticized on the CivFanatics forums:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/...

Here is another Civ player I respect very much, and his honest opinion. Note that he didn't like Civ V at launch either:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

When you have abortion debates, birth control debates, etc. it sure as hell is in the political level. When religion is part of Govt. policy even though your constitution states the seperation of church and state the thinking in that Country is backwards and medieval.

Good post Xardas. Could you tell us anything about how diplomacy has gotten better?

To me that's been a dealbreaker all along. Civilization has always struggled with it, but with vanilla Civ V it felt like it had gotten worse, if anything. If you want to cooperate with another ruler he'll make you pay 200% for what you get, and with the lousy combat AI, allies really aren't worth a damn for protection.

That's something I was hoping they would fix for good with this expansion.

Xardas, I never reviewed Elemental. You seem to think I've written all the reviews at 1up. Instead, I've only written the ones with my byline on them.