1901

I.e. they’d act more like the more renowned film critics.

1902

Saved you a click ;)

I mostly just love the vocal minority who for DECADES can’t let go of “using the whole scale” like the smaller numbers are this downtrodden minority who are being oppressed by The Man.

1903

I think Tom is one of the best reviewers around. He explains his position well and agree or disagree at least you know where he is coming from. I do think his rating system is flawed. Too many people think of him as “he’s the guy that gave “insert game” a 1” and don’t give him a chance. That’s their loss but I want Tom to be know for his writing not his ratings. I would be more than happy if he dropped the number all together and do what RPS does.

1904

That’s how I feel as well. Tom has been fighting the good fight for a long time, but the real progress on this front has come from RPS and also Eurogamer dropping scores entirely. Tom’s wholistic scale philosophy just attracts controversy. Maybe it drives traffic, which is good if it does, but it’s from people who are looking for the contrarian (or the fanboy looking to write a nasty comment!) rather than an honest reviewer who also happens to be a good writer.

1905

Same here. I disagree with his position on most games. I don’t read his reviews because I think he aligns with my taste at all. I read his reviews because he’s usually pretty clear about what it is he likes or dislikes and why.

1906

Bleh another “hey look at me” review score. His complaints seem to boil down to “add lots more techs, events, and traits”, “tie the name and portrait of a race to its most-unique trait”, and “any interface that can’t read my mind and treat me like the guy from Memento is obviously terrible.”

If he dropped the score and just let the words stand, would he feel so compelled to justify the score with terrible analogies like giving away a child (seriously - did anyone with kids do anything but cringe at that analogy?) and some tortured story about a Sci-Fi novel that simply repeated a point he’d already made? Maybe without the score he could have spent those paragraphs talking more about some of the positive things in the game so that people who didn’t share his pet peeves about the perfect interface could get something useful out of the review.

I feel like there are some games where he plays, is kind of meh on the idea the whole way through, and then gives a meh review wherever he feels he’s given it enough time. Then there are games where he gets super-excited, plays them like crazy, burns out, then writes the review. He’s like the poster who tells you “I played that game for 500 hours and it sucked!”

Anyway, I’ll be curious to see if, once the let down from the high of discovering all the new toys has worn off, the game has some legs for those of us who stick with it. I’m sure the thirst for techs, traits, and events will be steadily slaked by DLC.

1907

Actually, he could give a much more useful review scale by estimating the number of hours until boredom and the number of peak fun hours you’d hit during that span. That would cover the decent game with a lot of legs and the short-lived game with some amazing moments.

1908

Well, I don’t think he can do that when it was pretty evident, even prior to the review in some of his comments in thread, that he was not having all that much fun. Many of his complaints seemed to be getting in the way of that for him.

Agree, or disagree, I heartily endorse Tom’s commitment to utilising the entirety of his scoring system.

1909

I am too lazy to search, but didn’t he qualify his complaints/questions by saying he was having fun?

1910

wish all games reviewers were as grown up as RPS and could just drop scoring games entirely. the review content itself is of way more import than the score, yet the score is what tends to dominate the conversation.

1911

Thats incredibly childish -I expected better from Paradox, especially since their defending of the IGN review.

1912

Wow, didn’t expect a 1/5 score from Tom.
My main concern is that the EU type of “balanced” strategy seem to be anti 4X (Explore, Exploit, Expand, Exterminate).
Painting the map after exploiting everything and facing very bad odds (Impossible on MOO and MOO2) is the main draw of 4X.
“Anti-boobing”, “slowed research when expanded” etc all seem to hamper 4X game play (at least 2X is actively designed against.)
So EU in space is right. But it’s not a 4X.

1913

I don’t really think so. Not in the review and not really in any of his posts in thread. I didn’t watch the youtube stream though.

1914

I spoke to Tom briefly before, I understand he’s got concerns, as I’ve stated before 4x games suffer before games critics, the explorminate site loved Stellaris, and they play a shit ton of 4x, so something clicked for them as it did for me, but maybe I’m too tolerant of the flaws 4x games In general have. However some of those flaws I’ve rarely seen as a problem.

Last, personality, well leaders in civ 5 are way more distinct than this, but I just had to fend off a democratic crusading xenophobic lunatic, how is that not personality, that race made me rethink a lot of the early expansion strategies I use.

1915

I overcame my laziness. Page 37 is the full post. I am guessing the mid to late game killed it for him, but he was enjoying it at some point.

1916

I try not to pay attention to his scores. I honestly wish he’d drop them, they cause more controversy than they are worth.
I generally agree with his criticism, where we typically disagree is if the flaws are significant enough to ruin the whole game.

But on several occassion, there is something that bothers about the game, and I can put my finger on it and Tom nails with a couple of paragraphs. The races are a “collection of bonus but not a who” was exactly right. I was hestitant to say the Stellaris didn’t have personality, after being charmed by the pot planet and the missing colony ship stories.

I used the child analogy to describe handing over planets also, I don’t have any ikds either so I imagine both Tom and I are guilty of gross exaggeration. That said I went to rather extreme lengths to avoid sticking planets into sectors because I hated what the AI did to them so the analogy wasn’t completely off.

All modern 4x games face the challenge of providing some disincentives to grow, be it happiness, corruption, revolt risk, or in the case of Stallaris more people is slower R&D. But sectors weren’t sold as anti-growth feature, rather as way of reducing micromanagment. It is is completely reasonable to highly critical of qa feature that not only doesn’t work as advertised, but makes things worse. If the said effect is discourage the player to find new worlds to colonize that is’ even a worse thing.

1917

I suspect this will be a great game when all the DLC are in the mix, plus a few choice mods. CKII was really Paradox shifting to this new (for them) type of model of game dev. So in that context i will get this, and no doubt enjoy it greatly, when it is a bundle ‘all DLC’ (or even best DLC) option, also it might even be non Steam only at that point (as that is what stops me getting it now).

I have a guilty secret about my love of Paradox games (from EU I+II to CK I+II, with Rome Gold in the mix). I cheat at them, to enjoy them. It is the only way i have been able to break the game designed inertia and, to my mind, have some fun. Not an option for everyone, but i like the element of freedom it adds back to being able to play the game in a way i can live and enjoy the story creation they are excellent for. Some stories i love and many times they are not the path history actually took.

1918

Review scores are useful. Reviews are more buying guides than critiques (of course, depends on the reviewer, most have parts of both) and as such, having a shorthand for the evaluation of the reviewer is useful in that seeing an unusual score for a game I didn´t expect to get it (or a game I didn´t know about) makes me pay attention and read the review. That way I can discover games that interest me without reading all reviews (something I certainly don´t have time to) or being dependant on the publisher’s marketing (only discovering what is very popular or highly advertized).

Most media reviews (books and movies) are arguably morea ncient, with more history and I would argue more grownup that videogame reviewing (Tom -who I consider writes Variety-style reviews, short, technical and precise- and a few others notwithstanding). Yet they have not dropped scores.

I think alot of the dropping scores from reviews comes from people wanting more serious critiques of games. Which is something I´m all for, but not something that can or should be done so close to a product release. I would love for main game publications to start doing expanded critiques of games a year after release, but alas, there’s less marketing synergy/clicks involved in that, so I doubt we are getting that anytime soon…

1919

Tom’s reviews are not really buying guides. They are more like a Siskel & Ebert review where he’s giving a thumbs up or down and trying to explain holistically how he feels about the game. I think my problem with them often stems from the times he is overly focused on some particular flaw. Once you start complaining about a thing it gets easier and easier to work yourself up into a lather about how awful it is. And it may be that any flaw that bad would mean give a thumbs-down, but I think it’s important to be able to take a step back first and consider it more calmly. This is also true on the other end - writing a review after you’ve had an amazing moment will cause Black & White syndrome. That’s why I suggested the hours-based scale. Using something like that would both actually help people decide if the game was worth their money, and force the reviewer to step back and consider both the fun they’ve had and the drudgery they’ve experienced.

The personality complaint seems hollow to me. It’s like saying that enemies hearthstone are all just a collection of values like a hero power and a few cards you’ve seen many times before. And they all have names like “ravenight”. I mean that’s just some kid’s combination of raven and night crammed together to look cool. Who cares what a ravenight or JBillyB played against you?

1920

The personality complaint makes perfect sense - he even explains the reasoning behind it. Its fine to not agree, but lets not pretend Tom doesnt have his arguments all laid out for his issues.

I feel the same way - I have zero idea who the people in the galaxy is, even though I’ve met 7 of them. I dont really care either, other than the blob on the galaxy map is in my way. In Moo2 on the other hand, I know exactly what each race stands for, and I HATE darlooks, love Psilons, and always try to ally with other races based on my previous encounters with them.