lol, as soon as I saw that 20 on metacritic, I KNEW IT HAD TO BE TOM CHICK! Come on Tom, you've become predictable. Time to change it up.
Although I generally agree with the critique, I think 1 star is a bit harsh. You can have fun with the game and it generally works. Certainly there are serious problems, but it's not 1 star bad. I mean, are there zero star games?
Check the link on how he scores.
http://www.quartertothree.com/...
"1 star = I hated it"
Seems fair enough to me in this case :)
Assuming for a second that your theory that games are, on the whole, not as good as other forms of culture (movies, tv, books, etc) is true, let's look at metacritic ratings in each medium:
Most recent game metacritic scores for Xbox 360: 67, 86, 89, 38, 66, 81
Most recent film metacritic scores: 48, 22, 58, 49, 53, 81
Average game score: 71.16
Average film score: 51.83
So on average, it looks like games are scored 20 points higher than films. Either this is because games are, on the whole, a more artistically-successful medium than film, with a higher quality of output, or games are drastically overrated, in which case Tom's reviews are a necessary corrective to a broken system. Please tell me which way you have decided to be wrong.
Broken games get a 2/10 (or more accurately, a 1 out of 5 stars). It's not being reviewed in the state it may be after crashes and bugs that *should* get fixed, or *might* get fixed weeks or months after release. It's being reviewed in its released state. This apparently is a hyper complicated concept.
Check out some of the other reviews. Tom Chick is hardly alone here.
Why on earth do you suppose the scales have to be equivalent? I never disputed that game reviews tend to use higher numbers as compared to film reviews -- most film reviews use a thumbs up/thumps down scale, or a five point scale, where most game reviews use 10 (all the while spotting the first few points). What is inherently problematic about this??
What matters is what readers understand the scores to mean. I couldn't care less if all games were scored somewhere between an 8, 9, or 10, with 10 meaning "awesome," 9 meaning "eh" and 8 being "terrible," even if films meanwhile were scored 4, 5, 6 for the same designations...
Again, you seem to have a fetish or hangup about numbers, and you really do have a chip on your shoulder about games getting higher ratings on average than movies. Why?
Great Review
They expect us to pay 60$ to be BETA testers !
Bans the game sucks. You know why? Because there is not challenge. I don't want unit variety, tons of buildings and other stuff when the game doesn't offer any challenge. The Rome 2 campaign AI does NOTHING. Enjoy fighting slingers and mobs for 150 turns.
Yes in Shogun 2 units were not that varied. But it didn't matter because it was huge challenge everytime, especially at the higher difficulties. At Rome 2 I can crank it up to legendary and the only thing different would be my towns being in more unrest.
You just enjoy waiting for Hannibal to cross them Alps. In the meanwhile, I'm back to Shogun 2.
How's Empire? It still sucks.
Maybe CA should stop making shitty games, then they won't get Metacritic bombed.
I apologize for having a different opinion from you. You are the arbiter of knowing what great gameplay is. I deeply apologize and will be part of the hive. Just tell me what you want me to think of various games and I shall!
Thanks for being the only one to tell it how it is. Now if only I didn't pre-order and waited to read some reviews before I bought this game.
I hate overly negative reviews like this. Yes, we understand the sentiment. Yes, we understand you're outraged over the fact that this game did not meet your expectations. Now, hypothetically speaking, a new developer makes a game that can't even present a stick figure graphic and has the story and grammatical nuances of a two year old child. You decide to review said game, now how can you realistically compare that game to this? Obviously it will receive a low rating, perhaps a '0', yet this would imply that Rome II is merely a step above said failings. That is nonsensical. I wouldn't condemn the worst cookie-cutter puzzle game to such a rating, much less a game of this magnitude, despite its glitches and slow loads. Please use common sense and rational judgment before rating your next game; this is grossly exaggerated and is completely lacking objectivity. Poor qualities for any honest reviewer.
Objectivity, as always, being defined as "an opinion with which I agree."
Shogun: Total War metascore 84 user score 8.7
Medieval: Total War metascore 88 user score 8.7
Rome: Total War metascore 91 user score 9.2
Medieval 2 : Total War metascore 88 user score 8.9
Empire: Total War metascore 90 user score 6.8
Shogun 2: Total War metascore 90 user score 8.2
Rome 2: Total War metacscore 81 user score 4.1
the only real disparity between fans and reviewers is around empire that was an unplayable ugly mess and this abortion... there is no conspiracy to hurt Creative Assembly they did this to themselves. Now lots of sales were made because of reviews on sites that use 7-10 scale and got paid in advertising by Sega. This review sticks might have saved some people 60 dollars i wasn't the lucky one but ill never preorder a TW title again
Reading my post i agree i came out with guns blazing and i apologize for offending you. But on the contrary to what you say i want you to Think for yourself. The problem is that some people dont take time to critically analyze matters in order to judge whether something is an improvement or not. Some things are very abstract, like what color of blue the sky should have and are determined more by subjective factors, while other things could through argumentation be better or worse in light of its purpose. So lets use your critique against me of the hive reference, and approach this from a different direction. I will let you think.
Lets use the example of having victory points in open field battles. I would like you to explain to me why this is a good choice. Before you do that i should state what purpose i see rome having in terms of game design. That is to be a game of strategy, and thus bring forth gameplay the enhances this aspect.
EA isn't even the publisher of the Total War games, SEGA is. But you're right, they've certainly "pulled an EA" this time.
Could you please explain what you think is good with the following so that we actually can get an understanding of what you think is good in this game
The senate and its political aspect
Victory points in battlefields
The abilities including the ones that are far from being realistic
How sieging works, that you can torch metal doors rendering more advanced sieg weapons unnecessary
The naval battles
The aspect of not having to build boats for water transportation
Gravitas and how it enhances your gameplay
Lets not focus on shallow things that will eventually be fixed like the buggs. Could you talk about these core aspects of gameplay instead and explain what you like about them. The reason i ask is because after reading your posts i havent found any comments from you on the core of the gameplay.
Nailed this and Civ V.
So Creative Assembly, a company with over 20 years of gaming experience, producers of highly professional products should be reviewed in comparison to a hypothetical stick figure game that wouldn't ever be reviewed by the gaming press? If I buy a car, should I 'expect' it to be recalled three or four times before it is working properly? If the demo of my car is shown in candy apple red, but the product arrives in matte orange, do I not have a right to complain? Should I praise the manufacturer because I know the modding community will eventually paint me car? We don't rate professional athletes against how they play against their grade school equivalents, we rate them on how they play against one another.
Rome II is supposedly a triple A product, and it should be rated against other triple A products. While a zero is probably an unfair assessment, it is understandable given the absolute betrayal by the company in foisting this broken product upon its paying customers.