I wish people would jump right into ad hominem attacks more often, it makes for such interesting discussion. Since you've managed to completely dance around my main point, yes, true objectivity is difficult to achieve, Regardless, the main point still stands. I too have played Rome II, i'm not blind to its glaring deficiencies and mind-boggling mechanics. I preordered and found my fair share of disappointment, HOWEVER, I still would not rate this game any less than a 65%. What I cannot stand is the fact that this reviewer has made an emotional appeal and has greatly affected aggregate scores because of it. What if every reviewer rated a game based on what they felt like at the time? "Oh, I wanted my Roman soldiers to be vicious hot-dog men. 0/100".
The point I'm making is that this system of ratings also has a standard to be held to, and it's not being met. We might as well not even have a rating system if it's based on fickle shortcomings.
A hypothetical stick figure game that you assume wouldn't be rated by the gaming press? If said stick figure game was released for $60 and the gaming community wanted to make it abundantly clear that we should avoid said game, yes, I believe they would make reviews on that account. Should CA's games be held in comparison to said game? Yes. What if I was a newcomer to the Total War series and had no idea what the games were like? What if I'm coming from the stick figure game, or realistically, a repetitive shit-fest turn based strategy game like Heaven and Hell and have no idea that there are better TBS games out there? I'd look at Rome II's terrible score from Qt3 and automatically assume it's the absolute worst thing in the world. Worse than Euro Truck Simulator, and that, I think, is not a fair comparison.
I'm having trouble understanding your analogies as they do not seem to represent the matter at hand appropriately. Cars aren't cheap sources of entertainment that you throw away after a week, getting the top score of 100 miles traveled. Should you expect a car to be recalled? Certainly not. Car companies have decades to work over new designs and perform crash tests. They're able to rehash old design theories over and over again because it is proven to work. Game companies would quickly find themselves out of jobs if they followed the same principles. Imagine if we were playing Rome II to the controls and graphics of Pong, or Aliens if you must take into account the meager advancements of the car industry. Not the same thing, is it? As for colors: how is Rome II advertised? It says you can take control of an ancient world civilization and strive for power. The types of victory conditions range from diplomatic, military, and economic. It then claims to offer the option of working independently or trusting other nations to support you through the rest of the game. Is anything outlined here that is not provided in the game? No, you received a product that gave you nothing less than what was advertised. In direct comparison to every other TBS game, the point you've made is null.
Now, the athletes analogy! Somewhat self-defeating. What you've established is that we've focused in on prime players and refuse to rate grade school equivalents in comparison based on physical capabilities. To apply this to the matter at hand, we'd assume we're judging Rome II in comparison to every other Total War game. As this seems to be the basis behind your argument, yes, it would make sense. But only if this review were titled "Rome II in comparison to every other TW game" or "Rome II in comparison to other triple A titles", which it's not. What's happened here is that someone has taken the reviews of top athletes and the reviews of their grade-school equivalents and released them to the world as a whole with no explanation. With only this information at hand, I can logically assume that a grade school 7 will always trump a professional 6. Does it make sense? No! This is exactly what's happened in this review, and that's why I've started this debate in the first place. As for 1/5 being a 'probably' undeserved rating, there is no probability to it. If you've managed to stick with me to this point, you can understand my stance that this review is horridly biased and again, lacks objectivity. Again, betrayal or not, emotions should not be the entire basis of the rating system.
I think we will have to disagree then, because I don't think a game should be spotted over half its score for just showing up and not shitting itself. Reserving one-star reviews for your hypothetical "game made by a two-year-old" is unnecessary. While fun at times, the game has many failures in design and execution, which is attested by the majority of the comments on this review. It is not some ridiculous shortfall in journalistic ethics to give it one star, any more than giving Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a boring and underwritten movie that many people enjoyed regardless, one star.
Just a question, have you ever read a movie review? Because Tom rates his games exactly the same way. One star = hates, five star = loves, with everything in between. It's not an objective measure of the game, because that is impossible.
You are totally right, so is Tom, and it is a shame. I've played even more since my first comment and my respect for CA just took a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Angry Joe just released a scathing review of it. Check it out.
"By the way, before submitting the review, I doublechecked with my editor about review scores. Gamecenter was using the 1-10 scale. Not the 7-9 scale, they insisted! Even back then, I resisted the idea of the 1-10 scale being a 7-9 scale (that particular battle has long since been lost, of course). So while writing the Deus Ex review, I verified with my editor that a 5 would be an average game and not necessarily a negative score. He confirmed. So I sent in the Deus Ex review with a 3. I figured it was a couple notches below average. Man, can you imagine a 3 these days? No one’s going to use a 3 on any game that doesn’t cost $19.99 or less."
As I explicitly stated in the post you just responded to, yes, I've played the game. I still return to it occasionally as I find some enjoyment and have hopes for trivial glitches to be fixed in little time whatsoever, either by official patches or mods.
"Reserving one-star reviews for your hypothetical "game made by a two-year-old" is unnecessary." Why is it unnecessary? What basis is there for this? One star implies a far below average rating. Moreso, a failure in every aspect omitting redemption. Even stripped of its graphics and forced to run on bare mechanics, Rome II still works as a functioning piece of entertainment. There is no particular failure in design or execution aside from the fact that it doesn't run as smoothly as everyone had anticipated. What astonishes me is that this was not expected by the larger part of the community.
Yeah, I had always wanted to get into the Civ series but always found the games impenetrable until Civ V. The mechanics may be flawed (although I'm only seeing that after hundreds of hours) but Civ V is a millions times better at introducing people to Civ than any other game in the series.
I'm glad you think that there aren't any design failures. As shown everywhere else in this article and its comments, your opinion is not shared.
And even if it were, it's a broken rating system that reserves its lowest scores only for non-functioning products. We don't reserve one star only for movies that are incomplete or incoherent. Why would you restrict games to that, instead of just liking a game and accepting that someone else, in a position of slightly more authority, didn't?
Victory points also offer a new strategic view on the battlefield. And from a historical point of view I would say its actually a good move because one could mess around in the corner of a battlefield in ROME 1, moreover one could make an unrealistic movement with his entire army. From a logical point of view the attacker has an advantage because he can choose a moment to attack. This makes attaking and defending more realistic seeing the strategic options you have before you attack an enemy or when you want to put your army in a defending position.
"Shogun 2 was the Civilization IV of the Total War series. Rome II is the Civilization V" Simply this unfortunately many people were "ok" with civ5 oh well back to civ4 and shogun2..
So far I think you have brought forth one of the better explanations of victory points with your attacker advantage perspective.
But if you really want to look realistically on it, in real life armies dont just sneak up on each other and forces the fight to happen immediately, with the exception of ambushes. Armies that are marching against each other are usually well aware of each others positions when they are a couple of day marches away. The fights dont just happen out of the blue. Both armies has a "say" in where the battlefield is going to take place, as both are planning their movements with several days in mind. So in the situation of having a much smaller army than your enemie's, you would either try to outmarch your enemy to a safe haven, or choose a place to defend if the enemy can move faster than you can.
If victory points exist they should offer the defending army a choice of where to put it on the battlefield. This would reflect reality more and still offer the player some tactical options
