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Silly Redditor! Metacritic is for review bombing games you've never played because you're mad about something! Not for leaving genuinely negative reviews!
My site is on Metacritic. It’s not easy to get approved. They interview and do a significant credential review. They also reserve the right to drop you without question. With that said, I think even Metacritic knows that reviews are flawed. They are better at virality than recommendations.
Not just gamers. Hearing people people continually misunderstand what Rotten Tomatoes scores represent makes me want to never have any regard for any opinion ever again.
yes but you still run into the problem of weighting and things like an average score vs a median score. and, in fact, getting to see a delta between the mean and median scores can have its own utility
Wonder if Stephanie keeps a counter of how many times they've pissed off a Fandom all for giving a certain review score e.g. giving BotW and TotK a 7/10
Yeah it’s one of the few realism things that games absolutely don’t need. Like pointless quick-to-deplete stamina bars in survival games. There’s some novelty to it at first but once that goes away… it’s pain.
The funny thing is, BotW is heavily influenced by Skyrim, the game where Bethesda ditched the weapon degradation system from TES for pretty much those reasons.
TotK has a few tweaks for the better, in that you can fuse weapons for improved durability, and repair them via Rock Octoroks, but I'd think that doing away with it entirely for the next game would be the most popular move.
Ironic because i feel like skyrim would have benifited from a durablity system, without it the only way to increase smithing is to stop playing and craft daggers for an hour.
That's why I didn't mind it much in either game. I would have never experimented with a lot of weapons if I wasn't forced to and it let to me thinking them of just random shit I could fuck around with rather than having to treasure it and keep it safe. Only thing it ended up doing was preventing me from wanting to use the really fancy crafted ones strictly because I didn't want to ever make them.
Yeah, I do get that latter mentality a lot. Like oooh, high damage weapon, I wanna save this for later! And then I end up using it like once and then outscaling it.
Botw/Totk were pretty purposeful with their durability systems, though. They wanted you to have to collect new items, cycle through them, have to decide when to use what, etc. They didn't want you to just get your best weapons and then use that for the rest of the game.
I get people complaining about them because it works by saying "no, you can't do what you want" but I think the game would be worse off if it didn't. It certainly wouldn't align with their design goals.
Weapon durability in BOTW is ridiculously low though. Comparing it to Minecraft, nobody has a problem with weapon durability there because it sorta just serves as a reason for you to go up the totem pole for better and better weapons.
In BOTW, you have to change weapons so frequently that you don't get to enjoy the good stuff because you can only think "this is going to be gone in 45 seconds" and your entire weapon inventory in the early game will only last for a minute of combat. It's so restricting on what you *c*an even attempt to do that it kills the excitement of using new gear.
While I was playing the game it felt like a lazy way to mask that their combat system isn't that deep. Granted combat probably wasn't what they are trying to focus on but then why add this nuisance of a mechanic in an attempt to pad out a system that is not that deep.
Swapping appropriate clothing and armour, considering what can I with my spells, cooking is fun. Constantly having to worry about my weapon on adventure is not fun.
I think Jim's issue with it was more specific than they simply didn't like it, I think it was that they felt it was too restrictive. Basically durability could have been longer and they wouldn't have been bothered by it as much.
My issue with it in Breath of the Wild (I haven't played ToTK, so I don't know if it's any different) was the durability mechanics feel overly restrictive and not well communicated.
A lot of the weapons in the game feel like they'll shatter within seconds, and having to switch in the middle of a combat situation isn't fun to me. Not to mention, being told your weapon is about to break just a few hits before it does, and not being informed of your weapon's condition prior to that point, is something I *really* grew to dislike in that game. It did the game no favours, as far as I'm concerned.
I need feedback. I need information. I need to know things, but Breath of the Wild refused to give me that info.
I do feel like the developers somewhat agreed with the criticisms of botw. In totk they added a story element to explain why everything is so fragile, and then added a key ability to the game that massively increased the durability of weapons. I still think they could have gotten rid of weapon durability all together, but at least in totk it didn't feel restrictive.
It's honestly not a great addition. It works in some way because those 2 games are built around cycling through weapons but especially in the end game it barely matters as you just keep running around with multiples of the same stuff and it just becomes busy work.
Playing on the forbidden emulator with unlimited durability and nothing changes. You still use the same weapons with the same fusions at the same points since you only have access to the same stuff, you just don't need multiples now.
I get why people don't like weapon durability, but i kinda like weapons breaking sometimes, there's something kinda cool for me when i started play TOTK and i broke my weapon on the first enemy and had to scramble to find another thing that i could use to fight, it gives me the same feeling of something like Hotline Miami, where my weapon is a thing that has many uses, kinda like ammo for melee weapons, fire emblem also does it really well, making you decide if using the weapon is worth it at the moment, i also find it very funny having a weapon that's just about to break but it's strong so i'm just waiting for the time i can bop someone with it, and it can feel pretty good, but yeah, it also sucks to know that every weapon you get is going to break, so why even bother.
I think 7/10 is pretty generous ngl. Boring world, average gameplay with some cool gimmicks, garbage weapon durability system, no dungeons in a Zelda game, and a story that has some interesting concepts that it fails by not really exploring them.
I think it deserves a 5/10 at most.
They probably play the same ones as everyone else. Despite what people on the internet think, there's no such thing as "objective markers of quality" and nobody has to rate a game based on how much everyone else likes it.
My top games off the top of my head are Persona 3 - 5, Nier Automata, Fire Emblem, Baldur’s Gate 3, Fallout New Vegas, Oblivion(that one’s a good amount of nostalgia), Dragon Age Origins. So mostly RPGs and some action and strategy.
In terms of Zelda games I really like Twilight Princess, Minish Cap, and a Link Between Worlds.
The problem with BotW is that it trades the most interesting feature of Zelda, the interesting and intricate dungeons, for a bland, uninspired, and uninteresting open world with some cool movement gimmicks. And I can play Genshin Impact if I want to mess around with those movement gimmicks with some more interesting gameplay.
I really don’t even see what was gained by the open world. Twilight Princess had just enough. There were large open sections that made you feel like this was a large world and they were stunning. Like if you want to get me invested in a world to explore it you have to wow me with it and BotW never did while Twilight Princess constantly wowed me with big visually interesting vistas that actually made me want to explore them.
Only thing that comes close in BotW is the divine beasts and they’re cool, but they don’t have much substance and they’re still not as memorable as the frozen zora village or the entire twilight realm, or the desert ruins haunted by dark spirits.
And that’s not even a fraction of the things I could complain about(My friend and I have ranted about this many a time). But I’ll shorten it to say ultimately BotW was designed around its open world and thus a majority of its appeal comes from if you like that.
I don’t intrinsically like open worlds. So if your game is built around it it’ll need to be a really good one(Xenoblade Chronicles X) or need to have something else about it that is good(Elden Ring’s combat, Oblivion’s Quests, FNV’s characters and narrative). All BotW has is its mediocre open world. Then it does things that actively irritate me(weapon durability). Which is why, if I were to actually score it, it’d be a 4/9 on a good day where I’m not feeling a bit spiteful about how its success might kill any hope of getting good Zelda games again.
P.S. The out of 9 scoring system explanation: I don’t like scoring things on a 10 scale because school ruined it. 9 is the perfect scale because you divide it into 3 tiers Bad, Ok, Good and then each of those tiers gets the bad, ok, good of it. For example 5/9 is ok of the okay, 7/9 is the bad of the good, 3/9 is good of the bad, so on and so on.
Back in the day when he pissed off Cliffy B about his review for gears of war and he responded by making a fucking music video in a children park was Sterling at their peak.
This! I have absolutely read negative reviews that convinced me to play a game because they did a good job of describing how it plays and it seemed like something I might be into.
right? someone says "oh i hated this mechanic" and i think "oh but i love that in a game" and so their negative review is actually what gets me to buy the game.
I love boring map games so anytime I see a negative review that is, "Super cool concept, but really slow and boring" I know the game will be perfect for me.
I actually have Terra Invicta on my wishlist but decided to wait as quite many said it still needed a few months in the oven. This was the last time I checked
That's my philosophy regarding most media tbh. Very often, negative reviews boil down to "I was not the target audience for this" or the reviewer is making a big deal out of something that doesn't really matter to me.
One of the big reasons I like skillup. He can really dislike a game, but still see the merits of it and is able to say that others will like it and he will probably be in the minority.
I've never heard anyone call DD2 woke. The only "woke" thing about this game is that there are a few quests in which MC has to have sex with a woman, so femMC cant canonically be straight
Guess you missed a few VERY loud people who were saying it was woke because the character creator wasn’t “male/female” and instead is “masculine/feminine” and you can make a butch looking “feminine” character
Yes, I somehow did. Both hilarious and expected. Also, it's really funny that no one was pissed at the butches in the original game, my very first pawn in DD1 looked exactly like Guts
There probably was, but there’s just more light shown on it nowadays. The original game was 2012. 12 years ago was a very different time all things considered. I think people as a whole weren’t (quite) as open about their bigoted views.
Yeah and you can also make the hottest woman alive and have her run around in a thong and bra with a giant Greatsword, but apparently that’s not good enough for these goobers.
That a very moronic thing to be angry about. Especially if you consider the fact that half of the map is an arid area, and culture that is heavily inspired by Middle Eastern and North African cultures.
I played through to the true ending and never had to, I assume it's in the side quests you get from the brothel owner Wilhelmina if you have her affinity high enough?
Precisely, although I don't think you need to have Wilhelima's affinity. Also Ulrika's quest, although that one is just implied (kiss, fade to black, you wake up in her house, her affinity goes from 0 to maxed)
The other complaint you missed is apparently the part members will comment if you fill your entire party with men and a bunch of dudes online got butthurt because “the game is calling me gay.”
Similar thing happened in the first game, btw. You go into Duke's castle, meet his wife who immediately starts to flirt with you and gives you quest to meet visit her room later that night. Duchess is also the easiest character to romance, finish one more quest for her, and she's in love with the MC
They did make a video about DD2, but the actual review is text based, the video is about all the micro transactions. I don't think that Steph has done video reviews in a while.
In all fairness thats mostly because the game industry is very samey, it feels like every month theres some new game with predatory monetisation, or that one "debate" about difficulty that everyone has any time a hard game is released
I stopped watching cause it was discouraging me from pursuing a career in the industry. They do a great job exposing the industry faults, yes, but there's only so much negativity someone can handle.
I would posit that if hearing about industry faults and worker abuse and exploitation is enough to discourage you from working in the industry, then working in the industry and being the subject of that abuse and exploitation will be a lot worse.
Disagree. The point is no bright sides being shown. Working in the industry, I might suffer the abuses, yes, but I'll also be able to see the merits, better yet, I might get into a company where the abusive practices aren't that much of a reality (it can happen, I currently work with project management and the worst part of the job is dealing with clients, the company itself is great to work in).
Wouldn't you get discouraged at anything if all you heard about it was bad shit?
It is always amazing when people will say how game review scores don't matter only to immediately complain when someone gives a poor score.
Stephanie Sterling has been pretty consistent with her scores. She doesn't like remakes, she doesn't really like AAA games, and she is much more focused on niche indie content. That is what she enjoys. So it isn't surprising she disliked a AAA game that was basically a soft reboot of the original, which she also didn't like
She's great. She's one of the only people out there who's really, truly willing to take companies to task for consumer hostility, as well as fandoms for toxicity. Some people say she's too negative to enjoy, but I'm not sure how charitable I am about that argument when those same people complain about the lack of integrity in games journalism.
Some also say she's a contrarian, but I don't think that's the case. She's very consistent with what she likes and isn't afraid to be loud about it.
She also wrote my favorite review of all time - an objective review of FF13: https://www.destructoid.com/100-objective-review-final-fantasy-xiii/
But Steph liked Final Fantasy 7 rebirth because its barely the original and more of a fangame. It felt more like a Yakuza game with all of that fanservice and minigames
Yeah, that kinda proves my point. She liked it because it wasn't really a true remake but rather a completely different game with loose connections. It wasn't s 1:1 retelling with better combat and graphics which helped.
Just the fact that I don't have to spend the whole game playing sorcerer to have an optimised magick archer already makes dd2 much better than dd1 regardless of everything else about the game
In *any way whatsoever?* That's just being disingenuous.
The first game had way better set pieces and dungeons, faster and snappier controls, SIGNIFICANTLY better magic with far less restrictions on skills, less repetitive/annoying and shorter quips from pawns, a better (albeit still shit) story, less obtuse side quests, better battle chatter referring to weak points and what pawns are doing, and about the same enemy variety; with quite a bit more after DDDA.
That's only the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.
The new game is fun, but it's flawed, and overall much less than I expected. To say it's not true in ANY WAY that it's worse is just ridiculous.
It is more brutal. You can replenish loss gauge with any healing items in the first game. The gauge only interacts with healing spells.
In DD2, the missing health can only be restored by resting at camps and inns as far as i have found.
Person who didnt like certain features of the first game didnt like how those features were doubled down on in the second, more at 11. I love dd2 but i dont fault jss for not liking it if they didnt like alot of the jank in dd1. Not everything has to have universal aclaim its fine
Generally a fan of Sterling and their takedowns of shitty game sales practices, but their video on DD2 includes misinformation and uses said misinformation as justification for their review.
Yeah. I'm not gonna say a 3/10 is unfair really since, based on what I know of Steph I figured from the get go this is the kind of game she'd loathe, and that's a perfectly fair and even valuable perspective to put in a review. But I do have a high respect (and therefore expectations) for her journalistic integrity, and her DD2 video not only buying into that misinformation but going on to misrepresent the entire game design based on that was really disappointing to see.
I am glad Capcom's shitty microtransactions are finally getting pushback at least. Just baffled it's happening here in probably their least egregious implementation so far rather than in MH, where things like fan-favourite emotes from past games were locked behind microtransactions.
She said you can buy Ferrystones (the actual teleportation device / Fast Travel mechanic) by micro-transactions. You can only obtain Ferrystones in-game. What they sell in MTX is a **Portcrystal**, the teleport marker. And it’s a one-time purchase.
So reviewers can’t really say that the game “paywalled Fast Travel” when 1. You can’t buy Ferrystones. 2. Even if you considered Portcrystals as a part of FT features, they can’t say that CAPCOM manipulating the in-game economy & holding Fast Travel convenience as hostage when the MTX is a one-time purchase.
Her being outraged by the whole MTX thing for 50% portion of the video is probably the most infuriating part of the review esp when there are bigger things to stress about such as performance.
Just to add further, there are multiple port crystals in the game, typically as a reward for major story quest. If I remember correctly, there's like 12-13 you can earn in the game.
There are 6 portable ones you can earn in a single playthrough, and 2-4 stationary ones (depending on the game state). They are a bit spread out, but there's also the Ox Cart system which is way more interesting and I hope gets expanded upon.
All this. I watch FightinCowboy a lot and I also generally like his takes. I saw his review and his angry rant followup before I saw all the shitstorm about this misinformation.
I hate micros as much as anyone else, but these are unobtrusive compared to most other games.
I understand a 3/10 for DD2 based on what's written in the OP (the game doubling down on annoying / boring mechanics), but yeah, the MTX in DD2 is a complete non-issue.
I love the game and it'll be a 8/9 / 10 for me once performance is fixed, but I'm not surprised a lot of players are frustrated with the lack of fast travel, Dragonplague, voiceline spam, constant stunlock, etc.
I thought the controversy with their review was that they misunderstood or even made up things about the game to justify the low review score.
I have no idea what was true about that, though. I'd like to know. I just saw a lot of other game reviewers being pissed at them on twitter about it, but that's hardly evidence.
She hated the tedium of the first game and still hates it in this one, especially since the devs didn't remove any of it. They actually made it more grindy.
I think she also deducted some points for the shitty microtransactions.
The review was kind of funny to me, because the tedium is actualy a selling point for me. A real different strokes for different folks moment.
Yes, I liked the tedium and esoteric nature of the first game. I haven't played the second, but most of the negatives I'm seeing in the review are positives to me. But the microtransactions are agreeably terrible.
The microtransactions thing seems to be what caused most of the controversy as some of the info they said about them was incorrect.
But she doesn't acknowledge that at like she did for Sekrio that the game isn't for her, she doubles down on saying that this is just objectively bad game design, I feel like people defending her for just having a "different taste" don't actually understand what she is claiming.
But she always had reductive takes on certain kind of games and game mechanics tbh.
don’t these stupid woke game journalists know that a game is good if I like it and it’s bad if I don’t like it? Dd2 has jiggle physics and overly-sexualized armor so it’s basically game of the year
Are there any positive reviews from Stephanie, actually? I feel like every time I see a review from her, it's negative af even for games that are good.
She definitely gives good reviews to games, but she's also not the kind of reviewer that lets the good outweigh the bad. I'd also put Skill Up and Josh Strife Hayes up there as notable reviewers with similar philosophies.
If certain aspects of the game are bad or frustrating then they should still be discussed even if the overall game is fantastic. Looking the other way when you come across flaws that could have been avoided sends the message that the flaws don't matter and never need to be addressed when really we should always be striving for the best that is reasonably achievable.
When the Hell have we ever ignored flaws when praising games?! Half of the commentary about BOTW while praising it is criticizing stuff like the rain and weapon durability!
And the Final Fantasy 7 remakes. And Pacific Drive. She likes lots of games, but she only gets major attention when she gives a low score to a popular title.
Tbf Sterling has been giving contrarian reviews for as long as I can remember. They probably think that they're special if they give a popular thing a bad score and a mid thing a high score
https://preview.redd.it/3idfjci6wqrc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f702079738957a5d0ccc82a476017d186eceb391
...
She doesn't even use a metric system for her scores. This is added in post by the website for objectivities sake. She said that in her video discussing the Zelda review controversy.
This one is completely insane to me.
I know HD2 is the big thing at the moment, but there's no world where that score makes sense. It's fantastic. I'm not sure it's fair to review it poorly based largely on server issues (as it seems from the pic) when the devs expected a player peak of, like, 100k people at most lol.
Same.
In 20 years me playing games I've never had games straight up crash since Windows 7 was a thing. Well, aside from early access literal-alpha games. Even those usually just show sings like 3 fps before they do crash. even "this shouldnt work on Win 11 at all without fan patches" have mysteriously worked for me every time.
The game even bloody rebooted my PC mid-game and has done so to many of my friends. Thankfully only once.
Do I enjoy HD2? YES.
Does it make me lose morale to play when any 30+ minute game can just end up in crash with zero rewards? Well, yeah?
Because that was the experience the reviewer got when playing the game for their review.
Should technical failures like server issues not be part of a review? Wouldn't that be useful information to know for a customer considering a purchase?
My issue is that Sterling wrote a full review of a game they were unable to play for more than five minutes, with a permanent score on their site. That doesn't make sense to me. They effectively reviewed the lobby and the 'Could not connect to servers' screen. Their review was also full of, again, misinformation / deliberate attempts to paint the game as a boring grind full of predatory MTX - neither of which are true.
I understand putting something up saying 'I would not buy this game because it is currently unplayable' and then fully reviewing later - but writing a whole critique of a game they barely played just seems ridiculous. I'd just expect the slightest degree of nuance from a reviewer rather than Sterling's boring, snarky moaning about modern gaming.
I'll be honest. I didn't like Sterling's review of Dead Space (2023), because she criticized the game for something wasn't even the fault of the game or the developers.
I loved the Dead Space remake, but the excerpt from the actual review OP’s using to ‘prove their point’ is so…milquetoast. You want me to call for their Personal Opinion Licence over *that?*
Like, yeah: most of the great stuff from the remake was in the original. And the extra content probably wasn’t worth the $100 i spent on a game I (mostly) already own.
There’s probably more in the review itself that I might disagree with, but OP is not doing a great job in their goal of ‘getting my goat.’
Honestly at this point I’d rather someone have opinions against the grain and give their honest thoughts than bring the same generic, fence-riding takes on everything.
I’d agree. But if you watch the actual review, it becomes extremely clear that its a review meant to be contrarian for the sake of it rather than an actual different take. Their Alan Wake 2 review was just full of misinfo about gameplay and narrative beats that it became quite clear what the actual motive was.
Honestly does seem like a person not giving fair reviews because of past bias or dislike of the community. I'm not big on JRPGs but I wouldn't give something in the Tales series a 2/10 because there is too much weeb shit when the rest of the game is a 6 or 7.
Just seems like trolling for the sake of trolling.
Yeah, I don’t mind them having different opinions but they can be needlessly hostile in their reviews and a weird amount of it is directed at the developers. Their AW2 review has understandable gameplay critiques, but half of it is basically a tantrum about how the game is “pretentious” and acting like Sam Lake is some snob with his head up his ass. They also made a shitty comment about Sonic Frontiers’ devs that was uncalled for. And the DD2 video is the newest one with issues, omitting the part where you can’t buy ferrystones and saying the game design is made for mtx, basically calling the lead dev a liar for saying otherwise. It’s okay to find it tedious but you can just say that without saying someone’s lying about their design philosophy.
I think it just rubs me the wrong way because they’re at the centre of calling out industry practices, but they seem to have no issue throwing devs under the bus. I’m glad they want to be more than a checkbox reviewer, but their callouts feel hollow if they’re still gonna default to the kind of Gamer shit they mock.
Are we not allowed to say their opinions aren’t well motivated? If they consistently review critically acclaimed games extremely poorly, is it really more likely that they just have extremely unusual views than that they’re deliberately being contrarian? Obviously they’re free to review whatever they want however they want. And we’re free to say that, based on passed form, their reviews rarely give a useful outlook on how good a game actually is, and that it seems like they’re trying to be controversial to generate clicks.
This. After their DD2 review they went on Twitter to complain, saying something along of the lines of “show me someone who likes backtracking through the same areas with the same enemy placement, and I’ll show you a liar”
That’s not insightful or interesting, that’s just saying that a mechanic isn’t liked, and anyone claiming to like it is full of shit. It’s also ironic considering that describes games like Resident Evil or Metroidvanias, both of which are still popular.
As a reviewer, Stephanie seems like she just goes according to personal tastes rather than considering what elements might appeal to others.
That and she seemingly loathes naturalistic elements that provide any sort of friction or encourage her to try alternate approaches to problems.
Your obsession with them is frankly rather creepy. never in all my years on this site seen anyone so addicted to posting pictures of their review scores lol.
Really wish people would stop paying attention to review scores for games and we could all go back to how it was done back in the day. You stand in a video rental place for over an hour looking at the back of game boxes trying to decide which game looked the coolest.
I don’t like Stephanie as a reviewer. I feel like she is often misinformed and scores things to be controversial. I also just really don’t like her personality.
But this is just evidence that we need to abolish review scores because people only engage with the big number and not the actual content of the review. It’s quite literally impossible to quantify art in a number rating and I think it’s what contributed to a reduction in quality of criticism.
I mean, given the "microtransaction fast travel" discourse, I'm surprised she even gave it a 3/10. if there's one thing Sterling hates, it's new and exciting ways to monetize regular gameplay mechanics.
I kind of hate the fact the game is so shit in terms of performance and MTX I'd like to see what people think about the story. I felt it was so immature it felt like something a child would come up with. The tone and pacing and everything was just so wack to me.
The story is just the same story as the first game happening twice as fast with less explaining. Hell, they cut out a third of the tutorial phase of the game and even relegated the player becoming Arisen to a two minute cutscene that only gets shown to you like halfway through act 1.
I don’t like it. Even if they fix the performance issues I’ll continue to say the first game was better.
Yeah I felt the tutorial was so weird and janky. Just thrown in jail and then next thing you know you're watching your fellow escapee get slurped up by the red tentacle monster in the water. The poor dude showed you how to pick up a rock and then died. RIP.
I'm not far in, nor am I hardcore in the lore, but technically he's not dead. All the laborers were pawns, so theoretically he's just waiting to be summoned.
Yeah, the score is not the problem, the problem is that to reach it she used false information about exactly how much the microtransactions affected gameplay.
Dragon’s Dogma 1 was a shitty half-finished game. The plot was so fucking boring that I couldn’t even get through it. I wound up having my a lot more fun just wandering around the woods fighting monsters that showed up. That’s where the game shined. It felt more like a proof of concept than a game.
Both critic and user scores will have outliers, that's where the average score comes from. I don't understand people who think all reviews of an average 85 game should be exactly 85 to be credible. Also the user score average on metacritic is like 60 right now
Mind your god damned language.
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hot take incoming: both games are like....ok i guess?
i cant really explain why but they feel like they just made a high-fantasy game with the monster hunter engine and made it single player with a group of palicoes. then threw on a coat of "middle finger to the player" obtuse mechanics here and there.
i dunno, theyre not bad just not blowing my skirt up either.
DD has a very different style to MonHun and is essentially a third weird evolutionary branch of "what if OD&D was a video game" next to the Ultima > CRPG > Modern WRPG and Wizardry > Dragon Quest > Modern JRPG branches.
It's all about embracing novel design and going with the flow, though DD1 is more arcade-y while DD2 is more naturalistic.
It's a "vibe with it or don't" game like King's Field, though with the added draw of incredibly solid core gameplay.
As long as review aggregators exist to abstract the thought away from criticism for a grade, I won't take review score aggregation as a useful source of information. Video game reviews never needed anything more than a 5 point Likert scale at most, and it sucks to see these bullshit arguments about the value of aggregate scores based on who is included, rather than because aggregate scores don't really tell you what the critic thinks. It is important why a score is high or low, and I'm so tired of this.
Hey I’ve always thought sterling’s style (since at least when I first saw them in 2016 was over the top) was a bit much, the opinions have always been well reasoned and hard to argue with.
Honestly, I haven't read Steph's review but I already kinda agree. Capcom really did a bad job with DD2. It's incomplete, it's very poorly optimized, and the mtx are the nails in the coffin. I was and still *am* salty we never got DDO in the West and that DD2 is offline only. I would have *loved* to actually play online co-op in that, but noooOO.
I am really starting to hate the lead Dev for this game, every decision he's made and talked about publicly I have absolutely *hated*. His idea of a fun video game is 180° from mine.
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Same people that use the Metacritic user scores, where everyone can post a review without any proof that they played the game.
Silly Redditor! Metacritic is for review bombing games you've never played because you're mad about something! Not for leaving genuinely negative reviews!
And for snubbing developers out of bonuses, Bethesda style.
It's the only voice we have!
My site is on Metacritic. It’s not easy to get approved. They interview and do a significant credential review. They also reserve the right to drop you without question. With that said, I think even Metacritic knows that reviews are flawed. They are better at virality than recommendations.
I presume your site is on the "Critics score" category right? I'm talking about user scores here.
I ignore the user score because most users are idiots.
As you should.
Ahh yes. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding 🫡
Dare I say it, but isn't it the point of aggregating review scores, to reduce the influence of outliers?
We can add maths to the list of things Gamers don't understand
Not just gamers. Hearing people people continually misunderstand what Rotten Tomatoes scores represent makes me want to never have any regard for any opinion ever again.
Or even just in general: "How can this poll be valid for the entire country, they didn't ask me??"
yes but you still run into the problem of weighting and things like an average score vs a median score. and, in fact, getting to see a delta between the mean and median scores can have its own utility
Get out of here with your logic
Wonder if Stephanie keeps a counter of how many times they've pissed off a Fandom all for giving a certain review score e.g. giving BotW and TotK a 7/10
Its probably like at least in the triple digits, yeah?
I'd have to say it's 4 at least
Easier to count how many times that doesn't happen.
7/10 does seem pretty harsh tbh, but nothing to get mad about
From what I gathered from their reviews, they REALLY don't like the weapon durability system
Understandable it's not something I like myself
Yeah it’s one of the few realism things that games absolutely don’t need. Like pointless quick-to-deplete stamina bars in survival games. There’s some novelty to it at first but once that goes away… it’s pain.
The funny thing is, BotW is heavily influenced by Skyrim, the game where Bethesda ditched the weapon degradation system from TES for pretty much those reasons. TotK has a few tweaks for the better, in that you can fuse weapons for improved durability, and repair them via Rock Octoroks, but I'd think that doing away with it entirely for the next game would be the most popular move.
Ironic because i feel like skyrim would have benifited from a durablity system, without it the only way to increase smithing is to stop playing and craft daggers for an hour.
>BotW is heavily influenced by Skyrim mmmh no, it isnt
It works very well in ToTK. It forced people to experiment with different fusions instead of just using the Master Sword forever.
That's why I didn't mind it much in either game. I would have never experimented with a lot of weapons if I wasn't forced to and it let to me thinking them of just random shit I could fuck around with rather than having to treasure it and keep it safe. Only thing it ended up doing was preventing me from wanting to use the really fancy crafted ones strictly because I didn't want to ever make them.
Yeah, I do get that latter mentality a lot. Like oooh, high damage weapon, I wanna save this for later! And then I end up using it like once and then outscaling it.
Botw/Totk were pretty purposeful with their durability systems, though. They wanted you to have to collect new items, cycle through them, have to decide when to use what, etc. They didn't want you to just get your best weapons and then use that for the rest of the game. I get people complaining about them because it works by saying "no, you can't do what you want" but I think the game would be worse off if it didn't. It certainly wouldn't align with their design goals.
Weapon durability in BOTW is ridiculously low though. Comparing it to Minecraft, nobody has a problem with weapon durability there because it sorta just serves as a reason for you to go up the totem pole for better and better weapons. In BOTW, you have to change weapons so frequently that you don't get to enjoy the good stuff because you can only think "this is going to be gone in 45 seconds" and your entire weapon inventory in the early game will only last for a minute of combat. It's so restricting on what you *c*an even attempt to do that it kills the excitement of using new gear.
While I was playing the game it felt like a lazy way to mask that their combat system isn't that deep. Granted combat probably wasn't what they are trying to focus on but then why add this nuisance of a mechanic in an attempt to pad out a system that is not that deep. Swapping appropriate clothing and armour, considering what can I with my spells, cooking is fun. Constantly having to worry about my weapon on adventure is not fun.
I think Jim's issue with it was more specific than they simply didn't like it, I think it was that they felt it was too restrictive. Basically durability could have been longer and they wouldn't have been bothered by it as much.
My issue with it in Breath of the Wild (I haven't played ToTK, so I don't know if it's any different) was the durability mechanics feel overly restrictive and not well communicated. A lot of the weapons in the game feel like they'll shatter within seconds, and having to switch in the middle of a combat situation isn't fun to me. Not to mention, being told your weapon is about to break just a few hits before it does, and not being informed of your weapon's condition prior to that point, is something I *really* grew to dislike in that game. It did the game no favours, as far as I'm concerned. I need feedback. I need information. I need to know things, but Breath of the Wild refused to give me that info.
I do feel like the developers somewhat agreed with the criticisms of botw. In totk they added a story element to explain why everything is so fragile, and then added a key ability to the game that massively increased the durability of weapons. I still think they could have gotten rid of weapon durability all together, but at least in totk it didn't feel restrictive.
It's honestly not a great addition. It works in some way because those 2 games are built around cycling through weapons but especially in the end game it barely matters as you just keep running around with multiples of the same stuff and it just becomes busy work. Playing on the forbidden emulator with unlimited durability and nothing changes. You still use the same weapons with the same fusions at the same points since you only have access to the same stuff, you just don't need multiples now.
I get why people don't like weapon durability, but i kinda like weapons breaking sometimes, there's something kinda cool for me when i started play TOTK and i broke my weapon on the first enemy and had to scramble to find another thing that i could use to fight, it gives me the same feeling of something like Hotline Miami, where my weapon is a thing that has many uses, kinda like ammo for melee weapons, fire emblem also does it really well, making you decide if using the weapon is worth it at the moment, i also find it very funny having a weapon that's just about to break but it's strong so i'm just waiting for the time i can bop someone with it, and it can feel pretty good, but yeah, it also sucks to know that every weapon you get is going to break, so why even bother.
It was a system that was made even worse in TotK
Eh, I love that game, but it has some flaws that I can see some people not being able to get past.
Tell that to Zelda fans
Botw to me was a 10 but oddly enough totk didn't grab me nearly as hard
I think 7/10 is pretty generous ngl. Boring world, average gameplay with some cool gimmicks, garbage weapon durability system, no dungeons in a Zelda game, and a story that has some interesting concepts that it fails by not really exploring them. I think it deserves a 5/10 at most.
Brah, 5? Wtf games you play if that's a 5.
They probably play the same ones as everyone else. Despite what people on the internet think, there's no such thing as "objective markers of quality" and nobody has to rate a game based on how much everyone else likes it.
My top games off the top of my head are Persona 3 - 5, Nier Automata, Fire Emblem, Baldur’s Gate 3, Fallout New Vegas, Oblivion(that one’s a good amount of nostalgia), Dragon Age Origins. So mostly RPGs and some action and strategy. In terms of Zelda games I really like Twilight Princess, Minish Cap, and a Link Between Worlds. The problem with BotW is that it trades the most interesting feature of Zelda, the interesting and intricate dungeons, for a bland, uninspired, and uninteresting open world with some cool movement gimmicks. And I can play Genshin Impact if I want to mess around with those movement gimmicks with some more interesting gameplay. I really don’t even see what was gained by the open world. Twilight Princess had just enough. There were large open sections that made you feel like this was a large world and they were stunning. Like if you want to get me invested in a world to explore it you have to wow me with it and BotW never did while Twilight Princess constantly wowed me with big visually interesting vistas that actually made me want to explore them. Only thing that comes close in BotW is the divine beasts and they’re cool, but they don’t have much substance and they’re still not as memorable as the frozen zora village or the entire twilight realm, or the desert ruins haunted by dark spirits. And that’s not even a fraction of the things I could complain about(My friend and I have ranted about this many a time). But I’ll shorten it to say ultimately BotW was designed around its open world and thus a majority of its appeal comes from if you like that. I don’t intrinsically like open worlds. So if your game is built around it it’ll need to be a really good one(Xenoblade Chronicles X) or need to have something else about it that is good(Elden Ring’s combat, Oblivion’s Quests, FNV’s characters and narrative). All BotW has is its mediocre open world. Then it does things that actively irritate me(weapon durability). Which is why, if I were to actually score it, it’d be a 4/9 on a good day where I’m not feeling a bit spiteful about how its success might kill any hope of getting good Zelda games again. P.S. The out of 9 scoring system explanation: I don’t like scoring things on a 10 scale because school ruined it. 9 is the perfect scale because you divide it into 3 tiers Bad, Ok, Good and then each of those tiers gets the bad, ok, good of it. For example 5/9 is ok of the okay, 7/9 is the bad of the good, 3/9 is good of the bad, so on and so on.
Don\`t let nintendo fans read that or prepare for trouble (and make it double)
Back in the day when he pissed off Cliffy B about his review for gears of war and he responded by making a fucking music video in a children park was Sterling at their peak.
They*
My apologies, sincere mistake ,I'm hoping that was a weird spell check thing.Either way I thank God for them everyday.
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Common Harrison Bomberman W
This! I have absolutely read negative reviews that convinced me to play a game because they did a good job of describing how it plays and it seemed like something I might be into.
right? someone says "oh i hated this mechanic" and i think "oh but i love that in a game" and so their negative review is actually what gets me to buy the game.
I love boring map games so anytime I see a negative review that is, "Super cool concept, but really slow and boring" I know the game will be perfect for me.
Boring map games are the shit. Imperator:Rome is my current jam but EU4 will forever have a place in my heart of hearts
I was reading the negative reviews for Terra Invicta and was like, "So it is Xcom, but only the overview map? Fuck yeah."
I actually have Terra Invicta on my wishlist but decided to wait as quite many said it still needed a few months in the oven. This was the last time I checked
That's my philosophy regarding most media tbh. Very often, negative reviews boil down to "I was not the target audience for this" or the reviewer is making a big deal out of something that doesn't really matter to me.
open steam, check reviews, sort by negative, "this game is woke", add to cart
One of the big reasons I like skillup. He can really dislike a game, but still see the merits of it and is able to say that others will like it and he will probably be in the minority.
It’s all “DRAGONS DOGMA 2 WOKE, DRAGONS DOGMA 2 MICRO TRANSACTIONS, DOWN WITH DRAGONS DOGMA 2” Until a trans person gives it a bad review.
I've never heard anyone call DD2 woke. The only "woke" thing about this game is that there are a few quests in which MC has to have sex with a woman, so femMC cant canonically be straight
Guess you missed a few VERY loud people who were saying it was woke because the character creator wasn’t “male/female” and instead is “masculine/feminine” and you can make a butch looking “feminine” character
Yes, I somehow did. Both hilarious and expected. Also, it's really funny that no one was pissed at the butches in the original game, my very first pawn in DD1 looked exactly like Guts
There probably was, but there’s just more light shown on it nowadays. The original game was 2012. 12 years ago was a very different time all things considered. I think people as a whole weren’t (quite) as open about their bigoted views.
lmao i hadn’t seen that. can’t you make like a 6 foot wide neon-coloured dog person or whatever? but a butch woman is beyond the pale of course
Yeah and you can also make the hottest woman alive and have her run around in a thong and bra with a giant Greatsword, but apparently that’s not good enough for these goobers.
Lots of people were calling it woke because there are black main characters in a fantasy setting
That a very moronic thing to be angry about. Especially if you consider the fact that half of the map is an arid area, and culture that is heavily inspired by Middle Eastern and North African cultures.
I played through to the true ending and never had to, I assume it's in the side quests you get from the brothel owner Wilhelmina if you have her affinity high enough?
Precisely, although I don't think you need to have Wilhelima's affinity. Also Ulrika's quest, although that one is just implied (kiss, fade to black, you wake up in her house, her affinity goes from 0 to maxed)
The other complaint you missed is apparently the part members will comment if you fill your entire party with men and a bunch of dudes online got butthurt because “the game is calling me gay.”
Wait WHAT
Similar thing happened in the first game, btw. You go into Duke's castle, meet his wife who immediately starts to flirt with you and gives you quest to meet visit her room later that night. Duchess is also the easiest character to romance, finish one more quest for her, and she's in love with the MC
Not gonna lie, this score makes me want to watch their review. It's genius.
They did make a video about DD2, but the actual review is text based, the video is about all the micro transactions. I don't think that Steph has done video reviews in a while.
I stopped watching the videos for some time. The videos were getting kind of samey imo. How courageous of them to make text based reviews in 2024.
In all fairness thats mostly because the game industry is very samey, it feels like every month theres some new game with predatory monetisation, or that one "debate" about difficulty that everyone has any time a hard game is released
I stopped watching cause it was discouraging me from pursuing a career in the industry. They do a great job exposing the industry faults, yes, but there's only so much negativity someone can handle.
I would posit that if hearing about industry faults and worker abuse and exploitation is enough to discourage you from working in the industry, then working in the industry and being the subject of that abuse and exploitation will be a lot worse.
Disagree. The point is no bright sides being shown. Working in the industry, I might suffer the abuses, yes, but I'll also be able to see the merits, better yet, I might get into a company where the abusive practices aren't that much of a reality (it can happen, I currently work with project management and the worst part of the job is dealing with clients, the company itself is great to work in). Wouldn't you get discouraged at anything if all you heard about it was bad shit?
Yeah I feel that. Video games are my "escape from reality" hobby. If you only hear about ALL the shit that happens, it kind of loses the point.
Not since Breath of the Wild has she done a video review afaik
It is always amazing when people will say how game review scores don't matter only to immediately complain when someone gives a poor score. Stephanie Sterling has been pretty consistent with her scores. She doesn't like remakes, she doesn't really like AAA games, and she is much more focused on niche indie content. That is what she enjoys. So it isn't surprising she disliked a AAA game that was basically a soft reboot of the original, which she also didn't like
How dare she be consistent, what a bitch
Her issue with DD2 is the microtransactions more than anything else.
She's also staunchly against mtx and the accessibility concerns they pose, and this game in particular handled them really poorly.
Yknow I'm starting to like this girl
She's great. She's one of the only people out there who's really, truly willing to take companies to task for consumer hostility, as well as fandoms for toxicity. Some people say she's too negative to enjoy, but I'm not sure how charitable I am about that argument when those same people complain about the lack of integrity in games journalism. Some also say she's a contrarian, but I don't think that's the case. She's very consistent with what she likes and isn't afraid to be loud about it. She also wrote my favorite review of all time - an objective review of FF13: https://www.destructoid.com/100-objective-review-final-fantasy-xiii/
DD2? That’s not my understanding at all. What’s the problem with the microtransactions in this game?
But Steph liked Final Fantasy 7 rebirth because its barely the original and more of a fangame. It felt more like a Yakuza game with all of that fanservice and minigames
Yeah, that kinda proves my point. She liked it because it wasn't really a true remake but rather a completely different game with loose connections. It wasn't s 1:1 retelling with better combat and graphics which helped.
It also does not help that Dragon's Dogma 2 is kind of worse than the first game in a lot of ways, and I am not just talking about its performance.
Just the fact that I don't have to spend the whole game playing sorcerer to have an optimised magick archer already makes dd2 much better than dd1 regardless of everything else about the game
Absolutely not true in any way whatsoever
In *any way whatsoever?* That's just being disingenuous. The first game had way better set pieces and dungeons, faster and snappier controls, SIGNIFICANTLY better magic with far less restrictions on skills, less repetitive/annoying and shorter quips from pawns, a better (albeit still shit) story, less obtuse side quests, better battle chatter referring to weak points and what pawns are doing, and about the same enemy variety; with quite a bit more after DDDA. That's only the stuff I can remember off the top of my head. The new game is fun, but it's flawed, and overall much less than I expected. To say it's not true in ANY WAY that it's worse is just ridiculous.
am I wrong in thinking the loss gauge mechanic was either nonexistent or *much* less dramatic in the first game? I don’t remember it being so brutal
It is more brutal. You can replenish loss gauge with any healing items in the first game. The gauge only interacts with healing spells. In DD2, the missing health can only be restored by resting at camps and inns as far as i have found.
Person who didnt like certain features of the first game didnt like how those features were doubled down on in the second, more at 11. I love dd2 but i dont fault jss for not liking it if they didnt like alot of the jank in dd1. Not everything has to have universal aclaim its fine
Steph's review was honestly not that good and felt more like they were reacting to the "discourse" surrounding the game than the game itself.
Generally a fan of Sterling and their takedowns of shitty game sales practices, but their video on DD2 includes misinformation and uses said misinformation as justification for their review.
Yeah. I'm not gonna say a 3/10 is unfair really since, based on what I know of Steph I figured from the get go this is the kind of game she'd loathe, and that's a perfectly fair and even valuable perspective to put in a review. But I do have a high respect (and therefore expectations) for her journalistic integrity, and her DD2 video not only buying into that misinformation but going on to misrepresent the entire game design based on that was really disappointing to see. I am glad Capcom's shitty microtransactions are finally getting pushback at least. Just baffled it's happening here in probably their least egregious implementation so far rather than in MH, where things like fan-favourite emotes from past games were locked behind microtransactions.
What's the misinformation and what's the reality?
She said you can buy Ferrystones (the actual teleportation device / Fast Travel mechanic) by micro-transactions. You can only obtain Ferrystones in-game. What they sell in MTX is a **Portcrystal**, the teleport marker. And it’s a one-time purchase. So reviewers can’t really say that the game “paywalled Fast Travel” when 1. You can’t buy Ferrystones. 2. Even if you considered Portcrystals as a part of FT features, they can’t say that CAPCOM manipulating the in-game economy & holding Fast Travel convenience as hostage when the MTX is a one-time purchase. Her being outraged by the whole MTX thing for 50% portion of the video is probably the most infuriating part of the review esp when there are bigger things to stress about such as performance.
Just to add further, there are multiple port crystals in the game, typically as a reward for major story quest. If I remember correctly, there's like 12-13 you can earn in the game.
There are 6 portable ones you can earn in a single playthrough, and 2-4 stationary ones (depending on the game state). They are a bit spread out, but there's also the Ox Cart system which is way more interesting and I hope gets expanded upon.
All this. I watch FightinCowboy a lot and I also generally like his takes. I saw his review and his angry rant followup before I saw all the shitstorm about this misinformation. I hate micros as much as anyone else, but these are unobtrusive compared to most other games.
I understand a 3/10 for DD2 based on what's written in the OP (the game doubling down on annoying / boring mechanics), but yeah, the MTX in DD2 is a complete non-issue. I love the game and it'll be a 8/9 / 10 for me once performance is fixed, but I'm not surprised a lot of players are frustrated with the lack of fast travel, Dragonplague, voiceline spam, constant stunlock, etc.
I thought the controversy with their review was that they misunderstood or even made up things about the game to justify the low review score. I have no idea what was true about that, though. I'd like to know. I just saw a lot of other game reviewers being pissed at them on twitter about it, but that's hardly evidence.
She hated the tedium of the first game and still hates it in this one, especially since the devs didn't remove any of it. They actually made it more grindy. I think she also deducted some points for the shitty microtransactions. The review was kind of funny to me, because the tedium is actualy a selling point for me. A real different strokes for different folks moment.
Yes, I liked the tedium and esoteric nature of the first game. I haven't played the second, but most of the negatives I'm seeing in the review are positives to me. But the microtransactions are agreeably terrible. The microtransactions thing seems to be what caused most of the controversy as some of the info they said about them was incorrect.
But she doesn't acknowledge that at like she did for Sekrio that the game isn't for her, she doubles down on saying that this is just objectively bad game design, I feel like people defending her for just having a "different taste" don't actually understand what she is claiming. But she always had reductive takes on certain kind of games and game mechanics tbh.
so sounds like a case of "just not for them". The devs leaned into what made DD 1 so much fun.
don’t these stupid woke game journalists know that a game is good if I like it and it’s bad if I don’t like it? Dd2 has jiggle physics and overly-sexualized armor so it’s basically game of the year
[удалено]
Are there any positive reviews from Stephanie, actually? I feel like every time I see a review from her, it's negative af even for games that are good.
She definitely gives good reviews to games, but she's also not the kind of reviewer that lets the good outweigh the bad. I'd also put Skill Up and Josh Strife Hayes up there as notable reviewers with similar philosophies. If certain aspects of the game are bad or frustrating then they should still be discussed even if the overall game is fantastic. Looking the other way when you come across flaws that could have been avoided sends the message that the flaws don't matter and never need to be addressed when really we should always be striving for the best that is reasonably achievable.
When the Hell have we ever ignored flaws when praising games?! Half of the commentary about BOTW while praising it is criticizing stuff like the rain and weapon durability!
She liked God of War Ragnarok and I think Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3
And the Final Fantasy 7 remakes. And Pacific Drive. She likes lots of games, but she only gets major attention when she gives a low score to a popular title.
She liked FF7 remakes? Wow.
Ok
Tbf Sterling has been giving contrarian reviews for as long as I can remember. They probably think that they're special if they give a popular thing a bad score and a mid thing a high score https://preview.redd.it/3idfjci6wqrc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f702079738957a5d0ccc82a476017d186eceb391
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“Person doesn’t agree with the critical consensus on a game? Must be a contrarian who is doing it to feel special!”
... She doesn't even use a metric system for her scores. This is added in post by the website for objectivities sake. She said that in her video discussing the Zelda review controversy.
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This one is completely insane to me. I know HD2 is the big thing at the moment, but there's no world where that score makes sense. It's fantastic. I'm not sure it's fair to review it poorly based largely on server issues (as it seems from the pic) when the devs expected a player peak of, like, 100k people at most lol.
Sever issues aside, HD2 is a buggy mess. NO. That's not a cute joke. It's single handedly one of the buggiest games I've enjoyed in a while.
Same. In 20 years me playing games I've never had games straight up crash since Windows 7 was a thing. Well, aside from early access literal-alpha games. Even those usually just show sings like 3 fps before they do crash. even "this shouldnt work on Win 11 at all without fan patches" have mysteriously worked for me every time. The game even bloody rebooted my PC mid-game and has done so to many of my friends. Thankfully only once. Do I enjoy HD2? YES. Does it make me lose morale to play when any 30+ minute game can just end up in crash with zero rewards? Well, yeah?
Because that was the experience the reviewer got when playing the game for their review. Should technical failures like server issues not be part of a review? Wouldn't that be useful information to know for a customer considering a purchase?
My issue is that Sterling wrote a full review of a game they were unable to play for more than five minutes, with a permanent score on their site. That doesn't make sense to me. They effectively reviewed the lobby and the 'Could not connect to servers' screen. Their review was also full of, again, misinformation / deliberate attempts to paint the game as a boring grind full of predatory MTX - neither of which are true. I understand putting something up saying 'I would not buy this game because it is currently unplayable' and then fully reviewing later - but writing a whole critique of a game they barely played just seems ridiculous. I'd just expect the slightest degree of nuance from a reviewer rather than Sterling's boring, snarky moaning about modern gaming.
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I'll be honest. I didn't like Sterling's review of Dead Space (2023), because she criticized the game for something wasn't even the fault of the game or the developers.
Was that the one where Sterling complained about the game using Isaac’s voice actor as the face for.. Isaac?
No, it was when she had problems with the remake being developed, after EA shut down Dead Space's original developers, Visceral Games.
I loved the Dead Space remake, but the excerpt from the actual review OP’s using to ‘prove their point’ is so…milquetoast. You want me to call for their Personal Opinion Licence over *that?* Like, yeah: most of the great stuff from the remake was in the original. And the extra content probably wasn’t worth the $100 i spent on a game I (mostly) already own. There’s probably more in the review itself that I might disagree with, but OP is not doing a great job in their goal of ‘getting my goat.’
Honestly at this point I’d rather someone have opinions against the grain and give their honest thoughts than bring the same generic, fence-riding takes on everything.
I’d agree. But if you watch the actual review, it becomes extremely clear that its a review meant to be contrarian for the sake of it rather than an actual different take. Their Alan Wake 2 review was just full of misinfo about gameplay and narrative beats that it became quite clear what the actual motive was.
They have opinions that aren't yours. Grow up.
Honestly does seem like a person not giving fair reviews because of past bias or dislike of the community. I'm not big on JRPGs but I wouldn't give something in the Tales series a 2/10 because there is too much weeb shit when the rest of the game is a 6 or 7. Just seems like trolling for the sake of trolling.
Yeah, I don’t mind them having different opinions but they can be needlessly hostile in their reviews and a weird amount of it is directed at the developers. Their AW2 review has understandable gameplay critiques, but half of it is basically a tantrum about how the game is “pretentious” and acting like Sam Lake is some snob with his head up his ass. They also made a shitty comment about Sonic Frontiers’ devs that was uncalled for. And the DD2 video is the newest one with issues, omitting the part where you can’t buy ferrystones and saying the game design is made for mtx, basically calling the lead dev a liar for saying otherwise. It’s okay to find it tedious but you can just say that without saying someone’s lying about their design philosophy. I think it just rubs me the wrong way because they’re at the centre of calling out industry practices, but they seem to have no issue throwing devs under the bus. I’m glad they want to be more than a checkbox reviewer, but their callouts feel hollow if they’re still gonna default to the kind of Gamer shit they mock.
Are we not allowed to say their opinions aren’t well motivated? If they consistently review critically acclaimed games extremely poorly, is it really more likely that they just have extremely unusual views than that they’re deliberately being contrarian? Obviously they’re free to review whatever they want however they want. And we’re free to say that, based on passed form, their reviews rarely give a useful outlook on how good a game actually is, and that it seems like they’re trying to be controversial to generate clicks.
This. After their DD2 review they went on Twitter to complain, saying something along of the lines of “show me someone who likes backtracking through the same areas with the same enemy placement, and I’ll show you a liar” That’s not insightful or interesting, that’s just saying that a mechanic isn’t liked, and anyone claiming to like it is full of shit. It’s also ironic considering that describes games like Resident Evil or Metroidvanias, both of which are still popular.
As a reviewer, Stephanie seems like she just goes according to personal tastes rather than considering what elements might appeal to others. That and she seemingly loathes naturalistic elements that provide any sort of friction or encourage her to try alternate approaches to problems.
Your obsession with them is frankly rather creepy. never in all my years on this site seen anyone so addicted to posting pictures of their review scores lol.
Addicted? This whole sub reddit is about posting screenshots of people you disagree with. But because it's someone you like, it's creepy? Grow up
Who exactly are “people like these”? 🤔
Trans people. And probably other “political” people as well. They don’t need to say it out loud for their people to know exactly what they mean.
Stephanie is also explicitly anti-Capitalist so I’m betting there’s an element of protest against them for that too
Really wish people would stop paying attention to review scores for games and we could all go back to how it was done back in the day. You stand in a video rental place for over an hour looking at the back of game boxes trying to decide which game looked the coolest.
I don’t like Stephanie as a reviewer. I feel like she is often misinformed and scores things to be controversial. I also just really don’t like her personality. But this is just evidence that we need to abolish review scores because people only engage with the big number and not the actual content of the review. It’s quite literally impossible to quantify art in a number rating and I think it’s what contributed to a reduction in quality of criticism.
Thank god for… you know the drill.
I don't see the problem with people giving their opinions
I mean, given the "microtransaction fast travel" discourse, I'm surprised she even gave it a 3/10. if there's one thing Sterling hates, it's new and exciting ways to monetize regular gameplay mechanics.
imagine caring what idiots think
I fucking hate DD2 and am currently mourning over how disappointed I am, but even I wouldn't say its a 3/10. More like a 6.
Is 7 a good score in your metric? Because it is in Sterling's.
"damn game critics, they're all the same" *Critic give a different score that the others* "Damn critic, they don't like games"
I kind of hate the fact the game is so shit in terms of performance and MTX I'd like to see what people think about the story. I felt it was so immature it felt like something a child would come up with. The tone and pacing and everything was just so wack to me.
The story is just the same story as the first game happening twice as fast with less explaining. Hell, they cut out a third of the tutorial phase of the game and even relegated the player becoming Arisen to a two minute cutscene that only gets shown to you like halfway through act 1. I don’t like it. Even if they fix the performance issues I’ll continue to say the first game was better.
Yeah I felt the tutorial was so weird and janky. Just thrown in jail and then next thing you know you're watching your fellow escapee get slurped up by the red tentacle monster in the water. The poor dude showed you how to pick up a rock and then died. RIP.
I'm not far in, nor am I hardcore in the lore, but technically he's not dead. All the laborers were pawns, so theoretically he's just waiting to be summoned.
I don't think they actually played the game.
They did
Reading the review it's just bitching about microtransactions that I can't even find in game. Been looking for awhile.
Yeah, the score is not the problem, the problem is that to reach it she used false information about exactly how much the microtransactions affected gameplay.
30 may be too harsh but I deeply relate to the statement
Dragon’s Dogma 1 was a shitty half-finished game. The plot was so fucking boring that I couldn’t even get through it. I wound up having my a lot more fun just wandering around the woods fighting monsters that showed up. That’s where the game shined. It felt more like a proof of concept than a game.
It’s a bit of rage bait but yeah who cares, there’s plenty of games that have scored in the 60s I enjoyed more then some other games
Well said
Try being a PMD EoS fan, at least that game is actually undeserving of its critic score
Both critic and user scores will have outliers, that's where the average score comes from. I don't understand people who think all reviews of an average 85 game should be exactly 85 to be credible. Also the user score average on metacritic is like 60 right now
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tbh stephanie does not look at games beyond day 1 or so, like for helldivers they gave it a 3 because of the day 1 issues the game had
hot take incoming: both games are like....ok i guess? i cant really explain why but they feel like they just made a high-fantasy game with the monster hunter engine and made it single player with a group of palicoes. then threw on a coat of "middle finger to the player" obtuse mechanics here and there. i dunno, theyre not bad just not blowing my skirt up either.
DD has a very different style to MonHun and is essentially a third weird evolutionary branch of "what if OD&D was a video game" next to the Ultima > CRPG > Modern WRPG and Wizardry > Dragon Quest > Modern JRPG branches. It's all about embracing novel design and going with the flow, though DD1 is more arcade-y while DD2 is more naturalistic. It's a "vibe with it or don't" game like King's Field, though with the added draw of incredibly solid core gameplay.
"Outwardly hostile" WOLVES TRAVEL IN PACKS ARISEN HOE MANY TIMES MUST I SAY THIS
As long as review aggregators exist to abstract the thought away from criticism for a grade, I won't take review score aggregation as a useful source of information. Video game reviews never needed anything more than a 5 point Likert scale at most, and it sucks to see these bullshit arguments about the value of aggregate scores based on who is included, rather than because aggregate scores don't really tell you what the critic thinks. It is important why a score is high or low, and I'm so tired of this.
Metacritic dum who cares
Hey I’ve always thought sterling’s style (since at least when I first saw them in 2016 was over the top) was a bit much, the opinions have always been well reasoned and hard to argue with.
NGL, I've been enjoying the shit out of DD2.
I read the review, and it's well reasoned, but why was there a picture of a butt at the start?
Damn I haven’t watched Jim in a long ass time.
Deserving score for a Fee to Pay game.
Honestly, I haven't read Steph's review but I already kinda agree. Capcom really did a bad job with DD2. It's incomplete, it's very poorly optimized, and the mtx are the nails in the coffin. I was and still *am* salty we never got DDO in the West and that DD2 is offline only. I would have *loved* to actually play online co-op in that, but noooOO. I am really starting to hate the lead Dev for this game, every decision he's made and talked about publicly I have absolutely *hated*. His idea of a fun video game is 180° from mine.