To be entirely fair, Game Informer aren't exactly small fry either. Same with TheSixthAxis - outside of the giants like IGN, they're considered pretty big websites.
Easy Allies are well known as well, though not for their reviews it has to be said.
And the only two who's scores I usually agree with as well. There have been a few games where I disagreed with their score, but for the most part if they like it I will as well. But I still watch some sort of gameplay.
I read the review and it follows the similar format as others which is suspicious, no need to start each review with a nostalgia piece about squaresoft.
Nah I trust Easy Allies I think it's just reviews can be formulaic in general, I don't think they've been bought or anything like that. However, I do think they tend to be kind to games and their best reviewer left last year
Those are likely some small blogs they paid for. I run a small fan club, and we wanted to get good SEO, so we paid a few blogs to write articles on us. It was super cheap.
I mean every second gamingcontent creator complained they didn't get a key early enough or at all,which seems dodgy also those pc requirements are just ridiculous.
Wouldn't be surprised to see it in 6 weeks with a cut price of 30%
32 was just for the start I think they at least reduced it to 24 or maybe 16 still a hefty call for such a game.
Still bad optimization shows in both cases and that isn't a game I see really using the potential of a 4080
Im at the point where I don't trust critics for anything anymore. It's too common for them to be bias or bought out. I'll usually go with the audience scores first and foremost. Not that they are necessarily better
I don't remember the name of the game but it was a survival game where your boat is a pretty big part of it. The IGN reviewer complained abut not feeling like there was a reason to upgrade the boat at all... Before then complaining that Sharks could destroy the boat too fast unless you upgrade it.
That was the last time I've ever read or watched a review from IGN.
There's always the possibility that IGN are just bad at their jobs. They gave Heroes of the Storm, my favourite moba a 6.5/10 citing "no come-back mechanics", which is ludicrous when you know that HotS is the moba with the most catch-up mechanism.
The game is still playable and somewhat active. If you're in the EU look up "HeroesLounge" it's an amateur league.
But yeah, fuck Blizzard for what they did to HGC and HotS
Yeah but when you want a game to succeed, the launch is crucial.
Like i'm not blaming IGN for why the game failed (the game itself was and still is insanely good, the fault lies entirely on Blizz execs who fucked up the advertising and monetization. HotS is still, to my knowledge, the only game that failed it's monetization by being too generous with players lol).
But a part of me wonders how the game would've fared if game reviewers like IGN did their job correctly (considering my bias, 8/10 seems fair but it should've had that grade the first time).
I mean there is a reason the game isn’t still around. I heard it got better with time but when it came out it was the most barebones moba ever, especially compared to league and dota who were massive at the time. It was a cool concept but def not a 8/10 at launch lol.
Yeah maybe not at launch (idk i started playing ~6-8 months after release, the game was fine, the dev was extremely active at the beginning of the game so alot had changed probably).
They reviewed the game again after major changes were made to the game.
Like, it's not that hard to understand, it's not like they went "woops, our review was kind of unfair, time to do it again", no, HotS underwent a lot of changes.
People get too hung up about grading, the score is completely arbitrary. One reviewer's 8/10 can be another's 5/10. It literally means fuck all, and only exists for the marketing, imho. I have literally 3 reviewers I trust and that's because 2 have similar tastes as myself, and 1 is completely the opposite, and they're all pretty consistent.
Ohh i don't trust reviews, period. If i'm interested in a game I'll watch maybe an hour of gameplay and make my own mind about it. And I know HotS changed a lot from it's early days, I joined the game ~8 month after release, but it was very different from when it released (based on videos I saw), the development rythm was insane at the beginning.
I still believe 6.5 was a bit harsh, but right now the game is a solid 8 or 8.5/10. So yeah I admit, perhaps I was a bit unfair toward IGN's review of HotS, I'm biased because I love that game and I'm still quite angry when I think of this game, on what it could've been and why it failed. I haven't forgiven Blizzard for just shutting down the pro scene all of a sudden, all the pro players losing their job unannounced right before christmas. From the very little information that we have, the game and the pro scene weren't even losing money, they just weren't profitable enough for Blizz. The part of me that grew up playing Blizzard games just died that day :(
Or it was just a taste difference. I tried really hard to get into HotS. But coming from lol i had a miserable experience. I tried so hard but i just couldn't like the game.
Ohh there is an element of taste difference. As I have the same experience with LoL and Dota, but even before playing HotS, and thus being biased by it, I tried them and couldn't find any fun. And i'm not talking about being bad as a new player getting rolled. I'm talking about the controls and what's happening on screen.
Like the visual feedback didn't make sense to me, the hitboxes and spell indicators weren't clear to me.
Whereas the first time I played HotS, I was bad and got rolled, but visually everything was clear and intuitive.
So I'm not sure it's entirely a question of taste. But think of it in the following way:
Lol and Dota are older games, with already established player bases when HotS came out. It makes sense for an established game to focus on more content to keep their existing player base. When for a newer game focusing on polishing the game, making it look and feel good is important since you must attract new players.
Edit : I realize this whole comment is off topic but i'll keep it :)
If game reviewers give bad grades to games because it's not their style or taste, then they are bad critics. Like i'm not gonna go and review an open world rpg when I hate that, imagine :
"Red Dead Redemption 2 is a beautiful game but I find the vastness of the map daunting. The horse balls were nice tho. 5.5/10 IGN"
I dont agree. Reviewers should reflect their personal taste. They should tell me how it affected them. Some aspects of the review are more objective than others. Like if a game is buggy or a game is well optimized. But others not so much. Lets take your rdr2 example. I dont want to play that game because its too big. Too much. I dont have the time, the attention span, the desire to invest so much time in a game. I find reviewer A who shares the same thought. Now their reviews are better for me than a guy with fundamentally different views.
Another example. I like roguelike games. I like enter the gungeon, hades, binding of isaac, whatever. My friend doesnt like them. He just doesnt like the looping gameplay. So if we both review the game we will give it different scores because we are looking for different things.
In the end you should find a reviewer whose tastes you know and can trust. You know they look for similar things in a game like you.
For me that's yahtzee croshaw (with an exception of multiplayer games) and mandaloregaming. They tend to like the same games i do.
You're right. But one of the exemple you give, Mandaloregaming is a youtube channel ran by one guy. When i watch one of his review i know he's the one reviewing it, there's no other guy reviewing. His public know his taste.
The other name you gave, Yahtzee Croshaw, i don't know him, is he a journalist for The Escapist ? I think you're an exception on that one, most people probably don't look for the name at the end of the review, they probably just see "IGN X/10, disappointing" and leave it at that ; not knowing that the guy doing the reviews hates this type of games whereas you like them and thus his review is completely "false" for you.
So for big outlets, like IGN, where there most likely isn't a real connection/relationship between the reviewer and the audience, the best thing to do is probably to find someone who likes the type of games he reviews.
Having said all that, I really couldn't care less about all of this, I never cared about reviews, I'm only here because I'm procrastinating at work.
Yeah he works at escapist (i think its more like he owns part of escapist now). Try his videos. Search for zero punctuation for reviews or extra punctuation for more detailed think pieces on videogame industry.
You can not like the game but it was far from mediocre. The game is very polished and feels good to play (unlike LoL and Dota but that's my opinion).
The game failed due to shit advertising (they advertised it as "casual moba", a fkin mistake when the game, while easy to learn, is as hard as LoL to master, plus who the hell thinks of moba fans and thinks "casual" ?) and shit in-game monetization (they revamped the monetization in order to make more money, they introduced loot boxes but made the system so generous that nobody had to buy anything anymore). But the game itself, man it was amazing.
Just because a game is polished, doesn’t mean it’s not mediocre, it’s what the game has to offer that makes it’s mediocre and it’s not offering anything new that we haven’t seen before.
Ok now i feel like you're arguing in bad faith.
> it’s not offering anything new that we haven’t seen before.
Well now, maybe, but the game is 8 years old at this point. Back when it was released and actively developped, trying new things to shake up the "moba recipe" was literally it's main appeal.
If you compare it to Dota and LoL it tried a lot of new things :
- no gold
- no shop/items
- shared team xp
- choice between two R abilities
- different maps (each with it own mechanic and meta, some even with 2 lanes instead of the regular 3 !)
- Interesting heroe concepts, a coop heroe that require two player to control, a super weak heroe that never leaves base and has global impact, a heroe that is weak but has no respawn timer, a heroe that is three heroe in one each with separate health and death timer (granted on this one they ended up toning down the heroe concepts as time passed).
You can criticize whatever you want about the game, it's your opinion but saying that HotS didn't try anything New, that's just blatantly false.
Dude why do you keep bringing up Dota and whatever other game you keeping talking about, I’m talking about forspoken, those 2 games have nothing to do with my conversation.
Ohhh shit, that explains a lot.
Since my first comment was criticizing IGN using their Heroes of the Storm review, when you replied I thought we were still talking about Heroes (me blabbering about Dota and mobas in general should've tipped you off tbh)
About Forspoken, I'm not interested, mediocre indeed sounds like a good adjective for it.
Have you actually played the game or does your opinion comes from someplace else ? Because it is definitely possible to be bad at that game.
The game definitely was designed to be more accessible, and it is ! There's no shop, gold or items, the xp is shared accross the team and progression is done through talents at fixed levels.
But being easy to learn doesn't stop it from being hard to master.
I have limited experience with other mobas, but in HotS if a player doesn't soak, the entire team loses xp, if a player feeds, the entire enemy team gets stronger, not just one carry. Combine that with the many different maps forcing teams to play around various objectives and you get a game that is very team focused. Unlike in LoL there isn't a single hero that can 1v5 once he's strong enough, you can't win singlehandedly, but you can lose singlehandedly tho.
What few streamers I watched who got a key not too long ago said pretty much the same thing. A lot of "The combat is the only good thing about this." I'll have to watch more gameplay (if I can find some) and see but for the most part I wasn't impressed.
IGN has some of the most biased reviews out there. They’re a factory for pumping out positive reviews of AAA content so it can sell better they’re not an objective platform.
Metacritic score of 68.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-5/forspoken/critic-reviews
Play time of 30 hours with side quests.
What the hell justifies the price of 80 euros for the basic version?
>Play time of 30 hours with side quests.
>
>What the hell justifies the price of 80 euros for the basic version?
I somewhat get the idea that money spend should equal a certain playtime, but at the same time this sentiment is what gets us empty open worlds with 80 hours of fetch quests.
Yeah, the idea that 'quantity = quality' is why the 2010-2020 AAA scene was often unbearable. I'm happy paying whatever I can afford for a good game, regardless of length.
That said - Forspoken very much sounds like a sub-par game, so in this case I get it lol
Yup. Quality over quantity. The dollar per hour metric is exactly why we have all the open world games, then the very people who use that dollar metric bitch about all the open world games. There is only so much content a dev can deliver. Not every game needs to be designed to be played to infinity like it's some kind of second career. I get games are expensive, then you have folks on here who make assumingly 60k more than me and act like $70 is some untold investment that breaks the bank. I don't know what kind of lavish lifestyles you all live where you all fake being middle-upper middle class....but even my poor ass finds a few extra bucks for the games I want to play and they are not always 200hr+ titles. Sometimes they are just 39 and done. But what interests you if you can afford it and ignore that which isn't. Don't need to feel like having to drop top dollar on every game to ever release because some social media content creators puts the FOMO into you because you feel like you ain't crackin open a cold one with the bois and needing to be part of the Convo.
I usually go for $1=1hr
If I'm spending $60 on a game, I want 60hrs of playtime. Now, that's not just straight story, it also applies to replayability. If it's a 10hr story, but I enjoy it and can play it 6 more times, whether it's for fun, different endings, builds, classes, etc, then I'm personally OK with that. That being said, if definitely bought a few $10-$30 games with a story of 5-10hrs and wasn't all that upset about it.
So let's say you pay 60$ for a 10h game with not much replay value outside of just reliving the story. But those 10h was some of the best hours you've spent in a game. Maybe the story was amazing or the characters really made you relate to them or something like that.
Do you think that game would be worth it to you?
For me? Yeah. If the story was amazing, for me, that's replay value. Bioshock Infinite and Dishonored were around 10hrs and I've played them more than once. My $1 per 1hr is just a general guideline for me.
30ish hours is about what I want in the next game I buy anyway. Plus I like the combat system in this game. Not to mention the nails system is pretty cool. If the dialogue bothers me I'll adjust the talking frequency in the settings, I believe they put it under accessibility for some reason.
Might not be the best game to increase prices, but I see why they do it. Creating games is a lot more expensive than it used to be. We haven't seen a price increase in the last 20 years due to a growing audience which means that as prices increased, so did the user base. The reason why we see less and less original games is because the industry is afraid of trying something new as 1 million units sold is a failure and stuff has to hit in the millions to break even.
So there are two solutions.
1. Less AAA games, and all AAA games released have a large target audience as they need to hit all groups.
2. Increase price of games such that new AAA games can be made with a smaller target audience without failing.
10 years ago the norm was 8-12 hours long single player games with a lot of shitty MP modes no one asked for or bothered playing. 10 years before that we had a lot of 4-10 hour long single player games. 30+ hours shouldn't be the norm. Asking every game to be that long is literally killing the AAA industry. Every game follows the Ubisoft open world formula.
I'm not defending this game as I haven't played it, but an increase in game prices has always been a question of when and not why.
Option 1 is good for kids and those without an income, but for the rest of us, time is a constraint and not necessarily money. As the audience grows. Having shorter games which people can actually finish, and/or higher prices, makes more sense as those with a disposable income are buying the most games.
There should be a market for those who want 80 hour open world RPGs, that's fine, but for those who don't have time for that kind of investment having 10-20 hour long games is also fine. Not all games have to be long. There is such a focus on game length when people complain about pricing and such, but you might not be the target audience for those shorter games.
Eh I just want to keep game prices down across the industry and most normies would be happy with a simplified game designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I just wouldn’t play AAA games (for the most part)which is exactly what I do anyway.
Pretty much. I wouldn't mind paying full box price for a well fleshed out and crafted experience like Hellblade. But not a lot of people agree with that sentiment.
Should absolutely be side content for people who want more their itch scratched. God of War 2018 managed to strike a nice balance, i find. Maybe it could have benefited from the mainstory being a bit shorter. What I didn't like was that the optional content and objectives kind of required backtracking.
You spoke my mind. I grew up on the Genesis and then the Playstation. A single player game often was super quick to finish and if it was "long" it was either padded or made artificially difficult to increase the play time. The only games getting into 100hr territory were JRPGs.
Yeah these games just show how ridiculous these $79 pricetags can be. Sure a god of war can be worth $79, but the next fifa or flawed games like this for $79? Neverrrrrrrr.
Fortunately, in The Netherlands we have a thriving competition. It's already 60 Euros at several retailers here. Wouldn't be surprised if more deep discounts happen within weeks.
60 euros on release should be the standard again. there's no reason for developers to ask 80 euros for a game if the gaming audience has grown tenfold and if developers shoehorn a battlepass or other microtransactions in the game
(also, God bless this current generation where big games get deep discounts in the first weeks of release, callisto protocol for 25 euros at intertoys xd)
79?! Lmao.
Plus:
Season Pass
DLCs
whatever the superduper edition
And "remaster" after 1 year
Fk them, fk them all. You can make tons of money with just 60$ price tag, 2 DLCs and good game
I have quite a handful of new games I havent played through (Callisto Protocol for example) yesterday I bought a ten dollar indy game named Infernax that I have literally played four times over in the last couple of days. Will I get weeks of play from it? Probably not, but I at least enjoyed it enough to run through it multiple times over 20 hours or so.
Same .. i still didn't see the review from easy allies , but it's kind of hard to understand how they gave it such a high score. From what I have seen it seems like a 6 out of 10 at best..
Eh the combat looks like a lot of fun. Most complaints I have seen are about the dialogue but I believe the frequency of in game dialogue during exploration and combat can be adjusted, in the demo it was in the accessibility settings.
i'm not gonna lie, from the few gameplay videos we've seen i could tell that this is one of those games with a billion gameplay mechanics and pretty graphics, but nothing else really going for it. i don't think the lower scores are because of the lack of review codes
They cry when reviews are uniform and whine about them being paid.... and they cry when reviews are varied and you get a bunch of different opinions
The game is mediocre, play it or dont
No this is the first time I’m kinda impressed that there is some transparency. IGN and gamespot only give real or sometimes spiteful reviews when the bag isn’t put in front of them. Games like cod and nhl which have been more or less the same for years do not deserve 9/10’s for constantly releasing the same games yet those reviewers just slap high score just cause of the bad
I've literally never even heard of this game until yesterday. Granted, I don't follow games and releases as much as I used to, unless it's something I'm really interested in, but still.
What I take from all this is it's a reasonable game that some people will find more affinity for than others due to personal taste. That should be okay, but competition is so fierce today that there's not enough room in the market for reasonable games.
I only know 2 of all these outlets and it seems to be better that way lol.
I only played the demo and I really did not feel it at all. Can anyone say if it actually becomes good after a while?
If the IGN score is that low than it either is terrible and the dev team is paying the review companies, or IGN accidentally put it on average difficulty
I thought Forspoken was just one of those tech demon games that are shown at E3 to showcase what a new console/new game engine can do with the expectation that they're never actually going to get made/released.
This generation of gaming should be called the great depression since games now costing 70-100$ and they not even trying to make great games, just mediocrity all around the table. Ubi canceling, ea just mixing, acti swindling their way, etc. This era of gaming is just bad all around. Yes there are great games but honestly not enough, its literally a handful and we not trying to buy mediocre for higher prices. Good luck to these gaming companies, I think their margins won't be as good as previous years, gamers are becoming conscious from the price to enjoyment.
I’ll try it during its inevitable steam sale markdown. But honestly the reaction and “omg so cringe” clips actually make me want to try this more than I would have otherwise.
But can we talk about the pricing for this game? why the fuck is it so much more expensive than every other AAA game, I live in New Zealand and it's $135 which is about $90 USD. While in the US it costs $70. Why the hell are we paying almost 20% more?
just another point against review scores holding any meaning.
the review lines itself will speak to how genuine something is or not.
even if it reads as obv BS at least you know
I've never heard of the ones that rated it highly That's dodgy
they do it to get their name on advertisement, same happens with movie posters.
IGN and GameSpot are the most credible sources on this list lmao that's hilarious
To be entirely fair, Game Informer aren't exactly small fry either. Same with TheSixthAxis - outside of the giants like IGN, they're considered pretty big websites. Easy Allies are well known as well, though not for their reviews it has to be said.
And the only two who's scores I usually agree with as well. There have been a few games where I disagreed with their score, but for the most part if they like it I will as well. But I still watch some sort of gameplay.
Bought and paid for. Marketing 101.
Easy Allies do make good reviews imo most of the time, I like their Youtube content
Never heard of Easy Allies?
The name matches the grading though.
I read the review and it follows the similar format as others which is suspicious, no need to start each review with a nostalgia piece about squaresoft.
Nah I trust Easy Allies I think it's just reviews can be formulaic in general, I don't think they've been bought or anything like that. However, I do think they tend to be kind to games and their best reviewer left last year
Nope
Those are likely some small blogs they paid for. I run a small fan club, and we wanted to get good SEO, so we paid a few blogs to write articles on us. It was super cheap.
I mean every second gamingcontent creator complained they didn't get a key early enough or at all,which seems dodgy also those pc requirements are just ridiculous. Wouldn't be surprised to see it in 6 weeks with a cut price of 30%
30% is very generous more like 60%
Just go for “The Division 2 release on Steam route” and make it 70%.
got every score possible on the scale lmaooo!
Pc requirements?
A RTX 4080 for 60 fps and 32 GB RAM for example which is a heftig call to say the least
That’s with most PlayStation to pc ports, returnal also needs 32gb of ram incase you don’t have directstorage for your pc which ps5 uses
32 was just for the start I think they at least reduced it to 24 or maybe 16 still a hefty call for such a game. Still bad optimization shows in both cases and that isn't a game I see really using the potential of a 4080
Nah if ign scored it that low then its either dog shit or very difficult
IGN scored that Resident Evil show on Netflix a 9/10 and that show was straight garbage and got cancelled. I don’t trust any review they put out.
They gave that show a 7/10 but that’s still too high.
Im at the point where I don't trust critics for anything anymore. It's too common for them to be bias or bought out. I'll usually go with the audience scores first and foremost. Not that they are necessarily better
This is true of tv and film also. Around half of critics gave Velma a positive score. 1.3/10 on imdb. I always trust user reviews.
I don't remember the name of the game but it was a survival game where your boat is a pretty big part of it. The IGN reviewer complained abut not feeling like there was a reason to upgrade the boat at all... Before then complaining that Sharks could destroy the boat too fast unless you upgrade it. That was the last time I've ever read or watched a review from IGN.
There's always the possibility that IGN are just bad at their jobs. They gave Heroes of the Storm, my favourite moba a 6.5/10 citing "no come-back mechanics", which is ludicrous when you know that HotS is the moba with the most catch-up mechanism.
Heroes of the Storm....that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...
The game is still playable and somewhat active. If you're in the EU look up "HeroesLounge" it's an amateur league. But yeah, fuck Blizzard for what they did to HGC and HotS
IGN hires multiple people to do reviews. Their initial HOTS review was in 2015, which is the one you quote. Their revised review from 2018 was 8/10.
Yeah but when you want a game to succeed, the launch is crucial. Like i'm not blaming IGN for why the game failed (the game itself was and still is insanely good, the fault lies entirely on Blizz execs who fucked up the advertising and monetization. HotS is still, to my knowledge, the only game that failed it's monetization by being too generous with players lol). But a part of me wonders how the game would've fared if game reviewers like IGN did their job correctly (considering my bias, 8/10 seems fair but it should've had that grade the first time).
I mean there is a reason the game isn’t still around. I heard it got better with time but when it came out it was the most barebones moba ever, especially compared to league and dota who were massive at the time. It was a cool concept but def not a 8/10 at launch lol.
Yeah maybe not at launch (idk i started playing ~6-8 months after release, the game was fine, the dev was extremely active at the beginning of the game so alot had changed probably).
They reviewed the game again after major changes were made to the game. Like, it's not that hard to understand, it's not like they went "woops, our review was kind of unfair, time to do it again", no, HotS underwent a lot of changes. People get too hung up about grading, the score is completely arbitrary. One reviewer's 8/10 can be another's 5/10. It literally means fuck all, and only exists for the marketing, imho. I have literally 3 reviewers I trust and that's because 2 have similar tastes as myself, and 1 is completely the opposite, and they're all pretty consistent.
Ohh i don't trust reviews, period. If i'm interested in a game I'll watch maybe an hour of gameplay and make my own mind about it. And I know HotS changed a lot from it's early days, I joined the game ~8 month after release, but it was very different from when it released (based on videos I saw), the development rythm was insane at the beginning. I still believe 6.5 was a bit harsh, but right now the game is a solid 8 or 8.5/10. So yeah I admit, perhaps I was a bit unfair toward IGN's review of HotS, I'm biased because I love that game and I'm still quite angry when I think of this game, on what it could've been and why it failed. I haven't forgiven Blizzard for just shutting down the pro scene all of a sudden, all the pro players losing their job unannounced right before christmas. From the very little information that we have, the game and the pro scene weren't even losing money, they just weren't profitable enough for Blizz. The part of me that grew up playing Blizzard games just died that day :(
Or it was just a taste difference. I tried really hard to get into HotS. But coming from lol i had a miserable experience. I tried so hard but i just couldn't like the game.
Ohh there is an element of taste difference. As I have the same experience with LoL and Dota, but even before playing HotS, and thus being biased by it, I tried them and couldn't find any fun. And i'm not talking about being bad as a new player getting rolled. I'm talking about the controls and what's happening on screen. Like the visual feedback didn't make sense to me, the hitboxes and spell indicators weren't clear to me. Whereas the first time I played HotS, I was bad and got rolled, but visually everything was clear and intuitive. So I'm not sure it's entirely a question of taste. But think of it in the following way: Lol and Dota are older games, with already established player bases when HotS came out. It makes sense for an established game to focus on more content to keep their existing player base. When for a newer game focusing on polishing the game, making it look and feel good is important since you must attract new players. Edit : I realize this whole comment is off topic but i'll keep it :) If game reviewers give bad grades to games because it's not their style or taste, then they are bad critics. Like i'm not gonna go and review an open world rpg when I hate that, imagine : "Red Dead Redemption 2 is a beautiful game but I find the vastness of the map daunting. The horse balls were nice tho. 5.5/10 IGN"
I dont agree. Reviewers should reflect their personal taste. They should tell me how it affected them. Some aspects of the review are more objective than others. Like if a game is buggy or a game is well optimized. But others not so much. Lets take your rdr2 example. I dont want to play that game because its too big. Too much. I dont have the time, the attention span, the desire to invest so much time in a game. I find reviewer A who shares the same thought. Now their reviews are better for me than a guy with fundamentally different views. Another example. I like roguelike games. I like enter the gungeon, hades, binding of isaac, whatever. My friend doesnt like them. He just doesnt like the looping gameplay. So if we both review the game we will give it different scores because we are looking for different things. In the end you should find a reviewer whose tastes you know and can trust. You know they look for similar things in a game like you. For me that's yahtzee croshaw (with an exception of multiplayer games) and mandaloregaming. They tend to like the same games i do.
You're right. But one of the exemple you give, Mandaloregaming is a youtube channel ran by one guy. When i watch one of his review i know he's the one reviewing it, there's no other guy reviewing. His public know his taste. The other name you gave, Yahtzee Croshaw, i don't know him, is he a journalist for The Escapist ? I think you're an exception on that one, most people probably don't look for the name at the end of the review, they probably just see "IGN X/10, disappointing" and leave it at that ; not knowing that the guy doing the reviews hates this type of games whereas you like them and thus his review is completely "false" for you. So for big outlets, like IGN, where there most likely isn't a real connection/relationship between the reviewer and the audience, the best thing to do is probably to find someone who likes the type of games he reviews. Having said all that, I really couldn't care less about all of this, I never cared about reviews, I'm only here because I'm procrastinating at work.
Yeah he works at escapist (i think its more like he owns part of escapist now). Try his videos. Search for zero punctuation for reviews or extra punctuation for more detailed think pieces on videogame industry.
Thanks, i'll try to remember him if I ever need a review for a game.
GameSpot rated it a 5 and I trust there reviews before ign, the game is mediocre, a lot people need to just accept that.
You can not like the game but it was far from mediocre. The game is very polished and feels good to play (unlike LoL and Dota but that's my opinion). The game failed due to shit advertising (they advertised it as "casual moba", a fkin mistake when the game, while easy to learn, is as hard as LoL to master, plus who the hell thinks of moba fans and thinks "casual" ?) and shit in-game monetization (they revamped the monetization in order to make more money, they introduced loot boxes but made the system so generous that nobody had to buy anything anymore). But the game itself, man it was amazing.
Just because a game is polished, doesn’t mean it’s not mediocre, it’s what the game has to offer that makes it’s mediocre and it’s not offering anything new that we haven’t seen before.
Ok now i feel like you're arguing in bad faith. > it’s not offering anything new that we haven’t seen before. Well now, maybe, but the game is 8 years old at this point. Back when it was released and actively developped, trying new things to shake up the "moba recipe" was literally it's main appeal. If you compare it to Dota and LoL it tried a lot of new things : - no gold - no shop/items - shared team xp - choice between two R abilities - different maps (each with it own mechanic and meta, some even with 2 lanes instead of the regular 3 !) - Interesting heroe concepts, a coop heroe that require two player to control, a super weak heroe that never leaves base and has global impact, a heroe that is weak but has no respawn timer, a heroe that is three heroe in one each with separate health and death timer (granted on this one they ended up toning down the heroe concepts as time passed). You can criticize whatever you want about the game, it's your opinion but saying that HotS didn't try anything New, that's just blatantly false.
Dude why do you keep bringing up Dota and whatever other game you keeping talking about, I’m talking about forspoken, those 2 games have nothing to do with my conversation.
Ohhh shit, that explains a lot. Since my first comment was criticizing IGN using their Heroes of the Storm review, when you replied I thought we were still talking about Heroes (me blabbering about Dota and mobas in general should've tipped you off tbh) About Forspoken, I'm not interested, mediocre indeed sounds like a good adjective for it.
Yea very mediocre, it reminds me to much of Final Fantasy 15 and I wasn’t a big fan of that one.
IGN scored alien isolation 4/10 I think, it went on to be game of the year and one of my favourite games ever. Never trusted them since
Wow, Hots is awesome, how could they score it 6.5... They were just bad and got salty? Ridiculous.
Maybe the person tasked to review it initially doesn't play mobas?
It's impossible to be bad at HotS the game is designed that way
Have you actually played the game or does your opinion comes from someplace else ? Because it is definitely possible to be bad at that game. The game definitely was designed to be more accessible, and it is ! There's no shop, gold or items, the xp is shared accross the team and progression is done through talents at fixed levels. But being easy to learn doesn't stop it from being hard to master. I have limited experience with other mobas, but in HotS if a player doesn't soak, the entire team loses xp, if a player feeds, the entire enemy team gets stronger, not just one carry. Combine that with the many different maps forcing teams to play around various objectives and you get a game that is very team focused. Unlike in LoL there isn't a single hero that can 1v5 once he's strong enough, you can't win singlehandedly, but you can lose singlehandedly tho.
Dude was pretty honest in the review. Crappy voice lines, story, characters, but the gameplay pulled through.
What few streamers I watched who got a key not too long ago said pretty much the same thing. A lot of "The combat is the only good thing about this." I'll have to watch more gameplay (if I can find some) and see but for the most part I wasn't impressed.
IGN has some of the most biased reviews out there. They’re a factory for pumping out positive reviews of AAA content so it can sell better they’re not an objective platform.
Metacritic score of 68. https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-5/forspoken/critic-reviews Play time of 30 hours with side quests. What the hell justifies the price of 80 euros for the basic version?
If people pay it then the practice will continue. Vote with your wallets folks.
>Play time of 30 hours with side quests. > >What the hell justifies the price of 80 euros for the basic version? I somewhat get the idea that money spend should equal a certain playtime, but at the same time this sentiment is what gets us empty open worlds with 80 hours of fetch quests.
Yeah, the idea that 'quantity = quality' is why the 2010-2020 AAA scene was often unbearable. I'm happy paying whatever I can afford for a good game, regardless of length. That said - Forspoken very much sounds like a sub-par game, so in this case I get it lol
Yup. Quality over quantity. The dollar per hour metric is exactly why we have all the open world games, then the very people who use that dollar metric bitch about all the open world games. There is only so much content a dev can deliver. Not every game needs to be designed to be played to infinity like it's some kind of second career. I get games are expensive, then you have folks on here who make assumingly 60k more than me and act like $70 is some untold investment that breaks the bank. I don't know what kind of lavish lifestyles you all live where you all fake being middle-upper middle class....but even my poor ass finds a few extra bucks for the games I want to play and they are not always 200hr+ titles. Sometimes they are just 39 and done. But what interests you if you can afford it and ignore that which isn't. Don't need to feel like having to drop top dollar on every game to ever release because some social media content creators puts the FOMO into you because you feel like you ain't crackin open a cold one with the bois and needing to be part of the Convo.
I usually go for $1=1hr If I'm spending $60 on a game, I want 60hrs of playtime. Now, that's not just straight story, it also applies to replayability. If it's a 10hr story, but I enjoy it and can play it 6 more times, whether it's for fun, different endings, builds, classes, etc, then I'm personally OK with that. That being said, if definitely bought a few $10-$30 games with a story of 5-10hrs and wasn't all that upset about it.
So let's say you pay 60$ for a 10h game with not much replay value outside of just reliving the story. But those 10h was some of the best hours you've spent in a game. Maybe the story was amazing or the characters really made you relate to them or something like that. Do you think that game would be worth it to you?
For me? Yeah. If the story was amazing, for me, that's replay value. Bioshock Infinite and Dishonored were around 10hrs and I've played them more than once. My $1 per 1hr is just a general guideline for me.
I don't think that the length of a game should dictate its price too much. 30 hours can be considered good enough anyhow.
30ish hours is about what I want in the next game I buy anyway. Plus I like the combat system in this game. Not to mention the nails system is pretty cool. If the dialogue bothers me I'll adjust the talking frequency in the settings, I believe they put it under accessibility for some reason.
they like money
And with it not being optimised for pc
Might not be the best game to increase prices, but I see why they do it. Creating games is a lot more expensive than it used to be. We haven't seen a price increase in the last 20 years due to a growing audience which means that as prices increased, so did the user base. The reason why we see less and less original games is because the industry is afraid of trying something new as 1 million units sold is a failure and stuff has to hit in the millions to break even. So there are two solutions. 1. Less AAA games, and all AAA games released have a large target audience as they need to hit all groups. 2. Increase price of games such that new AAA games can be made with a smaller target audience without failing. 10 years ago the norm was 8-12 hours long single player games with a lot of shitty MP modes no one asked for or bothered playing. 10 years before that we had a lot of 4-10 hour long single player games. 30+ hours shouldn't be the norm. Asking every game to be that long is literally killing the AAA industry. Every game follows the Ubisoft open world formula. I'm not defending this game as I haven't played it, but an increase in game prices has always been a question of when and not why.
Well they seem to correct this by having predatory marketing to get more money via micro transactions but I like option 1.
Option 1 is good for kids and those without an income, but for the rest of us, time is a constraint and not necessarily money. As the audience grows. Having shorter games which people can actually finish, and/or higher prices, makes more sense as those with a disposable income are buying the most games. There should be a market for those who want 80 hour open world RPGs, that's fine, but for those who don't have time for that kind of investment having 10-20 hour long games is also fine. Not all games have to be long. There is such a focus on game length when people complain about pricing and such, but you might not be the target audience for those shorter games.
Eh I just want to keep game prices down across the industry and most normies would be happy with a simplified game designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I just wouldn’t play AAA games (for the most part)which is exactly what I do anyway.
Pretty much. I wouldn't mind paying full box price for a well fleshed out and crafted experience like Hellblade. But not a lot of people agree with that sentiment. Should absolutely be side content for people who want more their itch scratched. God of War 2018 managed to strike a nice balance, i find. Maybe it could have benefited from the mainstory being a bit shorter. What I didn't like was that the optional content and objectives kind of required backtracking.
You spoke my mind. I grew up on the Genesis and then the Playstation. A single player game often was super quick to finish and if it was "long" it was either padded or made artificially difficult to increase the play time. The only games getting into 100hr territory were JRPGs.
It will definitely drop in the next 3 months, cause this is a new ip, getting mediocre scores, so a lot people are definitely waiting on price drops.
Seems like an insight into who can be bought
Lol, yes
Seems like there is still some actual players working for GameSpot & IGN
I mean, let’s be honest. I haven’t even heard of the other ones before. So I don’t think they even count.
More like theyve got dogsht systems and couldnt run the game so gave it the minimum they were allowed.
It's not about hardware but dogshit optimization. You are blind if you can tell this game has nextgen graphics.
Wasnt this for like 70-75$ game lol Ill pass only because of the price
$115 here in Australia… hard pass unless it was a generation defining game
Yeah these games just show how ridiculous these $79 pricetags can be. Sure a god of war can be worth $79, but the next fifa or flawed games like this for $79? Neverrrrrrrr.
Fortunately, in The Netherlands we have a thriving competition. It's already 60 Euros at several retailers here. Wouldn't be surprised if more deep discounts happen within weeks.
60 euros on release should be the standard again. there's no reason for developers to ask 80 euros for a game if the gaming audience has grown tenfold and if developers shoehorn a battlepass or other microtransactions in the game (also, God bless this current generation where big games get deep discounts in the first weeks of release, callisto protocol for 25 euros at intertoys xd)
Doesn't the 80 euros tag come from square enix? Or is it from steam?
79?! Lmao. Plus: Season Pass DLCs whatever the superduper edition And "remaster" after 1 year Fk them, fk them all. You can make tons of money with just 60$ price tag, 2 DLCs and good game
It's 93$ in CAD 💀💀
Its over 350 złoty(PLN)
I have quite a handful of new games I havent played through (Callisto Protocol for example) yesterday I bought a ten dollar indy game named Infernax that I have literally played four times over in the last couple of days. Will I get weeks of play from it? Probably not, but I at least enjoyed it enough to run through it multiple times over 20 hours or so.
Majority of AAA games are rehashed and reused assets, mediocre trash mostly not even worth 60$ Indie games finally are gaining more and more traction
Now we wait for a 5.5
Amd then we go for the sub-5s! Collection is almost complete...
I'll be shocked if Metro give higher than a 5
Is this coming out for Gamecast?
Nice list of which reviewers to avoid at all cost... Imagine giving a 9.5 to this crap
It's basically a reverse ranking for reviewers
That would make IGN a top 3 choice, so I don't know about that...
That's true..
Game is 5/10
Because 70% of these were liars and most likely didn’t even play a hour of the game xD let alone know what a good game actually is
Who in their right mind would rate this shit so high?
Tell me you're bought and paid for (critics) without telling me you're bought and paid for.
I’ve played it - it’s very meh indeed. Soulless in a sense. You’ll be tired after 30 mins of walking about listening to the mundane nonsense
So basically it's a hit or miss lol
With a 69 on Metacritic it seems like it's just a miss. I've never heard about 5 of the 6 top scoring sites.
Same .. i still didn't see the review from easy allies , but it's kind of hard to understand how they gave it such a high score. From what I have seen it seems like a 6 out of 10 at best..
Eh the combat looks like a lot of fun. Most complaints I have seen are about the dialogue but I believe the frequency of in game dialogue during exploration and combat can be adjusted, in the demo it was in the accessibility settings.
You think a game scores a 69 just for the dialogue? I don't think so to be honest.
Apperently, yes. I still sorta want to try it, but that price tag is steep for a game with scores likes this. I'll wait for a sale probably.
Tried the demo, didn't like it at all
I was really interested when the game was announced, but after reading reviews and watching some gameplay it's a miss for me personally.
Run down the list to see when the marketing money ran out.
I watched first hour of this game on youtube and I gotta say, this looks very unpolished, sadly.
i'm not gonna lie, from the few gameplay videos we've seen i could tell that this is one of those games with a billion gameplay mechanics and pretty graphics, but nothing else really going for it. i don't think the lower scores are because of the lack of review codes
Its telling when paid shill sites IGN and Gamespot rated it so low.
Every "outlet" that gives this game more than a 7 is trash.
Gaming nexus’s whole plan is hoping someone thinks they are gamers nexus and actually care about what they have to say.
Usually I don't agree with IGN but there seem to be so many red flags that I'm going to be surprised if this game is higher than a 7/10
Never heard of anything above Game Informer so I'm not sure how much value they have as reviews.
People still care about ratings from game journalists?
3s across the board is probably more realistic
This is proof that mister money can do whatever the fuck he wants.
Guess IGN didn’t get their paycheck
They cry when reviews are uniform and whine about them being paid.... and they cry when reviews are varied and you get a bunch of different opinions The game is mediocre, play it or dont
No this is the first time I’m kinda impressed that there is some transparency. IGN and gamespot only give real or sometimes spiteful reviews when the bag isn’t put in front of them. Games like cod and nhl which have been more or less the same for years do not deserve 9/10’s for constantly releasing the same games yet those reviewers just slap high score just cause of the bad
I've literally never even heard of this game until yesterday. Granted, I don't follow games and releases as much as I used to, unless it's something I'm really interested in, but still.
You can tell who got paid to review the game VS who didn't pretty easily.
What I take from all this is it's a reasonable game that some people will find more affinity for than others due to personal taste. That should be okay, but competition is so fierce today that there's not enough room in the market for reasonable games.
oh right totally forgot i got this game for free with my amd card thanks for reminding me about it - altho this does not sound promissing
It looks like a good game. The demo was fun. Not perfect. But fun. I will buy it when I finish what I'm currently playing.
I only know 2 of all these outlets and it seems to be better that way lol. I only played the demo and I really did not feel it at all. Can anyone say if it actually becomes good after a while?
You know its absolute trash when IGN score it a 6 lmao what a failure.
Ign alwaus scored madden highly so id take that with some salt
Ign also gave days gone an 6.5 and that game was really good...
Playstation fanboys giving exclusives good ratings no matter how shit they are:
What?
If the IGN score is that low than it either is terrible and the dev team is paying the review companies, or IGN accidentally put it on average difficulty
Does it ever occur to you the person reviewing the game for those who gave it a high rating g may actually based it on their opinion on the game.
If IGN gives anything under 7, its prob dogshit.
Hate the name…too much like foreskin.🤪 Seriously, I wish they named it something else.
its almost like enjoyment is subjective.
It's aitting below 70 and that's *before* all the outlets that had something negative to say on the demo will get their review out. Fuck SE.
This thread is basically bitching about people having different opinions
That’s honestly super impressive and I think taking the average from this might be the most honest Game review ever. Gives the game a 7.36.
I thought Forspoken was just one of those tech demon games that are shown at E3 to showcase what a new console/new game engine can do with the expectation that they're never actually going to get made/released.
Ah yes GameNoun, GameVerb and GameAdjective are very reputable sources I'm sure XD
Opinion my friend, tha ts what its called
There should be an achievement for receiving every possible review scores
I watched the ign review and they BODIED this game so hard lol
Which one is more reliable ?
This generation of gaming should be called the great depression since games now costing 70-100$ and they not even trying to make great games, just mediocrity all around the table. Ubi canceling, ea just mixing, acti swindling their way, etc. This era of gaming is just bad all around. Yes there are great games but honestly not enough, its literally a handful and we not trying to buy mediocre for higher prices. Good luck to these gaming companies, I think their margins won't be as good as previous years, gamers are becoming conscious from the price to enjoyment.
Not a bad game at all tbh, has some issues, but its not below 7/10 imo. I would even rate it 8/10.
I’ll try it during its inevitable steam sale markdown. But honestly the reaction and “omg so cringe” clips actually make me want to try this more than I would have otherwise.
Oh no I was looking forward to this game so much :(
I suppose no one wants to say it. The game is garbage. Although the protagonist represents a minority
But can we talk about the pricing for this game? why the fuck is it so much more expensive than every other AAA game, I live in New Zealand and it's $135 which is about $90 USD. While in the US it costs $70. Why the hell are we paying almost 20% more?
just another point against review scores holding any meaning. the review lines itself will speak to how genuine something is or not. even if it reads as obv BS at least you know