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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Why do people hate low review scores?

I like that VGChartz bases its numbers off of a word or term that best describes the game's experience (Exemplary, Great, Decent, etc.). I do the same thing myself, as the number I assign to a game is just a placeholder to a word that best describes it. For example, here's my scoring range:

10: Masterpiece
9: Amazing
8: Great
7: Good
6: Above Average
5. Average
4. Below Average
3. Bad
2. Awful
1. Disaster (I don't think I've assigned a game a 'disaster' yet. Hopefully I'll never play a game worthy of this score. )

Despite my more "centered" review scale (compared to the 7=average crowd), my average game rating (of over 300 games) is still a 7.8. And I want to continue to raise that score, because who really wants to play a bad (or even average) game?

So for example, I gave Skyrim an 8/10. It's a great game. It has a few things that hold it back from being an amazing game (such as glitches and lack of evolution in gameplay), but it's still a GREAT game. But, I'm sure others see that 8 as a blasphemous mark upon such a great game as Skyrim (to be honest, how the game is one of the best reviewed game of the year, and VGChartz's highest rated game ever kind of boggles my mind... but in the end that's just on me ).

In the end... this really doesn't have anything to do with the OP. Just rambling I suppose... XD



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It's not that I hate bad scores, it's that I hate bad reviews. And not in the sense of a negative review, I mean a flawed one. Completely making up things, glaring inaccuracies, blowing small flaws out of proportion, not caring in the slightest about what is being reviewed and just getting it over with...

I could bring up examples, but I'll just leave it at "most of the reviews IGN or Gamespot does".



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Runa216 said:
MontanaHatchet said:
Gamers today are the most entitled babies ever.

There, I said it.

They don't want lower review scores for their favorite games or a legitimate challenge in the games they play. They know that a game they're anticipating is the best game ever before they even get to play it, and they'll ruin you if you should so dare as to give it a sub-9.0 score. If you made the average "hardcore" gamer today play Magician Lord, they'd have a panic attack.

What about games that were universally hated, like Duke Nukem?  I remember seeing almost every review for that game (mine included) getting harassed for "jumping on the bandwagon of hate" in spite of the fact that almost everyone agreed it sucked.  

I also get a lot of complaints when I mention shoddy control schemes...apparently I should just deal with it :P 


Gamers have invested so much hype and energy into Duke Nukem that the idea that it was, in fact, a bad game was devastating to them. It's one thing if a PS3 game disappoints (for example) and 360 gamers get to bag on it, but when a hyped, multiplatform game from a classic series launches to bad reviews, most gamers resort to a natural defense mechanism. It can't be the game that's bad, just the reviewer! Entitlement pure and simple.

Trust me, I wrote a couple reviews for Vgchartz. I got a lot of flack for my Mass Effect review because I gave it an 8.5 (the same as Gamespot gave it). Apparently many of its fans on the site thought it deserved no less than the excellence of a 9+ score. I don't really mind it now, but more than one user seemed to give the impression that I was the problem and there weren't any great issues with the game itself.



 

 

Because they are usually fans of the franchise/biased and hate to see anything below an 8.5 OR its the hottest game on there platform of choice and good reviews mean more bragging rights so naturally they want it to review really well.



Kangi said:
It's not that I hate bad scores, it's that I hate bad reviews. And not in the sense of a negative review, I mean a flawed one. Completely making up things, glaring inaccuracies, blowing small flaws out of proportion, not caring in the slightest about what is being reviewed and just getting it over with...

I could bring up examples, but I'll just leave it at "most of the reviews IGN or Gamespot does".


This is the problem right here its that there are alot of bad reviews that are being done on big name sites. And yes I have seen on many occasions where reviewers just did not know what they were talking about in relation to the games they reviewed or puts their bias into it just to exaggerate a small flaw, to those that are generally new to gaming sometimes take these reviews as the gospel truth for the game so a game that they probably would have enjoyed is tarnished by this review.

Thats why I barely take into account or look at any review done by any major site on the net.



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Mirson said:

I'm assuming this is about your Tekken review, but by the looks of it, it wasn't the score that's the problem; the problem was that your review didn't really say anything useful, particularly about TTT2 and the movie. You didn't talk about what the movie was about or who it followed. You didn't mention what new features were in Tekken Tag 2 Prologue. You didn't mention what four characters were available in that demo. Etc.

GameSpot gave it pretty much the same score you did, but their review was way better since it mentioned a lot of useful information. They mentioned TTT's gameplay still holds well, but it has some graphical issues and the lack of online is disappointing considering that other fighters that got rereleased had online included. They mentioned what four characters are in the TTT2 demo, and that there are new tag tricks.

However, the demo lacks the characters' move list which is a big problem (for me at least) since I only use two of those characters; I need to look at the move list for the other two to learn their combos and moves, but without a move list, I won't know how to properly play with them which will take away a lot of my enjoyment. I also need to constantly look at Xiaoyu's move list since she's more complex than most of the Tekken characters. Lastly, they talk about the movie's plot and what characters is mostly follows, which sounds terrible. Once I finished reading their review, I said that it was not worth it.

But you, instead, complain about the characters and having 'insert coin' on the screen (which has always been like that since the first game). The characters have always been silly and crazy since the beginning of the Tekken series, but that's one of the beauties of the series. It has a great, crazy diverse cast of fighters, and most of them feel entirely unique in terms of fighting style. Also, some of the characters like Kuma, Panda, and Roger (the kangaroo) aren't meant to be taken seriously; they're just for comedic relief. It's evident that they aren't meant to taken seriously once you've seen some of their endings; they're silly but funny. Lastly, you got the price tag wrong; it's $40, not $50.

And oh yeah, everyone knows Eddy and Christie are for the noobs. Many newcomers love them because you can just button smash with them.

This is a game review site, and as such the review was edited to take out much of the stuff about the movie.  I didn't mention much of the demo, though I did mention the fact that the 4 characters  from the movie were in the demo, that must have been edited out as well.  The review was edited to reflect the 'main course'  of the package: Tekken Tag Tournament HD.  

The 'insert coin' thing was a joke, nothing more than that (though I do think it's kinda silly).  

As for Eddie Gordo, I loved Eddie Gordo becuase I like capoeira, not because I'm a noob.  I've also used Hworang and Law (and a few others) in the past, but in this game both of them seemed too stiff for my liking.  

I didn't buy the game myself, but I looked up prices online, and on amazon at the time of the writing (and on Wikipedia at the time of writing), the price was at 49.99, so I wrote that into the review.  

I do admit that a lot of my complaints about the game (silliness of the setting, stiff controls, etc) could be aimed at any game in the series, but I actually LIKE tekken (and am looking forward to Street Fighter x Tekken), but this iteration of the series hasn't aged well and the demo wasn't that well put together.  Not to mention the movie was a joke...I could do  awhole seperate review on the movie since I occasionally do movie reviews as well.  

I think I justified my score well: poor movie, a port of a game that hasn't aged well with minimal graphical improvements, and a minimalist demo.  It's jsut not worth it even for 40 bucks. Unless of course you're a Tekken fan, which I think is a fair assumtion since you asserted that "Eddie gordo is for noobs".  



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I could never tell you why video gamers who have no employment connection to the industry "hate low review scores." I could conjecture, but I digress.

As for those employed by the video game industry, it has, in my opinion, solely to do with ego. Call of Duty, World of Warcraft expansions, and other cash cow video games regularly get low user review scores, yet score quite well among the professional viewers.

To nitpick and obsess over user reviews on Metacritic is inane. Many if not most who review those games a 5 or lower are just pure trolls who have not played your game and/or went into playing your game wanting to find any reason to cut it's balls off. To pay heed to these individuals is beyond insane. It is you calling to be eliminated from the gene pool.



It's more with videogames.

Movies Get 3 stars, and people are like, that's decent. But if you give a videogame a 6/10 it's bad.

I generally find videogame reviews to be way too positive, or negative (regardless of the final score)
fan's are always going to bitch. I think the general concept is people like to bitch. (I'm currently bitching about people bitching :))

Reviewers job is to state their opinion (but be rational) for instance say you hate it. But this, this and this, are redeeming features and may be enough for this group of people. But it's not enough for you to like it. Same thing for the other way. You love this game, but this, this, and this could be a detriment.

The final score I'd think would be where it ranks comparitively to your other games you've played. As the final score is the summation what you feel about the game. For instance I find many people give too many games 10's yet, They'd rank some of those games that they gave a 10 too higher than others. That's a symptom of being too positive about a game you like.




MontanaHatchet said:
Gamers today are the most entitled babies ever.

There, I said it.

They don't want lower review scores for their favorite games or a legitimate challenge in the games they play. They know that a game they're anticipating is the best game ever before they even get to play it, and they'll ruin you if you should so dare as to give it a sub-9.0 score. If you made the average "hardcore" gamer today play Magician Lord, they'd have a panic attack.

Huzzah for somebody else knowing about Magician Lord. Most frustrating game i have ever played in my life, and yet ever and anon it rears its ugly head, calling to me to test my skill anew, and like a carnival goer before a ring-toss game that the patron knows is rigged, i yet consign myself to try the impossible task



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

A review is an opinion piece. It is entirely subjective even if it attempts to found itself in objective statements in regards to the game. So you will always have a clash of opinion and some people are just more vocal than others.