| Kantor said: I have problems with that EuroGamer review, and it has nothing to do with the score. Take a look here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/uncharted-2-among-thieves-review A review from the same publication of a game in the same series. Ignore the score; the score is irrelevant. Look at what he says and you'll find that he's actually saying exactly the same thing, but saying it in a positive light. Wherever possible, a sequel to a game your publication has reviewed should be reviewed by the same person. That's our policy, and it should be EuroGamer's policy. What do you do if the reviewer of Uncharted 2 adored it, and you didn't? It's pretty clear from the review of Uncharted 3 that the reviewer didn't adore Uncharted 2, because everything he said about excessive cinematics and control being out of the player's hands applies to Uncharted 2 as well. In the event that it has to be reviewed by someone else, that person does have to take the Uncharted 2 review into account. Think. The people who loved Uncharted 2 are exactly Uncharted 3's target audience. You could be reviewing it for someone who hates all games except Angry Birds and Farmville, and they would find it unnecessarily heavy-handed and complicated. That person would never consider purchasing Uncharted 3, even if you gave it 11/10. The Uncharted 3 review is a fantastic editorial on the state of the gaming medium and honestly quite an awful review. It's like reviewing Gran Turismo and pondering why on earth anybody would want to make a game about driving cars. The Uncharted franchise, and hell, the entire action adventure genre, is based on cinematics and structure. Would the game honestly be improved if slightly misjudging a jump made you plummet to your death? It's an intentional design choice, and one which has clearly gone over well with pretty much everyone else who has played the game. A review is not solely an opinion; it is an analysis and appraisal of different parts of the game. That review was an opinion. It would have been great as a blog post, or an editorial, or with some more colourful language, even a rant, but it isn't fair to the game and it isn't honest to fans of the series and the genre, and for that reason, not an arbitrary score, it's not a good review. EDIT: I should point out that the quality of the writing was fantastic as usual, and that other than this slight hitch, EuroGamer is still one of the best review sites out there. Better, indeed, than the majority of sites that gave Uncharted 3 a 10/10. The review isn't trying to be controversial in the slightest; it's just excessively philosophical and not analytical enough. |
I don't think it matters who writes the review as long as it is well written out and thoroughly explains all the aspects of the game, something it seems only Eurogamer did.
No matter the situation, a reader should always focus on the review more so than the score. If a game is getting perfect 10s only because of its amazing multiplayer despite a mediocre campaign, and you don't like multiplayer games, then you should probably avoid it, while at the same time if a game gets a bad score because despite a great multiplayer its campaign sucks, but you don't care about single player, you should probably buy it. The score is almost meaningless because different people appreciate different aspects of a game. What makes me hate a game might be the exact reason you love that game.
