RolStoppable said:
It's hard to say what makes this cutscene so bad. The voice acting, the awkward animation or the eyes of the characters. Probably all of them. But praise for this kind of storytelling lines up with the praise for KotoR. I remember seeing a review of the Xbox version on the DVD of a video game magazine that showed off an example of the great freedom the game offers. It was about two families who didn't like each other or something like that and you, the player, could solve the conflict in a couple of different ways. They picked the option to make matters worse and then one guy shot a member of the other family while everyone else was standing still. Then someone of the other family raised a gun and killed a person in return, all the while everyone else is standing still. This went back and forth until almost everyone was dead. It was ridiculous, yet it was being praised by the reviewer. I really don't get why stuff that is so poorly executed can get (almost) perfect scores on a regular basis. Either reviewers are being paid off or they really have low standards when it comes to this kind of stuff. |
I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you this, but there is a general consensus within gaming ournalism that big games deserve big scores, especially when they're part of an established franchise. Final Fantasy 13 is the big exception that comes to mind, but the sad thing is it scored very hihgly in Japan. What this shows is that Western reviewers are not afraid to break this rule when the game is foreign, same for the Japanese press.
Game journalists and developers are just so cozily intertwined now in their respective countries that there will inevitably be a level of corruption. Don't review a game well? You won't get early acces to the game for news articles and reviews on launch, meaning less hits for your site. Review it well? Yeh we'll invite you to all our games' launch parties and press conferences and ship you the game directly, pre-launch.
I mean, IGN had an employee in the damn game they were reviewing. They gave ME3 a never seen before dedicated launch page, with an advertisement directly below the 9.5 score linking to 'buy this game at gamestop' and another advert on the right that said 'buy this game on 360, better with Kinect' and a blurb that was highlighted from the main review text saying 'it is highly recommended you play ME1 and ME2 before you play this game'. I mean, it's just obvious at this point.
Listening to Jeff Gerstmann at giantbomb has been particularly interesting, he isn't afraid to tell it like it is. Multiple times he, at gamespot and giantbomb, were cut out of events and game shipments because of reviews. Just sad.
