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Mummelmann on 11 March 2014
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Salnax said:
Mummelmann said:
Salnax said:
Mummelmann said:
The more important question is; will it matter at all in the long run? My guess is no.


In a broad sense, probably not. But as a gamer, I like playing good games, and this "75+ Metascore" scale is an easy, if flawed, way of gauging the number of fun games there will be to play.

Besides, eventually everybody will die and the universe will end, so of course it doesn't matter in the long run. But now that we've determined that most things aren't that important, it's interesting to see what we can find in the relatively trivial.


I don't disgaree, I'm just thinking of Reggie's simplified reasoning around "software sells hardware" (as in; not much else matters), which would by extension indicate that "good software sells more hardware", which in turn brings me to the belief many hold that high quality 1st party software alone can somehow help the Wii U become a contender.

Not saying you are one of these people though.

I agree that good games are desireable, of course, that's why I stick to the platform where I feel I get the best quality software for the best prices. That said; metascores are rarely a good metric for me personally in deciding which games are fun to play, I found myself being incredibly bored by a lot of very highly rated games in the 7th gen and I feel that the whole review system has collapsed on itself, asserting that production value is the supreme merit of a solid title, before any other aspects, leading to some gorgeous but shallow game experiences in the past 6-7 years.

Alright. I think I just misunderstood your tone.

The "software sells hardware" line is a good one, but overstated. Software may sell hardware, but hardware defines software. I am not under the delusion that the Wii U will compete for the top spot this gen.

I'm not sure about the idea of production value being the primary driver behind critical success. Too many indie games, many of which have retro-style graphics, have been acclaimed this past half-decade or so for that to make much sense to me. That said, I myself don't view aggregate review scores to be more than a helpful tool in determining which games I should buy. The difference between a game rated 80 and 90 is much closer to me personally than it is in reviewing circles, to the extent where I find the 80 game to be often better.

On the other hand, I still believe that using reviews and aggregates of them via Metacritic and similar sites to be a useful tool, at least if not too heavily relied upon. In this thread, for example, we can compare a bunch of reviews in 2014 to those in 2008. So long as we understand what we're actually measuring, I think reviews are still valuable at least in the macro sense.


Good Indie games are often judged based on actual merits since it is implied through the genre/branch itself that it has lower production value by default, that's one more reason to love Indie games. I'm mostly talking about so-called "AAA" productions, where production value seems to negate massive flaws, shallow designs, linearity with poor scripts and writing and baseless gameplay mechanics that only detracts from the immersion of the medium (insta-fail stealth missions, QTE's etc).

It's like reviewers are blinded by the dazzle and fail to see that that is basically what it is in most cases; dazzle. I'm not saying all 7th gen games were bad, but there was a crazy amount of inflated reviews scores for games and franchises with obvious and sometimes incredibly deep-set and massive flaws and faults (that sometimes weren't even mentioned or commented upon much at all).