Death Stranding Review Thread - MC: 82 / OC: 83 / GR: 83.17%

[DonFerrari]

RaptorChrist said:
@DonFerrari

Sorry, I don't mean to drag this conversation on too long with you, but I noticed something that makes me think I may have misunderstood you initially, so maybe our disagreement isn't all that big.

I do agree that a reviewer should be objective, and not give a game a bad score just because it wasn't for them. A good reviewer can, for example, give a game like Sekiro or Dark Souls a good score even if they struggled to find enjoyment due to frustration or lack of hand-eye coordination.

On a side note (mostly unimportant), I would imagine that publications will try to avoid giving a reviewer a game that conflicts with their preferences, or that reviewers will request certain games that they are hyped to play.

But I think that all reviewers know this. No publication would outright state something like "Persona V is a 4/10 because I don't like RPGs". Rather, reviewers that are stating that Death Stranding is not fun are stating it objectively (in most cases I would assume). I haven't read these reviews myself, so I suppose it's possible that some are trolling or have something against Kojima, but besides those outliers, I would like to think most are being professional.

It's not that Death Stranding wasn't to their preference, but rather that Death Stranding is not a satisfying game to play (objectively) according to them. If they believe that consumers will not like the game, I think their score should reflect that.

In a perfect situation, I could see all reviewers arriving at the same score for a given game. Death Stranding has a large standard deviation so it seems that this one is difficult to objectively score.

Historically, I've found MC to be very accurate when it comes to these scores (in my mind). That would be great if this game ends up being a 90 ~ 92, but I am curious about something...

You predicted an 85 for the game, but believe that you will personally feel it's a 90 ~ 92? Is that how you always generally feel (that games tend to deserve better scores than they get), or did reading the DS reviews make you more hyped for the game than you originally were?

Hey you wouldn't believe but there were a reviewer that gave Gran Turismo a very low score because she didn't see the point in running in circles. She totally hated the genre. And yes I do agree that you also should avoid someone that is totally in love for a game beforehand (or you could have someone read his review and play some areas to validate the score). And sure I have no problem with any user saying the game isn't for him and on his book it is a 4 or whatever (although I don't do that myself, if I don't think I can give it a fair score I won't score I will just say that although technically it is good and well acclaimed I didn't like it).

Every big game we have a couple or half dozen troll reviews or clickbaiters that is quite common when you go in a lot of the metascore threads.

About my prediction versus taste. I thought it would be at most 85 (I prefer to use 5 increment or round numbers =p) because I was sure the game would have mixed reviews and divisive opinions by looking at the trailers and threads since reveal. But also I think I'll consider it a 90 from the video reviews I saw. Sure it can end up being a 6 =p

Angelus said:
People really need to keep in mind that just because an aggregate, like Metacritic, may be a nice place to get an overview of a great assortment of reviews, as well as bringing them all in line with a singular, easy to understand score system, the sites they're pulling from can use vastly different rating systems. One man's 2/5 (or 4/10) doesn't necessarily equal someone else's opinion, even if they put the same number score at the end. While popular gaming media outlets may have conditioned you to view 7/10 as an average game, there are in fact others who would give a 5/10 to what they think is an average game. That's not even taking subjective criteria, like how heavily one weighs various aspects of the experience, into account.

If you dismiss certain reviews simply because you don't like the number attached to it, you're doing yourself a disservice in regards to how you gather your information. Maybe actually read what someone has to say about the thing they're evaluating. Maybe that person's view still won't align with your own, or provide you with a worthwhile perspective, but maybe it will....either way, at least your response to their work will mean something.

Simply having a rant about a score being too low or too high, without any context of how someone arrived there, coming solely from your own prism of perspective, is completely ignorant.

Sorry but I won't subscribe to that because I have done some verification on the scores on some threads.

And you'll see a publication that gave let's say 35/100 to Death Stranding is only 0.6 points below average on metacritic for the collective of their reviews so they aren't particularly harsher. They gave a total of 7 games worse scores than Death Stranding and no one would dispute they are worse games, they also gave much lower than average on some exclusives probably to attract clicks as well. Their average score is 73 (with 41% of their reviews above average and 55% below average of metacritic). For them Otter World is a 95 game, AfterParty is a 90, Control is 100, Super Mario Maker 2 is 95, BoxBoy-BoxGirl 95, ME Andromeda is 95, For Honor 90, Busch Hockey League is 80, and the list goes on.

Giant Bomb have its offenses as well but is on average only 3/100 lower than the aggregate. But go look at the games with over 80 meta that they gave a 40.

pokoko said:

RaptorChrist said:
@DonFerrari, @Nate4Drake


Also, when did it drop to an 83? Still a good score... Hopefully I'll fall into the camp that thinks it's better than it performed by reviewers. I just hope that the 83 isn't a buffed score based on it being a Kojima game. It's possible that many reviewers went easy on this one.

To be perfectly honest, it probably is a "buffed score" to a certain degree.  Most reviewers are pretty much just gamers who can write.  Actually, since many of them are passionate about gaming, they're probably even more susceptible to nostalgia and expectations than the general population of gamers.  

However, if you're going to label a Kojima game as "buffed" then you need to step all the way into the abyss.

Imagine if Pokemon were an EA game.  Think it would get the same kind of scores?  Think reviewers would be half as afraid to piss off fanatical fanboys?  What about Rockstar games?  Think they'd score quite as well?  Pretty much any established and beloved franchise from Nintendo, Sony, or ... well, I'm not so sure Microsoft has earned that kind of credibility with gamers, but you get the idea.  Hell, even being unabashedly "indie" can be worth extra points with some outlets.

Point is, there are PLENTY of "buffed" scores out there, so many that "buffed" is actually more like "normal".