Great quote, kasz. I'm going to steal that for an impromptu editorial I'm going to write up tonight.

Sterling: "With only the occasional glimpse at Cocoon's society and culture, we have no motivation for saving it. The characters talk about saving their world as if it's important, but to the player, Cocoon's just a series of random locations awkwardly mashed together. Their hatred of various characters, and their empathy toward others, mean nothing to the player."

Me:  He uses "the player," not "me."  It's not the player it is him.

He says Cocoon is a random blah blah.  How so?  Show, don't tell.  Basic writing. I can support the other way, Cocoon is a series of cities and wilderness zones, it includes a food processing plant, biological warfare research area, and a theme park.  The people walking around display emotion, and have a different perspective on the events taking place.  This I found interesting, because one flaw I often find is that news in RPGs seems to travel instantaneously.  This is not true here.

Sterling: "That's when the game isn't introducing epic FMV cutscenes that contain no narrative value whatsoever, just because Square Enix's art department felt like publicly masturbating."

Me: This is funny because, again, he doesn't explain how.  I actually count this as a negative too, but I can tell you why.  The cut scenes are too long, and are not action packed most of the time, they are talking about things that could easily have been shorter or background chatter.

Sterling: Battles ostensibly play themselves for you, mostly because Square Enix's new Paradigm System is so contrived and complicated that the player would be confused if he had to control it himself. Instead of manually inputting commands for all your characters, everybody -- including the player's character -- can automatically fight of their own free will. The player's job is that of a mid-management office boss, occasionally green-lighting the game's decisions and letting it get on with it.

"Despite the fact that the game is playing itself, the player is still forced to pay attention the whole time. It'll be your job to make sure the party's HP stays up, and with enemies always busting out hugely devastating attacks, it's a full-time job."

Me: Overly complicated, but it plays itself... these are contradictions.  He goes on to to say how great the paradigm system is and doesn't explain why it is bad, or like mid-level management.

I can keep going but I don't really need to.  I liked the game.  I reviewed it at nine, Sterling and I disagree.  No big deal.  But it is not a very good review, and from the way it reads (and other evidence) it appears as if he didn't really play it all the way through.  It really seems like he read all the other negative reviews and put the ideas together.

That being said, I can see how this could be the least favorite in the series to some.  It is linear for 15-20.  The battles are radically different.  There is more emphasis on in-game cut scenes and there is a love hate relationship with the characters...

The problem I have with the number 4, is that FFXIII is in no way broken or unpolished.  When a reviewing site is submitting there reviews to Metacritic and game rankings, their is a certain level of conformity that the non-core gamer would expect from a score under 5.  There is a duty to follow that standard for the readers.  Giving a game a below average score or telling them to "Avoid it" implies that the game is broken or severely suffering.

Evil Dead 2 is the greatest movie ever made, and one of my favorites. It's a "bad movie" despite having like a 100 percent on rottentomatoes.

http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/03/16/bioware-head-ff-xiii-quot-on-the-bottom-of-my-list-right-now-quot.aspx

Sterling: "With only the occasional glimpse at Cocoon's society and culture, we have no motivation for saving it. The characters talk about saving their world as if it's important, but to the player, Cocoon's just a series of random locations awkwardly mashed together. Their hatred of various characters, and their empathy toward others, mean nothing to the player."

Me:  He uses "the player," not "me."  It's not the player it is him.

He says Cocoon is a random blah blah.  How so?  Show, don't tell.  Basic writing. I can support the other way, Cocoon is a series of cities and wilderness zones, it includes a food processing plant, biological warfare research area, and a theme park.  The people walking around display emotion, and have a different perspective on the events taking place.  This I found interesting, because one flaw I often find is that news in RPGs seems to travel instantaneously.  This is not true here.

Sterling: "That's when the game isn't introducing epic FMV cutscenes that contain no narrative value whatsoever, just because Square Enix's art department felt like publicly masturbating."

Me: This is funny because, again, he doesn't explain how.  I actually count this as a negative too, but I can tell you why.  The cut scenes are too long, and are not action packed most of the time, they are talking about things that could easily have been shorter or background chatter.

Sterling: Battles ostensibly play themselves for you, mostly because Square Enix's new Paradigm System is so contrived and complicated that the player would be confused if he had to control it himself. Instead of manually inputting commands for all your characters, everybody -- including the player's character -- can automatically fight of their own free will. The player's job is that of a mid-management office boss, occasionally green-lighting the game's decisions and letting it get on with it.

"Despite the fact that the game is playing itself, the player is still forced to pay attention the whole time. It'll be your job to make sure the party's HP stays up, and with enemies always busting out hugely devastating attacks, it's a full-time job."

Me: Overly complicated, but it plays itself... these are contradictions.  He goes on to to say how great the paradigm system is and doesn't explain why it is bad, or like mid-level management.

I can keep going but I don't really need to.  I liked the game.  I reviewed it at nine, Sterling and I disagree.  No big deal.  But it is not a very good review, and from the way it reads (and other evidence) it appears as if he didn't really play it all the way through.  It really seems like he read all the other negative reviews and put the ideas together.

That being said, I can see how this could be the least favorite in the series to some.  It is linear for 15-20.  The battles are radically different.  There is more emphasis on in-game cut scenes and there is a love hate relationship with the characters...

The problem I have with the number 4, is that FFXIII is in no way broken or unpolished.  When a reviewing site is submitting there reviews to Metacritic and game rankings, their is a certain level of conformity that the non-core gamer would expect from a score under 5.  There is a duty to follow that standard for the readers.  Giving a game a below average score or telling them to "Avoid it" implies that the game is broken or severely suffering.

OMG! They have an opinion on a game they haven't played!  People like that should have their gaming license revoked.

OMG! They have an opinion on a game they haven't played!  People like that should have their gaming license revoked.

I completely agree with you up until the last paragraph.

You break down his review. That's the way to do it. You argue that the review itself is badly written and point out flaws in it. Fair enough, I'm not defending his writing (or his opinion) at all, just the fact that he's allowed to have one.

But your last paragraph goes horribly astray. "Conformity" is the LAST thing a reviewer should be worried about and that's one of the major problems with the game review system in the first place. Group-think has caused every high-production game to score over 80%, whether it's a piece of shit to play or not. Sterling points out that the game is beautiful to look at, what more do you want from him? I've watched plenty of movies that were beautiful but every other element was a festering pile of shit. Should I give that movie a good review because it did one thing right amongst the fifty things that it did WRONG?