http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=7514

Fire away, boys.

it is from you ?

you are "brock" (forget the last name) ?

funny, I was sure it was from you ;)

Yep, that is me.

I will post here in case there's a reasonable discussion about this, and that just can't happen using comment on the news.
My first question is what the A in RTFA stands for.

Other than that, I have always realized that the problem with the gaming as a medium is the fans, not so much the reviewers. As long as you have games like MGS4 and Halo being lauded the way they are, the medium itself will be laughed at by any other established entertainment medium.

As long as the review system is broken, video gaming as a whole is will suffer, and it is the cause of the very same people who want it to be something more than a past time or a toy. There is just no way that the medium can benefit from such people, and I won't point any fingers, but everyone knows the kind I am talking about.

Read The Fucking Article. As in "read the review before complaining about it".

And Mirgro, I touched on that point heavily two years ago. The editorial is linked at the top of my new op-ed, but here it is in case you missed it:

http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=1124

Oh thank you.

And damn... you worded everything I was thinking in a far better way than I ever could have without spending hours and hours on it.

I guess I agree with your overall point, reviewers and the fans alike are both at fault when it comes to the state of the medium and where it's viewed by the general population.

As an example, I don't know if you have played Metro 2033, but it is funny how by our system gets a very deserving score if we take 5 as an average, yet if it had ditched all the new things and swapped them for the same old it would have gotten even higher. I am not saying that the game deserves a better score, but that it is sad that by getting worse it would have had a better one.

I was talking about the PC reviews, since after reading some 360 reviews it seems that very few of the 360 reviewers even understood the most basic mechanics in the game, for instance the stealth illumination system and other such things. I hate to say it, but the 360 reviewers really reinforced the stereotype of the stupid Halo/CoD fanboy players of the 360 and I wasn't too happy with the representation the platform got.

I guess this is also a heavy recommendation to you to play Metro 2033 since it is a fresh breath of air in the green gaseous blob that is the FPS genre. Think of a cross between Half-Life 2 and STALKER, and I mean the cross of the good parts, in the narrative, and a large amount of new mechanics which could have been just labelled and used as gimmicks but are in fact very well developed. It looks amazing too to boot. The story is also nice, it doesn't try to be anything pretentions, like fixing the whole world, or even the small ecosystem where human live. It's just a story about a guy who wants to save home from threat and that's it. Yet it is an amazing journey. Would love to read a review about it from you actually. I also suggest you play it on the PC since, bar some really annoying console mechanics when it comes to the Options, it feels liek it was made for it.

I am sorry I talked so much about a game, but that game is great representation of the rating system and how it is broken.

Well, I think you just sold me on Metro 2033. Up to this point, the game hadn't even been a real consideration of mine. I'll check it out when I get the chance. Even I succumb to the stupidity of reviewers at times, I suppose. :)

I love new ideas, even if they don't work perfectly the first time around. If the potential is there, it makes me eager to see more.

Good one, and I very much agree. Seeing fanboys with foaming mouths because some reviewer gave their game a low score feels like a low point of civilization some times, and all that backlash can't be good for anyone.

The reaction from the fans of these over rated popular series receiving poor review scores is priceless. Good on you Edge and Destructoid for standing out from the crowd and voicing your own opinion on the game. Whether anyone agree with your opinions does not matter. You were brave enough to stand up and go against the status quo. Consequently you may miss out on thousands of dollars in advertisements but that does not matter. Moral victory for the little man going against the video game industry establishment.

A lot of these over hyped and over rated games receive these high review scores because they have been paid by the game developers. Grand Theft Auto IV, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Forza 3, Final Fantasy XIII and few other games received high scores which were not IMo deserved. An 8 out of 10 is now considered an average score. Anything below a 7 out of 10 is considered a fail.

Good article and /agree.

It sucks that as soon as you voice any opinion that isn't praise you're automatically labeled as fanboy scum and that's the people that even read your review!

(and I had to think for a minute what the A was in RTFA :-p)