| handlebars said: As a former GameSpot employee, I thought I'd offer my perspective, since I know what the reviewers go through. Tom knows his stuff, is professional, and takes his role seriously. I'm also confident that, for such a big and beloved franchise, his score was thoroughly reviewed by his editors, and he had to convince him that he was right. To put it another way, he would have had to build a certain amount of consensus around his score. GameSpot puts the reviewer's name at the end of its reviews because they want to make clear that the review is the *site's* opinion, it just happened to be written by a single person. Most of the people posting here haven't played the game yet. If you haven't and you are calling Tom an idiot, you're the definition of a fanboy - there's no other explanation. I personally love Zelda, don't care if it's formulaic, and will pick up this game regardless of the review. I expect/hope to disagree with Tom's opinion. But I'm willing to consider his perspective valid. The world doesn't have to agree and I think the industry's monotony is part of the problem, I wish there was *less* of a herd mentality. The review world also agreed on GTA IV as a masterpiece, I thought it was interesting but wasn't fun, and there's no way I would've given it the scores others gave it - I think they got sucked up in the hype. Other M also got solid reviews and then suddenly people woke up and decided it wasn't that great. That can happen to any game - and until we play it, we don't know. As for GS giving the original Zelda a 7.2, that's not quite true. They were reviewing it on the Wii version, and judging it by today's standards. If you wipe away nostalgia and play that game as a modern one, it's hard to imagine giving it a higher score than that. |
While I do not know of you I will treat what you say as equal to someone I did know of so please keep that in mind.
1) This has been my problem from the beginning. People claim to, "know their stuff" when in reality they are far less qualified to be doing this than a freelance journalist. The fact that he has an editor to pass this through and convince the score is adequate makes this worse. Thee editor must know the game does not use IR pointer controls. There are too many people out there that MUST know this information and therefore, must question thee integrity of his work from a factual basis alone. It seems this was not addressed before the review was turned over to the public and this makes me angry at more than just the person that wrote/conducted the review. As a freelance journalist with two editors for my work, when I write something that is even QUESTIONABLE, my editors are all over me about it. Like you said of the people at Gamespot, I have to prove my fact(s) in question to my editors before they even finishing editing it let alone send it out. As this review made it out in context, I have to assume the failures go past the person reviewing the game and onto thee editors and other staff as well.
2) Even if I have never played the game, watching a review of that calibur and critizing it does not make me a fanboy. If a person is contributing lies and passing them off as fact, I do not have to play the game to know that person is lying. So when I call someone an idiot (which I have not), maybe I am not a fanboy, but that person is actually an idiot.
3) I agree with this sentiment. I believe most people will. The problem again arises when a game is marked low over complete lies and bias slander. A review is supposed to be objective and if it is and the concerns are legit, then people (most) tend to be reasonable. I know I do. A perfect example of this is when Other M was being reviewed and the scores were a little spread out. I was making it clear to as many people as possible that most reviews had the same complaints and how it affected each person and the weight of their experience with the game will vary. What you may not see as a big deal may be a big deal to the next person. And that is why today, the general feeling about the game is still all over the board.
4) I will leave this one alone as I could go on and on over this one. I will agree to disagree with you on this point.
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