Hmm.. If I give people guns right now.... One blink and someone's probably dead.

many of them aren't being made in house though

EDIT:When you mean high profile titles, does that also include stuff like The Last Remnant and SO4 or is it only FF, KH, and DQ

with a 7. :/

The presentation was rated a 7.  Try reading the actual review.  The story was called 'intruging' in that same review

The good thing about websites like meta critic is that give a broader view and hopefully a score balances out across reviewers.

I think im right in saying that the person who reviewed Infinite Undiscovery (and LO) is also the person who slated Assassins Creed last year on IGN and gave it a poor mark.

I loved LO - its one of my favourite games of the year
I love Assassins Creed - yes it got a bit repetitive but i really enjoyed it

Maybe IU is yet another game criticised by this reviewer which will turn out to be better than their score indicates. *waits for more reviews*.

My thoughts on her specific comments:

- The number of party members is sure to detract a little from character development so this is understandable
- Not being able to pause during boss fights, the ability to pause and change equipment / use potions is not a reality of real time combat.
- 15-20 hours suits me just fine I do not have 60 hours lying around to pump into every new game i want to play!!

I think IGN has been a bit hard on some of these recent JRPGs and thats the benefit of the web and being able to read multiple reviews! Reviews are subjective so lets see what their UK and AU reviewers say.

This is incredible. Rock_on you were flaming IGN when they gave Gears 2 the best grpahics of E3. In fact because the PS3 didnt get many awards with IGN you said they were Biased. LOL.

However yes I trust IGN, and it looks as though Square Enix have lost their flare. Although Tri Ace made the game, the story and entire operation was overseen by Square. Still anything above a 7 is still a good game.

Mistwalker are doing the best RPG's this gen so far.

Yes LO is probably the most underated RPG Ive ever played. FF10 I do not consider in the same sentence as LO. However when I talk of FF7 I have LO in the same bracket. LO was exceptional. And I agree that expectations have changed, and reviewers can miss the point of traditional RPG's.

Just saw that it was Hillary Goldstein that did the review...consider this game to be much better than anything he writes.

I'm going to make this blanket statement which I feel that strongly applies to this. Falling back on numerical ratings is overrated and is for sheep. One specific and very important thing I like about IGN's reveiw is that they go in depth. So aside from the numerical score, the specifics pointed out by an IGN review might not appeal to the reveiwer, but it might appeal or doesn't matter to certain individiual gamers. Some people might not be bothered by the 20% less voice acting in the cutscenes for instance. I will warn that if the majority of the reviews are in the 7.0 range, then maybe it is a 7.0 quality game. But if it becomes a 7.0 average game with ratings ranging anywhere from like 3 to 9, then I might be a "rent before you buy" scenario. If this is the case, then it's probably worth the price of the rental plus full price to own the game. That's why I do not place to much emphasis on numerical ratings because reviews are just opinions. The more detailed they are, the better. I will not buy a game because of a number, but I'll buy a game because I serve myself as a gamer.

Im glad im not the only one who noticed it was Hillary doing the review.

Dont really agree with the scoring system this reviewer goes by mainly because they seem to use the spectrum properly and not like every other reviewer whereby 75% is only "average".

The biggest enticement for this game over ToV is IU hass 20-30 hours gameplay vs ToV's 60 hours. 20-30 hours for £30 (game.co.uk preorder), is good value by my books!