Famitsu ain't exactly reliable either. They gave Haze a 34/40. I just find it jarring that JRPGs are giving better scores in Japanese publications then in Western publications.

EDIT:I am expecting TLR to be mediocre at best like SaGa Teams other games compared to Persona 4.  But the quality could still suprise me.

"Famitsu ain't exactly reliable either. They gave Haze a 34/40. I just find it jarring that JRPGs are giving better scores in Japanese publications then in Western publications."

That's because the Japanese people are smart enough to give thought provoking, high qualityJapanese games the scores they deserve. Whereas in the West, dumb Western game critics love to give high scores to dumb Western shooters.

Western critics aren't afraid to give thought provoking games high scores.  Look at BioShock, Shadow of the Colossus and ICO, those are considered to be some of the most thought provoking games ever created,

nazanips said,

"On the flip side: FFXII was freaking awful.  For all Mass Effect's faults it was still a good (but not great) game underneath.  FFXII was a melee button-mashing, cliched-story, horrendous characters, autopilot combat, broken mess of a game.  It was nearly flawless on a technical level, but did almost nothing else right."

Wrong on all accounts. Final Fantasy XII received a 10 from Play Magazine and a 9.5 from IGN. It also won IGN's Playstation II Game of the Year Award for 2006.

http://bestof.ign.com/2006/ps2/39.html
http://playmagazine.com/index.php?fuseaction=SiteMain.showGamePage&Game_ID=407


Play had this to say about Mass Effect:

"Ten gamer score points are awarded when Commander Shepard finally takes, to put it mildly, the skin boat to tuna town. It’s an achievement, all right, to attract a woman to his cabin for loving, but not much of one. At one point, the role-playing game Mass Effect makes it so overt that Shepard actually has to choose between potential love interests: the alien Liara, whose race incorporates both male and female characteristics; or the hard-fighting human Ashley Williams.

This should be epic stuff. The space-based Mass Effect is mature enough to show, at least partially, characters progressing toward the physical act of fornication. Yet it’s not emotionally developed enough that players will care about, or be moved by, any of it. Shepard’s ultimate choice, the progression of his relationships, and the very explicit love scene itself all come with almost zero emotional resonance. It’s all just a series of dialogue choices leading up to partial nudity.

Mass Effect spans some 30-35 hours of gameplay. It offers up situations where game characters can, and will, be killed off in the course of space battles. This is important, Mass Effect screams. The galaxy is at stake. People are going to die.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter. The impact is missing because the characters are, for the most part, zeroes. They have all the charm and depth of an ATM card."

http://playmagazine.com/index.php?fuseaction=SiteMain.showGamePage&Game_ID=693

@Riachu,

What country did two of the three games you mention come from?

Nanza there is so many thing wrong with your post I don't know where to begin. First of all the "sex" in Mass Effect maybe 3 minutes of game time for both scenes combined. In both cases it's optional. Sex is a selling point in the Witcher not Mass Effect. Not a knock on the Witcher, just being real about the situation. Also of course a relationship in a 20 to 30 hour game isn't going to approach the actual thing. That said, in the Witcher you pretty much nail anything with long hair and legs. In Mass Effect, two characters that have been darting across the galaxy for months have the option of "hooking up" right before they think that they could die along with the rest of organic life.

Evil alien invasion? Did you play the game or did you watch the Fox News impression of it because evil alien invasion isn't the story. Maybe my copy was defective. I thought sentient machines were cyclically wiping out advance organic life. As for the choices, they are more limited than they appear but black,white, and grey would be a more accurate assessment of the situation. Not only that Mass Effect doesn't have an "evil" option. You are the hero regardless. How you get from point A to B is up to you. You can be dipolmatic or aggressive.

The only thing I agree with you on is the fact that the technical problems with the game were inexcusable. I have to wonder how much MS pushing for a holiday release had to do with it. That said, it doesn't change the fact that the bugs should been ironed out before release. The PC version is what the console version should have been.

SotC and ICO were both developed in Japan but that only proves my point that critics will praised thought provoking games no matter what country they can from as long as they feel those said games derserve the praise.

White knight Chronicles

I'm glad your entire enjoyment of games is based on what other people think about them.  There are those of us though who form opinions separate from those of reviewers, and in mine FFXII was awful.  Not even a debate for me.  I would not replay that game if you paid me.  I would actually rather go to work than play FFXII, and that goes double for Oblivion.

@Darc Requiem

Excuse me, an evil alien machine invasion.  My fault.  There was nothing deep about it.  It was laughably simplistic.  Although nothing made me laugh as hard as the romance. The worst cheesiest dialog to grace a video game in years.  If Mass Effect were a movie, it would be lucky to be considered a B-Movie.  It's a mess in story, character development, and design (my god how many times can you remake the same fucking planet with a different texture paint?  Try not making your game in a map editor).  Playing WoW by yourself is better than Mass Effect.  At least it has variety of design.