Episode 526: New York State of Mind

This week’s episode of Gaming Podcast features the first news of 2019 for the podcast, and there’s some juicy items to discuss. There’s no Gaming Flashback, but there is more discussion of the latest Civilization VI: Gathering Storm civs to be discussed.

The news includes:

  • “Exciting Halo: The Master Chief Collection news” teased for SXSW 2019
  • EA cancels open-world Star Wars game
  • Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is getting turn-based combat later this week

Let us know what you think.

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Episode 426: Paul’s Return Part 2Episode 426: Paul’s Return Part 2

As promised, the second half of the two hour long podcast, in which there’s a long, long ramble about pop culture and potential future specials with Paul and company.

The other news items included in the podcast are:

  • 2K announces Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
  • Nintendo NX “is neither the successor to the Wii U nor to the 3DS”

The next podcast will be recorded live at E3’s show floor in two weeks – stay tuned!

Episode 724: State of SonyEpisode 724: State of Sony

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The guys discuss Eric Barone still working on Stardew Valley, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 being confirmed for Xbox Game Pass, blackjack roguelike Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, Kerbal Space Program developer layoffs, The Sims 4 launching a battle pass-like, and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.

The news includes:

  • The Sony State of Play showcase
  • Sony apologizes for interview with developer Neil Druckmann
  • Silent Hill announcement stream scheduled for this week

Let us know what you think.

The post Episode 724: State of Sony first appeared on Gaming Podcast.

Users Pwn MetaCritic Review SubmissionsUsers Pwn MetaCritic Review Submissions

Although we’ve found Metacritic a userful resource for game reviews, many folks have gone on a user submission rampage to discredit games that haven’t even launched yet. Their first attack was on LittleBigPlanet followed by Resistance 2, now their hitting Gears of War 2.

While Gears of War 2 has a Metacritic score of 94/100 the user’s have reviewed it to be a 3.5 out of 10, with a bright red box around the user review due to its low nature we’re sure. Although users are free to give their own honest representation of the game from their perspective, Gears of War 2, as of the review dates, hasn’t been released yet – these reviews are bogus.

This style of attack was popularized in Spore, when Amazon got nailed with poor reviews of the game because Spore’s “Draconic” DRM made people angry. However, it’s more reasonable for people to voice their opinion on a known issue with a game; Gears of War 2 review spamming is just mean.

We use Metacritic as guidance when we do our gaming podcast to understand what games are rated in the industry, but we don’t use user reviews as our main guide. There are plenty of folks out there that may utilize these reviews in more seriousness because they may feel journalists reviews are tainted by advertisers or “the man” and want the common gamers opinion.

The common gamer cannot possibility be reviewing Gears of War 2 before the title has arrived. This is bogus. Metacritic has this to say:

“My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site.” (1up)

So, to those looking for holiday gaming gifts, keep this in mind while you start hunting down games you’ll want to buy.