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.
It’s contest time again! This time, we’re giving away the Xbox Live Arcade version of Defense Grid: The Awakening, a great tower defense title. You can read GameStooge’s review here, which has gameplay videos.
I first started following the TD Podcast back in 2007. My buddy Luke clued me in that TD was doing a ‘cast, and said I should start following it.
So I did.
Boring story.
I actually only started about 3 weeks ago. I got sucked into pod-casts actually only 4 weeks ago also by podcasts on retrowaretv.com So I seeked out new and diffrent pod-casts. I do have to say this is one of my favorite because of the format that it’s been put in. Also i’ve sorta cherry picked previous episodes in the back log of pod-casts. It’s always so intresting to look back and see what we believed would happen today. Even it was only three months ago.
I started getting addicted to you lovely chaps, when i was reconmended by the lovely bird known as twitter. Its interesting to listen to you guys and see how wrong you got the future 😀
This is actually my first one, the Defense Grid cross-promotion pulled me over here. I guess that was the point of the cross promotion huh? 🙂 I had no idea you guys did a podcast. I regularly listen to the 2o2p one and majornelson and oxm and I love your common man cocktails video podcast, very professionally done. But now that I know you also have a gaming podcast, i’ll add this to my weekly listening pleasure.
@Bushmaster2000 Hey hey! Welcome to the show, this one isn’t as explicit and does prove to be unique and different than the other casts, so you probably won’t get too much redundancy and a completely different perspective (esp. considering we’ve got three folks and one being a women, you can get a bit of a different perspective on things)
@David: Wow, glad twitter got you hooked, promoting a podcast is tough with all the other audio shows getting in our way. At least I know twitter has done us good!
@Jareske: Our format is a bit different than other “professional” shows because we’re not in the industry and we’re not living and breathing it everyday, we’re taking it more from a gamers perspective and the reactions of what a gamer might say when they hear the weekly news… or so I think 🙂
@Stephen: Glad you’re still on board. You’ve been around awhile and we’re used to hearing more from our newer listeners. Ya never know who still sticks it out for the long run, considering the audience is growing I guess we’ve got to be doing something right.
Same thing as Bushmaster 2000. I listen to some of them in french (quebec) but also the GT and Screwattack one. Planned on listening to this one for sure 🙂
The truth be told, up until a link from gamestooge.com about a contest brought me here, I had never heard a TD Podcast. BUT, I am now currently listening to one of the newer podcasts and I must say that it’s pretty good. I like the mix of content covering multiple services and consoles and the banter between the hosts.
It’s refreshing to hear the opinions of people that have no direct affiliation with a big media outlet or game company. I feel I’m getting a more honest opinion of the gaming community as a whole, and not just the highlights from a group that wants me to buy into their product(s).
Thank you. I will definitely be returning to listen to the TD Podcast.
Hey im from cooktown & listen to da cast today…… Give me, Give me Give mee!
I got hooked after a friend told me about it. If I’m not gaming at least I can listen to a podcast about it.
The contest is over, and the winner will be announced soon.
The winner is VanIslePimp. Everyone had great comments, but only one can get the code.
Thanks everyone for entering!
Thanks for holding the contest! I look forward to your next podcast. Now I’m off to play some Defense Grid: The Awakening. Thank you again.