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.
@Thief:
If you have Doom 3, and no patience for Thief 4:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod
@Steam forums hacked
Me don’t like this. Normally you would not depend on third party software for modules in your core application. You’d want access to the source code, so that in case a vulnerability is found, you can fix it quicker than the third party.
So, assuming Valve has access to the code powering their forums, and yet somebody managed to hack it, it means that their developers need to better cover their security holes.
No puns intended.
@Xbox 360 failure rate down to 10%
Paul, I think those 10% come from any kind of combination of the following factors: old version of the console and placing it on a rug, with no space for ventilation.
I had no piece of equipment burn out. Those ventilation holes (sorry for getting back to holes) are there for a reason. If you thought of something different than ventilation, shame on you :P.
@Sony revamps< PSN sharing policy
I actually like that kind of sharing policy, and reducing it to just two devices is quite ok.
@cease-and-desist order to NeoGAF over Mass Effect 3 spoilers
Oh man … this is still free advertising. And since the game is not yet released, it can be changed so that the story of the game remains new.
@QOTW:
Yes.
You'll say this is absurd, but think of it: a game is not a novel, that once you read it you've extracted all of it.
A game is story and gameplay. Or just gameplay. The ones that are just story usually turn crap.
My 'Yes' answer is also based on a personal experiment: I watched/listened in background "lets plays" for STALKER Call of Prypiat, and I still love (not loved, love!) playing the game.
Now granted, such a big spoiler does have one effect: instead of buying the game full priced, I wait for a nice discount.
Great… First you say I’m 8 and then you say I could be a girl. Thanks a lot. =P
@Xbox 360 failure rate down to 10%: The biggest reason I didn’t buy an Xbox 360 when I was choosing a console was that it had a very large failure rate. I’m glad that it’s finally at a point where most people can enjoy it without it failing in less than a year.
@QOTW: I like to watch trailers and gameplay footage as much as I can until I see about 1 or 2 demos from gaming conventions such as E3, so that I know the game is worth buying. Otherwise, regarding story, I like to know as least as possible because gameplay is most important to me and the story is just what holds it together.
Regarding what you said about going to a library and learning a programming language: I would like to do that after I do my GCSEs which are only in next May and I need to focus on them as much as possible first. Also, I was unfortunate that my year is the last year that my country has Pascal programming in its Computer Studies syllabus instead of Java programming. Even though I excel at Pascal, I think there’s going to be a big leap for me to write in another language.