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.
No Paul again, you know the drill.
Lately I’ve been ignoring all these articles just spewing out rumors day after day, hoping one of them will be right. First, IGN comes out with “Report: BOTH New Xbox and PS4 Will Be Shown At E3”. The very next day they wrote that an analyst said none of the consoles will be shown. And now yesterday, they came out with “Microsoft or Sony To Quit Console Race?”. Seriously guys, stop guessing and just wait for E3 for goodness sake.
And also I hate when they say an “analyst” says so. Oh, it must be true then because this guy gets paid to “analyze”.
@Rumor: Next Xbox tablet-based?: Even though the Wii-U will be sort of tablet-based, I think that Microsoft wouldn’t be able to pull it off and will just end up sucking.
hey guys… hope you can read this before recording the 247th!
@ps4 and 720: I hope they will be announced at this next e3 but i am ready for dissapointment. and yes, if the ps4 do not have some awesome co-funtionality with the vita, sony will be effectivelly killing the it
@diablo auction houses: not only south coreia: you guys talked about south coreia and russia, but you did forget about the prisoners in china gold farming in WoW who are obligated to do it (a few months old podcast). sad stuff
@SOPA: i am a brasilian gamer who has warned all american friends to help not passing this bill project because it will affect not only US but all the world. i like the machinima channel on youtube. SOPA would kill them
@before last week’s QOTW: my only handheld console is my trusty dark DS lite and i play on it since it lunched and still love it!!! SO SHINNY
my most played game of 2011 was CoD MW2 and BF3. i know.. the controversy…
the most surprisingly fun game was terraria most preciselly after patch 1.1.
most dissapointing is Black ops (not even 100h of gametime according to steam)
LOVE YOU GUYS, KEEP IT UP!!!
I’ve heard happier versions of Jonah before.
@Gaming Flashback:
Ha ha ha 🙂
The game was mentioned before, but Jordan made this particular flashback entertaining. The other 9 games? Please make a list.
@Fallout MMO rights belong to Bethesda as Interplay settles
Well, I guess Interplay got what it aimed to get. Jonah, it’s not the ‘wrong people won’. When you sell your IP, you won’t be able to make games on it. They should have known that before selling out to Bethesda.
Yes, they had some provisions in the contract allowing them to use the name for an MMO. That’s just not enough though. Interplay should have known better.
@ Next Xbox tablet-based?
No. They want to use PC-like hardware, so that they don’t have to worry too much about software. Plus, the more components (tablet, base station etc etc) the more expensive. So, no.
They will make it more slim, I suppose. Heck, even add a touch screen front panel. But that’s it.
@Diablo III release held due to South Korea (from GameFront)
Erm … yeah, I guess it a bit more difficult to foresee all legal difficulties, especially when you need to keep an eye on all the countries you want to ship …
@QOTW – hardware specs, as asked by your reader:
My ‘modern’ machine is a single core Sempron 3000+, 1.5 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 4650. 🙂 Pretty ancient.