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.
@Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed:
“I didn’t ask for this” – Deus Ex guy (sue me, i forgot the guy’s name)
“But i’ll take it… gladly” – Me
@QOTW:
I have a list…
Cthulhu Saves the world (epic fun awesome RPG)
Terraria (bought for 2.50)
Space Pirates and Zombies (2.50 as well – all hail Ganben)
I could go on, but these are the high awesomeness ones!
Have not yet listened to the podcast, but I thank you very much for the games. Made my crappy day a lot better =D.
Jordan, glad to hear about the job.
@Star Citizen hits $4.5M stretch goal
Jonah, good point on stretch goals. If I ever ever come up with a project that requires funding, and if I put it on Kickstarter, it’ll have all the requirements mentioned, no stretch goals.
@Black Ops 2 1.03 patch doesn’t fix server issues
Ah, EA’s way of pushing Origin … just kidding!
Still, gotta hand it to them the way they do their testing :P. You can test for server outages, bad network conditions, you can test that.
What can I say, COD lost me at Modern Warfare 2. It became just waay too action movie like. Now, Medal Of Honor, that’s a modern warfare game that I liked!
@Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed
Meh … i liked Mortal Kombat, but that’s pretty much it on games turned into movies.
@QOTW:
Ib. Free game, no microtransactions. It went waaay above my expectations, becoming a point of reference for “story and characters beat graphics”.
Black Ops 2 is Activision, not Electronic Arts.
@Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed: Seriously, how many video game movies have been announced and then they run into problems? Just wait until you actually have finished something, and just announce it with a trailer because I’m getting sick of this. Halo, Uncharted, God of War, Castlevania, World of Warcraft, Devil May Cry, Shadow of the Colossus, Bioshock and Gears of War are just a few of the many that will probably never see the light of day.
@Epic Mickey 2: Seeing as the sequel got pretty much the same reviews as the 1st one which I loved, I will probably end up playing this. Would be pretty excited to play it if I hadn’t like 6 new games which I would like to play.
Epic Mickey 2 is getting worse reviews, actually.
@Kickstarting the Party
As fun as Kickstarter sounds, I stay away from it. I am very conservative about how my games are made and frown upon the Rise of Communism in gaming. I still think that Kickstarter is just a passing fad and will eventually wither away.
@Patchy Black Ops
Haven’t played multiplayer. Although I own the Xbox 360 version so I should be safe. People expect Xbox games to run well on-line because we pay the Gold Tax and are entitled on it. Maybe PS3 should have had a payed subscription. It’s on-line is a mess compared to Xbox 360. It’s not just Black Ops that runs bad.
@Deus Ex
At least it wasn’t Uwe Boll…
@Taking the Mickey
Jonah’s right. Epic Mickey 2 is taking a critical beating. It doesn’t matter how many endings you have if your AI partner puts all effort ensuring that you never make it to the end.
@QOTW
GunZ Online. I played it back in 2006 before it went freemium. Back then there weren’t that many free on-line games. Especially action games that weren’t MMORPGs. That made GunZ stand out and I sunk a good few life-times into that game. Occasionally I come back there but the smell of nostalgia is not enough to keep me interested for long. Better games to play these days.