73 réponses à ce sujet

[Realmzmaster]

@AlanC9,
The way PC Gamer's rating scale works is:

90%+ Editor's Choice Oozing class, this is the work of experts at the top of their game.

76-89% Good Enjoyable well made and entertaining

61-75% Fair A decent effort with a little more polish could have been a contender

46-60% Mediocre A ordinary game, quickly forgotten, Think twice even if you find it cheap

31-45% Weak Serious flaws ruin any chance of this game offering sustainable fun.

0-30% Intolerable A crime against gaming. Whether it is bugs or bad design, this should be shot on sight.

Modifié par Realmzmaster, 31 mars 2010 - 05:56 .

[JaegerBane]

kelsjet wrote...

If we are to be completely honest here (a proposition that is hard to accept on DA:O's own forums, especially given the rabid fanbois about) I think we will all agree that if we really looked at Awakenings we would all say that it should not get any more than 75/100 at best.

Most review sites are giving it an extra (read: 'free') 10 or so points due to the "Bioware" splash-screen that we see when we load up the game.

An accurate way to look at the reviews is to normalize for the "splash-screen effect", which, in the case of Awakenings is to take whatever score you see and subtract anywhere between 5-10 points from it to get the 'real' score.

Remember, a name can carry A LOT of weight, especially in the somewhat unprofessional (due to its relative youth) 'games review' industry. After all, who would want to be the single reviewer giving a bad game with a big name a bad review when you know it would just end up out-casting you. Take that sentiment and multiply it across all the noteworthy review sites and you see why you get the kind of scores that you do.
Its the common fear of the conformist.

Kelsjet, no offence, but this is exactly the kind of close-minded behaviour that the forums are getting a name for.

'They gave it 81% therefore they must be fanboys or on Bioware's payroll or someone told them to blah blah blah'.

*Maybe* they just thought it was worth the grade, and that all this hysteria is just going overboard, did you ever think of that? PC Gamer aren't known for being 'fanboys'.

[Terror_K]

Murphys_Law wrote...

I don't think people were expecting a DA:O length game.  They were probably expecting an amazing expansion set like Throne of Bhal, NWN:MotB or other well known RPG expansions (it is Bioware).  20-30 hours for $30 and only a few new features added in (talents, tradeskill etc.).

Yeah, but those expansions didn't come out in only a few months after the original game.

The main thing is just to add more content and at least keep it on the same level of quality as DA:O (hopefully improve).  From what I have been reading that is not the case, but I will make my own judgment when I buy the game at a lower price.  There are several very serious bugs...quests not even working because they were not done in the "right" order, people losing gear at the mines, and various other ones.

With the exception of a couple of niggles, I'd say for the most part the quality is pretty close to DAO personally. Some parts I even found better, such as the story which didn't feel as by-the-books as the original game's one. But then I haven't really come across any major bugs either (I read about the DLC thing so just got the mod to fix that and the only other bugs were a couple that gave me massive approval for single gifts, which helped more than hindered). Maybe my feelings would be different if I had these bugs.

Combat has repeatly said to be too easy, which really has me worried because I thought DA:O was already too easy for my tastes.

This is admittedly true I feel. DAO's difficulty was actually far better before the first patch, IMO. Not sure if that's a fault of the expansion or just DAO in general though and the fact that we're in the higher-level tiers in Awakening. For one thing, we're still basically fighting the same enemies for the most past (genlocks, hurlocks, bandits, etc.), while the AD&D titles usually had tougher enemies in the higher-level areas.

The new dialog system replaces the old one, which for a lot of people (including me) is a huge downgrade (couldn't they have compromised the two systems?). 

New dialogue system? Not sure what you mean here... Awakening used the same style of dialogue that DAO used as far as I could tell.

Then there is the big elephant in the room the price...$40, really?  $10 less than DA:O for maybe 1/3 of the content.  Hell if I bought the game at that price, you would better believe that I am expecting something close to DA:O length!  I would bet you my bottom dollar that half of the negativity is really directed at the price more than anything.  I really have to facepalm at EA (someone got a little greedy) for the potential damage they may have caused to the DA franchise.

Yes, admittedly a bit pricey. I still bought it simply because it was Dragon Age though, and I don't regret it. As I said earlier, it may just be an expansion, but its still got more hours of gameplay than most of today's modern games, and they're usually priced a bit higher. If this had come out in another 8-12 months then I probably would have been disappointed somewhat myself, but since it came so quickly, I'm more than happy with it. Again, I'm happier with Awakening than I was with Mass Effect 2: a longer, full-priced game I was looking forward to for years. 

[Realmzmaster]

@Terror_K,

The AD&D titles could have tougher enemies at the higher level area because most if not all of those games were linear. Since you are allowed to go anywhere in Awakenings it would not work as well. You could decide to go to Wending Woods first and I decide to go to Forlorn Cove. Should your enemies be tougher than mine since you picked a different location to start.

The AD&D titles had everyone following the same path so the enemies could get progressively tougher. You could not get to an area that was too far over your level.

So there are tradeoffs. If you imported a character you are probably coming in at 5 to 6 levels over the new warden commander. So the expansion would be much easier than if you started with a new character.

Also after going through Origins you are use to the combat mechanics. No learning curve there except to look at the new spells and talents.

[kelsjet]

JaegerBane wrote...

'They gave it 81% therefore they must be fanboys or on Bioware's payroll or someone told them to blah blah blah'.

*Maybe* they just thought it was worth the grade, and that all this hysteria is just going overboard, did you ever think of that? PC Gamer aren't known for being 'fanboys'.

I'm sorry, but I think you are confused since you have not really been following the thread.

The statement of 'fanboys' was only brought up by me in an entirely different context, that being, that it is always difficult to say anything negative about a game in a forum that is at the very heart of the game's community. No one, including myself, was saying that the PC Gamer guys are fanboys, in fact, the discussion was entirely different.

The fact of the matter is that Awakenings is an average expansion. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence across the internet that most players agree with this assertion. What this thread was looking into was the reason why games, like Awakening, can be rated highly even though they are average at best.

Fanboys really don't come into it really. Big money, however, does.
You are right, PC Gamer is not known for being fanboys. They are, however, known for giving bad games good reviews by order of their parent company, who in turn, is given orders by the 'big name' game publishers. Refer to the link I posted in my earlier posts in this thread to see the evidence of this occurring in many 'well known' review sites across the web.

As far as your final point of the few of us who are pointing out this discrepancy between the quality of Awakenings and the review scores are being 'hysterical' about it, I think that is just a simple case of fanboy hyperbole on your part

I don't think anyone reading any of my posts will reach the conclusion that I am being 'hysterical' in any shape or form.

[HighlandBerserkr]

the only problem i have with awakenings is the lack of romance and the massive bugs that will probably not get fixed for consoles, other than that its great, my characters cant be killed and the main story is even better than Origins

[Massadonious1]

Fact of the matter is, it's still your opinion.

[TheMadCat]

Kelsjet, no offence, but this is exactly the kind of close-minded behaviour that the forums are getting a name for.

'They gave it 81% therefore they must be fanboys or on Bioware's payroll or someone told them to blah blah blah'.

*Maybe*
they just thought it was worth the grade, and that all this hysteria is
just going overboard, did you ever think of that? PC Gamer aren't known
for being 'fanboys'.

Let's not get naive now, while I don't agree 100% with Kelsjet the fact is there is a positive bias towards major companies. It's no so much the BioWare label as it is the EA label, or Activision, Ubisoft, and other big name publishers. These companies gives these review sites millions of dollars a year directly through adveritising and indirectly through promos/exclusives. Just look at history, it's not unheard of for reviewers to let some things slide when it comes to the big boys games, after all you don't want to agitate the hand that feeds you too much otherwise they may start cutting back on their allocated advertising budget to you company. It's simply the way business operates. An EA game typically won't be treated the same as a Stardock game when it comes time to pick it apart.

[Massadonious1]

Maybe the reviewers missed the memo when they were reviewing Dante's Inferno.

[Ignus Burns]

Massadonious1 wrote...
Fact of the matter is, it's still your opinion.

But... but... kelsjet uses lots of intelligent words... he must be right, mustn't he??? [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/andy.png[/smilie]

I really despise people who can't seperate fact and opinion, who feel the need to write 'we' when they really are saying 'I'. You didn't like it kelsjet. Fine. Yet you try to present it as a fact that 'we' all can agree that it wasn't good enough. However highly you think of your opinion, it is still an opinion. A fact is that it invcluded new skills. A fact is something that can't (yet) be disproven. Try to learn to seperate fact from subjective opinion in the future, please.

Modifié par Ignus Burns, 31 mars 2010 - 09:00 .

[Finiffa]

I usually check metacritics, because you see different reviews from different magazines and gamers. Here is the score for Awakenings:

82 from magazines
78 from gamers

http://www.metacriti...riginsawakening

[dbkkk]

kelsjet wrote...

This will not remain like this forever though. Eventually, both the games and game review industries will mature (after a lot of study has been done) and we will start getting game reviews that are at least on par (as far as professionalism goes) to what we have in the movie industry today (not saying that the movie review industry is faultless, its just leagues ahead of game reviews as far as credibility is concerned).

DA:O Awakening is an average expansion at best.

I tend to agree with a fair chunk of what you have been saying regarding a big gaming compnay bias, except for the idea that somehow subjective game reviews  will fix themselves with time. The idea that the game industry and reviewers will 'mature' in a symbiotic fashion that somehow avoids compliicty or collusion is a nice one but hardly guaranteed nor even necessarily likely. How will game reviewers of the future differ from modern entertainment / media pundits in other venues? Heck look at stock market analysts, there is a profession that has been around for eons yet has all sorts of credibilty issues and highly subjective appraisals. It would make more sense if there were more game reviewers that didn't have any skin in the game. i.e. had business models that were much less reliant on the gaming industry themselves. Like a New York Times or Time magazine that couldn't care one whit if the game succeeded or failed. But I wouldn't hold my breath for anything like that to arrive soon.

Modifié par dbkkk, 31 mars 2010 - 12:16 .

[wowpwnslol]

There are no reviews these days that are not bought or fixed. 81%? It barely deserves a 70.

[CybAnt1]

New dialogue system? Not sure what you mean here... Awakening used the same style of dialogue that DAO used as far as I could tell.

The new dialogue system is that to speak to your companions, you either have to find environmental objects, or wait for a "quest" flag to appear over their heads at Keep. Also, some have objects at the Keep that you can use to speak with them. For most, it's only once. Oghren's Cask appears to be the only repeatable one that allows you to have several instances of (drunken) dialogue with him. 

BTW, it also seemed to me that a lot of the environmentally triggered conversations had zero effect on many companions' approval, which I found surprising considering how hard some are to locate/trigger. 

I like only one aspect of it, yes, it does avoid the many times where I started a "convo" with a companion by O by mistake simply because with the camera angle they were in the way of my movement cursor. "Never mind." 

[Realmzmaster]

So chunk the reviews and ratings if they have no meaning and the reviewers are in the pockets of the gaming companies. They cannot be trusted. Buy the game, expansion and decide for yourself.

The reviews are simply someone else's opinion. Form your own, but that requires that you spend your money first. Better yet ask a friend. But your friend who has already spent their money might be one of those rabid BioWare fanboys and actually like the expansion.

Also we must disregard 1up rating of Awakening which is a B+ and IGN rating of 8.5 by the editors except the readers who responded gave it an 8.4 on the PC (consoles readers gave it a lower rating 7.0 on their respective platforms)

Are we therefore to say that the readers who play on the PC and gave it an 8.4 which about mirrors the editors 8.5 are fanboys? They have no advertising stake or are swayed by the industry. Are they just blinded by the halo effect of the Bioware name?

They are not giving an honest opinion?

If I say I liked the expansion and agree with PC Gamer and the numeric rating is my opinion then invalid. Of course not. It simply does not agree with yours. My experience with the expansion could be totally different from yours. My expectations could be different.

You have a right to your opinion. I have a right to mine.

It is a fact that there is a bug in the Silverite mine. It is opinion that someone does not like the way Justice looks.

It is a fact that the MSRP is $39.99. A numeric rating is just opinion. A review is just opinion. You can take it at face value as I do or not. That is the choice.

[AlanC9]

Realmzmaster wrote...

@AlanC9,
The way PC Gamer's rating scale works is:

90%+ Editor's Choice Oozing class, this is the work of experts at the top of their game.

76-89% Good Enjoyable well made and entertaining

61-75% Fair A decent effort with a little more polish could have been a contender

46-60% Mediocre A ordinary game, quickly forgotten, Think twice even if you find it cheap

31-45% Weak Serious flaws ruin any chance of this game offering sustainable fun.

0-30% Intolerable A crime against gaming. Whether it is bugs or bad design, this should be shot on sight.

Thanks. 81% seems like a fair rating for DA:A if that's the scale.

[BanditGR]

Finiffa wrote...

I usually check metacritics, because you see different reviews from different magazines and gamers. Here is the score for Awakenings:

82 from magazines
78 from gamers

http://www.metacriti...riginsawakening

I'd say that those scores pretty much hit the nail. Good but not the 'classic' it could have been, considering the potential.

[SSH83]

Ratings I give to wannabe reviewers in this thread: 13 / 100.

Rating I give to Awakening 95/100.



Hey I can give out bs ratings too!

[Gaharia]

81 is good.

[Crixt]

81% is fair for PC. Lower for 360.

[Viglin]

kelsjet wrote...

If we are to be completely honest here (a proposition that is hard to accept on DA:O's own forums, especially given the rabid fanbois about) I think we will all agree that if we really looked at Awakenings we would all say that it should not get any more than 75/100 at best.

Most review sites are giving it an extra (read: 'free') 10 or so points due to the "Bioware" splash-screen that we see when we load up the game.

An accurate way to look at the reviews is to normalize for the "splash-screen effect", which, in the case of Awakenings is to take whatever score you see and subtract anywhere between 5-10 points from it to get the 'real' score.

Remember, a name can carry A LOT of weight, especially in the somewhat unprofessional (due to its relative youth) 'games review' industry. After all, who would want to be the single reviewer giving a bad game with a big name a bad review when you know it would just end up out-casting you. Take that sentiment and multiply it across all the noteworthy review sites and you see why you get the kind of scores that you do.
Its the common fear of the conformist.

Never speak for everyone.

I myself would rate it higher, but thats just me.

[Murphys_Law]

Terror_K wrote...

Yeah, but those expansions didn't come out in only a few months after the original game.

The expansion was in the works for at least a year (Bioware people have said this, sorry no citation).  Remember they were done with DA:O for a while we had to wait for them to port it to consoles.  This expansion has been planned for a long time before DA:O was even released.  Even if that was not the case, there is no excuse for releasing a "quickie" expansion set just because they want to make some deadline, especially when DA:A has quite a few things that needed to be improved.

Terror_K wrote...
With the exception of a couple of niggles, I'd say for the most part the quality is pretty close to DAO personally. Some parts I even found better, such as the story which didn't feel as by-the-books as the original game's one. But then I haven't really come across any major bugs either (I read about the DLC thing so just got the mod to fix that and the only other bugs were a couple that gave me massive approval for single gifts, which helped more than hindered). Maybe my feelings would be different if I had these bugs.

I don't doubt DA:A's story because I think Bioware has some of the best writers in the gaming industry.  Well regardless if you didn't experience any bugs they are still there for other players.  It may also be the case that you didn't notice any, but in fact missed out on a quest that you didn't even know was supposed to occur.  I think it is completely unacceptable to release a game that basically ruins various quest lines just because of the order they are done in.  Another problem I have with the quality aspect, is not enough carry over from Origins.  From what I understand, it is basically just short cameos of some of the old companions and virtually zero mention of the choices you made in DA:O (minus who is the King/Queen).  That seems pretty low even by ME2 standards.  I am a little jaded at Bioware with their choices and them having little impact or conquences.

Terror_K wrote...
This is admittedly true I feel. DAO's difficulty was actually far better before the first patch, IMO. Not sure if that's a fault of the expansion or just DAO in general though and the fact that we're in the higher-level tiers in Awakening. For one thing, we're still basically fighting the same enemies for the most past (genlocks, hurlocks, bandits, etc.), while the AD&D titles usually had tougher enemies in the higher-level areas.

Yeah, I don't like the sound of that.  DA:O's combat system has a lot of potential, but has yet to really shine like it did in BG2.

Terror_K wrote...
New dialogue system? Not sure what you mean here... Awakening used the same style of dialogue that DAO used as far as I could tell.

As someone said earlier, the object-based conversations you have with your companions.  You cannot just talk to your companions at camp like DA:O.  I kinda like the new idea, but ripping the guts out of the old way was not the way to do it.

Terror_K wrote...
Yes, admittedly a bit pricey. I still bought it simply because it was Dragon Age though, and I don't regret it. As I said earlier, it may just be an expansion, but its still got more hours of gameplay than most of today's modern games, and they're usually priced a bit higher. If this had come out in another 8-12 months then I probably would have been disappointed somewhat myself, but since it came so quickly, I'm more than happy with it. Again, I'm happier with Awakening than I was with Mass Effect 2: a longer, full-priced game I was looking forward to for years.

I don't really think it is fair to compare DA:A to other modern games.  Really you are comparing an expansion pack to a full game (totally different cost models, they play differently, etc.).  You are also most likely comparing it to FPS games, which is a different genre (emphasis on gameplay/graphics not story/lore for one thing).  What would 8-12 months change?  As I said, the expansion has been worked on for one year, which is pretty much the standard for expansions.  I guess Bioware does get some slack because people didn't know that the expansion has been in the works for awhile and was not worked on only from DA:O's release till DA:A release (only a few months development time).  The quick release worries me a lot, it looks too much like they are trying to ride the DA:O positive feelings train and less about the quality of the product.  I am surprised you were so disappointed with ME2.  I wasn't really satisfied with all their decisions (way too much dumbing down), but I thought it was overall a great game (not better than DA:O though ).

[kelsjet]

Viglin wrote...

kelsjet wrote...

If we are to be completely honest here (a proposition that is hard to accept on DA:O's own forums, especially given the rabid fanbois about) I think we will all agree that if we really looked at Awakenings we would all say that it should not get any more than 75/100 at best.
...

Never speak for everyone.

I myself would rate it higher, but thats just me.

Too bad that you didn't bold and colorize the first part of my sentence in your fit of chest-beating, since it is far more pertinent to your post then anything else.

But lets move on to someone who is actually trying to contribute constructively to the discussion in an effort to move the conversation forward.

dbkkk wrote...
I tend to agree with a fair chunk of what you have been saying regarding a big gaming compnay bias, except for the idea that somehow subjective game reviews  will fix themselves with time. The idea that the game industry and reviewers will 'mature' in a symbiotic fashion that somehow avoids compliicty or collusion is a nice one but hardly guaranteed nor even necessarily likely. How will game reviewers of the future differ from modern entertainment / media pundits in other venues? Heck look at stock market analysts, there is a profession that has been around for eons yet has all sorts of credibilty issues and highly subjective appraisals. It would make more sense if there were more game reviewers that didn't have any skin in the game. i.e. had business models that were much less reliant on the gaming industry themselves. Like a New York Times or Time magazine that couldn't care one whit if the game succeeded or failed. But I wouldn't hold my breath for anything like that to arrive soon.

You make fair points and I would agree that you are totally right in your hesitation in thinking that the unprofessional state that the industry (both games and game reviews) are in may not ever change. To be fair, you are right, there is no guarantee that this issue will be resolved eventually. However, we do have precedence of how other, related industries have become more 'professional' when they have matured.

A key point you have touched on is that the industries are somewhat inexorably linked, due to the constant feedback loop of game creation -> game criticism -> game creation iteration (ME2 is a great example of this process at work, where the devs themselves stated that they made a concerted effort to respond to every single criticism made about ME1).

All this being said, the examples of precedence I talked about earlier come from the movie industry. As any good student of media history will tell you, the movie industry and the movie review industry were in a similar place as we are now in the late 40s and early 50s. The vast majority of films were formulaic and the major production houses had far too much interest in the review process. All this changed in the early 50s with not only the introduction of legendary directors (Kurosawa et al.) but a simultaneous birth of movie critics who came to light in an effort to truly appreciate these new movies being released.
This lead to movies being studied as an art form, which eventually lead to the introduction of actual professional, educated movie critics taking center stage in the discussion. This eventually lead to the situation which exists today where a real movie critic is not only a professional, but a highly educated individual who has not only just 'watched many movies' but studied movies at an academic level (individuals like Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and A.O. Scott of the New York Times).

But the key take away from this is that both events need to happen somewhat simultaneously. Not only do we need professional and educated game critics, but we need a true "next generation game" to spark the engine of creating the need for these 'new breed of critics'.

Essentially, we need an Akira Kurosawa game designer.

My hope for the maturity of the games industry (and all related industries) is born from a belief that out there somewhere there is in fact a Kurosawa for games.

[Ignus Burns]

Ahh yes, the fanboy defense. "If you don't agree with me, you are a fanboy". How very mature of you.

[SuperMedbh]

kelsjet wrote...
Essentially, we need an Akira Kurosawa game designer.

My hope for the maturity of the games industry (and all related industries) is born from a belief that out there somewhere there is in fact a Kurosawa for games.

At the risk of being called a "rabid fanboi" (fangirl, fwiw), I think you're being unfair to the DA design team.  The real question is whether or not the consumer base is ready to buy the game equivalent of Rashomon.  There are a few "art games" out there (if you haven't looked at The Path by Tale of Tales, do), but they can't command the budget or success of more traditional games.  They may get great reviews, but at the end of the day, the traditional gaming audience wants a traditional game.

And to me, that's the brilliance of DA.  It uses the standard FRPG medium, complete with the usual races/classes
and game mechanics (kill the monster, grab the loot, fight the boss, level up), and added a terrific story with large sections dedicated to such foreign concepts as character development.  It's the age old artistic need to be novel, but not so novel as to alienate the consumer base.