132 réponses à ce sujet

[Kohaku]

I don't really know to be honest. I read reviews after I've already brought the game in question. I don't place any stock in them anymore. I won't go as far as saying they get "paid" off in a sense but I know they feel pressure from somewhere to maybe give a game higher score than it should be. What made me suspicious of that is when IGN goes back to games they've reviewed and ponder if the game really deserves the score they originally gave it. That's kind of suspect but what can you do?

DA2 is not a tragic game. I agree that it's about a 7/7.5 out of 10 in my book. If it weren't for me actually liking the companions and some of the story it would be worse. I just take issue with the final chapter of the game, going overboard with reusing areas and the damn waves of enemies.

Modifié par Kerridan Kaiba, 16 mars 2011 - 06:11 .

[Haexpane]

The only people on Metacritic are other gaming websites, developers, trolls etc...

"Fans" don't go to metacritic and read horrible PR press releases posing as reviews or /b/ trolls

[Galad22]

It is just ridiculous that some critics have given it over 9/10 since obviously this game has some deep flaws, however I think it is also unfair give it 0-4/10. It is not like DA2 is worst game ever.

Personally I'd give it 6-7,5 or so, it is not very good game but it's not horrible either. It is just mediocre in every possible way.

[Haexpane]

Galad22 wrote...

It is just ridiculous that some critics have given it over 9/10 since obviously this game has some deep flaws, however I think it is also unfair give it 0-4/10. It is not like DA2 is worst game ever.

 

IGN gave GTA4 and Halo 3 10/10 so why not?  IGN throws out 9.5s like a stripper spreads herpes.

[AlanC9]

Damn. In the prediction thread I bet the critic average would be 87.

I wonder who won the bet?

As for the disconnect, we've got different groups applying different methodologies. Even without the outright dishonest user reviews, there's no reason to expect that we'd get very similar numbers.

[Melca36]

javierabegazo wrote...

I myself would rate DA2 a 7/10. It gets docked points not for not including features that I feel "must be in an RPG" but for taking shortcuts such as reusing maps. Such a short development cycle is what really strung this game up, I think

7-8 is how I rate the game as well.

[nightlordv]

Reviews from review sites can be bought with deep pockets like EA. As for the fan reviews I believe a lot of them are just trolls with no real "reviews" even put in there probably just a bunch of raging people who may have only played the demo and not the full game. Still, its not just on metacritic, even the Amazon reviews for the game are just as bad with more 1 stars then any other.
Its obvious that the fans do not like what Bioware did to DA2, and Bioware really has to address this at some point because it is not going to go away.

[jds1bio]

javierabegazo wrote...

A great deal of those 'reviews' by fans on Metacritic are copied and pasted, which points to a great deal of it being done by trolls from sites like 4chan and such, which I think is totally counterproductive to giving actual feedback. A two line paragraph review to me just looks like spam, where as a 3 page long review discussing actual features in specific seems much more real

But this is kind of the crux, isn't it?   Since each contribution to Metacritic requires only one piece of contextual information (score X out of 100 or X.Y out of 10), you really don't know what that rating stands for in the eye of the contributor. 

For both critics and users, it's supposed to stand for rating the subject in question. When you read critics' reviews, you see that biases nudge the final rating up or down from time to time, but they are primarily trying to increase their publications' readership if nothing else.

But for users, it is all bias for or against the product, company, industry, themselves, the world, etc. and rarely is it about their personal experience with the subject.  A tool like Metacritic gives users a chance to quickly make a mark on the world, however insignificant, as if the rest of the world is not available for them to contribute to.

So there is a disparity of motivations between the two types of contributors, and thus the disconnect.  If you could guarantee that all the contributors' motivations are the same, then the comparison between critic and user scores could be useful.

[RagingCyclone]

Same here Melca. I give it 7.5. Good, but lots of room for improvement.

[azarhal]

jds1bio wrote...

So there is a disparity of motivations between the two types of contributors, and thus the disconnect.  If you could guarantee that all the contributors' motivations are the same, then the comparison between critic and user scores could be useful.

This is why I only look at review/score on digital stores where the only ones who have the right to vote/posts are the people who bought the product (and the reviewers are usually moderated as well).

[angry_peon]

I think 8,4 from the critics might be even worse than all the trolls giving 0s, in some ways. I mean, 8,4 is not a bad score, but it isn't outstanding either, and much lower than most other Bioware titels. That will take away prestige over time.  
It fits also nicely, with what people here say (many 7-8, so it's not way off).
The trolls will (and should) be ignored by EA/Bioware when rethinking what perhaps could be improved. But much good and solid criticism can be found when reading through the professional reviews and non-polemic threads. And this is where they might/should and most likely will start looking.

Modifié par Varhjhin, 16 mars 2011 - 06:44 .

[Senzen Sumnor]

Pedrak wrote...

In general...

Professional critics are (mostly) so spineless that they typically won't rate an AAA game lower than, say, 80. Like movie critics, they try to save their credibility by listing lots of flaws but still giving a game or a movie a very high rating, so they won't make enemies with powerful developers and fanboys won't stop reading - they don't like to have their blind opinions challenged by serious reviews.

This pretty much explains my thought on the professional review.  Triple A games will very rarely get less than 80 from major gaming sites, because they don't want to create an enemy with the publisher.  They wield alot of power in terms of advertising dollars and future game exclusives, making it impossible for say a site like Gamespot, IGN or Eurogamer to give a too low of a score.  You really have to read the review and read between the lines to get thier true assessment of the game. 

[jds1bio]

Melca36 wrote...

javierabegazo wrote...

I myself would rate DA2 a 7/10. It gets docked points not for not including features that I feel "must be in an RPG" but for taking shortcuts such as reusing maps. Such a short development cycle is what really strung this game up, I think

7-8 is how I rate the game as well.

I respect your opinions and thank you for sharing them.  Two points regarding DA2 review ratings in general:

One - short dev cycle hurts - how come people didn't say this about Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, released only a year after its predecessor?  Because we were having too much fun playing it, even though a lot was changed.  Whereas with DA2, that doesn't seem to be the case with everyone. 

I've heard this short dev cycle stuff a lot over the past week, as if people are trying to rationalize why they didn't like the game.  We don't say this about movies we didn't have fun watching, and movies that we do have fun watching can be made very very quickly if the motivation is there. 

So if there was a longer dev cycle, and if there were unique maps for every situation, would your rating really go up?  And by how many points?  You can't really say because that game wasn't made and you don't know how those maps would have turned out.


Two - Ratings are fine, but would you guys ever purchase at full price and play a game to completion that was rated a 6 or under by critics?  I don't think I have within the past 5 years, and I'm not sure that that's a coincidence.  But I have seen movies and listened to albums that have rated low, and have enjoyed a bunch of them.  It seems like half the review scale we use for games ends up being useless for critics and too useful for users..

[Oilking72]

Did you just throw out metacritic user reviews as evidence of this "disconnect"?

All I have to say is "holy small sample size, Batman".

To be honest, I don't think there is that big of a disconnect and I would hazzard a guess that most of those "reviews" are pretty useless.  It's got a 4.2 average because half the mouth breathers on there are giving scores like 0 and 1 or 2 instead of being realistic to what the actual score should be.

You go to rottentomatoes for a movie review and you see a critic score average of 32% but a user review average of 80%, then that's a disconnect.  You routinely have numbers over 30 000 user reviews to draw from.  I would guess that's a good indication of how good the movie was.

You just can't make that claim with metacritic and their ±1200 reviews.

[J-Nice]

7/10 is probably the most accurate rating for this game. Its a better than average game (5) but not spectacular. And to not compare it to the original is nonsense. Its a sequel to an excellent game, and if anything, it should be just as good. The reason it gets a 7 is for lack of depth, lack of customization, poor storytelling, sloppy combat, reused environments, and the story falls apart at the end.

If they put as much effort into the 3rd act that they did into Act 2, this game would not have such a bad aftertaste. The 2nd act was nothing short of amazing. They did everything right as far as storytelling and building tension goes.

Theres no reason to take what made a game great and loved by fans and throw it out the window to appeal to a broader audience. I suspect the reason they kept the name Dragon Age is the same reason they remake movies. People know the brand, simple as that.

[arathor_87]

javierabegazo wrote...

A great deal of those 'reviews' by fans on Metacritic are copied and pasted, which points to a great deal of it being done by trolls from sites like 4chan and such, which I think is totally counterproductive to giving actual feedback. A two line paragraph review to me just looks like spam, where as a 3 page long review discussing actual features in specific seems much more real

Not true. If you're angry you won't write a two pages review. For me its not a 4/10 rating but neither a 8-10. Many of the 10/10 rating are fanboys so you can see this from two point of views.

[Zem_]

TheAnima wrote...

Actually, I think it's due to the average person being more likely to review something they feel is bad than something they feel is good. Where as professional ussually just go by what's out and popular.

I would put it a bit differently.  What I expect of a critic is to review how well the game achieves what it is trying to be.   That means you don't knock off points because they went in an Action RPG direction.   But you can if you think they didn't do a good job of it.   The mid-air spawning of enemies for example.  Meanwhile in a fan review it's perfectly acceptable to say you think action RPGs are tools of the devil and Bioware should burn for even thinking about it.

I think that's pretty much what's happening here.  Even if these changes get them more new fans, the old ones that feel betrayed are venting in the user reviews.  And because this game ISN'T a 9+, you aren't getting as many people there voting it up.  Because if it's just a 7 or 8 are people really going to bother to rate it?  Not as many certainly.

Modifié par Zem_, 16 mars 2011 - 07:03 .

[cofcof]

"professional" reviewers are for the most part terrible and a part of them is probably paid by big companies for positive reviews

who can forget that guy who played da origins on console and then complained in preview that him clicking on enemy doesnt make him attack it faster

professionals...

[Zem_]

J-Nice wrote...

7/10 is probably the most accurate rating for this game. Its a better than average game (5) but not spectacular.

This is one problem with numeric scoring.  Not everyone uses the same scale.  Think of how tests are typically graded in an academic setting.  7/10 is more "Average"  ©.   A 50% grade is almost always considered "failing".  Some gaming review sites even use letter grades, if I'm not mistaken.

Certainly, if a gaming review site gives something a 5/10 it would be considered an extremely poor game than nobody should buy.  No one would say it is "average".  They would say it is a complete failure.

Which is why you have to ignore the scores and just read the reviews.  That way you can say, "Okay... there's a fanboy... hmm.. fanboy, troll, troll, oh hey... this one doesn't sound like it was written by a 3rd grader off his bipolar meds.  Maybe I should read it!"

[cipher86]

I don't care what this game could have been called or who else could have made it, it'd still be a 6/10 in my book, but if it were from a new developer I'd at least feel that they had potential, but since it's Bioware I have to wonder what the heck they were thinking.

Modifié par cipher86, 16 mars 2011 - 07:18 .

[AnnaBananaBamBamBoo]

The ultimate vote is your purchase of the game and odds are you will buy DA3 if and when there is one. It's like buying a ticket to the movies, you don't know if you're gonna like the movie until it's over but either way, you already gave them your money. It's a lose-lose situation IFF you look at it from a monetary perspective AND you didn't like the game. If you like the game, you're out there playing it instead of wasting your time here with the complainers. Over time, this game will go down as revolutionary, whether you like it or not.

[CakesOnAPlane]

Did I play the same game as everyone else? I would give it an 8-9. Ok it was less 'epic' than Origins but it felt alot more personal and intense imo.

Modifié par CakesOnAPlane, 16 mars 2011 - 08:02 .

[errant_knight]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Thats because some reviewers gave it 94% or 10/10 which given the state of the game is borderline laughable.

Users have done the opposite giving it a very low score in protest.

I'd rate it around 4 , but any score between that and 8 would be ok.

Agreed. The data has been skewed by protest votes on both sides. We'll never get an accurate picture of user views unless they remove the zeros and tens. Me, I rated it as a 6 to 6.5. It was 7 to 7.5 in act two, but lost points in act 3.

Modifié par errant_knight, 16 mars 2011 - 08:10 .

[JrayM16]

THe disconnect has always existed, but that's not the relevent point in terms of the Metacritic scores.

There is a score war going on with haters and fanboys both going multi-account to schew the score. The haters seem to be doing a better job right now. We may never know what the true user consensus is because of this schew.

If we look at the history of the internet, we see that a dedicated group of people can easily 1-star something into oblivion. Look at that person from the Mass Effect Fox News scandal. Her book was 1-starred into utter destruction by a dedicated group of ME fans. Amazon eventually locked the user review function on that book cause the score was so low.

The DA2 Metacritic thing is a similar phenominom, albeit it is based more on people not actually liking the game than a personal vendetta.

[Soul Cool]

jds1bio wrote...
Two - Ratings are fine, but would you guys ever purchase at full price and play a game to completion that was rated a 6 or under by critics?  I don't think I have within the past 5 years, and I'm not sure that that's a coincidence.  But I have seen movies and listened to albums that have rated low, and have enjoyed a bunch of them.  It seems like half the review scale we use for games ends up being useless for critics and too useful for users..

I bought and completed Two Worlds. After I read the reviews. Because it was hilarious.