I'm writing this, cause when you write an opinion piece on BSN it gets flooeded with the usual people who rushes in and posts "Well thanks for speaking for all of us /sarcasm" or some other smart ass comment. Ok? Ok.
Now that I got that out of the way, this will be my first long post on here that's somewhat serious.
If you're like me, then you remember back when it was very hard for a game to get 9/10 or 10/10 scores. But things changed as the gaming industry got bigger and bigger. I'm going to use a local example to show you how it changed.
If you live in Denmark and you play PC games, chances are that you've heard of a magazine called PC Player. I used to buy this magazine a lot. I've bought it when Warcraft 2 came out, maybe even earlier, I can't remember. It used to be a cool magazine and what stood out to me the most, was a review of Fallout. The reviewer liked the game, but didn't think too much of it, so he gave it a 6/10 score. This prompted another reviewer, who was far more in to RPG than the original reviewer, to write a little protest in a small box on the same page. There he explained very briefly why he thought the game was better than that and gave it 8/10. Wow, this seems to be a good magazine, I thought to myself.
Then somewhere along the road, I don't know when exactly, they sold out. Not in an open way, but in a "subtle" way, that many missed out on. They were invited to EA's Westwood's development studios in the U.S. They actually flew them to America, and treated them like royalty. They made a big article about it, writing how awesome it was to see all those big stars that acted in the game and how everything looked so amazing. The game in question? Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun.
Then lo and behold! Some months later, the game came out, but they had the review ready for it. And it was a perfect 10/10. This made many of the readers, myself included, rush out and buy it. Funny enough Starcraft, which was reviewed a few months earlier got 8/10. Many couldn't understand this, but we guessed it was because that PC Player had very high standards. Until C&C: Tiberian Sun, only Half Life and Dungeon Keeper, and Dungeon Keeper 2 got 10/10. The warning signs were there with Dungeon Keeper 2. The only games I agree on is Half-Life and Dungeon Keeper.
Well, it turned out that Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun was a very forgetable game. I didn't complete it. I wasn't impressed as I played and began to think "This game sucks". I couldn't understand how this game got 10/10. Neither could many others, and whenever the topic is brought up on their website, they're quick to lock the threads due to the fact it's old news. The game didn't deserve anything other than maybe a 6/10.
It woke me up however, and made me understand that gone are the days of honest reviewers. You can still find a few honest reviewers, but it's not like there is a whole lot of them. These days, you gotta check youtube to see an honest review, like that Totalbiscuit or Halibut guy.
So the whole 75 perfect reviews for Mass Effect 3 is a joke. If you want to give the game an honest score, like in the old days, it would get a 7/10. A good game, that's fun, but certainly not perfect.
Here's a quick summary of Mass Effect 3.
The good stuff.
- Excellent combat system, the cover and cover movement works very well.
- Lots of different weapons with the ability to customise them.
- Melee can be very handy in certain situations.
- Skill tree is easy to work around.
- Enemies seem to work together and they mix up well.
- Insanity is hard, but still doable for an experienced gamer.
- Multiplayer is pretty ok.
- Return of well loved characters.
- No scanning of planets.
- Sound and music are top notch.
- Health and healing system flows well with the combat.
- Pretty cool choices during the game, like the cure of the genophage, siding with the Geth or not.
Bad stuff.
- The game is WAY TOO SHORT! It's the shortest of all three games, even if you do every single side-mission.
- Multiplayer affects the singleplayer ending if you want the best ending (destroy with Shepard alive). Which is a terrible idea to force those that care only about playing singleplayer to play multiplayer.
- Extremely linear, there is only one way and that's forward, every other path you see is an illusion.
- Wasted potential of certain levels. The ones where you walk around with the flash lights on your gun turned on in the complete dark. Now that would've been awesome to fight in.
- Squad mates still being stupid in combat. It's OK for Vega to be stupid and rush in, since he's tough and can handle it, but why on earth does Liara and EDI do the same thing? You have to constantly control them and park them in the back where they are safe.
- Sprites and funny head movements, shows that the game didn't get enough time to get polished. It's very annoying to see Shepard look like the girl from the exorcist.
- Lack of boss battles.
- The game expects you to know things that's in the novels.
- Journal system incredible inefficient.
- Pandering to IGN.
- Introduction of the universally hated spacebrat. If you like this character you should read a good book for a change, something other than Dragonlance or cheap sci-fi novels.
- The ending leaves you disappointed, which affects the replay value of the game.
- Day one DLC that's already on the disk, and it's not something or someone that's useless or of zero importance, but a freaking Prothean.
Based on what we've experienced Mass Effect 3 is a 7/10 game. Meaning it's a good game, it's fun, but it has too many flaws to get 8/10 and higher. It's main saving grace is the amazing sound and the combat system.
Before the drones rush in and say "How can you give it 7/10. You admitted you had FUN playing it, didn't you?!" Well I also had fun playing Puzzle Quest, Puzzle Agent and Zuma's Revenge. Are those 10/10 games? No? Then your point is stupid. You're letting yourself get blinded and you ignore the issues infront of you.
Modifié par M25105, 13 juillet 2012 - 02:05 .
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