darkpaladinmfc said:

This is pretty bad (GameTrailers compilation).

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kokujin said:

Etrian Odyssey 3 Review from IGN


It's the worst review I've seen on IGN.

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7.0 Sound
While the music isn’t earth-shatteringly awesome, it’s pleasant and fits the different environments of the massive labyrinth and seascapes.

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Oh lord, I had forgotten this one. "I made basically the worst group possible and fail." Pfft. Even then, if I could do an all Farmer playthrough, you should manage with basically any other group.

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Orellio said:

If his thesis is "There is a lot wrong with this game, but the good overcame the bad so I give it an A+" then HE SHOULD HAVE STATED THAT UP FRONT and not waited half way through the review to mention it. Even if you don't disagree with that sentiment (And I do. If there is something quantifiably wrong with a game it doesn't deserve a perfect score. Period.), the review is still horribly written/structured. Like he's just making it up as he went along, got half way through the review, realized how much he was bagging on the game and was like, "Oh but I actually really liked it."

It's sloppy writing, plain and simple. And that's part of what makes it the "worst" professional review. It's not just the score, but the manner in which the review is written. He should be embarrassed.

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darkpaladinmfc said:

This is pretty bad (GameTrailers compilation).

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acidspunk said:

wut? how is the campaign in gears of war broken?

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darkpaladinmfc said:

This is pretty bad (GameTrailers compilation).

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EmmanuelMunoz said:

I can not find it now. But I remember Morgan Webb bashing Mario Galaxy 2 for being a cartoony rehash

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Dance In My Blood said:

I just don't really agree. I find it much easier to take a positive review seriously when the person can recognize legitimate faults of the game and bring them up in a constructive manner. I don't think Shoe's review is outstanding or anything, but it isn't the "worst" anything.

Stuff like Portal 2 reviews where the only cons listed are stuff like, "Well, stupid people won't be able to like it because the puzzles will hurt their brain," really bother me.

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Fantasy Final said:

Too cartoony, not enough 3D, I believe she said music sucked at the end too. That was a podcast not a review, still...

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As the world of videogames advances through its years, so do the gamers' expectations.

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Even though its simplified gameplay, just like its mobile phone counterpart id Software's design works on the Nintendo DS.

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It has a way of sneaking under the radar; Orcs & Elves is a great nod to a genre that's been left behind.

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What the game lacks in story and customization, it makes up for it in a game design that gets straight to the point.

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You're thrust into got a sword for up-close combat and a wand to blast those far away targets.

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Movement is entirely grid-based: every step forward, left, right or backward, as well as every rotation is in 90 degree increments.

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The wide variety of potions that players can use in the game add a bunch to the strategy element...

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The id Software influence is pretty obvious...

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The games a lot of fun...

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...but it's hard to not roll the eyes in parts of Orcs & Elves corner-cutting presentation.

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And all the maps will rememeber every notch that's been traversed?

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It’s a mobile phone game brought to the Nintendo DS, but don’t call it a port: the game looks and plays so much better than any version already on the market.

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The game’s back-to-the-basics approach goes against the grain that probably wouldn’t work on any other system but a portable one…and it indeed does work on the Nintendo DS.

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...so do the gamers' expectations.

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Although we can certainly reminisce about the good ol' days of the dungeon-crawling games like Bard's Tale, Eye of the Beholder, and Lands of Lore...

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back-to-the-basics game design

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but it's hard to not roll the eyes

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Thankfully the game's been designed for the on-the-go mentality.

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ThoseDeafMutes said:

What I find more distressing, actually, is the fact that games that are good always receive a good score for sound, story, graphics etc even when it absolutely does not warrant it, and games that are bad seem to get trashed on the same stuff. It's like they don't want to bring the overall score down based on the trashy story and mediocre sound design (because they are less important in 99.9% of games), so they basically lie about how good they are on the points table.

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Segata Sanshiro said:

1. Justin McElroy joins NeoGAF, asks that Joystiq be taken off the banned list.
2. Justin McElroy makes silly mistake, blames a game for it.
3. GAF calls Joystiq on this in the usual GAF fashion.
4. Justin McElroy admits silly mistake but still doesn't take any responsibility at all for making it, instead still blaming the game.
5. Joystiq makes a podcast where Justin still doesn't take responsibility for making a mistake, and makes constant shots at GAF for both calling him on it and enjoying Nier.

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What sports fan doesn't want to take control of his favorite team and guide it to a championship, or, better yet, a long string of championships? Well, if it means playing Worldwide Soccer Manager, you can count me in that number.

Worldwide Soccer Manager 2009 gives gamers the chance to manage and coach 5,000 soccer teams from 50 countries around the globe, giving them the chance to manage every aspect of their team's roster, field questions from reporters at their team's press conferences, and coach their teams in real time as each simulated game unfolds. What it doesn't do, more importantly, is provide any compelling reason to keep "playing."

Although the game's database of more than 350,000 real-life soccer players is certainly impressive, only the most diehard fans of the sport would be able to appreciate having such a massive pool of talent to sift through, and the casual fan would almost certainly find the task overwhelming – I did.

The game's incredibly complex menu system is very difficult to navigate, even with the on-screen help box directing you through the process. In short, this game is extremely difficult to simply pick up and play. If you're unfamiliar with the franchise expect to spend a significant amount of time simply trying to figure out how to navigate the menus.

Worldwide Soccer Manager's presentation problems don't end there though, once you finally make it to your team's first game you'll find that the player renderings and animations are awful, and the stadiums you play in lack any kind of personality or detail. Each field is bordered by fences and what appear to be unfinished stands, which don't have any fans in them. And, when the ball is kicked off of the pitch, it passes smoothly through the surrounding fences, right through the stands, and disappears from view only to return to the field in the same fashion, appearing magically from the stands and passing through the fences (and goals) on its way back into play.

Then there's the sound, or lack thereof. There is no soundtrack that plays while you work in the game's menus, which you'll spend the vast majority of your time in this game doing. There is no audio narration to accompany your participation in press conferences, even though your options for how to respond to each question is incredibly limited. There is no audio commentary to accompany the action in the simulated game's you watch/coach. In fact, the only sound we found in the entire game was the tones of fans cheering as each simulated game played out – which only detracts from the game's feel of authenticity seeing as there are no fans rendered in the stands.

As far as traditional gameplay goes, there really isn't any in Worldwide Soccer Manager 2009. Apart from managing your roster and coaching your team, there really isn't anything to do at all. So, unless you really enjoy clicking on menu buttons, you'll find your interaction with this game extremely disappointing.

However, if you're a big footie fan and big fan of sports simulation, you'll be extremely impressed with the depth of Worldwide Soccer Manager, which allows you to control just about every facet of your team and draw from a player pool that is simply mindboggling.

Closing Comments
This game obviously aims to provide the deepest soccer simulation experience possible for the sport’s most passionate and informed fans, but it offers little to nothing that would appeal to a casual fan of the sport or to the average videogame enthusiast. The menus are complex and difficult to navigate, graphics are terrible, the sound is non-existent and there is no traditional gameplay to speak of. I couldn’t imagine why anybody would prefer Worldwide Soccer Manager to FIFA 09 or Pro Evolution Soccer 2009.

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I’ve been a been anticipating Mass Effect ever since I saw the first demo of the game in Amsterdam at the X05 unveiling of the Xbox 360’s first slate of games. This was the first next-generation game that I saw with the highest of ambitions: crossing the uncanny valley. The valley is the familiar problem of computer-generated images. The closer they approach reality, the more disturbing the images are, particularly human faces. By trying to do good human facial animation, the developers at BioWare endeavoured to make games as emotionally interesting and visually appealing as movies. As such, this game promised a big leap forward in cinematic storytelling and game play.

It delivered on the first, but not on the second. While the conversational system and facial animation is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen in a video game, the game play is maddeningly flawed. Call it Mass Defect.

I know my criticism will annoy a lot of fans out there. It will no doubt anger all of those who poured a lot of work into this high-profile game, but I consider it my job as a critic to call it as I see it. Call me picky. But just as this game gave me some of the finest experiences I’ve ever seen, it also let me down.

I saw several demos of the game over the course of its long development. The expectations built to unreasonable levels. I participated in that to some degree. I interviewed lead designer Casey Hudson when the game debuted as an exclusive on the Xbox 360 in November. I was duly impressed with everything that I saw in the demos. But I never got my hands on the actual game until it arrived. And the final product leaves me disappointed.

Mass Effect is a big game. You can play it in a non-linear way and that makes you feel like you are truly exploring a galaxy, Captain Kirk style. It’s an open world, or galaxy if you prefer, where you can pretty much travel to the planet of your choosing. The game designers direct your attention by providing you with missions that take you to the key intersections of the game’s story lines. When you reach those points, the game moves into a movie-like scene where the characters talk to each other. The camera closes in on the faces; the developers aren’t afraid of showing you moving lips and synchronized speech, as they are in many of the games with lesser graphics.

For those who haven’t played it, there are actually two parts to this game. One is a conversation system with extremely realistic modeling of characters and their facial features. When you come to a cinematic moment, you watch the characters reveal more of the story.

When it comes to a branching point, three or more lines of conversation appear as text on the screen. You can scroll through the lines and pick the tone and message of what you want to say. The character then speaks the appropriate lines. Most of the time, the character does not mimic the text on the screen. Rather, you pick the subtext, and the character delivers the message.

You can watch the smirk, a bare hint of a smile, and interpret that as a positive reaction to your line of questioning. The female soldier Ashley gives such a barely perceptible lip curl to Commander Shepard, offering a clue to the gamer that Ashley might welcome further inquiries from the commander. You can get some nuance out of the characters.

The cool part of the game — and why it took so long to make — is that you can customize your character at the beginning of the game and then you run through all of those cinematic scenes with your character in the middle of them. You can also go on missions and choose different companions to accompany you. The cinematic scenes change to match those characters.

As Casey Hudson told me, there are more than 20,000 lines of dialogue available in this part of the game. That’s enough for 20 movies, though you won’t encounter all of those lines in a straight play-through of the game, as many of the lines cover alternate stories.

I think the long development cycle was actually part of its problem. BioWare, the Canadian developer recently bought by EA, spent more than 3.5 years working on the game. The team rolled off the development of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic role-playing game for the original Xbox. That 2003 game had an original storyline with deep dialogue interspersed with player-controlled third-person sword play and combat. The team adopted some of the same style of that game, another flaw, in my opinion. I think the Mass Effect guys were stuck in the game play of 2003 and they never emerged with superior game play in 2007. I mean, come on! This is the year of Halo 3. If they had game play that resembled anything close to a tenth of the game play of Halo 3, this would have been the game of the year. But it’s not even close.

While the KOTOR game play was more primitive and graphically average, the goal with Mass Effect was far more ambitious. The team tried to create realistic human and alien faces, animated by crisp dialogue. It also tried to create more interesting first-person shooter style combat and to wrap all of this inside a riveting story set in an original sci-fi universe. You can equip your soldiers with all sorts of weapon types. The storyline is truly something that I can see lasting over several games.

But here’s where it breaks down. The tactical play is horrendous. That wasn’t so evident on the early Eden Prime level, but once you’re off in the missions to other planets, it becomes overwhelmingly bad. You feel like you’re fighting with extremely incapable soldiers.

You never run out of ammo. But you’re always shooting these solid mass bullets at the enemy. Every guns sounds and fires and behaves the same, whether it’s a shotgun or an assault rifle. Stupid. Then, when you’re shooting at a target, an orange box appears as the one and only place on that target where you can actually hit them with a mass bullet. That’s not even close to realistic, and counts as stupid No. 2. Then you can’t even tell if you’ve hit your target because your target just keeps coming at you or does not even flinch upon impact, whether their shields are up or down. That’s stupid no. 3. You get a red bar that shows exactly how many times you have to shoot the enemy in order to take them down, no matter whether you’re getting in the equivalent of head shots or toe shots. The grenades are equally stupid. They fly in straight lines like hockey pucks on ice until they hit something. That something will often keep running right at you and then blow you up.

This feels like you’re playing a game from the 1930s. And yes, I know they didn’t have video games in the 1930s. Let me recount a scene deep into the game on the planet Feros. Ignore the fact that I have had to endure countless stupid firefights to get to this point in the game. I’ve done my time, so to speak, to get to this point.

At this point in the game, as the player, you’re trying to take out this big plant-thing called a Thorian. It vomits or excretes an “Asari clone” soldier, who bickers with you and fights you no matter what you say to it. I had a couple of capable companions with me, a reptile-like Wrex and more cerebral alien named Garrus. They are tough fighters. But the Asari takes them out with ease in the extremely confined fighting space. It’s as if the only purpose they serve is to be cannon fodder. (What, they’re dead? Don’t worry. It’s not an emotional scene because they always come back from the dead if you complete the battle scene and move on to the next one.)

With a shotgun or an assault rifle, it takes me around 15 shots to take out the Asari, and then you have to take out the Thorian Creepers who come at you in waves afterward. The only way you can really get these many hits on them is to shoot them when they aren’t looking. And yes, that happens quite often if they are facing the cannon fodder. These Thorian Creeper guys are zombies who actually vomit at you. I was already almost out of grenades and health by the time they came at me. And then they make the guns so that they overheat — yep — about every 14 shots. You doing the math? So you have to shoot in a reserved, haphazard fashion when you’re taking out four or five enemies.

Now it takes me about 10 or 15 attempts to take out the Asari. And you can never skip the cinematics that you have already seen. So you figure that each time you have to waste about two minutes watching a cinematic of an Asari being vomited out of the Thorian. How’s that for major league stupid? So, again, that scene took me about three hours to get through. And it’s one of five battles with a bunch of Asari clones and Thorian Creepers. This is just one example of the ridiculous tactical battles that you have to put up with to get from one cinematic to the next throughout Mass Effect.

I’ve made a sizable commitment of time to this one, but I haven’t come near finishing it. I went through the beginning scene at Eden Prime, wandered aimlessly through all of the different subplots within the Citadel headquarters space station. And made my way to Feros, where I fell into my own personal hell with the tactical game play quagmire.

People tell me that the story gets better. It does. I know because BioWare showed me a very key scene that was full of emotion as a character had to make a very tough choice about a personal friendship. That cinematic scene, when I saw it demoed to me, was riveting. But the game play is so flawed that it’s just not worth it to finish it. I feel like I have to move back several hours in the game play to get my characters in shape doing some other task while I forget about the mission at Feros for a while. That’s just not a viable option in a game this long. It’s like the game allowed me to make a choice that my characters just weren’t ready for.

I know a lot of purists out there say I should finish the game and then spout my opinions about it. But I can’t abide that. The Microsoft folks once told me that I had to finish Perfect Dark Zero because, they promised, “it gets better.” That was baloney. I’m sure that with Mass Effect, it’s true. But this ain’t my fight. If they had come up with Halo 3 game play and Mass Effect cinematics, it surely would be one of the greatest games ever made. But I felt as inept as Homer Simpson running around with a pea shooter in the midst of a melee. There is no excuse for this. I blame the game developers who put me in this losing position.

Maybe this game is just my Vietnam War of video games. I’m stuck in the middle. And I don’t think I’ll ever get out. It has beaten me. And you? If you’re into good game play as much as I am, you should forget about this one.

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shidoshi said:

Somebody who wants to remain anonymous asked me to post this (click for full size):

http://i.imgur.com/PHFfm.jpg]http://i.imgur.com/PHFfml.jpg[/URL][/QUOTE]

Thanks for posting this, but damnit if it doesn't make me angry. Complaining that one of the 16-bit era's most beautiful games is a "first generation SNES game" and spouting lies about reuse of assetts?

This man does not [i]deserve[/i] to play Yoshi's Island.

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kokujin said:

Etrian Odyssey 3 Review from IGN


It's the worst review I've seen on IGN.

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darkpaladinmfc said:

This is pretty bad (GameTrailers compilation).

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iconoclast said:

This Gameshark review of Death Smiles is one of the worst I've seen in the last few years: http://www.gameshark.com/reviews/3578/Deathsmiles-Review.htm

It's a shooter though, so ignorant [mainstream] reviews come with the territory.

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When I asked to play Deathsmiles, I was looking forward to a “so bad, it's good” type game – one of those arcade titles that you and your friends can shamelessly enjoy despite the lack of the highfalutin effects that go into your typical AAA game. Examining Deathsmiles from a distance, it seems to have the right combination of elements to make a perfectly delicious “bad game”: Anime preteens dressed in full goth Lolita fashion, poorly translated Japanese, a nonsensical plot and its core feature, bullet hell side-scrolling action. But where Deathsmiles succeeds in absurdities that will strike you dumb where you sit, it fails at providing a worthwhile bullet hell experience.

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Struct09 said:

Tommy Tallarico had some reviews that probably shaved a few years off of my life

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Chacranajxy said:

The problem was the voice. When the review starts, whoever that is starts talking, and you're like "wait... something's wrong." Then he shows up and you're like "oh..." And it was distracting for the duration of the review. Does that make me an asshole? Maybe. Probably. But c'mon, people... don't pretend like you didn't even flinch.

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Vigilant Walrus said:

MGS4 is unarguable the best game of this generation. Sorry if the awesome went over your head. May you be trolled with MGS4 propaganda and may it annoy you as long as you live.

10/10 - FOREVER.

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Sn4ke_911 said:

I hope we can soon add OPM's Alice: Madness Returns 5/10 review. I doubt this game is THAT bad.

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Wormdundee said:

You're part of the problem man. 5/10 means it's an exactly average game. Your post implies that 5/10 means that a game is horrible.

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Mama Robotnik said:

Thanks for posting this, but damnit if it doesn't make me angry. Complaining that one of the 16-bit era's most beautiful games is a "first generation SNES game" and spouting lies about reuse of assetts?

This man does not deserve to play Yoshi's Island.

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iconoclast said:

This Gameshark review of Death Smiles is one of the worst I've seen in the last few years: http://www.gameshark.com/reviews/3578/Deathsmiles-Review.htm

It's a shooter though, so ignorant [mainstream] reviews come with the territory.

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Riposte said:

Edge's Marvel vs Capcom 3 review comes to mind. The sheer confidence in his ignorance is amusing.

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N4Us said:

Oh man, totally reminds me of his Judgement Day review of Four Swords where he goes on a rant about MIDI music and calls people who buy the game fanboys.

(I'm very sorry for linking YTMND but this is the only place I've found it)
http://tommytal.ytmnd.com/

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Snuggler said:

That MGS4 review has to be parody. I refuse to accept the possibility of that person being serious.

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BertramCooper said:

What was that one review from a magazine back from the SNES/Genesis days that was nothing but dummy text? I think it was for a football game.

Whatever it was, it was hilarious.

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RoboShmup said:

Xplay's Beatmania Review
Easily the most insulting review I've seen. Inaccurately calling Beatmania a ripoff of Guitar Hero and basically calling any fans of Beatmania outright losers. Granted, the US version of Beatmania wasn't very good, but this review is needlessly full off asshole. The whole thing is just grating.

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bhlaab said:

King of the hall of fame

TheSixthAxis reviews MGS 4
Credited only to "TSA News Team"

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2008/06/18/metal-gear-solid-4/

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PhantomOfTheKnight said:

Nope; even he doesn't consider himself an actual reviewer. He prefers to be called a critic insstead.

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Man God said:

I remember how hung up he was about 1 ups in Super Mario Galaxy.

1ups have technically been useless in every single one of the 3D Mario games, but the sheer sense of joy you get when you hear that noise is worth it being there.

Mario wouldn't feel right without 1ups.

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shidoshi said:

Somebody who wants to remain anonymous asked me to post this (click for full size):

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Orellio said:

Even if you don't disagree with that sentiment (And I do. If there is something quantifiably wrong with a game it doesn't deserve a perfect score. Period.)

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Roto13 said:

That's stupid and apparently exclusive to video game reviews. I don't know why gamers think a perfect score can only go to a perfect game when reviewers in every other medium give perfect scores to everything that's great.

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bhlaab said:

If it's parody then someone alert metacritic because it's stuffing a fat 100 into MGS4's average.

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kokujin said:

Etrian Odyssey 3 Review from IGN


It's the worst review I've seen on IGN.

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Unfortunately this game adopts such a "hardcore means not explaining anything" mindset that it doesn't teach you how to use the map – the most important tool at your disposal. Sure, there's a basic intro, but the legend is never explained and there are some pretty random icons included (a hand? Scissors? The letter "E"? What does it all mean?!).

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PataHikari said:

The best/worst part is this



Like, the thought of he himself deciding what each symbol means is BEYOND HIM.

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shidoshi said:

Somebody who wants to remain anonymous asked me to post this (click for full size):

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The graphics are very reminiscent of Super Mario World--perhaps resembling it too closely.

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TheShampion said:

Now with the internet democratizing people's opinions, I wonder why are people still getting worked up about bad game reviews. It is just people's opinion, misguided or not.

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