Not the type of thread I usually speak up in, but a few things have jumped out at me here. Joe's review really (even moreso than his average one, I'd say) supports the points he's making about the game's traits, both good and bad with nearly incontrovertible examples of what he's talking about in-game. I'm really hard pressed to say he didn't give it a fair shake.
Some of the counterpoints I've seen have been reasonable (that he faulted the design of one combat encounter without trying various attempts to clear it first), while others have been fairly absurd (placing an unfair emphasis on gameplay..?).
A few things keep biting at me though. The first is this omnipresent notion of game reviewers not using "the whole scale." I think this concept began when recurrent, profitable franchises started putting out annual entries that never seem to wind up scoring below a 7.5 or (*gasp*) a 7.0.
But regardless of whether or not reviewers are particularly forgiving with regard to these games, the undying truth of the matter is that they had enough appeal at the start to make them
into popular franchises. A fun factor. Once we're in "above average" territory, i.e. something above a 5/10, this tends to be what reviewers draw from in doling out the points.
The fact that these games score consistently in the upper register of the scale doesn't mean the lower isn't being used. Take Gamespot... there are reviewed games with essentially every interval of the scale at a reviewer's disposal in the Gamespot archives.
These games just sort of suck, indiscriminately and hard. But
someone had to review them. They are scarcely played and quickly forgotten, and it's easy to wind up with the impression that scores like this are never assigned, because we barely ever
pay attention to them. I know, I know, the first Assassin's Creed is a terrible, embarrassing game and reviewers just couldn't wait to fellate Ubisoft upon its release. But let me assure you that there is a vast gulf in quality between a game like that and a game like Tony Hawk Ride- and games you can point to as guideposts for every marker in between.
The reasons a game might wind up scoring below average when judged by any reviewer are many, but the idea that scores of 4/10 and below should be reserved for functionally broken games is beyond ludicrous. Some 2/10s, 3/10s and 4/10s that are reviewed have severe bugs and broken designs holding them back and would have otherwise scored higher; others are merely so boring and lackluster in their intended design that they earn no more, even if perfectly stable and bug-free.
In other words, a reviewer may choose whatever criteria they feel appropriate to determine their review score, the number ultimately reflecting nothing other than a quantification of their own feelings about a game.
This is why I used to love the old EGM style of reviews, which actually consisted of three or four separate mini-reviews, each by a different person and with its own score, with the highest accolades reserved for those games that averaged out among these different viewpoints to an 8, 9, or 10- having such universal appeal as to withstand the critiques of multiple voices. Things are different in the Metacritic era, and I do miss that, even if the "they don't use full scale" complaints don't quite resonate with me.
You want to see what it looks like when a truly broken game goes before a reviewer?
Big Rigs is so deeply broken and obviously unfinished that it barely manages to squeeze itself within the confines of what qualifies under even the loosest definition of a "game." It barely has any expressed limits or goals, and lacks even the inclusion of a failure state despite being a
racing game in theory. It earned that 1 point almost wholly due to the novelty of having such a hilariously unplayable product put on a reviewer's desk to be taken seriously. For broken games, being reviewed and scored at
all is an absolute luxury.
My point is: Gamespot gave The Order a 5/10. And there are a LOT of games in the spread between that 5 and the aforementioned 1.
For Angry Joe, The Order instead comes in one notch lower down. That shouldn't be a controversial or unacceptable notion, to anyone. He explains precisely how he arrived at this number to represent his viewpoint. Condemning this range to only be used for products with broken functionality is so restrictive as to make the idea of using a numerical scale even more meaningless than it already is.
The one last thing I wanted to revisit was that tweet from one of the founders of the developer that made The Order:
I couldn't believe this... a dev making a personal stake in the critical reception of a game is unusual, but I had to know what it was that he felt significant enough to specifically call attention to, in a "here's the final word" sense.
So I watched it (
this review). The whole thing.
And... fuck. It isn't even a review, first of all- it's a rebuttal. From the very outset, it takes the position that critical reviews of the game are wrong and here's why. That's a terrible, meritless, cringeworthy approach to reviewing a game. It belies that the content of the review won't be primarily informed by the reviewer's own experience with the game, but a need to counter what other people have already said about it.
It only gets worse from there. The capstone, in my opinion, is this screengrab toward the very end:
Even if I can manage to get past the lack of even token maturity on display here ("It's just like what Angry Joe does, isn't it?"), the IDIOT review tagline he's taking aim at doesn't say a goddamn thing about Ready at Dawn delivering a different product than was advertised or promised. Nothing! The criticism is that it
does not live up to its own potential (which may be considerable), and this is something you can recognize in a game even if you hadn't even heard of it before picking up the controller.
I didn't really have any feelings one way or another about Ready at Dawn until seeing that tweet and watching that review. I know that having a lackluster reception must be very difficult for people who have poured their hearts into creating something. But by hitching their wagon to this guy, they've really generated a lot of ill will in me that wasn't there before. I mean, just take the hit. There's no reason to go out calling attention to the reviews that explicitly aim to stand against consensus in the first place, but when it includes as many abhorrent conclusions as this one... I've gone from neutral to actively wary of their future endeavors. :-/
