Hell, or even just the reviews where the reviewer clearly despised the game completely, but gave a score that doesn't reflect that, because they chose to try and predict the viewer's experience instead.
I'd like to see how good such a review is.
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Yooka-Laylee- Review Thread
- Thread starter FireSol
- Start date
Hell, or even just the reviews where the reviewer clearly despised the game completely, but gave a score that doesn't reflect that, because they chose to try and predict the viewer's experience instead.
I'd like to see how good such a review is.
Gravy Boat
Member
Because opinions.
He didn't like the game, most other people liked it more than him. This isn't difficult. You're literally picking out obvious hyperbole from his review (which is not exclusive to this review or even him as a reviewer. Come on, you know he wasn't being literal with that statement) to try and discredit him? I really don't know what yo're doing actually.
casey_contra
Member
I read the OP and I'm not trying to start anything... but do you think there is a correlation between Laura Kate Dale's review and Jim Sterling's? Not in a sense that they are conspiring or are just trying to get views and clicks, but because they are close.
I know people I'm close too rub off on me and vice versa. Opinions are amplified, and often positives and negatives are pointed out that might not be noticed otherwise. It becomes a shared-type experience. Like if I moderately dislike blueberries and so does my friend, if we start talking about it then at the end of the conversation I might be like "blueberries are the freakin' worst!"
I think both scores (and reviews) are valid and I don't doubt their opinions, I am just wondering from a journalistic perspective if alignment as individuals may sway opinions. I really respect Laura and I hope this doesn't come across as trying to diminish hers or anyone else's opinion. I think as a whole the scores are fine and I'm excited to get the game! And I'm excited to talk about stuff like this with y'all.
I know people I'm close too rub off on me and vice versa. Opinions are amplified, and often positives and negatives are pointed out that might not be noticed otherwise. It becomes a shared-type experience. Like if I moderately dislike blueberries and so does my friend, if we start talking about it then at the end of the conversation I might be like "blueberries are the freakin' worst!"
I think both scores (and reviews) are valid and I don't doubt their opinions, I am just wondering from a journalistic perspective if alignment as individuals may sway opinions. I really respect Laura and I hope this doesn't come across as trying to diminish hers or anyone else's opinion. I think as a whole the scores are fine and I'm excited to get the game! And I'm excited to talk about stuff like this with y'all.
this was the exact reasoning used by the guy who gave Paper Mario TTYD a lower score because the game was "too kiddy" for the readership of the magazine
Well... this comes across as similarly misguided even from the other direction.
It isn't from the review it's from his scoring system. By the terms of his own scoring system he was wrong in this case. It isn't only desperate players who will find the game passable. It seems to be genuinely well-regarded critically actoss the board, at the very least a functional throwback 3D platformer for those who want that.
Gravy Boat
Member
I think that's a poor way to review and score things. I can make my own mind up on wether I want to buy something, but I like hearing what other people thought about it to help me with that decision. I don't want someone trying to make the decision for me. Scoring a game low just because you assume I, the reader, may not enjoy it comes across as patronising or something.
Still doesn't change anything in my post though. You're taking obvious hyperbole (exaggerated for humour) literally, and you know you are. My question was why?
LegendofLex
Member
I mean, the real issue is people see Banjo-Kazooie as a 8/10 or 9/10 game, so Yooka-Laylee resembling Banjo-Kazooie shouldn't give it a 2/10 score.
SomedayTheFire
Member
not really. that's his score. that's what he thinks, and that's who he thinks will enjoy it.
JayWood2010
Member
Then i wouldnt want you to review games, as i wouldnt respect you nor think your are professional. Its that simple.
If you are going to review games like that, you might as well just do a thumbs up, or thumbs down system.
Obviously he's not going to be omniscient about other people's abilities to appreciate the game.... if anything this should serve as an argument against trying to adjust the score to account for what you think others will feel about it.
Besides... maybe he would consider all the positive reviews to be coming from people desperate for that type of game. It was kickstarted after all.
Gravy Boat
Member
Instead of not wanting me to do reviews, would it not just make way more sense for you to not read my reviews? Or would the mere existence of my 'unprofessional opinion' be too much?
Who decides what is professional and what isn't in games critique? Please give me an example of a professional review, a non-professional one and explain the difference. I really have no idea what a professional opinion is, what it looks like, or how you differentiate it from a non-professional one.
SomedayTheFire
Member
you have absolutely no grasp of what reviews are. like god damn.
Well that would be an incredibly obnoxious assumption, if it were true. And just like all the positive Mighty No.9 reviews presumably... oh wait.
JayWood2010
Member
You talk of opinions, until somebody disagrees with you, and then its "My opinion is the only one that counts." Is that about it?
Reviews are informing people on what is good and bad, and if they should invest in it. No more, no less. I believe there is some kind of professionalism that goes hand in hand with opinions that is suppose to inform people.
Gravy Boat
Member
In the opinion of the person writing the review.
Yea it would be. It'd be less obnoxious then claiming directly that a person's opinion on a game is invalid because it differs from the majority's though.
JayWood2010
Member
Yes, yes. We have went over this. That is why there is good reviewers, and bad revierwers. There is people that do a much better job at it than others do. People who can be a little more professional.
Does that need to be repeated?
SomedayTheFire
Member
nope, my opinion doesn't really matter. I didn't state an opinion there, either. but reviews are not objective fluff pieces, that's not an opinion. saying someone shouldn't review games because they don't like popular games is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of reviews. you're pretty much saying, if you don't toe the line and agree with everyone you're unprofessional? that's complete bullshit, man. complete and utter bullshit. your notions of professional and unprofessional reviews seem to boil down to if the review is normalised to what others are writing about it, again a complete misunderstanding of reviews.
thiscoldblack
Unconfirmed Member
Despite some technical issues and design flaws, there are a lot of reviewers who liked the game. Lots of 7s,8s, and even 9s. To me, that is great news. I'm sure Playtonic has delivered a great platformer experience.
JayWood2010
Member
You seem to like to put words in my mouth. I have remained the same since you first replied to me. I cant make it much more simple than how I have already told you.
I will bold this for you,and leave it at that. Its as if you completely ignored what i said in the first place, and just continue to try and sway me in another direction.
You can be objective while also having your own opinion.
Well I obviously disagree with their benchmark for scoring but it's understandable, they're running a business. Same goes for "honest reviewers", it's a modern gimmick that youtube critics use as a selling point to gain a bigger audience, it's their job to validate a group of people's preconceived notions about a game. Jim takes it one step further and sparks controversy for the sake of it, aka trolling.
In a perfect world the benchmark for quality is good game design, so games that excessively hand hold the player should be docked points but they don't because both the reviewer and the reader loves that type of game, refering to the IGN's etc. What can you do, mainstream gonna mainstream and buy the latest junk food, that's how it is unfortunately.
For me, I openly say that Uncharted is an amazing game, but it's not for me. I recognize that if you implement any of the changes I suggest, then the pacing would be drastically impacted in a bad way. Think about it, if you had actual, skill-based platforming in Assassin's Creed you'd constantly fall and have to repeat the same section over and over which would get frustrating in such a massive world. It works in Mario because of the compact level design, I get that. So AC sets out to do what its audience wants, the only thing I can say is thanks but no thanks, the game isn't for me, but I'm not gonna score it a 2/10 and say don't buy this piece of shit game to the general public.
evilromero
Member
Lol what is this "objective" nonsense when talking about reviews? Anyone demanding objectivity in their reviews are missing the purpose and utility of criticisms and reviews. The nature of reviewing a piece of entertainment is to provide a subjective perspective on the experience. If that kind of thing bothers you then don't read reviews and just let the marketing campaign of the product messaging wash over you.
Also, avoid reviews for movies, music and books as they are also just as critical and laced with subjective observations.
Also, avoid reviews for movies, music and books as they are also just as critical and laced with subjective observations.
Gravy Boat
Member
Instead of repeating yourself, how about addressing this instead of ignoring it every time it's been asked.
Because none of what you say makes even a shred of sense until you clarify or demonstrate what you mean by that.
You can not be objective when giving your opinon. Please demonstrate that if you can. Provide me with an objective opinion.
Somewhat the opposite, you should stop repeating nonsense. There's nothing unprofessional about the review(s) in question just because they disagree with your opinion on the matter. It's not unprofessional for one person to consider a game unplayable while others love it, it's an opinion and as long as they review backs that up (as the most argued one in this thread does) then that doesn't make it "unprofessional."
Spehornoob
Member
I feel like no one is actually discussing anything here and everyone is just talking back and forth to each other.
SomedayTheFire
Member
You can think that, that's fine. It doesn't make you any better or worse than someone who writes a subjective review. If you genuinely think someone who writes a subjective review should not continue to review, and those that only write objectively should, you have a misunderstanding about reviews.
I just checked out Jim Sterling's review of the game, and I thought it was charactestically badly-written. As one poster earlier in this thread puts it, "[...] All Jim does is go "Its bad!" and moves onto the next bit of unelaborated snark, but idk". He says the "the horrendous hub world design that makes the simple act of finding levels difficult due to obscure, sometimes bizarre placement." but he doesn't give any examples of what's stupid or confusing about it. He says "There are several retro arcade games that couldnt even be bothered to use new character models to make anything look retro and take the form of piss-poor racing games or shooters. ", but he doesn't say why the minigames are piss-poor. There's some baffling writing ("His clumsy, stiffly animated stumbling throughout the world is visually unfortunate and interactively awkward" lol, what?), and so on. I don't think Jim Sterling has ever written good game criticism and this hasn't changed my opinion.
Not saying Jim can't give Yooka-Laylee 2/10 because his review is bad. I don't really care about the game or its source material, most of my exposure comes from afriend who's real hype about it. But I find it weird people looking to discredit him fixate entirely on the numeric value he assigned to the game instead of his writing.
Not saying Jim can't give Yooka-Laylee 2/10 because his review is bad. I don't really care about the game or its source material, most of my exposure comes from afriend who's real hype about it. But I find it weird people looking to discredit him fixate entirely on the numeric value he assigned to the game instead of his writing.
You can't be objective in a review about an inherently subjective medium such as video games or music or art. It makes your review entirely useless as you either stick to solid facts (this game runs at X framerate, etc etc) or you have to try and guess as to whether different crowds might like something despite not actually being in a position to know.
Spehornoob
Member
Isn't that a matter of opinion?
Reviews cannot be objective. They are subjective assessments of a game/product/artwork.
SomedayTheFire
Member
objectively better or worse ;-)
generally what would make a reviewer better than another in my eyes, is their actual writing and backing up their own arguments. a reviewer i can disagree with and understand where they're coming from is far better than one I agree with. but that's just my opinion on that.
TheVoidDragon
Member
While that may be true, the problem Jim has with this is that ignores the improvements to the genre that have occurred since then. E.g. Controls and camera improvements. With so many years between the two games and possible solutions to those problems, choosing the keep those archaic design choices and not improve on the issues the original games in the genre had doesn't make a lot of sense to him and that's why he found it nearly unplayable, because it keeps the bad parts of those games as well despite them being solved.
JayWood2010
Member
Do you understand why people get so upset with those type of reviews? Its not because they have a different opinion. Its because it comes off as being unprofessional or click baity.
You act as if everybody who gets upset about it is wrong. They arent.
Spehornoob
Member
Ayyyyy
Gravy Boat
Member
I don't understand why anyone would ever get upset with a review, period. Unless they were reviewing something a friend or family member of yours made. Maybe then it would make sense.
But outside of that, no, I don't understand why anyone would get upset at someone else saying bad things about a game.
il Diavolo
Banned
The big king resembles a big mac, but does it taste as good?
Storm Brewer
Neo Member
This is more of an open question to everyone, but what 3D platformers in particular managed to solve these problems? The only ones I can think of are mario galaxy, which basically took away your camera control altogether, and mario 3D world/land, which had a fixed camera perspective. Aside from these games I can't think of any notable 3D platformers to have even come out in the last decade, let alone managed to solve those issues.
The closest games I can think of are the jak and ratchet games, which aside from their first iterations were much more hybrid platformers/shooters. Jim mentions snake pass which looks really cool, but again it's a completely different take on a 3D platformer. Anyone else got some great suggestions for 3D platformers that I might have missed out on?
SomedayTheFire
Member
Yeah, I understand. I find it stupid that people get upset about other's opinions of games they haven't played. Some people think of reviews as objective pieces rather than subjective and that leads into the displeasure and therefore think that people with different opinions are "unprofessional". It's honestly baffling to me that people do get upset at them, given they are subjective.
Game reviews and scores can (and should) contain objective game information. A frame rate of 1 is objectively worse than a frame rate of 30. The presence of game breaking glitches is objectively worse than the lack of such issues. Games aren't 100% art in this sense, and reviews ought to take this into account to some extent.
To what level extent is up for debate, of course.
To what level extent is up for debate, of course.
So you would divorce genuine objectivity for the sake of confirmation bias among an audience with predetermined buy-in? The game need not stand on its own merits, good or bad it is the presumptions I hold towards a hivemind mentality that I must consider rather than my genuine experience?
As for your final sentence, you have it very backwards. People click on a Jim Sterling review specifically to see what Jim Sterling thought of 'x' game. It's largely the entire basis of youtube culture.
JayWood2010
Member
Already did. I dislike God of War, but understand why people think it is good.
I dislike the Cowboys, but I will tell you why they are good. Wouldnt commentate on them and tell you why i hate them during a live game.
I despise most JRPG games, but i get it why others like them, and i can tell what a good JRPG is from a bad one.
I think Mario is over-rated, but it has solid platforming regardless of my opinon of it being overly easy. Great for casuals as an example.
List goes on and on. You not liking something, doesnt mean you cant see why others would like it.
By this point, Im just repeating myself. You can go back and read my comments as this is going nowhere.
plagiarize
Banned
Let me try here, as someone who has previously reviewed games in the past.
Some people want a review to reflect the reviewers own opinion of the game. Some reviewers provide this. Reviews such as this are interesting and useful, more so if you have an idea of the personality and likes of the reviewer in question.
I think Breath of the Wild is the best game I've ever played. I am an interested in knowing who else feels that same way, and if they don't, why.
Some people want a review to tell them if they'll like the game (rather than telling them if the reviewer liked a game). Again, there are sites that cater to this desire. I can tell you that Breath of the Wild has technical issues like framerate drops and lacking image quality. I can describe to you the elements of the game you mightn't like such as weapon degradation systems, even if they don't remotely bother me.
I don't think we should want or need every reviewer to confirm to the same review standards. The ideal objective reviewer you describe, should they exist, what need do we have for a large number of these reviewers? If they do the job you want, they will all come to the same conclusion as to whether a game will appeal to a certain type of gamer or not.
TLDR: Why should every review cater to what you want from a review when there are outlets that provide what you are looking for?
If the annoyance is based on metacritic scores being dragged down by people like Jim Sterling... get over it. The whole idea of aggregating a review score is to encompass a wide range of opinions and to attempt to distill down to a single score that can be used to compare games. This doesn't make sense if you're going to disregard any reviews that deviate too much from the median score or whatever. Why even bother aggregating a bunch of identical opinions?
Of course true objectivity can never be achieved but it is possible to put aside your personal reaction, and strive for some objectivity to give a more rounded and level-headed review - some of you deny this, it isnt what you want, fair enough. Doesn't mean professional reviewers aren't capable of it. To go back yo films for a second - I disagree with Mark Kermode's movie opinions most of the time, but his reviews are usually well-argued and with caveats which welcomes different opinion. He will often say "I didnt like it, but if you are someone who enjoys this then this film may work for you" - I don't think I've ever heard him say "I hated this and you'd have to be desperate to find anything passable in it at all", even the Transformers movies, he hates them and rants but is always self-aware enough to acknowledge there is an audience that enjoys seeing CGI robots blowing up, and even though he thinks the films are bloated and dull on every level.
TheAggroCraig
Member
Holy shit, someone sane who has my exact view on this whole thing!
Gravy Boat
Member
Undersatnding why you think it's good isn't something that's required to be written in your review though. That's still not being objective, it's just being diplomatic. 'This game is absolute trash' and 'I don't like this game but others may' can mean the exact same thing about the exact same game, one is just softer than the other. There's nothing unprofessional or objective about that. Different people have different writing styles. None of what you listed are examples of being objective.
The reason you were repeating yourself was because you weren't making sense, and it seems that was because you don't understand what objective means. Objective does not just mean stating the obvious and being polite about it.
JayWood2010
Member
plagiarize
Banned
Why should every reviewer cater to what only some people want from reviews? If you've got movie or game reviewers that you like and trust, why get upset about someone else who approaches film or video game reviews differently?
Because of Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic?
That's a really dumb reason to mandate that every review must confirm to a certain approach.
I can tell from Jim Sterling's review of Yooka Laylee that I'd like the game more than he did. So what's the issue?