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[ranmafan]

I don't pay close attention to them, but have found that they seem to give everything good scores/inflated scores.

They do give bad scores and low scores but the games they do that for you will never ever see or play ever, as they tend to be terrible kids anime licensed games. But yeah low review scores exist from them. But they have more higher scores these days then they used to.

Interestingly recently picked up a ton of mid 90s famitsus and the review scores were indeed lower accross the board. Would be interestingly if it were like that again.

 

[crinale]

They do give bad scores and low scores but the games they do that for you will never ever see or play ever, as they tend to be terrible kids anime licensed games. But yeah low review scores exist from them. But they have more higher scores these days then they used to.

Interestingly recently picked up a ton of mid 90s famitsus and the review scores were indeed lower accross the board. Would be interestingly if it were like that again.

They have internal policy (or is it public? I forgot) that they'll feature articles regarding game with certain score or higher, so to publishers it's like whether their game would be featured is quite important.

 

[urfe]

You know I'm not fully sure how it was done before, although I have friends here who work in banks who could tell me, but Japan has been and still is mainly a cash based society. I remember being told in Japanese classes almost 20 years ago that it was normal for Japanese to carry at least around $300 with them always. From my experience now I don't believe that's the case anymore at all, but people still rely on the cash based society. Only recently have people really started to use credit cards more. Lots of people just go straight to the banks and do everything manually still, but yeah most transactions now are done via bank transfer, using ATMs, or of course automatic payment now. But things are changing more and more to digital thanks to the move to credit cards and prepaid card systems. One things for sure I like it better here. Hated cheques and don't miss them at all.

It's not rare for me to carry 50,000 yen, nor is it for people I know honestly.

I think all my friends are too casual and no one reads reviews. I use Amazon. Stopped me from buying that Setsuna game.

 

[ranmafan]

It's not rare for me to carry 50,000 yen, nor is it for people I know honestly.

I think all my friends are too casual and no one reads reviews. I use Amazon. Stopped me from buying that Setsuna game.

Where I'm at I would be surprised if it's the same or even more believe it or not. But most of my friends it's a little less, but not by much.

I can't trust Amazon's reviews considering too many angry gaming otakus throwing out crazy reviews over small ridiculous things that make them mad. Although sometimes they can be good, the reviews written for #fe on Amazon were shockenly well written.

 

[mujun]

I've been an avid Famitsu reader/fan since living in Japan in the mid-90's. They are rarely off-base, and best viewed in lots of 5 (E.g., no difference between 40 and 36, or 35 and 31). I also love that they sit four seperate people down to review each game, and the accompanying comments are usually brief, but insightful. Admittedly, it's rare that review scores vary by more than 1 or 2 points between reviewers.

All the fuckers on GAF carrying on about Famitsu getting paid for reviews have likely never read the magazine and are just parroting what they've heard.

Japan has always been about 'the hype' of big games and big promoters of Japanese developers. Every individual game reviewer, let alone publication has an inherent bias towards developers/genres. Deal with it.

I mean, shit, they gave P4G a 35 and it is in my top 3 of all-time. Boohoo. I still trust Famitsu as much as I do any other reviewer. Anything above 28/32 usually means a game is worth playing. Can't wait.

Really? In my experience the relationship between the media and the devs/pubs is symbiotic. They are about as biased as they can be and don't try to hide it.

 

[ranmafan]

They have internal policy (or is it public? I forgot) that they'll feature articles regarding game with certain score or higher, so to publishers it's like whether their game would be featured is quite important.

I think that's the burning question as always with famitsu, is that policy really public and open and provable? I don't have much doubt such things exist but I still want to see real actual proof of it and not assumptions or hearsay. I want more real evidence that you could take to a court of law and all. And we still haven't seen enough sadly.

Funny thing is at least for me when I look at the game scores and compare them to my feelings they are pretty on par. Almost 100%. I think the only big one that wasn't was their review of demons souls which if I remember correctly was way lower than you would expect. And that was a Sony published game and all, although it didn't have a great start in Japan especially with promotion. Which could be a possible great sign of said policies at famitsu.

 

[mujun]

I think that's the burning question as always with famitsu, is that policy really public and open and provable? I don't have much doubt such things exist but I still want to see real actual proof of it and not assumptions or hearsay. I want more real evidence that you could take to a court of law and all. And we still haven't seen enough sadly.

No one looks into that stuff. You'll never see the proof unless shit changes in a major way.

TV is similar, the amount of advertising disguised as entertainment is ridiculous.

 

[crinale]

I think that's the burning question as always with famitsu, is that policy really public and open and provable? I don't have much doubt such things exist but I still want to see real actual proof of it and not assumptions or hearsay. I want more real evidence that you could take to a court of law and all. And we still haven't seen enough sadly.

Funny thing is at least for me when I look at the game scores and compare them to my feelings they are pretty on par. Almost 100%. I think the only big one that wasn't was their review of demons souls which if I remember correctly was way lower than you would expect. And that was a Sony published game and all, although it didn't have a great start in Japan especially with promotion. Which could be a possible great sign of said policies at famitsu.

Yeah I want to see the proof of the criteria thing too. BTW as for Demon's souls, one of the reviewer gave 7 for rather sharp difficulty, and that resulted Famitsu to not feature article regarding the game (That being said I think it's fair to have a reviewer who thinks Souls series have rather unfair difficulty).

 

[Hero Prinny]

eyes of heaven got a perfect score from them?! get the fuck outta here, I'm a jojo dick rider and even i refuse to buy that game. they literally had 1 job for me when it came to the gameplay, just make something that won't bore me to tears, it didn't even have to be that fun, all it had to do was not be boring enough where i won't continue playing (since i was only going to buy it for the story mode anyway) and it failed so hard at that. that game is a damn snooze fest

 

[Valkerionseven]

From what I've seen, and like others said, just like other places in the world, most people go by word of mouth or a trusted modern reviewer on something like youtube. Japan really has a ton of gaming channels on youtube and nico ect.


Also one thing I always found weird when people posted or quoted famitsu review scores was they rarely quoted the comments the reviewer had, only their number. I always kinda liked their system of 4 reviewers opinions of it, and a small comment. Different people have different tastes so that was part of it. Now if those opinions went to shit in the later years is up to you. Like one I liked was Demon's Souls it got a pretty good review but not perfect. It made the point that it's difficulty may be a turn off to some but the sense of accomplishment when you beat a boss is there. That was from the lower number.

But yeah, some reviews come across as suspect. Either from blatant "I'm a fan of this so I will give it a high score" or some other thing. Like the Jojo scores, Jojo is super popular, more so now than ever before but those games are hardly perfect.

 

[ranmafan]

Yeah I want to see the proof of the criteria thing too. BTW as for Demon's souls, one of the reviewer gave 7 for rather sharp difficulty, and that resulted Famitsu to not feature article regarding the game (That being said I think it's fair to have a reviewer who thinks Souls series have rather unfair difficulty).

Exactly I want that proof, I want it exposed publicly for everyone to see but you never will see it cause it's a perfect system you have in Japan and no one wants to break it. Big publishers get their games out in the open always, magazines sale more and more. Everyone seems happy. And you know I agree a bit about the demons soul review thing and difficultly. But yeah that review especially considering where the game came from always brings me back to asking just how far does this whole famitsu money thing goes.

No one looks into that stuff. You'll never see the proof unless shit changes in a major way.

TV is similar, the amount of advertising disguised as entertainment is ridiculous.

Yeah cause journalism for these types of things is basically non existent. Just look at the nightly news and see what stories get shown and what's swept under the rug in Japan. There's a big worry about it and even some prominent big name news people have retired recently in frustration about it.

Sadly there is no Japanese equal in the video game world to say a Jason Schrier and all. And I doubt there will ever will be. Whenever we do get some scoop it's small bits from a more major important place like a newspaper and all.

And your right things would have to change in a major way for that to happen, but they won't. They never do in Japan. Nothing ever changes unless someone screws up insanely bad and the word "scandal" is brought out. It's the only thing that changes things and sadly it seems to only happen to stupid celeberty things people shouldn't care about

 

[urfe]

Where I'm at I would be surprised if it's the same or even more believe it or not. But most of my friends it's a little less, but not by much.

I can't trust Amazon's reviews considering too many angry gaming otakus throwing out crazy reviews over small ridiculous things that make them mad. Although sometimes they can be good, the reviews written for #fe on Amazon were shockenly well written.

I didn't meant any score that Amazin provides, but what people actually write. If they're angry otakus, it'll come off in their review. There's a surprising amount of people who write well written easy to understand reviews.

 

[ranmafan]

I didn't meant any score that Amazin provides, but what people actually write. If they're angry otakus, it'll come off in their review. There's a surprising amount of people who write well written easy to understand reviews.

Oh I agree with you there are some good reviews there. Before I mentioned quite a lot of good ones to read for #fe for example. they certainly do exist but there's just so many bad ones there too you have to go through at times. Still it's another option open for people which is always good.

 

[Ninferno]

Influential? Maybe.
Respected? Probably not.

2ch impression posts and Amazon.jp user reviews matters much more to sales it seems.

 

[BigBoss007]

I dont think it's indentended to be directly literal. What would you prefer, the yen is in the envelope?

LoL. That comment made me laugh loud as hell.

 

[Zeroth]

I think Famitsu's reputation used to be different. Back when I first heard about it, they were known for being harsh with their grading, so perfect or near perfect scores were an event. Then around Nintendogs it suddenly became a lot less rare, and their reputation started going downhill.

I remember getting a near perfect score was already quite impressive back then. I don't think nintendo dogs was the start of it (although it was the first big "out there" perfect score), but around 2008, Famitsu started handing out perfect scores to all kind of games, including some that, in hindsight, were probably being hyped too much.Case in point, from 1986 til 2003, there had been only 4 games that were awarded perfect scores. 13 years later, there are 23.

 

[LeleSocho]

It was very respected by me up until they started to give 40/40 like candies in the middle/late of the '00s or something like that.

 

[Drain You]

I know it's an expression and it's all ok to use, just like I said it's a silly pet peeve of mine. Of course people don't know that about Japan so I don't get too big over it.

I though Japan used to use checks. Kogitte or something?

 

[ranmafan]

I though Japan used to use checks. Kogitte or something?

Maybe they did but they haven't for quite a long while. At least not by individuals. I've tried explaining checks to people over the years here and they all looked at me with a blank huh expression the whole time.

 

[Crimson_Echidna]

Lmao honestly do people in the US even use checks anymore?

To pay rent, yes.