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February 2006 EGM Scores

Wow, games getting high and low review scores? Reviewers having different opinions? Fuck EGM. Accept your goddamn money hats already and give all games a 9+.
 
6.5 is pretty realistic for PD0,christ what a subpar game.

Wonder what happened to MVP :( And why is it being reviewed so early,releasing a baseball game in Jan/Feb doesn't make much sense to me >.>
 
After playing a lort of RR and PDZ, I can not play PGR3 again. It is so stale and boring, and I won't even mention the online part.

A 6.5 for PDZ means they only played SP in agent difficulty, much like IGN. *cough* Guides.IGN*cough*
 
AniHawk said:
Oh shit, online PC ports exclusive to Revolution.

I woudlnt' go that far, but they gotta be loving the RevMote because it's so much more like a mouse than a standard analogue controller.
 
Ramirez said:
6.5 is pretty realistic for PD0,christ what a subpar game.

Wonder what happened to MVP :( And why is it being reviewed so early,releasing a baseball game in Jan/Feb doesn't make much sense to me >.>

College baseball starts in Feb. I believe.
 
Kon Tiki said:
A 6.5 for PDZ means they only played SP in agent difficulty, much like IGN. *cough* Guides.IGN*cough*


Correct. That and he didn't play the same online PD0 as I did obviously. =|

POP:TTT reviews are awesome. MUST check this out now.
 
rod furlong said:
You would.

You know, instead of responding to my worthless posts on here, maybe you should be working on reviewing those games you guys just don't have the time to cover.
 
Unconfirmed top 10 games. Keep in mind these are the "Best Games of Their Time," which I think is really lame since we're going to be seeing pong and shit, I would have MUCH rather seen a top 200 best games of all time a la issues 100 and 150 =/. Spoilers?

10.Pong
9.GTA3
8.Legend of ZeldaOT
7.Space Invaders
6.Super Mario 64
5.Legend of Zelda
4.Tetris
3.Street Fighter 2
2.Pacman
1.Super Mario Bros.
 
SailorDaravon said:
Unconfirmed top 10 games. Keep in mind these are the "Best Games of Their Time," which I think is really lame since we're going to be seeing pong and shit, I would have MUCH rather seen a top 200 best games of all time a la issues 100 and 150 =/. Spoilers?

10.Pong
9.GTA3
8.Legend of ZeldaOT
7.Space Invaders
6.Super Mario 64
5.Legend of Zelda
4.Tetris
3.Street Fighter 2
2.Pacman
1.Super Mario Bros.

Why do magazines have to compile this lists every fucking year?
 
People keep reading the lists. Seriously, tossing GREATEST 10 GAMES OF ALL TIME on the cover will pull some attention on newsstands.
 
I think that's a Top 10 that most people can agree with, aside from a few anti-GTA nuts. I'd still kinda question the inclusion of Zelda: OoT, but can't really think of a 3D adventure game that was as competent "at the time." If I was gonna replace it, I'd probably replace it with Final Fight or Halo or Donkey Kong.

The inclusion of Pong at #10 seems kind of like an admission that the game isn't that great, but somehow deserves a spot because it was one of the first. I woulda picked a classic title that had a bit more substance to it.....either find something you can wholeheartedly endorse or give up on naming something from gaming's archaic era. I'd replace it with Joust for innovations in the field of competitive simultaneous multiplayer.
MarkMacD said:
Actually yes: both were Che.
Che used to seem a bit more discerning. ;)
 
Ganondorf>Link said:
GTA3 didn't even win GOTY from them in 2001, and now its the best game of this gen? :lol
Different staff members than they had 5 years ago? Better perspective now that a few years have passed? Aside from Halo, I don't think there's much else from this generation that is in need of a Top Ten slot.
 
can somebody please post a summary of the MVP impressions/pros & cons.

I was really looking forward to it. I played MVP 05 more than any other game in 2005. Load & Fire hitting sounded interesting and hopefully the online mode is decent.

An 8 sounds promising as its not meant to appeal to as wide an audience as Madden, but I'm worried about the lower scores.
 
border said:
Different staff members than they had 5 years ago? Better perspective now that a few years have passed? Aside from Halo, I don't think there's much else from this generation that is in need of a Top Ten slot.

I can think of plenty, and Halo sure as hell isn't one them.
 
Ganondorf>Link said:
:lol if that list is true.

GTA3 didn't even win GOTY from them in 2001, and now its the best game of this gen? :lol
Differences in how many get a say in it, staff changes as someone else said, and just plain added perspective from 3 years later. I remember in 1997 finding it funny how Final Fantasy VII beat out GoldenEye 007 for Game of the Month by 0.5 points, but GoldenEye ended up winning Game of the Year.
 
Ninja Scooter said:
thats why you're supposed to read the reviews instead of just the scores.

Yusaku said:
I always love how people get confused or upset at review disparities. WTF is the point of having multiple reviewers if they all give the same scores? It's probably pretty accurate that at least 1/3rd of people think PDZ is a piece of shit, so I don't see the problem.

:lol Exactly...reading this thread just reconfirms how completely stupid "hardc0re gamers" are these days.





Soul4ger said:
You know, instead of responding to my worthless posts on here, maybe you should be working on reviewing those games you guys just don't have the time to cover.

:lol As if this thread wasn't entertaining already...





jett said:
Why do magazines have to compile this lists every fucking year?

Gotta take into account the games released in the last year that made it into the high 70's...
 
Ganondorf>Link said:
I can think of plenty, and Halo sure as hell isn't one them.
You get a gold star!

The list seems to focus on "Holy shit, this created a genre!" type of innovation, and in that sense I suppose Halo doesn't belong. But then neither would anything else from this generation, outside of GTA3.
 
people complaining about review spread, people saying if you hold an opinion about a certain game you must not have experienced its multiplayer, a throwaway top ten... all is well.

Definitely interested in trying out Ape Escape 3, but this seems like a fairly weak month overall. Not much in the way for worthwhile discussion, even in the rumours.
 
Amir0x said:
people complaining about review spread, people saying if you hold an opinion about a certain game you must not have experienced its multiplayer, a throwaway top ten... all is well.
Halo seems to have started a "You can't dislike a game unless you played it on the hardest difficulty" trend. While Legendary Halo really did make the game mechanics shine, it seems now you can't put down anything without somebody somewhere saying that it must be played at some insanely cheap difficulty level before a proper judgement can be made.

And scoring games based almost entirely on multiplayer is an iffy proposition for console titles. For Xbox, roughly 90% of users are in no position to play an FPS in full-on multiplayer, so a bad single player mode ought to drag the score down a bit....
 
AniHawk said:
6.5 for PDZero. Ouch. It's like the two other scores don't matter.

If it's anything like last month, the lowest reviews probably mostly belong to the new reviewer, who isn't doing a bang-up job at the moment
 
belgurdo said:
If it's anything like last month, the lowest reviews probably mostly belong to the new reviewer, and you can tell she's trying way too hard to analyze the games
The 6.5 is from the Editor-in-Chief.
 
border said:
Halo seems to have started a "You can't dislike a game unless you played it on the hardest difficulty" trend. While Legendary Halo really did make the game mechanics shine, it seems now you can't put down anything without somebody somewhere saying that it must be played at some insanely cheap difficulty level before a proper judgement can be made.

And scoring games based almost entirely on multiplayer is an iffy proposition for console titles. For Xbox, roughly 90% of users are in no position to play an FPS in full-on multiplayer, so a bad single player mode ought to drag the score down a bit....

Well I think that if you're reviewing a game you should be accurately judging all facets of the product. Which is why I don't necessarily agree with Che's opinion that even if you think the singleplayer of PDZ may be throwaway, the multiplayer is great and thus the game deserves a great score - because that means part of the product is not great at all, and is in fact throwaway.

But that's just details. My point was that the implication of the comments in this thread were if you played multiplayer and still thought PDZ wasn't great, your opinion must not be right.
 
I know it's been said, but EGM's review system is good only in theory. They simply do not devote enough space to make it worthwhile. Furthermore, all too often they will take one thing about the game and mark the score far too low because of it. I still remember Perfect Dark getting average scores because it had slowdown. An honest complaint, but what if people dont' care about framerate? EGM would be much better if they actually dissected games rather than write a paragraph or two. Of course, I kind of loss faith in them after someone said Viewtiful Joe 2 was co-op....

The scores for PDZ were not shocking at all. I bet a 3rd of all people will totally dig it and a 3rd will grow tired of it after an hour. Fine by me. Not every game has to be loved by everyone for me to enjoy it.
 
TehOh said:
I'm not surprised by the Electroplankton scores. It's fun to play around with, but there really isn't enough to do to justify the cost.

Definitly worth getting for $10, maybe $15. I payed something like 3800 yen for my copy and wouldn't recommend it for that price (even if it came in a shiny box with spiffy headphones).
And if it wasn't only being sold on Nintendo's online store maybe people would have a chance to pick it up for that price eventually. :(
 
Gigglepoo said:
I know it's been said, but EGM's review system is good only in theory. They simply do not devote enough space to make it worthwhile. Furthermore, all too often they will take one thing about the game and mark the score far too low because of it. I still remember Perfect Dark getting average scores because it had slowdown. An honest complaint, but what if people dont' care about framerate? EGM would be much better if they actually dissected games rather than write a paragraph or two. Of course, I kind of loss faith in them after someone said Viewtiful Joe 2 was co-op....

The scores for PDZ were not shocking at all. I bet a 3rd of all people will totally dig it and a 3rd will grow tired of it after an hour. Fine by me. Not every game has to be loved by everyone for me to enjoy it.

How can you not care about framerate in a FPS? Especially when the framerate gets as awful as it does during Perfect Dark 64?

I mean, it's there, and it's terrible... so that's an extremely valid complaint.
 
Amir0x said:
But that's just details. My point was that the implication of the comments in this thread were if you played multiplayer and still thought PDZ wasn't great, your opinion must not be right.

I never said it wasn't "right" I disagreed with him. Not really sure what game he was playing online but the people on my friend's list certainly wouldn't spend this many hours on a a 6.5 game.

To me, single player in a FPS is usually throwaway as the vast majority of my time will be spent with people online. I cannot remember the last time I booted and played HALO2's campaign.. To me its "throwaway" My reviews would always skew towards the online play. That would be my preference.

Shoe played with us a few times and "didn't like it" Maybe he likes SRPG's more? No big.
 
Amir0x said:
Well I think that if you're reviewing a game you should be accurately judging all facets of the product. Which is why I don't necessarily agree with Che's opinion that even if you think the singleplayer of PDZ may be throwaway, the multiplayer is great and thus the game deserves a great score - because that means part of the product is not great at all, and is in fact throwaway.
Well the flipside of this is....what do you do if the single player is great and the multiplayer sucks? I guess Call of Duty 2 would be the recent example.

Since the console gaming community is still very heavily slanted towards single-player over online multiplayer, I think that's where the weight should be. I guess ideally there would be two scores for single and multi, but we're not there yet...
 
border said:
I guess ideally there would be two scores for single and multi, but we're not there yet...

That would be brilliant. Hell I haven't bought COD2 because the online play is junked. Maybe after they patch it since I would love to try it.
 
Amir0x said:
How can you not care about framerate in a FPS? Especially when the framerate gets as awful as it does during Perfect Dark 64?

I mean, it's there, and it's terrible... so that's an extremely valid complaint.

Framerate never bothered me in the N64 days. PD didn't have awful framerate, it generally stayed around 20 FPS which was fine by me. Sure, it was unplayable with 8 bots and 4 humans, but there's no reason to play with that many opponents anyway. For people like me, who played with a maximum of two humans and 8 bots (or 3/4 humans and no bots), it was a fantastic game. If everything else about a game is beyond other games in its genre (which PD clearly was) than I don't think framerate should knock it down too far.

Also, I don't think it's fair to seperate single and multiplayer. I would give both Halo 2 and PDZ around a 9. PDZ, to me, had a really fun single player mode and a multi mode that just seemed rather blah. Halo 2 had a lame single player mode and an amazing multiplayer mode. Both are great games and need to be played, but for very different reasons.

Despite EGM's average reviews, I am still going to but Electroplankton. Anyone know if it will arrive in stores, or is it truly online only? And are earphones included like in the Japanese version? Also, can you actually save your songs?
 
Gigglepoo said:
I know it's been said, but EGM's review system is good only in theory. They simply do not devote enough space to make it worthwhile. Furthermore, all too often they will take one thing about the game and mark the score far too low because of it. I still remember Perfect Dark getting average scores because it had slowdown. An honest complaint, but what if people dont' care about framerate? EGM would be much better if they actually dissected games rather than write a paragraph or two. Of course, I kind of loss faith in them after someone said Viewtiful Joe 2 was co-op....

The scores for PDZ were not shocking at all. I bet a 3rd of all people will totally dig it and a 3rd will grow tired of it after an hour. Fine by me. Not every game has to be loved by everyone for me to enjoy it.
N64 Perfect Dark got 2 10s and a 9.5. There was, however, a brief section devoted to the framerate to the left of the reviews (it was a chart that rated the games playability vs unplayability in different modes).
 
krypt0nian said:
I never said it wasn't "right" I disagreed with him. Not really sure what game he was playing online but the people on my friend's list certainly wouldn't spend this many hours on a a 6.5 game.

To me, single player in a FPS is usually throwaway as the vast majority of my time will be spent with people online. I cannot remember the last time I booted and played HALO2's campaign.. To me its "throwaway" My reviews would always skew towards the online play. That would be my preference.

Shoe played with us a few times and "didn't like it" Maybe he likes SRPG's more? No big.

All these comments -

m0dus said:
I'd give PDZ a 7.5-8.5. It's better than a 6.5, and calling it 'subpar' means you didn't touch the multiplayer, IMO.

Kon Tiki said:
A 6.5 for PDZ means they only played SP in agent difficulty, much like IGN.

krypt0nian said:
*Replying to Kon*

Correct. That and he didn't play the same online PD0 as I did obviously. =|

Directly imply that if they had a low score for PD0, it's because they did not experience the multiplayer portion. Which by association means that if they DID experience the multiplayer and thought the same thing, their opinion is wrong. That's the implication. You and the others might not have actually meant that, but that's the only possible way it can be read.

Anyway, I don't want to boil back into semantics...I just thought that whole exchange was ridiculous.

border said:
Well the flipside of this is....what do you do if the single player is great and the multiplayer sucks? I guess Call of Duty 2 would be the recent example.

Since the console gaming community is still very heavily slanted towards single-player over online multiplayer, I think that's where the weight should be. I guess ideally there would be two scores for single and multi, but we're not there yet...

This is why people need to be focusing on the TEXT of the review. I don't see why a concept such as "reviewing everything in a product" is foreign to some people. If the text said "Singleplayer is terrible, which accounts for why it's getting an average score... but trust me, if you're only in it for multiplayer I don't see how you could go wrong with a purchase" then there should be no problem. I mean, that's assuming people actually read. Which I guess I should never assume.

Gigglepoo said:
Framerate never bothered me in the N64 days. PD didn't have awful framerate, it generally stayed around 20 FPS which was fine by me. Sure, it was unplayable with 8 bots and 4 humans, but there's no reason to play with that many opponents anyway. For people like me, who played with a maximum of two humans and 8 bots (or 3/4 humans and no bots), it was a fantastic game. If everything else about a game is beyond other games in its genre (which PD clearly was) than I don't think framerate should knock it down too far.

Wow, I don't know how your perceptions of framerate suddenly changed over time. But even if it did, now you're sensitive of it - would you give it the same score (even though EGM gave it phenomenal scores, apparently)? But even during the N64 era my mind was melting from playing through PD during certain areas. It was positively awful at times with the framerate. At one or two moments it was near unplayably awful. But I mean, we all have different opinions about the weight of what a flaw should have... so it's no use arguing over such details. We both agree the game had a low framerate (20fps is LOW, even though it got lower than that at many occassions), so it's just a matter of how much that affected your game.
 
Amir0x said:
Directly imply that if they had a low score for PD0, it's because they did not experience the multiplayer portion. Which by association means that if they DID experience the multiplayer and thought the same thing, their opinion is wrong. That's the implication. You and the others might not have actually meant that, but that's the only possible way it can be read.

Anyway, I don't want to boil back into semantics...I just thought that whole exchange was ridiculous.


Yes disagreeing could be seen as saying its "wrong" That would be the whole point in a discussion I suppose. None of that was ridiculous. You've done the same to people when they've criticized things you've defended. Again, no big.

My time with PD0 online tells me that a 6.5 is ludicrous. That's all I was saying.
 
OpinionatedCyborg said:
N64 Perfect Dark got 2 10s and a 9.5. There was, however, a brief section devoted to the framerate to the left of the reviews (it was a chart that rated the games playability vs unplayability in different modes).


Wow, you're actually right. I don't know why I remember it being much lower. I guess they did just what I asked: stating a problem but, seeing as the rest of the game was head and shoulders above other FPS of the time, still gave it a nearly perfect review. Good job EGM.
 
krypt0nian said:
Yes disagreeing could be seen as saying its "wrong" That would be the whole point in a discussion I suppose. None of that was ridiculous. You've done the same to people when they've criticized things you've defended. Again, no big.

My time with PD0 online tells me that a 6.5 is ludicrous. That's all I was saying.

krypt0nian, we're not going to play this game. The meaning was clear and without any confusion. You can clarify it now for yourself, if it makes you feel better, but saying that people who give PD0 a 6.5 couldn't possibly have played multiplayer only has one possible implication.

The fact that you had to claim I did the same thing only highlights this.
 
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