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GFW Radio (97.5: The Brodeo) - 11/13/07

Ryan, I got your back. I never touched Diablo. i was completely hung up on the Fallout series at the time and had a problem with Diablo being called an RPG. I thought of it as an adventure game with stats, and was insulted that people were calling it a role playing game. Plus I hated fantasy games.
 
For Shawn, don't take any of the review score madness to heart. Most of the people that take part in the feeding frenzy aren't even really interested in the game, they either want to draw some kind of vindication from a big number or schadenfreude from a low score; yet never actually play the game. I thought it was a well written piece and I enjoyed reading it, I do encourage you to give the multiplayer a try though, I played it for the past couple months and I really dig it (and there are some specific ways to go about getting prestige very quickly,) there's a lot of depth to the actual combat and suit power combos.

And Jeff, don't worry about progression in The Witcher, the pacing stays great throughout and the end game is awesome. The combat keeps getting more rewarding and fun as you unlock new combos and Signs, I beat it the other day and it's definitely the best RPG I've played in a long time.

Great show this week guys.
 
Shawn, your review was awesome. It's all good. However, your reaction to it all is justified as well. And hilarious! :D

Great show this week. You guys really make me want to upgrade my video card again in the next year to experience more PC goodness. I'm definitely going to check out The Witcher now.
 
Yep, this was an episode that was worth the wait. And for people who complain about the lack of games discussion, here's an episode that's pretty much 90% games chat with very little digression. Still just as great.
 
ZootedGranny said:
Man, fuck these review nitpickin motherfuckers. Shawn, let's ride on 'em, "Hit 'Em Up" style.

*starts working on a beat*




*not really*
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Ha. Man, I've been sleeping on the one beat I have. I'm guessing I'll feel inspired to finish the lyrics this weekend.
 
gray_fox224 said:
That CashCall was sweet. Haha, awesome fart

That was unexpected!:lol :lol :lol :lol
Click to expand...

Thanks, I had no idea how that would turn out...I just knew I had the urge to call. And pay off the first CashCall.
 
9/10

great story, tries to be a little too hard to be serious, no hero of the web. Cash call was hilarious good work.

Reviewing podcasts :)
 
Shawn, I have nothing against your Crysis review, I think you're doing a great job analyzing and evaluating the shit out of the games and you tend to have insightful things to say, so please don't stop doing that.
At the same time, you really should be able to understand where this is all coming from. It's not about your review. It's about the incosistency between reviews on 1up as a whole, and the apparent absence of any rules and standards what a 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 game needs to accomplish to warrant that kind of score.
I'll spell it out once, because it's not usually done: the absurdly high scores for Bioshock and Halo 3 are what got your publication into this state of indefensibility. Now that the PR backwind has been switched off and everyone sobers up wondering what the heck just happened, you have to shake that shit off as best as you can, and those are the exact pains you guys are going through now.

An eight is a score for a fantastic game, and there's no distrusting that when you say it yourself so clearly. It's just that other reviews under the same 1up umbrella have completely disconnected standards.

You really really should try to channel this frustration into some ground-rules for 1up reviews, with the explicit goal to ensure some consistency and comparability to those scores. It's the lack of consistency that's creating this shitty situation in the first place, and once you make that association, you can start working against it.
Let me just throw some things out there:
*Sequels that don't "innovate" much. Can that have an effect on the score? Why/why not?
*Price of the game. Can that affect the score? Why/why not?
*Tacked-on token multiplayer. Something that's just there but not really polished and destined to die three weeks after release. Does that affect the score? Why/why not?
*Your perception of how good the PR work is. Can that affect the score? Does a reviewer need to think about PR? Why/why not?

And so forth. And it doesn't even matter what the answers are, but just that some fundamental agreement can be reached to bolster the consistency between what different reviewers set as the bar for any given game to clear.
 
Also just want to add that I think the impressions I get from the podcast/1UP Show etc. mean as much if not more to me then the review. Seems a lot more personal and I seem to get a better feel of what you guys think of something.

That said a lot of the game talk is incomplete due to them being previews or under embargo (like Shawn's segment on Crysis on the 1UP Show last week) which can obviously vary greatly the final game

Looking forward to that 1UP Show Review Crew podcast :)
 
bcn-ron said:
*Your perception of how good the PR work is. Can that affect the score? Does a reviewer need to think about PR? Why/why not?
Click to expand...

They kind of talked about this one on the podcast two weeks ago in response to Crispin mentioning the reviewer guides, and as I remember, they more or less all agreed that PR shouldn't affect a review score and that for them, it doesn't.
 
randomwab said:
They kind of talked about this one on the podcast two weeks ago in response to Crispin mentioning the reviewer guides, and as I remember, they more or less all agreed that PR shouldn't affect a review score and that for them, it doesn't.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I know. It's more of an awareness issue, so it would be good to make it part of the formal set of rules, just as a reminder. Reviewers shouldn't be extra gentle about a game just because [PR makes them believe] a lot of kids were are looking forward to it, nor feel justified to be really harsh because a title has drawn lots of hate (e.g. Hellgate). It's really easy to fall into peer-pressure mode and nudge in the direction of what you think is expected of you.
 
Well, I'm checkin' out this episode now, and what do you know? Ryan has a voice!
I kid, I kid.

neuroticphil said:
Ryan, I got your back. I never touched Diablo. i was completely hung up on the Fallout series at the time and had a problem with Diablo being called an RPG. I thought of it as an adventure game with stats, and was insulted that people were calling it a role playing game. Plus I hated fantasy games.
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I never touched Diablo 2 or 2 either, I was 100% a console gamer then, so anything that ran on a PC was off my radar.

Also, Fart, Way to go on calling out some of the asshats bitching about your review. Seriously, I bet next to no one's actually read it, but just looked at the score and went off like a cry baby. People tend to forget there's often a reason a game will score what it does, and that such handy knowledge actually comes with the review as well, in the form of words.

Furthermore, If a person doesn't agree with a review, they can fuck off. Really what good is it going to do arguing that you're own personal opinion is better than someone else’s?

These days, I'll still read plenty of reviews from all sorts of sites/magazines, but I'll never enter something like the review threads here, because I know only bad things come out of crap like that. Instead I just compile various thoughts from different reviewers, stack it against previews and my own personal idea of what to expect out of a game, and go from there. Works far better than getting pissy on the interenet because I had a personal investment in the game and in my own crazy ass mind it has no flaws.
 
Nice podcast, listened to it while eating breakfast and playing a couple of matches of Company of Heroes this morning.

The Hellgate:London commentary was very colorful, to say the least. I think that the emphasis (and huge developent headaches it must have caused) on dynamically generated environments was also a real mistake for the reasons you mentioned on the podcast-it just doesn't feel like a quality hack and slash playground. I think that a better approach would have been to randomize the enemy placement/encounters while anchoring the whole thing with full-on level design complete with the kind of fit and finish in level design we saw from the never-mentioned-enough Titan Quest.

(Note: After playing the hellgate beta some, I reinstalled Titan Quest and the great expansion. Such a great game.)

The no respec thing is really baffling until you sort of look through it through the prism of the hardcore Diablo 2 types, who think respecs are for weaklings who aren't good enouch to be powerleveled to 99 in a few hours from their bnet buddies. I think overall Hellgate might have suffered more than it benefitted from trying to stick with some of the core concepts from Diablo 2.

I noted that update over at VoodooExtreme when it came out and was surprised that it was done by Robert "Apache" Howarth, who has been basically running the site for years (and the site does get a lot of traffic). I was sorta surprised at that post and I agree that he should eat a dick for penning it. Preferably while calling up CashCall, he should know better than to post something like that for fuck's sake.

People need to do two things with reviews that they don't currently seem to do:

A) read the thing, see if you agree or disagree with the review, and note if the reviewer hits on the things that you find most relevant to your gaming interests
B) make a quick mental note of who wrote it. Next time you read a review from the site, see if it is the same person.

I don't read Gamespyy, Gamespot, or 1up reviews. I read the reviews of Tom Chick, Alec Meer, Jason Ocampo, Jeff Green, Shawn Elliot, and others whom I know I agree with in terms of what I look for in games. There are some reviewers who I disagree with or who get hung up on things in games that don't bother me, and some whose views mirror mine, and I weight the reviews through that context to get the Kernel of +3 Truth that exists in every decent review.

I would like to say that the hardcore gaming community on the internet as I see it has almost completely lost any ability to note nuance in criticism. It's sad but I think the combination of a high-octane console war and the holiday blitz have everyone with ants in their pants and man it's getting annoying.

Oh btw Jeff-if you can get the time to get around to the second half of the first Sam and Max season, I highly recommend it. The first half of the season, while good, is actually far inferior in pretty much every way to the second half.
 
I've only listened for 20 seconds, but already a "what the hell?" has been uttered. :lol

Suburban Cowboy said:
Is it mean to say I prefer the podcast without Daren
because he's irish?
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You mean bastard!

Honestly, I think I prefer it without him too, although I don't dislike him. :(
 
I'm with Frag on reviews. I see who is reviewing the game before I take in its consideration. I appreciate the fact that you went through the entire scope of Crysis in your review Shawn. It is good to see the good and the bad pointed out. An 8 is an excellent, but I can also understand where the reader frustration comes from as well. BCN RON makes a good point as well. For those of us who don't actively seek out who is reviewing said game, it does look like a total lack of consistency. From reading many reviews, I can honestly say Shawn that you hold games to a higher standard than most other reviewers I've read over the years. This is why I appreciate your commentary, as I could find plenty of other cookie cutter comments across the web without much effort. But to the casual observer it goes over closer to this, "1up gave Halo 3 and Bioshock a 10, Crysis 8 lulz Crysis sux.", without taking into consideration the reviewer or criteria they used to reach said conclusion. On top of this, there are too many games which are getting scored way too high for just being competent. The full reviewer scale needs to be used more often.
 
Awesome talk on reviews once again, I love that.

Oh, and reviewing games on the podcast without a score? That's already happening if you ask me. If I hear you guys talk about Crysis, CoD4 or some other game, that's worth more than a review for me.

This podcast was a fighter jet.
 
FartOfWar said:
AC-130 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afv5el1-nhg

Search Apache for helo missions. Or try militaryvideos.net
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As I was listening to the podcast on the way to work this morning, and even after watching the YouTube video, I'm wondering what to think of myself at this point. I feel disgust when I see the casualties of real war at a ground level view, but for some reason --- both in the CoD4 level, and even when watching the YouTube video --- I'm not moved emotionally by the AC-130 footage.

Intellectually, I know what's happening and I understand that those people are dying horrible deaths from an unseen assailant, but there's such a disconnect there. I think that it must be the combination of the far-off view from above, the lack of any ground-level audio, and the black and white display.

Either that or I'm "doing it wrong".

On another note, great podcast as usual! Regardless of whether you guys talk about games 10% or the time or 90% of the time in a given show, you always find a way to entertain. 2+ hour shows ftw!
 
Another great podcast this week. I completely agree about the reviews - things are getting absolutely ridiculous and scores in general are pretty much meaningless now.

It seems like most games are getting 8+ just for not being terrible, rather than actually being great games. All the 9s and 10s that have been thrown around lately have basically broken the scale - not that it was ever great to begin with, as most games were being rated on a 7-10 scale, but there seems to be a lot of backlash if a game gets less than a 9 now. Hell even a 9.5 for some titles is apparently low which is ludicrous.

These days, I'd much rather hear what people actually think of a game, and base my decision to buy on that - this is something that the podcasts and 1up show are great for. At least that way you get an idea of how much people are enjoying something, without having an arbitrary score tacked on.

Listening to GFW radio has really got me interested in PC gaming again - I stopped a number of years ago when things started getting stale for me - just as every game was seemingly a WW2 shooter or a Battlefield clone, but I've now started playing things on my MacBook Pro and have been thinking about picking up some titles that I've missed out on. (like Titan Quest, as I keep hearing people talk about it lately)
 
Haven't played anymore than the Crysis demo (just ordered an 8800GT last night, with my Athlon X2 4200+ I'm really hoping I can now use medium settings at a lower res), but based on your opinion of the end your score makes total sense. The whole alien thing seems to be the climax of the single player game (from both a story and more importantly gameplay perspective), and people are complaining that you're just supposed to ignore the climax when scoring it because of the excellent beginning :lol.

That would be like a reviewing a movie or book and ignoring a major turning point in the plot. The turning point/climax is supposed to be the payoff, and it's going to have the biggest effect on your opinion.

And whenever a director makes a bold creative decision mid game, movie, etc., it's always going to be divisive. I think of the movie Magnolia - the frog scene IMO comes out of nowhere and is against the tone of the movie that it taints what I view to be an otherwise perfect movie, so if I were to review it it wouldn't be 4/4 stars. But look at critics and IMDB and you'll see a healthy amount of people with the exact opposite viewpoint.

That said, I guess you have to give the guys at Crytek some credit for taking a different approach for the ending than their proven sandbox gameplay.
 
Xrenity said:
Oh, and reviewing games on the podcast without a score? That's already happening if you ask me. If I hear you guys talk about Crysis, CoD4 or some other game, that's worth more than a review for me.
Click to expand...

I dunno why 1UP doesn't do video or audio reviews along with their text reviews. I say cut out the Crysis segment from The Brodeo this week and stick it at the top of the Crysis 1UP review.
 
Mrbob said:
I'm with Frag on reviews. I see who is reviewing the game before I take in its consideration. I appreciate the fact that you went through the entire scope of Crysis in your review Shawn. It is good to see the good and the bad pointed out. An 8 is an excellent, but I can also understand where the reader frustration comes from as well. BCN RON makes a good point as well. For those of us who don't actively seek out who is reviewing said game, it does look like a total lack of consistency. From reading many reviews, I can honestly say Shawn that you hold games to a higher standard than most other reviewers I've read over the years. This is why I appreciate your commentary, as I could find plenty of other cookie cutter comments across the web without much effort. But to the casual observer it goes over closer to this, "1up gave Halo 3 and Bioshock a 10, Crysis 8 lulz Crysis sux.", without taking into consideration the reviewer or criteria they used to reach said conclusion.
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IAWTP. As an Xbox360 owner and owner of a pretty piss-poor gaming PC, I *rarely* even play PC games anymore, with the last one being CoH (props, bish). But I always read GFW reviews, and specifically Shawn's. I only wish that more reviewers we able to take a step back from the hype of a "mega-game" and take a more cautious and reserved look at the entire product. I mean, if Halo 3, Bioshock, or Gears of War had been reviewed as an 8 or an 8.5, would that have meant that they would've been any LESS of an entertaining experience?
 
anachronous_one said:
As I was listening to the podcast on the way to work this morning, and even after watching the YouTube video, I'm wondering what to think of myself at this point. I feel disgust when I see the casualties of real war at a ground level view, but for some reason --- both in the CoD4 level, and even when watching the YouTube video --- I'm not moved emotionally by the AC-130 footage.

Intellectually, I know what's happening and I understand that those people are dying horrible deaths from an unseen assailant, but there's such a disconnect there. I think that it must be the combination of the far-off view from above, the lack of any ground-level audio, and the black and white display.
Click to expand...

I don't know, I couldn't watch more than 2 minutes of that video. It was sickening, knowing I was watching actual people die. I haven't played COD4, but I have a feeling that it might be equally disconcerting.
 
Revengeance said:
I don't know, I couldn't watch more than 2 minutes of that video. It was sickening, knowing I was watching actual people die. I haven't played COD4, but I have a feeling that it might be equally disconcerting.
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Hey, I'm certainly not saying that the way you felt wasn't an appropriate response. Last week, I accidentally ran across an embeded YouTube video in someone's signature over on the CoD4 forums that appeared to be a "highlight reel" of American soldiers doing their job, which was interesting for the first few minutes. However, the longer I watched, the more I got the impression that this was a video celebrating the violence of war and the free license to fuck shit up, as opposed to honoring military men doing their job. I stomached about 3 minutes of the 9 minutes video, and had to stop after there was a shot of a couple dead men in a lean-to or tent, followed by a man lying dead in the street, whose head was collapsed from either having been shot or run over.

But I digress ... like I said, for whatever reason, it really did not strike an emotional chord with me, which even I find odd. I'm not a hunter, can't stomach slasher flicks anymore, and abhore the themes/dialogue presented original Manhunt game. Hell, I can't even watch Grey's Anatomy with my wife without feeling queezing during an OR scene.

I know this sounds fucked up even as I'm typing it, but it's almost as if the technology, weapons --- and probably most importantly to them --- the clinical nature of the environment are managed in such a way in real life that it's easier for a soldier manning the weapons to have this disconnect and see the hot zone as a futuristic version of Asteroids.
 
Man, listening to this podcast while walking around campus is dangerous. It's so hard to keep from laughing out loud and looking like a jackass when listening to you guys. Fantastic discussion all around, though. Don't be afraid to do another long one sometime soon.
 
anachronous_one said:
I know this sounds fucked up even as I'm typing it, but it's almost as if the technology, weapons --- and probably most importantly to them --- the clinical nature of the environment are managed in such a way in real life that it's easier for a soldier manning the weapons to have this disconnect and see the hot zone as a futuristic version of Asteroids.
Click to expand...

I think the clinical nature is exactly what bothers me most, as if the humanity of those below is being disregarded. I shudder to think what the view from the ground would be. Try to imagine being the guy caught out in the open, being pursued by bombs dropped from a nameless foe in the sky.

Anyway, people definitely have different visceral reactions to different things. I for one loved those gory surgery and emergency room shows on TLC.
 
anachronous_one said:
Hey, I'm certainly not saying that the way you felt wasn't an appropriate response. Last week, I accidentally ran across an embeded YouTube video in someone's signature over on the CoD4 forums that appeared to be a "highlight reel" of American soldiers doing their job, which was interesting for the first few minutes. However, the longer I watched, the more I got the impression that this was a video celebrating the violence of war and the free license to fuck shit up, as opposed to honoring military men doing their job. I stomached about 3 minutes of the 9 minutes video, and had to stop after there was a shot of a couple dead men in a lean-to or tent, followed by a man lying dead in the street, whose head was collapsed from either having been shot or run over.

But I digress ... like I said, for whatever reason, it really did not strike an emotional chord with me, which even I find odd. I'm not a hunter, can't stomach slasher flicks anymore, and abhore the themes/dialogue presented original Manhunt game. Hell, I can't even watch Grey's Anatomy with my wife without feeling queezing during an OR scene.

I know this sounds fucked up even as I'm typing it, but it's almost as if the technology, weapons --- and probably most importantly to them --- the clinical nature of the environment are managed in such a way in real life that it's easier for a soldier manning the weapons to have this disconnect and see the hot zone as a futuristic version of Asteroids.
Click to expand...


Weird. Watch this and tell me if you feel the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXvEy8leKpM
 
Ah shit...it's here and I can't download it. It goes really slow and then just stops, in Itunes and using the download link. Goddamnit.
 
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