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Gies: Reviewing BF3 was not easy.
- Thread starter chickdigger802
- Start date
I'm really curious to check out this campaign. Reviewers are REALLY apathetic towards it, but I'm wondering if it's because it's genuinely terrible or because it's "just" a solid setpiece mover like CoD(which I don't generally see reviewers act nearly as indifferent to) or even BC2.
So what have we learned?
don't use reviews as a basis for buying games. Ask people that have it, try it out yourself.
I've found the campaign to be okay so far, but I bought it for a return to BF2-type Multiplayer and I got that delivered that in spades. So for me I'm highly enjoying my purchase.
Though apparently they must mean something to part of GAF since some people were ready to start an angry mob because Uncharted 3 got an 8/10 from someone.
don't use reviews as a basis for buying games. Ask people that have it, try it out yourself.
I've found the campaign to be okay so far, but I bought it for a return to BF2-type Multiplayer and I got that delivered that in spades. So for me I'm highly enjoying my purchase.
Though apparently they must mean something to part of GAF since some people were ready to start an angry mob because Uncharted 3 got an 8/10 from someone.
BlazingDarkness
Member
So most of the single player is 'unacceptable' and the mupltiplayer 'stinks' but it's a 4.5/5 game.
Right.
Right.
DevelopmentArrested
Banned
Your mind seemed to made up that it's a mess before Arthur ever tweeted anything. No offense.LuchaShaq said:
Lol what?BlazingDarkness said:
NullPointer
Member
So that would be fine for Battlefield 3? Or would we see a stream of posters who would complain at the high score for a Battlefield game with crap multiplayer?Cobra84 said:
Mr. B Natural
Member
If a SP game had 100 levels and 90 of them stunk and 10 were awesome, another game had 10 levels and 10 of them were awesome...in one case you trudged through mediocrity. just to get to the good stuff, the other you didn't.scar tissue said:
The same could be said about added scenes in a movie, a book, more crap on a hamburger, cup holders in a car or more paint on a piece of art. It doesn't matter. At no point is adding something worse than what the package offers without the said addition make the product better. It needs to be better to make the product better. If it's of the same quality then fine, go ahead and state quantity as a bonus. I have no issue with that.
It's called filler and if filler can't keep up with the quality of the rest of the content then the game is worse off for it. And if the quality was high enough, then it wouldn't be called filler in the first place. The trick is to value your time, then the proper conclusion is made. A game that is wasting your time to check arbitrary boxes is wasting your time just to check arbitrary boxes. Those 5 hours still weren't all that hot, despite spending 100+ hours in a feature that is hot. The 105 hours spent were not as good as the 100 hours spent. This is especially a case for a game that will not get complaints about the value for your money/replay value. A game that's 2 hours long, alright, maybe will benefit with filler, but these big AAA mp heavy fps's are not and should not be concerned with longevity. There's plenty of that inherit.
They should have added 20 more unpolished maps to MP, right? Better. More. I still got those 10 maps that were good, Why not add deer turd to your sundae. You get more sundae for the same price, blah blah blah I mean, if you don't like it just remove the turd from the sundae and eat up. Yummy yummy. If you're reviewing the sundae, just ignore it. Yep. You don't see it. Not there. Who buys sundaes for the deer poo anyway?
Kaltagesta said:
yeah maybe i see it differently. i mean these games cost 60 dollars, which is a lot, and i think the consumer is entitled to know the good and bad aspects of the game that they are buying. under your philosophy, we should judge games on 'how fun' they are, which is a pretty weak category seeing as everybody will be able to twist this to their own advtanges.
i think of the score as like a combination of things - complement the review or if its a must buy. i dont know, at the end of the day consumersare entitled to know the good and bad things about their games. so with BF3, yeah the multiplayer is pretty fun, but the SP is shit, the co-op is shit and if you're playing the console version (where the majority of players will be) then it'll be buggy as well.
so you might say, "well the multiplayer is fun thats where it counts" and yeah it probably is fun to some degree, but you got to take in account about the overall package. i mean if multiplayer is the only thing that counts, why did DICE bother making a sp and co-op mode? because it counts as a overall package, and they need to justify to the consumer spending $60 on a game at launch. it's disingenuous not to inform people about issues of the game.
maybe its a perspective thing. i think game journalsits/fans/critics we should use reviews less as a form of saying 'is this fun' but maybe ask the question 'is this worth asking full price at launch' as well as.
anyawy thats my serious post for the year done.
Kaltagesta
Banned
Mr. B Natural said:
No, it specifically isn't like that. If it were, you'd be right - but it's not, which is why you're not. You can't add a scene to a film that doesn't impact the whole. You can't add crap to a handburger that doesn't change the whole flavour, or paint that doesn't alter the image. You CAN add a crap mode that doesn't impact the FUN mode. If the fun mode was worthy of a good score, it's no less worthy of a good score after, because the crap bit doesn't detract from the good bit, unlike a series of editted in fart scenes in Schindlers list, or indeed Deer poop in a sundae. You list of examples proves exactly why you're wrong.
Houston3000
Member
Do any other games in the Battlefield series besides Bad Company (1942, Vietnam, 2, 2142, or 1943) have single player campaigns at all? I seem to remember some story with China and Russia in the second game but I thought it was just a series of bot matches.Mr. B Natural said:
macfoshizzle
Member
one thing i like about kotaku reviews is that they don't have a score. it's just written and you don't get the wrong context out of it from a score or number to reflect the review.
Kaltagesta
Banned
Chinner said:
You say "everybody will be able to twist this to their own advantages" - I'm confused by this. Fun is fun is fun. Everyone knows it's not universal, but everyone also knows reviews are subjective, so that's OK. But fun is fun.
I just think it's ridiculous that you could give a game that you had a lot of fun with a bad score. Again, who does that help? I wouldn't take awy the "entitlement" of gamers to know the good and bad things about games - it's all there in the review. I don't think literally everything about a game has to be great for it to get a great score, because not literally everything about a game needs to be great for you to have fun with it - just as long as enough of it is.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
I always looked at it like the score was for the publishers and the text was for the readers.
They are making a singleplayer because for some reason console gamers seem to be incapable of accepting that such a thing as a mutliplayer only game can exist. Hence why the BF games got throwaway SP modes when they started appearing on consoles and why Shadowrun was panned despite being a decent mutliplayer game (from what I've heard, I never actually played it).Chinner said:
Neuromancer
Member
They weren't always. Bad Company 1 and Mirror's Edge were great. They need to stop following the CoD style, and do their own thing.zomaha said:
iam220 said:
Exactly. Skyrim might be released with an amazing 80 hour+ single player section that a reviewer feels is worthy of a 10/10 score.
But it might also come with a tacked-on, broken PvP multi-player component that the same reviewer feels is worthy of 1/10.
So is the reviewer supposed to average those two scores out and give the whole game 5/10? Or take down the score to 9/10? 8/10?
Two separate scores seems the way to go IMO. Although, that would mess with metacritic so I doubt it would happen.
How is that useful to me or any consumer? "Buy this game, it's fun!" That seems amateur to me and almost as unhelpful as telling me the game is visceral or epic. It's a term we can all relate to, but has come to a point where it's used to justify a poorly reasoned thought. I don't know about you, but a game with a shit SP and co-operative mode and buggy multiplayer doesn't seem 'fun' to me. Maybe you'll have some highs here and there, but that shouldn't be used as an excuse to justify either the lows or the launch price. I don't see what the problem is with marking a product fairly and telling the consumer the good and bad things about a product? And more importantly, why are you so intimidated by the thought of reviewing games critically?Kaltagesta said:
DevelopmentArrested said:
Not sure where you ge that from. Unless it ends up being a complete piece of shit or amazing beyondthe most hyped expectations I'm going to play it for about a week when it gets here from gamefly Thursday. No real investment either way once I found out I couldn't buy it on steam.
CamHostage
Member
chickdigger802 said:
I'd be nice to have that as part of the review write-up, but I'm not really subscribed to that idea that reviews need to be overdone in order to be complete. Too much "data" can ruin the fun of the review for me, it starts becoming homework if I have to do work to figure out what the reviewer is trying to tell me. It feels like a cop-out if reviewers can add multiple scores to a game. I like traditional reviews, with a fat-and-skinny couple giving thumbs-up/thumbs down or a couple of screaming heads or a review crew. If they can do it like GameSpot or GameSpy do with their good thing/bad thing emblem boxes, I'm cool with that, but I personally am picky and don't want some wishy-washy, hedged-bet version of a review score.
You don't get to pay for only half of the game. So just review the box and give me some words to help me see if I'm of the same mind as you in whether to put down money on the product.
Derrick01 said:
Well, hold up. If you start running your scores as a series of deduction points rather than reviewing the experience, you're setting a poor precedent. Battlefield 1 was exclusively multiplayer; Battlefield 2 had a little campaign that was mostly a training ground for the MP component. Reviews of BF3 are saying that the multiplayer is better than ever... so do you drag down the review score for a great game just because some part of the package isn't up to par?
Granted, BF3 is being advertised as the "total package", and there are arguments that polish is more valuable than quantity; I could understand a reviewer taking that approach and scoring the game that way (provided he explained his approach in text.)
But to me, that sets a poor restriction gate on game makers that if you're not dead-on with your features, reviewers will shit on you for the bad parts of good games. Reviewer says: this game is awesome, but the online multiplayer doesn't work. Producer says: let's not spend money on online for the next product because our MetaScore got dropped last time. Or in the case of BF3, shitty SP dragged down the review scores even though that was just a small part of the package, so next time, let's spend MORE money and time on SP and not worry so much about the multi. Developers will fight for quality, but publishers look at features as bullet points that will either help or hurt their marketing, and if they're discouraged from trying or from prioritizing appropriately, products will lose their distinct qualities and will all chase the same goal.
Kaltagesta said:
So it doesn't have to be technically great in order for it to be critically reviewed as great, only subjectively fun to the person reviewing? That doesn't make sense. A reviewer should be able to still enjoy a game while being able to write about the technical flaws found within it. I like Earth Defense Force 2017. It is not a good game. I had fun with it for hours, but that will never make it a technically good game.
If the developers spent time and resources making a single player and co-op mode as part of the BF3 package, and those modes are flawed with bad AI or design, then that was time they could've spent making the multiplayer aspect even better. They are a whole package, and a reviewer isn't going to take into account the personal mode preferences of the reader. They'll review it as a whole and let the reader derive the value of what to expect from the game from there.
A) trolling for hits
B) stealth attack on the review score; maybe joystick had an internal policy to not
score it lower? So he had to and now he's trolling his review
Either way, not sure why sites would want to use Geis after this. There's plenty of video game reviewers+wannabes out there
B) stealth attack on the review score; maybe joystick had an internal policy to not
score it lower? So he had to and now he's trolling his review
Either way, not sure why sites would want to use Geis after this. There's plenty of video game reviewers+wannabes out there
To have real scores, you have to apply this formula:
Real Score = (Score-6)*2'5
In this case, BF3 gets a 7'5 . Meh, possibly still a bit high, but fine. The score problem is a general problem with the videogame scene, and understandable. The publishers push for high scores, high scores on the magazines look good, so everyone puts high scores to the games. Hell, now if you see an 8 in a "normal" magazine, you tend to think it might not be worth it. It's a different scale. In my university, final year projects were always marked between 9 and 10.
That said, BF3 is 90% multiplayer, so I understand why he gave it that score.
Real Score = (Score-6)*2'5
In this case, BF3 gets a 7'5 . Meh, possibly still a bit high, but fine. The score problem is a general problem with the videogame scene, and understandable. The publishers push for high scores, high scores on the magazines look good, so everyone puts high scores to the games. Hell, now if you see an 8 in a "normal" magazine, you tend to think it might not be worth it. It's a different scale. In my university, final year projects were always marked between 9 and 10.
That said, BF3 is 90% multiplayer, so I understand why he gave it that score.
Criminal Upper
Banned
I think it's ridiculous military shooters get away with crappy single player campaigns because it's "not what it's about."
macfoshizzle said:
I do like that format better, however Kotaku's starting to deviate from that a bit. They give out like an editor's choice award for the really great games which isn't as bad as a score, but it does let you know without reading the review that there's a clear difference from something like Batman and a game that didn't get one of those.
CartridgeBlower
Member
Awesome self-promotional article. So 'conflicted' yet he still caves and does exactly what they wanted. From roommate to an employee of 1up.com, to now having threads dedicated to him on GAF. I guess that's something to respect...?
cjtiger300
Member
Honestly Gies could get attacked by a swarm of bees and I wouldn't care.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Fixed1979 said:
Jesus, it was just a joke. Lighten up, dude. It's not like anything I post will affect BF3's sales or something.
Which makes me wonder why they even bothered with a single player campaign.Strife91 said:
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Strife91 said:
Well, his point is that some of the people that are interested in the game may be want only a SP experience, yeah, we (most of us) know that BF is about multiplayer, but that's definetly also true, so a an almost perfect score may not represent the real experience for these people.
Of course this is quite true for other shooters and games this gen, so I don't know why is getting so much attention in this case.
The Albatross
Member
I like Gies, I like his Twitter account, I respect his opinions on games too. I always liked when Joystiq did not give numbers/stars to their reviews, but it is also one of the reasons major publishers stopped shipping them review copies, so they started doing it again and this is the result. An honest review with a review score that is "not insulting" to the developer.
I feel where the reviewer is coming from when struggling with reviews. The game industry is still young enough and immature enough where there has to be that relationship between the reviewer and the product, or the journalist and the publisher. The problem with this method has been stated a million times, but a major reason for this method existing is because of us the videogame consuming public. We turn to videogame websites for our videogame reviews, which is different from how we'd turn to a review of almost anything else, and because videogame websites are so specialized, they can not bring in other revenue streams than advertisements and hand outs from the major publishers.
Take, for instance, movie reviews. A major portion of the movie going public turns to journalists who don't write for "THe Hollywood Review" or "Movie Magazine," but rather, they write for the Washington Post or the New York Times, and while the Times obviously gets solid revenue from, say, 20th Century Fox or some other film giant, they don't have that same necessary relationship because their primary revenue stream isn't from the film industry. Go on a website like Rotten Tomatoes and look at the aggregate score for your favorite movies: nearly all of the reviews are from journalists working for newspapers or magazines that aren't primarily movie-review magazines or movie-news publications. Then, go to MetaCritic and look at the reviews for a videogame: nearly all of the reviews are from videogame-based publications. This is the financing problem for videogame journalism. But, as consumers of videogame content, we often times avoid the reviews and media produced by the likes of the New York Times, or MTV, and the others... We treat them as if they're not "serious enough" or "hardcore enough" to give us a true critics eye.
So, as consumers, when we only ingest videogame content from websites or publications that specialize in videogame content, we're making it nearly impossible for authentic, honest, and critical videogame journalism to really blossom.
*edit*
Why do people hate Gies so much? I've been following him since he's been hired at Joystiq and he seems like a pretty good videogame journalist? That might not be saying a lot in comparison to other specialties in journalism... But, he doesn't seem all that bad?
I feel where the reviewer is coming from when struggling with reviews. The game industry is still young enough and immature enough where there has to be that relationship between the reviewer and the product, or the journalist and the publisher. The problem with this method has been stated a million times, but a major reason for this method existing is because of us the videogame consuming public. We turn to videogame websites for our videogame reviews, which is different from how we'd turn to a review of almost anything else, and because videogame websites are so specialized, they can not bring in other revenue streams than advertisements and hand outs from the major publishers.
Take, for instance, movie reviews. A major portion of the movie going public turns to journalists who don't write for "THe Hollywood Review" or "Movie Magazine," but rather, they write for the Washington Post or the New York Times, and while the Times obviously gets solid revenue from, say, 20th Century Fox or some other film giant, they don't have that same necessary relationship because their primary revenue stream isn't from the film industry. Go on a website like Rotten Tomatoes and look at the aggregate score for your favorite movies: nearly all of the reviews are from journalists working for newspapers or magazines that aren't primarily movie-review magazines or movie-news publications. Then, go to MetaCritic and look at the reviews for a videogame: nearly all of the reviews are from videogame-based publications. This is the financing problem for videogame journalism. But, as consumers of videogame content, we often times avoid the reviews and media produced by the likes of the New York Times, or MTV, and the others... We treat them as if they're not "serious enough" or "hardcore enough" to give us a true critics eye.
So, as consumers, when we only ingest videogame content from websites or publications that specialize in videogame content, we're making it nearly impossible for authentic, honest, and critical videogame journalism to really blossom.
*edit*
Why do people hate Gies so much? I've been following him since he's been hired at Joystiq and he seems like a pretty good videogame journalist? That might not be saying a lot in comparison to other specialties in journalism... But, he doesn't seem all that bad?
Which is why people should READ reviews and not just look at the score.Relaxed Muscle said:
"I'm looking for a good racing game, but I dont like realistic-style racers. Lets see here, I'll go to the review sections and type in 'racing games' and see what gets good scores. Oh look - Forza Motorsport is very highly rated, I'll get that."