Spiders

@RevGaming It’s relevant if I wanted my games to be sexy. Personally I don’t care, but is that not valid anymore? That’s been the brand since MK2. It’s Kung Fu Heavy Metal Fantasy.

@Needjamesd Didn’t Cyberpunk have a huge backlash when they had put that key art of an in-game ad with a trans person with a big bulge out? The resetera OT was like a two-page pinned post of trigger warnings and hand-wringing on how if it was okay to buy the game or if a purchase made you transphobic.

@RevGaming That’s fair, but again I’m not concerned about the number. I doubt that professional reviewers brought it up and if I was an MK fan, I might want to know that the series’ sexuality has been toned down.

That’s my point: there’s is a lot of off-narrative stuff that only comes to light in user reviews, comment sections, etc. I think it’s pretty cheeky for PushSquare to dismiss them out of hand and try to claim authority and consensus.

@MattBoothDev I think I saw the “reddit” crowd but I don’t know what that even means haha.

The unrealistically diverse thing is a interesting in that it’s explained by the story of HZD but it makes sense to point out because it is, in fact, unrealistically diverse. That’s the point. It does sound ignorant to bring it up as a knock against the game, or at least reveals you haven’t played it too far.

I’ll concede I just didn’t see any reviews that brought that up, and I do think those would be stupid reasons to knock the game — especially if their fake! — but I’m glad we agree that most of the gripes are pretty reasonable.

I don’t know enough about the story about TLOU to have an opinion, but I’m always skeptical of one side gaslighting the other. I could be wrong but my take was that TLOU2 was a Snake/Raiden bait-and-switch and then the internet brought guns to a knife fight and made it all political. I could completely wrong here and wouldn’t mind being illuminated, but that’s all to say I think there’s plenty of “manufactured reality” to go around.

Also to be fair, I quit playing Chrono Cross back in the day when they took a steamer on the characters plot of Trigger, so I don’t know how I’d feel if I cared at all about TLOU1. I’m generally for the artist’s vision over gamer’s expectations, but I respect the tension.

@Col_McCafferty That’s not at all what’s happening. The controversy is between an 8.8 critic score and an 8.0 user score. The “fanboys“ are the ones enabling PushSquare to gaslight with this toxic nonsense article.

@RevGaming Many reviewers write their real score in the review. You obviously don’t read metacritic user reviews because you have no idea how it works. ‘Twitch Plays Pokémon‘ beat the game, but if you zoom in on one minute of it, it just looks like a bunch of morons spamming left and right. You’re not understanding fundamentally how the user score works and why people spam 10s and 0s and that the context is written and often reasonable.

I think it’s childish to dismiss them out of hand without knowing at all what you’re talking about.

@MattBoothDev TLOU2 has some serious gripes from a political point of view — I don’t agree with those views, but I don’t like to judge people that do because honestly I dropped out of TLOU1 out of boredom so I don’t know how much of a betrayal they perceived was real or nonsense.

I don’t think that’s happening here. I think this is more “Celda” than TLOU2 and HFW defenders are trying to dig up old controversy to dismiss pretty mild and reasonable complaints — I haven’t seen one negative review talk about “fat Aloy” or Mary Sue or anything like that.

Really, this is a controversy over whether the game is an 8 or a 9 at this point and there’s plenty of “incel” to go around. My main concern is the gaslighting article and people falling for it.

@RevGaming Yes, to pull the score down. Hate the game (metacritic) not the player. That’s the system they created. When all is said and done, it’s not a 0/10, it’s a User Score of 8.0 which is pretty reasonable.

@RevGaming You’re hung up on the zeros. It’s just a binary tug-of-war between 10s and 0s to move the User Score up and down. Nobody actually thinks Horizon is a 0/10. It should read as thumbs up/thumbs down, but metacritic wants it to be analogous to the critic score so it gets gamed.

Especially with a game like COD that PushSquare’s review didn’t even seem like the queued up for an online match, wouldn’t you want to hear what the reviews are from people who are actually playing?

@Uncharted2007 Here here! I do think there is a problem that lives just below the narrative though ... see my post right above this one. (273). it’s nuts to have an article dismissing people who disagree so mildly (not the zeros, which is just tug-of-war, but the actual copy) and be slandered and have people throwing crazy and marginalizing accusations at them. It’s wild. Someone thinks Horizon 2 is a disappointment? Alt-right incel!

We may agree or disagree whats wrong in the world, but I think we can agree that a society that operates like this is incapable of solving any of them.

@MattBoothDev The user review PushSquare quoted:

“ “I had very high expectations. The story is bland and unimaginative, the gameplay is very boring. Even the lauded graphics are underwhelming. Really dropped the ball here.”

Does that sound like an “alt-right incel”? C’mon now don’t fall for that noise.

@Hypoman Nonsense. Most reviews on metacritic are Horizon 1 fans disappointed in the sequel. Just take a look for yourself.

@MattBoothDev I think there’s a lot of ground between one hour — which I agree is an unfair assessment, especially with today’s front-loaded tutorials — and finishing a game.

Even let’s look at Horizon. 30 hours to roll credits, 80 hours to Platinum.
Platinum is not representative of how most people play, and frankly most open world games have so much copy-paste content I would be surprised if most didn’t bother.

Moreover, look at a game like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla where I think you’d see the ratings for the game go down had professional reviewers actually slogged through the “100%” game. It’s biggest user criticism is padding and length. A pro with a deadline is never going to catch that. (I wonder what PushSquare’s play clock was for Horizon...)

I agree at least rolling credits for a professional reviewer ought to be expected, but I can see the other side of it too.

If you’re bored of a 30 hour game at 10 hours and utterly disappointed at 15, then that’s the review. I think that’s fair. I can’t think of any game that redeems itself so much in the last act that first two are no longer representative.

This was the argument for Final Fantasy XIII: it gets good after 60 hours. That’s crazy. Having played it, you can get a pretty good impression of how it’s going to be after 5-10 hours.

I think we both agree that reviewers should disclose their playtime, but I think we disagree on how much one has to play that their experience could be considered representative of a potential player’s experience or of the whole game.

@Uncharted2007 You don’t think the opposite is true? The press having open contempt for the people and misrepresenting their grievances for clicks, consensus, and consolidation is not an issue?

@Porco Valve does have authenticated reviews.

@themightyant The majority of user reviews are 10s and 0s to move the needle. It’s “Twitch Plays Pokémon”... they’re just trying to move the average score in one direction or the other.

It disingenuous to discredit a user review because it’s a “0”. Nobody actually thinks it’s a 0/10.

@TheCollector316 Howlongtobeat.com has Horizon at 30 Hours to finish the main story not 80 (100% checklist complete) and I don’t think one need to play to credits to decide they’re disappointed.

@Voltan That's actually really funny! I'm going to remember this post if that criticism of the logo gets traction.

@Envy Astral Chain is currently Critic: 87 User: 90... where is the review bomb? Was it “counter-bombed”?

I guess for all this talk, I’d like to see an example of a “review bomb” that didn’t bring up an issue the press ignored that shouldn’t have been brought up.

The mountain PushSquare made of the user review molehill is that some gamers are disappointed with the story, the structure, and the “filler” and thought the game should be knocked more for these issues than from what the press is saying... literally they got it down from an 88 to an 80. Sounds like a reasonable to me.

Worse, and really my issue here is the way this article slanders users/gamers voices. “no reason”, “nobody actually listens”, etc. It’s really gross, and an example of the worst trends in press today of dismissing, marginalizing, and insulting people who disagree with them. I’m surprised they don’t just say everyone who gave Horizon a ‘0’ is an unvaccinated fascist.

“Review bombs” are the people’s voice, and like I theorized above, more of an indictment of the press than of the games.

@viktorcode You can tell by the difference in the critic and user scores and then read the reviews. Most user reviews end up within 10 points on the 1-100 scale and that’s as close to agreement with the critics one can expect.

A good example of a review “bomb” is COD Vanguard Critic:73 User: 36.

It takes less time to read a “critic” review than to see what’s going on with gamers:

-samey gameplay
-bad campaign
-network issues
-borked spawns and imbalanced weapons
-Activision sexual harassment
-woke pandering in story

NONE of this is brought up in the PushSquare review (7/10). After going through user reviews, PS sounds like a press release. They don’t even describe what network play is like; they just go over modes over a paragraph. That’s where most players spend hundreds of hours.

That’s not to say users are right and critics are wrong here, but I think you get a much better picture of what’s actually going on with a title by taking it all in and determining what’s important to you.

Honestly, I think user reviews are more of a backlash of our poor enthusiast press and the idiotic number grades system than of the actual games.

@ATaco I think it’s sad too, to review games you haven’t played, but most of the user reviews I read have the similar complaints and it sounds like they played the game.

@RevGaming I get what your saying but the 0/10 is just to pull down the number — that’s just people gaming metacritic to be heard — it has nothing to do with the content of user reviews.

Still, despite the system being open to gaming and abuse but still the user reviews and critic reviews line up for the most part so it really is those times when it doesn’t there is usually a story that we’re not hearing in the media.

This Horizon example is even worse because there is no “review bomb”... user score is literally 8.0 as I type and really this is just a gross fake news story by PushSquare slamming gamers for not going with their narrative that Horizon is some masterpiece.

PS call Horizon an 80 hour game; it’s more like 30-40. They say gamers have “no reasons”, but a quick glance at the actual user reviews and you see they have actually a consensus on issues and they’re disappointed with the story, lack of innovation in structure, and immersion breaking technical issues like Aloy getting stuck on geometry, that an $70 AAA game in 2022 shouldn’t have.

Also, what little they showed of SF6 looks dope;)

I’ll just leave this here for the 80 hour game claim... or do we not trust each other as players anymore only the media?

https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=79775

@RevGaming I think you’re mistaking me for someone who “outcries” versus someone who listens to outcries. I don’t ignore user reviews because PushSquare tells me too, and if there was some issue or controversy that caused people to be upset, I want to know what it is. Ya know, like a news site ought to be doing.

Turns out some people don’t think it’s all that good. Glad PushSquare was here to tell me those people have the wrong opinions and are trolls. Good grief!

@DarthKiwi I don’t know man... the user reviews are pretty sanguine. This article has me losing my faith in journalism. Or blogs or whatever this site is.

@RevGaming I am getting over the “narrative” games, fair enough, but what does that have to do with Street Fighter 6? I have over 1,000 hours in SFV and never touched the story mode if that’s what you mean.

@RevGaming I don’t even understand the leap in logic... I’m psyched about Street Fighter 6....

I also think PushSquare wrote a ridiculous article trying to call a ‘7.7’ user score a review bomb “for no reason” other than people didn’t like it as much as they did.

Horizon 1 wasn’t that good I played it. It was fine. I got bored at like 30 hours and dropped it. I’d give it a 7/10. User reviews for the sequel are stronger.

Is that a “review bomb”? or I just don’t like linear games stretch across “open” worlds for the sake of it?

@RevGaming I wish we could bet! You make a lot of assumptions I’d like to test with some stakes. Also, Why would I hate the new Street Fighter? I love Street Fighter.

@StylesT That’s fine, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to dismiss user reviews. Most of the time they line up with media reviews within a few decimal points. When they don’t, there’s almost always an interesting reason. Either something really messed up technically that the media is squashing (think Cyberpunk, Skyrim PS3), or something “political” (think bad company practices, “woke” or anti-“woke” commentary, community grievances).

It’s interesting at the very least, and quite informative if you follow the hobby and industry.

Steam reviews are particularly good because you can vet the user’s profile and see how many hours they logged.

@Falkirk4life It’s not obvious. Many 0/10 reviews — and 10/10 reviews for that matter — post their “actual” score in their review and only swing for the extreme numbers to try and affect the user score. They’re trying to game the algorithm.

Pushsquare: Horizon getting reviewed bombed for no reason

Metacritic user reviews: reasons

“ Of course, we all know that the user score on the website is a complete waste of time...”

No, we don’t. I trust player reviews over media and blog reviews any day of the week, and I’m media literate enough to “read” a review bomb, understand what the grievances are, and determine if I care.

This is gross and I hope your readership can see through this facile attempt at gatekeeping.

@bighal It’s nothing like Fallout. The RPG elements are AAA RPG-lite, and fiddly gear stats with 0.5%+ bonuses — most stats and systems are not even worth engaging with. Most “choices” don’t matter a whit. even for an open-world shooter, you barely feel like you have an effect on the world; just dragged from story beat to story beat.

@nessisonett What’s to reappraise? The game remains an over-promised, under/delivered, mediocre shooter with pseudo-RPG artifacts and a pointless open-world backdrop.

It just works on a Dual Shock now.

Like NMS, Cyberpunk had its fans on release. NMS addressed them fundamental issues players had with their expectations of the game. CD Projekt Red has done no such thing.

For all they made about your “origin”, it’s a pick-your-tutorial and all gets railroaded into the same dumb story that has little player agency and consequence.

No Man’s Sky is nearly a completely different game than what launched. This sounds marginally better than what people were playing on high-end PC after the Day 1 patch.

Sony made their bed, they need to lie in it.

Get a cheaper SKU of PS5 that can meet demand, go big on VR, and FFS invest in Japanese talent again.

If you can’t survive not being the de facto Call of Duty box, don’t bother making a PS6.

@naruball I’d agree with that, but when you say monopoly it’s saying that Sony is “locked out” of being able to compete, and that’s just not true. I think we’re looking at two different strategies here and while Microsoft is expanding their portfolio (at great expense), Sony is consolidating. Microsoft is going wide, and Sony is going premium. Of course it hurts when they lose at least the “premium” Call of Duty experience, however that pans out.

Personally I think VR is their only play to stay relevant, but that has more to do with their strategy than anything Microsoft is doing.

Sony can compete. This acquisition doesn’t change that. I think it’s the decisions this generation that they’ve been making up until this point that I think makes this sting so much. It was their generation to lose, and their finding a way to do it.

@naruball Fair enough, but neither is Call of Duty, WoW, Diablo and Overwatch. Hardly a monopoly on gaming. Let them buy Take-Two, Nintendo, Epic Games and EA and we can talk about monopolies.

The developer that made me love Playstation. How has Colony Wars stayed dormant all these years?

Since when are voice actors storytellers?

I expect a lot of gaslighting from Sony fans who defended the old PS Plus from us plebeians who thought it was a ripoff.

Good write up and I agree with most of it.

I think you’re point about cross-gen is off base though. On some level, the promise of a PS5 is that it can do things a PS4 can’t. When games are cross-gen, it doesn’t break that promise but it certainly bends it, and gamers have a right to be upset. They feel deceived, and have good grounds to feel that way.

Also, development could have started ten years ago. That has nothing to do with what hardware was being targeted, what the motives were for releasing cross-gen, or how much the spec was cut to accommodate.

"Now I know virtual reality isn’t for everyone, and I genuinely accept and respect that."

Not only is this a stupid thing to say, "Now I know books aren't for everyone..." Or cars, or phones, or the telegram, or paintings, or video games...

It's not just a stupid thing to say, it's an awful thing to say. Are we really so conditioned by the binary nature of social media that everyone has to have an opinion and take a side? Just speak plainly about your observations. Report reality as you see it. Why draw lines at all? Why encourage the awful fanboyism?

@Ryno This is my favorite comment of the year so far. You sound paranoid and insane, but you're also not entirely wrong. Problem is, that ship sailed with smartphones, and the internet before that, and with games before that, and with television before that, and the printing press before that, and with writing before that... We've done been in the matrix friend. It's just getting more sophisticated.

I think it's easy — and tempting — to mistake consequences with agendas because the outcomes seem so obvious, it's impossible to imagine the people executing these technologies don't see it too. I'm open to the idea though, but what's the difference really between plotting and predicting? Where we'd go with technology as it developed had been written on the wall (and in books and screenplays and blogposts) for hundreds of years. Everybody saw this coming.

@Flaming_Kaiser Maybe, but then you shouldn't be paid to write about games on the internet. Can we agree on that?

Personally, yes — I think you can always dig deeper and justify your "I just like it" feeling. For example, I liked Tales of Eternia primarily because of the color palette. Stupid reason, but ultimately, I liked looking at it and "being there" more than other Tales games.

@segasteve I disagree, but I think it makes sense to just disqualify it... this seems half-assed. Hades seems to "lose points" for the late release. It was GOTY for 2020 for many people and outlets, and I think it's rich to think any of the games ahead on this year's list would have been GOTY 2020 had they released then.

Either disqualify or compensate for the bias.

@Flaming_Kaiser It's a Game of the Year feature, you should have to justify your choices.

I’ll grant the PushSquare staff the late release quandary. I think Switch teams had a similar problem when Hollow Knight released on Switch.

That said, Hades is a masterpiece of design and I think you are going to have a tough time explaining how any game, let alone 5 games beat it out as “best” in any given year.

Hype counts for too much.

@colonelkilgore I didn’t buy Hades for a long time because I did the same thing going back and playing Transistor (already played Pyre). Hopefully you’ll enjoy it more. Either way, you’ll appreciate how far they’ve come as devs.

Glad to hear this hasn’t disappeared and is coming to PC!

@Medic_Alert I love the points you make. I think this is all part of the medium maturing. Movies had indie and art house long before the medium went into homes. Video games started as mainstream and the independent voices came later.
I think there are some expectations that, like mainstream Hollywood, the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and the the good guys win if you play/watch to the end — just by the fact how of the hobby started. This, exacerbated by the fact that we are rewarded online for complaining and outrage and not incentivized to take responsibility for our own consumption, you have this kind of backlash.

Aside (sort of): I will never understand the call for “safe spaces” when we’ve had this thing called fiction the whole time with which to do exactly that, and the irony that fiction needs to be protected often from people who feel that way.

@AFCC That’s my main gripe too. Having the solution in hand but having to go through multiple loops to “set” it was very annoying. It plays like a sandbox but seems there’s only one way to trigger the right sequence.