Monday, February 6

That is a Bulls#!t Call, Ref!

In the time I've contributed to this blog, I've waffled on about all sorts of crap. Sometimes I even reviewed games (shock horror). Maybe nowhere near as many as Dutch has, but there were a couple.

When I did these reviews, I like to think they were not biased in any way, shape or form. Sure, I only reviewed games I liked, but that's because I'm stingy on buying games and time poor with playing them.

I recently opened my local rag to see what this week's rants were all about when I noticed a newish column about gaming. It was a review of Assassins Creed Revelations. His verdict: a ridiculous 10/10.

At first, I thought that just because I have no interest in the game doesn't mean that it's crap, and therefore not worthy of a perfect score. Upon further investigation, however, metacritic gave it 80%. At best it was awarded 9/10 from an individual site.

Thats a big difference between the aggregated and the delivered scores. While I'm sure that it's got decent graphics and a story that ties into the others in the series (and yes, personal opinions will provide a range of scores), I just can't help but be annoyed at this perfect score.

If professional critics can find flaws, surely a fan can; surely a random player of games can. In my books, a game has to be pretty awesome on all levels to get that perfect score; not just be enjoyable and fit the theme of the rest of the series.

Dutch has touched on this topic before, but I suppose it's never really hit a nerve until now. I'm not even sure why it's bothering me.

What are your thoughts on games being inaccurately reviewed? Have you ever bought a game based on said review to find it was crap and the reviewer was clearly bias towards the franchise/publisher? Am I just as bad for not accepting the review due to my own bias towards the game?

4 comments:

  1. You know my feelings on this, brosef: If you identify faults with a game, it's technically not perfect and undeserving of a perfect score.

    Unless a publication defines their scoring system (example: 10/10 means that the reviewer is confident that 100% of gamers will find something to like in this game etc.), then we need to start moving down the scale.

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  2. Exactly. Even worse again were the numerous grammatical and spelling errors. DOUBLE TROUBLE AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHH!

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  3. What was the publication (if you don't mind me asking)?

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  4. North Lakes Messenger. It's a local independent. Pretty good read in general. It's one of those glossy mag style print jobs that you are happy to drag inside and read with the rest of the junk mail (especially for the Rant's & Rave's community complaints section)

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