ALERT:::: MADWORLD GETS 9 FROM IGN




Posted by BLUNTMASTER X

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/960/960344p1.html

whoa..... miracles do happen.............




Posted by Panic!

=D I knew it would be the ****.




Posted by BLUNTMASTER X

panic i'd chainsaw you but cutting through the lard would be a serious test of my patience




Posted by Speedfreak

IGN gave *** Hand 3/10. Their opinion is not trustworthy.




Posted by Ant

The IGN Wii guys have wanted to give a good score to a Wii game for a long time now. I have my doubts as if it is really a 9 worthy game.




Posted by WillisGreeny

So, taking into account IGN's Wii-flation, it's probably an 8.




Posted by BLUNTMASTER X

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/wii/madworld?q=madworld

its metacritic aggregate is higher than RE5...




Posted by Ant

not too surprising since it seems as if re5 is plagued by sequelitius.




Posted by Speedfreak

[quote=BLUNTMASTER X;934155]metacritic

Hur.




Posted by BLUNTMASTER X

still a decent way of finding out of a game is **** or not




Posted by Speedfreak

Really, really not.




Posted by BLUNTMASTER X

if vamp was here he'd totally prove you wrong




Posted by Speedfreak

I'd say Twilight Princess and he'd agree with me. Or you would. I can't remember which one of you hates it as much as I do.




Posted by coromoro

Vamp thinks it's one of the better Zelda games, if I recall correctly. :cool2:




Posted by WillisGreeny

I remember him saying, before Brawl came out, that TP was the only wii game he liked playing.

[quote=BLUNTMASTER X;934323]if vamp was here he'd totally prove you wrong

Vamp doesn't prove things wrong, he declares them wrong, which just shows he has a higher metachlorine count than any of us here.




Posted by BLUNTMASTER X

[quote=Speedfreak;934337]I'd say Twilight Princess and he'd agree with me. Or you would. I can't remember which one of you hates it as much as I do.we both thought it was pretty good though i do hold a general dislike for the last temple or two




Posted by Speedfreak

Fair enough.

God Hand: 73 on metacritic.

Words cannot express how depressingly wrong that is. Especially with most of the higher scores coming from less significant websites and publications.




Posted by BLUNTMASTER X

73 sounds about right for *** hand. good game, not ****ing awesome but definitely fun




Posted by Speedfreak

Are you shitting me? 73 is below average for most review sites. That's the same score as The Force Unleashed for Christ's sake.
Lego Star Wars got an 85.

God Hand is above and beyond this garbage.




Posted by Big Boss

One thing I've recently learned, is that a game can be awesome, and the score of the review of the game can be high, yet the review can still be complete garbage (This is an easy thing to imagine and assume, but I actually know it now). This is the main reason why Metacritic is rather pointless. When we also consider that different sites have different guidelines for how they go about scoring a game (some represent a 5/10 as average, some a 7/10, for one), and that a lot of the editors of said websites tend to contradict the critique guidelines of their publication (from Game Informer's Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door to Action Button's God of War II reviews), then discussing aggregate scores really tells us nothing. It is more interesting to take an individual review and determine whether or not it's worthwhile. Essentially, whether or not their reasons for liking or disliking a game are valid. We received a "C" grade for our game from one publication. Naturally, most of our studio was up in arms at the review, but I had no problem with it, even if C to metacritic translates to a 50. Why? Because his reasons for giving the game a C, for not liking the game enough, were perfectly valid. On the other hand, we got over 50% in a magazine (greater than the C), but because his review was vague about anything that was wrong with the game, despite his greater score, I despised the review. At the same time, I hold that C grade in higher regard than some of the 80s that we've gotten that have very stupid reasons for liking our game.

With that said, I've only played a couple of stages of God Hand. My first impression of it was very positive, as the game is ridiculous in its presentation, yet faithful to 16-bit and arcade beat-em-ups of the '90s (while a lot of you played RPGs in this era, beat-em-ups and fighting games were my bread 'n butter of the day). The ability to gain new moves and place them in any of the attack buttons is very interesting, although from what I've played the enemy design, AI and level design are a far cry from games like Ninja Gaiden and God of War, offering bland, repetitive environments and dumb enemies. Spamming the strafe + roudhouse kick seems to be the optimal strategy for beating most enemies than anything else, at least thus far. I'll get several more hits in this way against an enemy before being hit back than I would with other techniques. I've been playing beat-em-ups constantly for the past few months, so I'll definitely get back to this one later.

As for Madworld, I have the same worry as I do with GH, which is the dumbness of enemies, as well as their lack of variety. I've only played through the first part, up until beating Little Eddie, but I'm interested to see how enemies can become more challenging when the grab mechanic is so slow. It feels to me that developers woul want enemies to be dumb throughout, so the Player has enough time to grab objects and stick them on enemies, followed by grabbing said enemies and throwing them against an environmental hazard. New ways of hurting enemies with objects and new environment hazards must constantly be introduced for the game to remain entertaining, so I'll have to play more and see.




Posted by Speedfreak

The enemies get trickier with later levels, or if you boost the difficulty (by playing better, interestingly). They're still "dumb" in a sense, but I don't cosider it a disadvantage. In the same way Super Mario Bros 3 or Megaman has entirely predictable enemy patterns that still prove to be interesting challenges by their placement alone. I've found defeating an individual enemy in God Hand to be more thrilling than an enemy in God of War or Devil May Cry, partially because they're made to be more difficult but mostly because the mechanics and enemies mesh so neatly together by comparison.

By the way, Madworld apparantly has a higher difficulty mode that supposedly makes even the tutorial level a tough challenge. I'm not sure if you have to complete the game to unlock it though.

My criticism of metacritic has more to do with game critics themselves. To be honest, I don't think most of them know what they're talking about. They're prone to judging games by entirely arbitrary metrics; such as comparing a sequel to it's prequel and reasoning that it is inferior because it is different in certain ways. Such as Breath of Fire V being considered inferior to other BoF games purely because it's short, and games that belong to that particular game genre are supposed to be long. Often they can't even tell bad level design from good, and will give games like Twilight Princes and Super Mario Galaxy some of the highest ratings ever despite both titles being riddled with poor level design. What's shocking is that level design is supposed to be the single most important aspect of any game.

Metacritic might, in future, be worth more as standards improve and certain bad game design trends fall out of favour, in the same way that criticism of film improved as understanding of the medium grew. But even then it'll only be worth as much as a site like rottentomatoes.com. They'll always include scores from a critic that someone won't think very highly of in their average, so it'll only ever be as useful as an extremely rough guide. Certainly not any indicator of true quality, certainly not for any games company to decide which of their games are good (they should know that before they're even released).




Posted by Vampiro V. Empire


Quoted post: IGN gave *** Hand 3/10. Their opinion is not trustworthy.


Reviews are only untrustworthy when a game you like is reviewed low or a game you hate is reviewed high.

And lego star wars was awesome. what the hell? Not to mention *** Hand is the type of game that completely divides a crowd. It's a love it or hate it so they very fact that it's a 73% is pretty remarkable. I mean, the content is super out there and it's a pretty terrible game when you break it down with a review system. Graphics are horrible, sound is bad, replay value barely exists and so on. So if a site doesn't have any tilt it's ****ed.

But again, for a polarizing game 73% is ballin



Posted by Speedfreak

The music was great, what the hell is wrong with you?




Posted by Vampiro V. Empire

sound. music is music. point stands for the rest.




Posted by Speedfreak

The sound consists of punching noises, screaming and explosions. What's missing, a Dukes of Hazzard horn? The texture's and environments are pretty bad I'll give you, but the animation is spot-on. You honestly can't ask for anything slicker in an action game.

I find the concept of replay value quite alien. Honestly, if a game is good I think it's worth playing again. Unlockable shit as a list of something to do should not be necessary for a game to be great. Besides, mastering it is a massive challenge alone. I can't even get to Level Die on the first stage.

I guess the story is stupid, but it's precision-engineered, laughably stupid. Is there really an action game similar to this with a story that isn't bad? Games like Devil May Cry, God of War and Ninja Gaiden commit the cardinal sin of having ridiculous stories that think they're remotely decent. It's just bad demon, greek god and ninja fan-fiction, respectively.

Most importantly the mechanics and level design **** all over most games, including braindead garbage like Lego games. The technique system is deeper than anything in God of War and it gets the honourable mention of not turning entire fights into a series of QTEs. These two points alone should get it a much higher score than that.




Posted by Vampiro V. Empire

Hey, I think the game is great. I'm just saying it's not the type of game that fits neatly into reviews and it's horribly polarizing as is. And there's a difference between a story (lack thereof) like *** of War and one like *** Hand. One's simple and to the point and pretty basic, easy to consume and digest. The other makes little sense and it's insanely over-the-top which doesn't fly with a lot of people. And the animation is the only good thing about the graphics. But compare the sound of a Ninja Gaiden and GoW to it, it's pretty different. Sound is pretty basic, but there's definitely such a thing as quality sound. Like Halo 3 for example. Same basic sounds as any other FPS, but done amazingly.

Anyways, my point is that's a great score for said game and you can't go by overall ratings for such games anyways. Anything that's polarizing doesn't work for sites like metacritic and gamestats. One of those games you have to play for yourself since opinions differ greatly. So your use of *** Hand in this instance is poor.




Posted by Speedfreak

Hence metacritic cannot be trusted, as it's the average opinion of jerkoffs who don't know what they're talking about. The kind of people who will happily rate **** games higher than good ones because, when broken down into their component parts, some things turn out better. That's not writing a review, that's writing a spec sheet and directly comparing it to every other spec sheet.

I saw this quote in a Gamasutra MegaMan 9 review (note: it's part of a "critical essay" series of reviews):


Quoted post: [FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]While Mega Man 9 has all of the elements to make a classic 8-Bit game, it some how just misses that 8-Bit perfection of Mega Man 2. For whatever reason, that intrinsic quality of a classic 8-Bit game seems to constantly elude it.[/SIZE][/FONT]


He not only constructs a sentence that doesn't actually make any fucking sense, but he also fails spectacularly at critiquing the game. "Uhhh, somehow there's something missing. I dunno what it is". How often have you seen that exact point made in other reviews? "There's something missing", "it's lost its magic" etc. Critics are supposed to be able to articulatethis stuff, it's what they're paid to do. IGN aren't untrustworthy specifically because of GH's score, it's how they arrived at that score and how they review games in general. They have no inner set of standards of what makes a good game other than what can be recorded directly by a computer (this many polygons, this many levels, this many characters, this level of sound quality). Nothing that wouldn't be noticed at first glance by the average video game player.

I mean for ****'s sake, look at the quote in Big Boss's sig.


Quoted post: [FONT=trebuchet ms][FONT=verdana]For anyone who appreciates games that rise above the simple act of pushing a few buttons and pulling a few triggers, Metal Gear Solid 4 is a stimulating ride that you won't soon forget[/FONT][/FONT]


What the fuck does that mean? Since when are games about the "simple act of pushing buttons" in the first fucking place? He's saying something whilst saying nothing.



Posted by Degeneration

I think the reviewer is informing us that MGS4 isn't Parappa the Rapper. Who knew?

Really, though, cryptic or not, reviews that take a shot at certain players always come off as ***hole-ish.

[quote]It's not that Shadow of the Colossus isn't something that any gamer who is interested in it will enjoy, because they will, and thoroughly so, but it might not be one of those titles you can pass off to your ADD-suffering little cousin. But not every game is made for the Ritalin generation, Shadow of the Colossus being one of them.

I rest my case.




Posted by Vampiro V. Empire


Quoted post: Hence metacritic cannot be trusted, as it's the average opinion of jerkoffs who don't know what they're talking about.


It can be trusted for pretty much every big release. It just falls apart like any site like this when you introduce a polarizing element, which is rare in games.


Quoted post: What the **** does that mean? Since when are games about the "simple act of pushing buttons" in the first ****ing place? He's saying something whilst saying nothing.


He's saying games that have nothing to offer besides pushing buttons to do stuff. Like the majority of shooters where there's no story, no reason to do anything except to move onto the next area and clear it out. It makes a lot of sense actually.


Anywho, sites like metacritic are just a tool to compile reviews, that's all. It's not a review and shouldn't be used like one. I think most people know to use a couple sites they share similar opinions with and use their reviews as a guideline.



Posted by Speedfreak

Then that particular critic doesn't know how to write and doesn't understand subtlety in game design. For starters, that sentence doesn't actually say that. And secondly, even shooters with stupid plots will give you a reason to shoot, it's never just for the sake of pressing buttons. In Bangai-O spirits you are shooting nameless robots because they are trying to kill you, and therefore your only possible objective is to destroy them all. In Half-Life 2 you're killing Overwatch soldiers because they're oppressive, cruel, f[COLOR=lightgreen]u[/COLOR]cking bastards. It doesn't need to specifically tell you that, it doesnt need to describe precisely what they've done; it expicitely shows you their behaviour and allows you to come to your own conclusion that they're oppressive, cruel, f[COLOR=lightgreen]u[/COLOR]cking bastards. This is a game that was released almost an entire generation before MGS4. So it's not a wholly remarkable thing, pretty much every videogame does it. Even Gears of War gives you a reason to fight in the first seven seconds of the intro cinematic, despite the dialog and plot in the rest of the game still being pretty awful.




Posted by Vampiro V. Empire


Quoted post: And secondly, even shooters with stupid plots will give you a reason to shoot, it's never just for the sake of pressing buttons.


The reason to shoot is that there's stuff on the screen to shoot. But I think most people actually know exactly what he means. It's not that he sucks at writing he's just exaggerating. Saying such games are rarely anything more than pressing buttons. Which is true. There's nothing to them than button pressing. I think it's just a case of you reaching.



Posted by Speedfreak

He's either bad at writing or honestly thinks nanomachines, vampires, psychics and giant robots is the best game plot ever. Either way the point is invalid, the game's utterly unremarkable in that respect. It's convoluted fan service.




Posted by BLUNTMASTER X

whoa... fantasy elements in a video game plot...... I'M SO ANGRY!!

why dont you jerkoff to braid's story




Posted by Vampiro V. Empire


Quoted post: He's either bad at writing or honestly thinks nanomachines, vampires, psychics and giant robots is the best game plot ever. Either way the point is invalid, the game's utterly unremarkable in that respect. It's convoluted fan service.


You know, if you play the games and pay attention it's actually not that convoluted. And he never specifically mentions any one part of the game in that quote, also only going as far as calling it "stimulating" and something "you won't soon forget"

so you're super reaching here, dude.