RPGmasterBoo

Its just...too much. I think I'm going into cardiac arrest over this. Gotta go lie down now.

That's the spirit!

Couldn't help commenting but didn't want to open another thread Can't blame 'em. Waiting a decade for something and getting FO3 would make anyone lose their mind and OD on Jet.

God I haven't been this excited for a game for a long time. Please Obsidian, just don't screw up the gameplay by making the combat too simple and the game too easy. As for the rest I'm confident it will be quite good.

Um, NMA is not objective. They made up their mind on Fallout 3 before it was ever released. Read the review. Its honesty incarnate. The greatest dialog ever: Three Dog -I fight the good fight with my voice! PC -[intelligence] Ah, so you fight the good fight with your voice, eh? Three Dog -I can see that you are very smart.

Possibly the funnies review ever written, and the only objective one on F3 http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=47347

Oh, so that's what this whole discussion was about.

The most recent epic lie in cRPGs are the ratings of the german RPG Drakensang. A well crafted, polished, old school dungeon romp in Icewind Dale style has on average got a grade of 70, with no real justification apart from it being "too confusing" (because it isnt DnD) and because you actually have to read a few lines of text that haven't been voice acted. Oh and its also generic... (nods to Oblivion). Never mind the beautiful graphics, tactical combat, subtle humor, pleasant music, depth, that's all not important lets just bury the game because it isn't Bethesda/Bioware...

When a game gets above 90 its considered must play. Above 95 is instant classic. The numbers may vary slightly depending on the system of grading but she is essentially right. A top grade means a top game, as in it does everything as perfectly as one can imagine a maximum at the moment. What she is saying is obvious - there are objective criteria for grading a game, regardless of opinion. To deny that these criteria exist is to make everything dependent on opinion, and that would make reviews, discussions and awards utterly pointless because its all someone's opinion. To know what objective criteria a game must fulfill takes experience, but its hardly rocket science. Eg. Oblivion. In an era around 5 years after Baldur's Gate 2, (which is really an eon for PC games) comes a redone and upgraded version of what is essentially a game of the early 90ties. As if there are no standards in storytelling, characterisation, plot, interaction with the world, character development, choice, a variety of content a game must offer - for a game to have to posses to be considered a contender for RPG greatness. At the same time reviewers bend over themselves to make the game look like the next best thing since sliced bread - insulting all of us who haven't been living under a rock for the past decade and perhaps even know that there are previous TES games, which I may not like - but I cant deny that they are well crafted. Basically they are telling me, this is a game that is so good you must play it - and I play it - and find out that its more simplistic and has less originality than a randomly chosen game from the 90ties (eg. Eye of the Beholder), indeed less than its predecessor Morowind. As if it was made in a time vortex where role playing games really didn't do anything apart from waiting for Oblivion to show up, and not a single reviewer in a major game site comments on this?. A game cannot ignore years of development in its genre if it is a contender to greatness. At the very least it must offer everything its predecessor offered, certainly not less. In both Oblivion fails. Therefore Oblivion is, at best mediocre at worst crap .

Hardly surprising given that many people have both platforms and just bought the game when it came out on the 360 , long before the PC port.

He (Bos) does have a point though. Its not selling as well as some other genres - but it was always and exclusive thing, too complicated for the average gamer. Its also probably more difficult to code, design and requires more money than an FPS or an RTS. Still 99-02 there were at least double cRPGs made a year, then whats made today.

They don't have to stick to my opinions, but if they are going to write remotely objective reviews they should learn to point out obvious flaws in the so called AAA titles. While they were so good at finding them in the Witcher, there is nothing to excuse the fact that they didn't even look for them in Oblivion or Fallout 3. Its all there, quite obvious to anyone willing to see it, and it has nothing to do with my opinon - rather with the fact that reviews are 80% paid advertising. To not see that is to have no insight in how selling a product works, and is also turning a blind eye to actual proof regarding this issue. Like the Kane & Lynch scandal.

Its success is just another nail in the coffin of single player RPG games. Not that they will cease to exist, but we could have done without Biowares SW MMO and played KOTOR 3 or something of that sort. What is it then?

User reviews = Fanboys & Haters. You will never get a fair average score/vote. You're looking at one. Both games have as many fanboys, haters and neutral voters as they could get in that place and in the time the voting was open. In fact Oblivion has a slight advantage because its there longer. So what's not fair about it? Obviously the Witcher inspired more people and Oblivion less.

How do you explain the recent, and quite common - large differences between gamer grades and the rewiewers grades present on say Metacritic? Example: Oblivion -critic score: 9.3 (45 reviews) -user score: 8.3 (142 votes) Witcher -critic score: 8.1 (50 reviews) -user score: 9.3 (384 votes)

The cult of respect for ancestors has always been strong in China, showing bones all over the place wouldnt be desirable for obvious reasons. That's my reasoning. Apart from that censoring any PC game is just giving it more importance than it deserves, and overrating its influence. But we're used to that.

A wild guess is that it has something to do with chinese traditional religions. Its probably disrespectful from some standpoint.

Hello, totalitarian communist China? They pretty much do whatever they want. You watch too much CNN. So they don't have game addiction treating camps? It's all lies to make us hate the happy Chinese people? Apparently they do, but they effectively stopped being communist and totalitarian a decade ago, not to mention that that was an unfair evaluation given whom its coming from (US/EU). As if they are innocence incarnate. But this is going so off topic.

I'd like a figurine of that great looking chick with the huge gun, sunglasses and beret. Please?

Hello, totalitarian communist China? They pretty much do whatever they want. You watch too much CNN.

I don't see the point of those treatments. Its one thing to toughen up and get some exercise, but that sounds like a POW camp.

As long as they do that to every MMO I'll be singing them praises. That stupid genre will be the ruin of the PC.

God forbid.

So you give absurdly high grades to crap games, for nothing?? Eg. Oblivion, Crysis, Fallout 3... That's just... illogical. You might not be paid, but its obvious to anyone who has eyes and a brain that there is a large number of games that are bound to have high grades even before they are released, and on the other hand that there are games that don't have that kind of advertising power and are thus sentenced to making a name for themselves on their own. No one who knows anything about cRPG's would say that Oblivion is a better game than the Witcher, yet the former was graded in general above 90 and the latter between 80-90. There is obvious favoritism at work, and no other way to explain it besides money. The honest reviewer in the Kane & Lynch case on Gamespot proves this.