newc0253

exactly. any system of reviews that seeks to quantify quality has its inherent problems but there's something especially silly about a scoring system that gives 8 or 9 out of 10 as the average for any new release that isn't grossly flawed. if folks are gonna seriously defend scoring reviews, at least try and honestly grapple with something like metacritic. is every summer release at 80 or 90%? the dark knight, probably one of the best films of the summer, and probably one of the best superhero films ever made, rates an 82% on metacritic. if dark knight had been a video game, silly kids and gaming mags would be giving it 11 or 12 out of 10. no, the lazy and the corrupt are reviewing games and the easily impressionable fanboys are copying them.

so a 'fun adventure game' these days rates 8.5 or 9 on a 10 point scale? some day you kids are gonna grow up and finish high school and realise that the average of a bell curve distribution on a 10 point scale isn't 7 or 8. i realise you're all on ritalin and everything but this kind of grade inflation is truly puerile.

a '9'??? '9'?!!!? until i got to that part of your mini-review, i felt sure you were gonna say it was a 4 or a 5 ... the fact that you're giving what sounds like a so-so game a '9' is the best evidence of how lazy gaming journalism has infected impressionable minds. an entire generation of gamers is now apparently under the belief that the average score of a 10 point scale is an 8 or a 9. because fable 2 truly sounds about as epicly average as fable 1 was.

giving someone the keys is typically implied permission but, yes, you can always make the permission conditional - e.g. when somebody gives the housekeeper the keys to clean on thursdays, it doesn't give them permission to enter on saturday night. the point is, in a criminal case anywhere in the english-speaking world, you'd have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person not only didn't have permission but knew they didn't have permission. i'm not saying that the crazy japanese lady hasn't done anything wrong, i'm saying that it's a hysterical overreaction to treat what she did as in any way criminal.

broke in? he gave her the frakking password. that's like 'breaking in' to someone's apartment after they've given you the keys... at best, she's tortiously interfered with his contractual rights, not committed a criminal offence, still less an arrestable one.

i liked Far Cry 1 but Crysis bored and annoyed me. if it's a return to the relative simplicity of Far Cry, then that's something i appreciate.

that would be an insult to mediocre lawyers everywhere. a half-blind donkey with a learning impairment could point out the flaws in that sham of a case.

Fable 2 is the kind of game i'd wait until a month of rainy days to play - the first one was entertaining in a time-passing kinda way, but anyone who falls over themselves to play it has to be fairly bored...

Bioshock was a great game. it might not have been particularly groundbreaking in terms of gameplay, and neither was its story entirely free of flaws. but it had a fantastic setting, atmosphere, graphics and ideas. that, together with decent gameplay, makes it one of the best games i ever played on a console. to paraphrase deadwood's immortal phrase, those who say otherwise cook socks by choice.

yes. yes, it is. Fable was a highly-ordinary run-of-the-mill actionish CRPG with reasonable graphics and some cute customization. it was nonetheless touted as ground-breaking and genre-busting by its developer who is a famous loudmouth. in most other industries, the people who are paid to report news and review things are typically professionals, or at the very least people who can be reasonably expected to distinguish hype from reality, and do more than just recycle press releases. in the gaming industry, though, it seems that all you need is a good PR and - viola! - you're automatically a visionary...

going after a mechanic in the UK for playing the radio in his garage? i call bullsh1t on that.

i don't whine about drm. i sometimes whine about drm whiners though. it's one big whiny feedback loop. of whining.

everyone has their biases. the best you can hope for is a review from someone who shares yours. but no reviews yet AFAIK.

yes, i think we all want the medium to do well. but i very much doubt that all of us want Fallout 3 to do well, and i find it interesting that many of those who claim to have the medium's best interests at heart are actually suprisingly keen for FO3 to crash and burn like a gigantic flaming turd. and the fact that so many folk seem to want Fallout 3 to fail so epically (yes, i know it's not a word) is yet more proof of a Fallout fanbase that hates Bethesda to its core. people who like Fallout flatter themselves that they have good taste in games. they feel very strongly that Bethesda simply lack the talent to make a sequel to Fallout and they're prepared to highlight every single decision as a misstep and yet more proof that Bethesda just don't 'get' Fallout the way that they do. most of all, they don't want Bethesda's Fallout to be accepted by the world at large as the 'real' Fallout. that's why Fallout 3 just has to be Oblivion With Guns or Fallout In Name Only. because if the world at large thinks of Fallout 3 as actually Fallout, their tiny little world might crumble. me, i have nothing invested in Fallout 3. it could turn out to be great, it could suck balls. at the moment, i tend to think i will enjoy it but that's probably because my expectations of the story have been set sufficiently low - i know not to expect too much from Bethesda in the writing department. i think that's the fundamental difference in our approaches to Fallout 3. i'm willing to suffer a substandard Fallout because i like the Fallout series in general, and even an inferior Fallout game promises to be better than many games out there at the moment and certainly better than no Fallout at all. (also, i applaud Bethesda for refusing to pay homage to the idiots who think all CRPGs have to be isometric and turn-based, otherwise they're not CRPGs). whereas other people would prefer to see Rome burn than have it fall into the hands of the barbarians. Fallout 3 has become a gamer's gestalt, a so-called purity test of not only how much you like Fallout but how much you'd be willing to sacrifice in order to keep it pure. and that's just a little silly, no?

sorry dude but Aristes is right. the moment Bethesda got the rights to Fallout, there was a howl of incoherent rage from the NMA-crowd and it's continued ever since, swelling into the crescendo of pre-release hate we're seeing now. as fan of Fallouts 1 & 2 who has played both Morrowind and Oblivion, i can well-understand folks' initial fears about Bethesda. Bethesda are good at building wide-open worlds with fantastic visuals and atmosphere, but they fairly suck at things like writing, characterisation and combat, things which were at the core of Fallouts 1 & 2. but, despite their past failings, i've been moderately impressed by what i've seen of Fallout 3 so far. it seems to me that Bethesda have made a genuine effort to get the Fallout world and keep it relatively faithful, at least in terms of tone. although i doubt it will be anywhere as great as Fallouts 1 & 2, i'm at least willing to give them the benefit of that doubt. it may well end up sucking but i'm at least gonna wait until i've played it before i declare it. and i certainly ain't gonna damn the game straight to hell simply because it's not turn-based isometric or because i saw someone's frakking walkthrough on youtube.

yes, i know, but what mystifies me are the people who aren't interested in Fallout 3 who nonetheless devote an inordinate time to reading up about it, watching videos etc, and post about it ad naseum... reading reviews is one thing. posting repeatedly on threads over months at end - as a lot of Fallout 3 pre-haterz seem to do - is another.

i am behind with my correspondence... not the same thing. you don't have to be an architect to be interested in architecture, just as you don't have to be a filmmaker to enjoy films. but it still doesn't make much sense to be very interested in a game that you personally have no interest in playing. you're interested in architecture, for example, but do you spend time actively researching architectural styles you don't like?

will this crafting bench be in the gnome's lair? will you have to kill the gnome to get to it?

and I'm saying 'wha?' right back to you... it's one thing to be interested in playing a game, watching a video about it, and then - having decided you're not interested anymore - criticising it. it's quite another to be uninterested in playing a game, nonetheless spending a lot of your time gathering information about that game in order to keep criticising it repeatedly on the internet. there are games i'm interested in & games i'm not. sometimes it takes me a bit of time to decide if a game interests me and i tend to revise my opinions over time if i read enough to suggest that a game may be worth a second look. now, being interested in playing a game doesn't mean i won't be critical of it. indeed, i probably spend most of my time on these boards criticising games that i've played. i also criticise games i don't plan on playing, e.g. having played dungeon siege 1, i may contribute to a thread on dungeon siege 2, if only to say how much i think it will stink if it's anything like the first one. but once i've determined that a game isn't interesting, i don't waste any more time seeking out info about that game, still less watching someone else's play-through. there aren't horses wild enough that could make me look at anything to do with dungeon siege 2, for instance. it's like watching a show on tv that you dislike, just in order to post how much you dislike it.

great but so what? if you agree that there's a bunch of Fallout fans who are - for whatever reason - now reflexively anti-Bethesda, then how can you be 'confounded' when i say i'm suspicious of reviews of Fallout 3 from people who profess not to be interested in the game itself?

because folk like that more than likely have an axe to grind? if you've been following FO3 even a little, it can hardly have escaped your attention that some folk are determined to hate it no matter what. odds are that someone who is more interested in the reception of the game than the game itself isn't coming at the game free of preconceptions or biases.

hmm, i'm a big fan of Fallouts 1 & 2 but i could care less about 'how the various different factions of fans will view the game' or 'its general acceptance in the gaming world'. and frankly, i'm more than a little suspicious of reviews from folks who are, especially anyone who'd describe themselves as a member of a 'faction' of Fallout fans.

your interest in Fallout 3 hit 'another all-time low'? because it sounds to me like you actually went out of your way to find online footage of other people playing FO3 and sat through enough of it in order to post your little mini-review there. sounds to me that despite your interest in Fallout 3 being at 'another all-time low', your interest is, in fact, still pretty damned high...

that was your biggest problem? really? i don't remember the specific reasons why i visited each planet in ME, but i'm pretty sure it was something to do with the investigation you were charged with. i don't remember the reasons why i visited the planets in KOTOR either, but the basic motivation seemed about on par with ME. yes, you've really convinced me that KOTOR is radically superior to ME then...

yes, if they were true Fallout fans, they'd be posting streams of themselves going "THIS ISN'T FALLOUT, THIS IS JUST OBLIVION WITH GUNS! THIS IS FALLOUT IN NAME ONLY! OMG, BETHESDA RAPED MY CHILDHOOD! BETHESDA IS TEH SUCK!", etc. Then they would take out the disc, cover it with lighter fluid and set fire to it.