October 9, 2009 4:12:28 AM
METACRITIC is an excellent RESOURCE. I see a lot of misplaced bagging on it. It is a very transparent site, which brings together consumer reviews with a large set of known published reviews, with links to the text of each one. It's easy to see where you more trusted venues fall in line with the score. It's easy to click through and read unfathomable amounts of text reviews, and see what backs up the scores. It's easy to compre a huge number of review authors on any given game to find out which ones suit your tastes/mindset/standards of integrity. Yes publishers/marketing/PR abuse and misuse it, but it's akin to claiming that Bittorrent is bad because of the ways it gets misused. The current gold-standard of a quantitative review score for what is inherently a qualitative experience is deeply flawed, but also deeply ingrained in our culture an in evaluative journalism across most fields. Metacritic at least gives me a way to easily compare all of the perpetrators of this method and glean what useful info may be available. This method will unfortunately be the industry standard until/unless gamers(consumers), devs, and THE PRESS demand something different and more substantial and qulitative and critical from publishers, mmarketers, PR, and THE PRESS. I don't really see that coming anytime soon, but we can always hope.
July 7, 2009 6:58:54 AM
@JHay: Yeah, i think i might have come of as a bit of an ass too, after rereading my post just now... oh well, thanks for keeping it civil. =) For what it's worth: my reading-between-the-lines- on Hsu's statements leads me to believe that he feels hopeful about the resurection of EGM too. And my interpretation is that he's not condescending or offended by people being excited about it, but he just takes hype with a large grain of salt until he has more, and more solid, evidence. He doesn't really indicate wether Steve Harris gives him any particular hope, nor the opposite. This could be an indicator of little faith in Harris, or just an indicator that Hsu knows a lot more goes into a good mag than just a competant/faithful managing editor... duno... it's all to much speculation for me. I certainly hope the best for EGM, but i'll wait til the first issue is out to see whether it's worth more than a fishwrap. ;) LOL btw. As of 3:30am pacific time 7/7/09 your "*JZ" comment, where you corrected the misspelling of my name, is at the bottom of the "ChatterBox" recent comments crawl on the right side of the page. I guess that thing doesn't parse at all. Heh.
July 4, 2009 11:48:29 PM
@JHay: wtf?! Where do you sense resentment from? He makes it clear that he's interested to see how the new EGM turns out, but is not about to be excited about it just because someone plans to use the brand. That's a level, unbiassed, logical approach. Frankly, if you're not approaching pretty much EVERYTHING with that sort of healthy skepticism, in our cynical, ultra-commercialized world, then you're playing the fool. As for the rest of your comment, i can't really say... I don't exactly follow Hsu's work, and i haven't read Bitmob. He may be as biassed and unprofessional as you say, but i'm disinclined to take you seriously as an objective, unbiased source. I think you may have tipped your own hand, with the extreme liberties you took in interpreting his comments in the interview. ...just the way it looks anyway. No offense or nastiness intended. -jz
December 18, 2008 8:55:57 PM
Excuse me? Did he just take credit for Gears of War inventing the the concept of cover systems in video games??! Other than that, it was an interesting interview. He didn't seem like anywhere near as much of a tool as i expected him to be.
November 13, 2008 3:38:01 AM
Voice controls are sort of cool and futuristic, but will always be nothing but a novelty for me. I do most of my gaming at night with my wife sleeping one room away; voice control is not an option. I can just get away with voicecomms. I suspect, in this world of overwelmingly adult gamers, that i'm not alone.
August 20, 2008 1:47:56 PM
For most of us adult gamers our time investment is far more valuable than the cash we put out for a game. Relatedly, when you make us pay a significant chunk, like $30-$60, for a crappy, boring, or repetative game, you really ad insult to injury. Today's game industry has really become expert at rubbing salt and lemon in our papercuts.
July 24, 2008 2:59:28 AM
Agreed; almost 100%.(Except i like the Splinter Cell games, and Halo wars looks good to me, though i do agree about Halo being, in general, overrated; but then i generally like RTS's, even the new crop.) Good to see someone FINALLY calling out Spore, and the shitty Lego games, and Little Big Planet. The only thing missing from your crotchety-old-man, get-off-my-lawn rant is Rockband and all the lame-ass Guitar Hero games. Seriously WTF do people see in that crap?!
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