The Bard

Best post.

I didn't say "can't," - that connotes an incapacity. I said "failing to," by which I meant "not exercising their ability to." Which is definitely true, because there are arguments being made, but people are picking out phrases, and neglecting to address the whole argument. As for not replying to me, sorry, I just assumed you were because your post was directly after mine and you didn't quote anyone else. Nothing is "inherently bad," in the game industry, but unfortunately, scores for certain sites have been made bad, in both a utilitarian and a moral sense, by the culture surrounding them. Like I said in my above post when you see a 9 from, say, IGN given to something, you can't then assume that this proves its excellence. All you can assume is that publisher pressures enforced a normalising 7-10 effect because they don't want one person's opinion dragging down a Metacritic rating. I should also remind you that Metacritic amalgamates scores based on different grading rubricks. For example, a 6/10 in EDGE could very easily equate to a 9/10 in IGN. And so on. Different games are also reviewed by different sets of publications as well, so there's that further bastardising complication added to Metacritic's meaningless number. Also you're not engaging with the argument. I have no problem with you or anyone disagreeing, but you're not saying why. You're just insisting that "no, I don't agree" contrary to all the evidence and reason presented, without elaborating.

Let's do it. Need to get @Goron_3 and @Zell down for some gaming soon.

I don't think I was acting high and mighty at all, I was making an argument. I don't think you can accuse a person of acting in an affected manner at all if all he's doing is listing facts. Could you specify exactly what I've said that you disagree with? Also you neglected to address the parts of this and my previous post about the negative incentive structures created by scores and score aggregates, which are more pronounced in the gaming industry than they are elsewhere because the audiences, for whatever reason, are more likely to buy a videogame that scores highly than they are to watch a movie or buy an album that scores highly. Publishers then use this mechanism for their own gross ends (I think I'm repeating this for the third time). Another factor thrown into the powder cake is that gaming publications subsist almost entirely on endemic advertising; they advertise the very games they're supposed to be critiquing. I think the negatives for the reader should be more than apparent. Now the simple reasoning over which so many words have been expended is this; there is nothing a score can add to the text which a literate person can't see for themselves in a far more nuanced manner. Secondly removing the score, removes the possibility for amalgamation into aggregation sites and thus also removes pressure from publishers for these review sites to tow a narrow line. Often times what you're getting with a review score is more a reflection of the pressures of endemic advertising and the strain on a publication caused by knowing that if they shitcan a game in a review, the publisher will be displeased and then not invite them to developer events, and disallow them access to their future games. Also the fact that the score distracts from the text is pretty well documented, and evidence is readily available. Look at the comments section of any review on a major site. There is almost no engagement with the ideas, just fury or vindication at the fraction at the end of it. You can expect that a site with some slightly higher aspirations to want to be shot of the whole ordeal, no? So there we have it, the benefits and negatives have been talked about to death. You can go over the previous morass of posts, because I do actually think that most of the finer points, as well as some of the broad points have been missed by most of the people having it out here.

Yeah, I like how it's signed "Sad Cunt" as if he's giving me the benefit of his own wisdom from a lifetime spent as a sad cunt. As an insult I give it a 2/10. Sad cunt wont be earning his bonus this year.

Looks like I've been pissing off at least one person on here

The bottom line is that review scores are great for products judged by merit of their utility, like a toaster or a washer dryer where the extent of your engagement with it is really very simple; does this contraption make my bread brown, what is the efficiency with which it does so, and how does it compare to other bread browning devices? Also a review sits between description and interpretation. The description of the game might be enough for you to make a purchasing decision on, but then there is also the interpretive aspect, which is the experience of playing the game filtered through the reviewers subjective lens. You'll get a good sense of both the experience, as well as the reviewers predispositions from this, allowing you to decide whether your own predispositions align with the reviewers or whether the things she's describing would tweak you differently. Finally, almost every review for anything under the sun has a paragraph in summation, giving a verbal verdict on whether the game is purchase worthy and for what reasons. The entire edifice of numerical evaluation falls down for something that you can only really get a sense of through an explanation of the experience. The only purpose scores serve when the text already exists, is for compulsive people to create a mental list of the critically sanctioned heirarchy of quality games: Ocarina of Time has the highest metascore of all time, which must mean it's the best game of all time! And reasoning of that ilk. This heirarchy then becomes an easy validation of any given person on a forum's preferences - "Oh my favourite game sits four spaces above yours in the rankings, it must be better." Er...who was it that made the woefully ironic Appeal to Authority claim somewhere above? Well here it's recapitulated specifically because of the fact that review scores can superficially be aggregated in a way that actual verbal opinions can't. What I'm advocating is actual dialogue about games, rather than number touting. Isn't that why people read reviews in the first place - to read the thoughts of someone who is employed in a capacity to critically engage with the experience presented by the game? If not, if you really don't want any insightful commentary, or to find out something about someone else's experience with it that might in turn augment your own understanding, then metacritic still exists. So do hundreds of other sites where you don't even need to glance at the text so much as take a scroll straight to the number. Eurogamer are trying to do something different, and godfuckingspeed to them. Removing review scores is both an easy and helpful way to circumvent the bad habits espoused in the gaming industry both from the press and publisher sides. @Sheikah, keep fighting the good fight, but I think you've made all the points it's possible to make about the subject, and the continuing discussion is just people failing to read properly.

This is a good conversation. One thing to remember; the bonuses tied to Metacritic scores are usually never for the development team, many of whom are laid off at the end of the cycle anyway. Instead it's usually for the PR representatives that serve as liason between the publisher and the press. Now why would PR reps be getting bonuses for the Metacritic score? Unless it was the publisher's assumption that they had a direct ability to (contrary to what you believe Zechs) nefariously influence the score through, say, publisher events where press are invited out to five star resorts, catered to with all the Doritos and Mountain Dew they can quaff, paraded in front of literal dog and pony shows, and all the rest of it? That's what's being objected to; the idea that metacritic and its primacy fosters the backward idea among publishers that they can influence score irrespective of the quality of the game. And let's not be naive, they try this in every which way they possibly can. Secondly, Zechs, Eurogamer are dropping the scores not only for this reason, but because they put more emphasis on the critique that goes on in the body of the text, and to attempt to foster the habit of actually reading the shit wot they wrote. To say that there is very much of meaning that you can gather from a fraction at the end of a page, about a cultural product that on average could take you twelve hours or so of your time to experience, is mad. I'm not saying all people who like review scores are syphillis afflicted, just that all syphillis afflicted people like review scores. There are still scores (hurrr) of sites and publications that have got the numerical element, which you can read at any time on your undoubtedly merry traipses through the internet, bruh. So chill the fuck out. Not only that, but the existence of scores in a world with Metacritic, creates an incentive structure backed by publishers, where publications and sites are afraid to give big budget games scores outside of the 8.5-10 range because there exists the threat of access to future games made by that publisher being revoked. For reference, take what happened to 1up with the original Assassin's Creed, or Gamespot with Kane and Lynch. This only happens because say, a score of 40/100 for a game that has been scoring in the low 80s could bring the average down into the 70s. Yet another function of Metacritic, and yet another perverse incentive structure that it creates. It causes publishers to enforce an atmosphere wherein reviews and the opinions they can prospectively project are normalised within a very narrow continuum. And before anyone says "well those publications with aberrant opinions deserve to have the iron fist of publisher x brought down upon them," remember that you're a fucking idiot for thinking that, and a wide diversity of opinions about cultural products is not only to be expected, but to be celebrated. Bad juju. Getting out of that shitstream is the best thing a serious publication can do.

Haha. Take it with a pinch of salt though, I just generally don't like platformers. They make me feel really nervous, and Sonic epitomises that feeling because it takes more control away from you than most platformers.

Look man, I liked jerking off to lingerie catalogues when I was eleven but I'm not here fourteen years later saying that it was a great experience. Like Sonic, there's that momentary euphoria but always followed by depression and pure embarrassment.

Well they own Relic and Creative Assembly, the two best strategy game developers in the world to my mind, so this is probably a propitious direction for them to take. Also Sonic is and has almost always been hot street trash, so it's about time they jettisoned it, as much as it may hurt, like a dog howling during the outbound path of the plate of splintered bones it gobbled down two decades ago.

Wooooah, never expected to hear this from you man, especially recalling an epic spat we had over metacritic about 6 years ago. Couldn't agree more, games are nuanced cultural products, hence the text and lengthy discussion in the bulk of the review. You can't meaningfully reduce the experience of playing one down to a number, and have it serve as anything more than fodder for aspy spectrum bound goons to use as a way to meaninglessly heirarchise quality. They're not the first to do this, although I think they might be the biggest outlet to have done. Hoping that EDGE and Games TM follow.

Finally a Grand Theft Auto has grabbed me. I think I might even buy it again on PC, seriously this game is too good.

Call of Duty has always had aim assist though. Console shooters would be largely unplayable without it.

I'll try the plank, looks like it'll be good for building up stamina since it's not really weight they can't take but more that they just tend to crap out into the fourth set. Dips pretty much work seem to work in the same way as triangles except you're bearing less weight so that probs won't be too helpful. Might just start doing kickbacks with random household objects. I've got a couple bricked xboxes sitting around somewhere

What exercises do people do for triceps at home without weights, and at what kind of rep/set ratio? I've been doing triangle pushups at home but I've sort of plateaued at 24, thinking of putting some plates in a backpack and doing it that way. What say ye? Anyway, I've been back at the gym for the last month and a half doing a lean gain and trimming fat and just about got myself to being able to dumbell press 2x34s for 10 reps as my max (can do quite a bit heavier on a barbell but don't want to risk it because I don't have a spotter because I don't have any friends) but I'm being held back like a bastard by my triceps which seem to have atrophied more than any other muscle group over my year and a half absence from the gym.

I might get it in a couple days after gauging some peeps' (hurr) impressions. Is it not sodden with shitty aimbots?

Well this is getting circular. I get wt u r saying doe.

I really kind of want this.

You used a family guy gif which suggests that you might just be the worst person ever. I'm outta here Ps. I don't care about Evo, I was merely adducing the correlation between games that feature at Evo and their potential skill ceiling. It was some sophisticated ish, and you didn't get it.

The simplicity is great but it's also the source of the skill ceiling. How good you get at the game depends largely on how quick you can learn to respond or how well you can anticipate attacks and use the sometimes confusing pathways at the edge of maps to your advantage to psych out your opponents. It's good, but it's also limited - which is fine, it's a game you can introduce anyone to and assume they're going to be competent if they have any history with platformers or 2D Action Adventures, but it's not going to be featuring at Evo. I'd argue that Smash can also be played at varying levels of seriousness. The base game is just as easy to learn as Towerfall, and far far more forgiving.

Yeah I love Towerfall but you have to be on some serious ganj to even suggest that it's better than Smash Bros. Apart from Brawl which is a towering shit pie.

My girlfriend got a distinction in her Masters which means she gets to apply for PhD funding .

Happy Birthday bruh!

The GP told me I have a potassium deficiency on account of being strictly carnivorous. I've been eating three giant bowls of vegetables for the last two days and I'm experiencing a level of energy that is MDMA levels of extreme. You could rip my heart out and I'd still run a mile.