I don't think there's even a question there. Who cares if gaming journalism is unethical. They are grading subjective media, not covering up for corrupt politicians or organized crime. Just read past the number at the top and form opinions by reading and interpreting the thoughts and criticism that is being presented, get multiple sources and/or watch gameplay. But I guess expecting someone to read and analyze what they just read is too much to ask of someone.

Or, alternatively, you could not give a shit what others think about what you like or don't.

That sounds like your typical early FF games to me! Really, really, really frustrating near final/final bosses. I think those games actually do benefit from overleveling/completing optional quests for certain items/abilities, but also really setting up a strategy that you can play through quickly, and changing it often to play to the invariably alternating weaknesses of high-level enemies. It's actually not that easy to simply overlevel some enemies without taking into consideration how the battle should play out in terms of what spells will be most effective or not effective at all, what kind of defenses are necessary to put up in the beginning, etc. It seems like by maybe around FFVII, there was a shift more towards making extremely, stupidly difficult optional enemies and keeping bosses in the critical path relatively manageable and making them defeatable by simple overleveling -or- by good strategy alone. That said, I haven't played most of the games in the series, so it's all just based on things I've read or experienced first hand with the games I do know.


Hey, thanks. That is a good tip. I honestly would've never known this because I assumed Sony made each platform use proprietary cards. or something. The company is pretty bad about that sort of thing... Anyway, a friend told me about some card with a USB port for backing up saves on a hard drive. I haven't looked into it yet, but that sounds like a good solution to my problem... I do worry about the potential for somehow corrupting game data by moving it back and forth, though.

I actually didn't know that about PS3s. This gives me some incentive to get one, because I've got a lot of old school games that I'm dying to play, but couldn't because I don't have a functioning memory card.

Umwhat? Like it or not, review scores have a direct and measurable impact on game sales. Therefore, firing a reviewer for giving a game a 6/10 simply because a bunch of suits were worried about ad revenue is a big fucking deal, at least for the game's industry, whose exploits trickle directly down to you, the consumer. Do I really need to get into a capitalism 101 discussion here?

Just because subjectively reviewing electronic toys isn't nearly as important as outing corrupt politicians or mob bosses doesn't mean it doesn't have its place or shouldn't matter at all.

Which is why I suggested:

See?



Irrelevant. So long as people don't make good, informed judgement (by reading and researching, as stated above) they will continue to support shitty products. So it's been, and so it will be.

I'm not usually for flashing credentials, but I graduated business school, pal. I'm aware of how that works. The less assumptions made about strangers, the better.

...but it does have it's place, I never said it didn't. If a publication wants to inflate/deflate their scores, it's their issue. If people want good products to do well and avoid the rest, they should do their homework and be smarter with their spending.

The most troubling aspect, really, is the injustice of a guy or girl losing their jobs because they gave a game a low score. That's just shitty.

Having worked as a game reviewer (for IGN and a couple others), it was a well-known policy for developers/publishers to provide sponsorship for a price. That price was often characterized through skewed reviews that lend themselves to favorable judgments. In other words, relationships are formed. Companies will oblige because they want the (often) financial, fanbase and marketing support that a developer/publisher might be able to offer. Individual reviewers will do it for the perks that networking can give them. The "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" philosophy. Everyone has their own agendas. I don't think many gamers understand just how pervasive that is, even between one another. Go to PAX; Go to E3. Watch the developers, the journalists, and the "regular" gamers. Witness as they all seek gratification from one another, how they might seek to "fit in" with certain people, and how they form cliques. Is it really that surprising that individuals who might not have the most stellar offline lives might project their sorely lacking social lives into the gaming community instead? Not really. It's no different from the bottom up.

Apt.

Of course In A Perfect World consumers would collectively look past the numerical score--which, you're right, is an awkward and ill-fitted way to graft an objective metric onto an inherently subjective one--but that isn't how things are. Fundamentalist Christians aren't going to vote for gay marriage, pornography devotees aren't going to buy videos with condoms in them (en masse, at least) and the majority of the game-purchasing populace requires a score for a review.

Did you even bother to skim the Kotaku article I linked? It's a State of the Industry exposé.

You're more than welcome to stand tippy-toed on your roof shouting from the top of your lungs, "Don't use a review score as the primary influence for whether or not you'll buy a game; instead, use your own judgement based on what you've read and seen!" but I'm sorry, very few people are going to listen and not just because they're too dimwitted to read either. There's a reason we score things-that-can't-really-be-scored, you know?

Let's try alleviating the more severe symptoms, i.e. corporate impingement on review bodies that should (and could, since you'll see that film reviews aren't filled with quite the same degree of corruption) be autonomous before trying to restructure from the ground up the way people perceive and use criticism.


Definitely, as well as game developers who've lost their jobs because their low-budget, poorly-promoted title didn't fall into the hands of the right reviewer/s.

*checks what's up in the Video Game Thread*
*quietly leaves the Video Game Thread*

^ What he said.

Possibly last day of the sale (ends on May 4th) on PSN:
https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-ca/ ... NWEEKMIXED
Reminder of some notable deals (standard prices first, followed by PS+ prices):

Demon's Souls - $6.80 / $5
Dragon's Crown - $13.60 / $10 [Vita version]
Catherine - $6.80 / $5
Remember Me - $16 / ? (won't show PS+ price for me for some reason)
Dust: An Elysian Tail - $8 / $7.50
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection - $20 / $16 (individual games are on sale too)
Suikoden 2 - $5 / $4
Pier Solar and the Great Architects: $7.50 / $6
Resident Evil Revelations 2 Episode 1: $3.59 / $2.99

There's also Castlevania: Lament of Innocence ($5) for you weirdoes who were arguing that game was actually good the other day.

They're probably pretty cheap now. I got one after getting my PS2 for like $10.

ALSO: What on a PS4 is worth my time besides TLoU, Bloodborne, and Final Fantasy Type-0 that's already out? I know about DMC4SE, but that doesn't even have a confirmed release date beyond Q3 2015. I just decided "Fuck it" and are going to get one when I get paid next considering all of my preorders this month are paid for already.

In a perfect world, we shouldn't have to supervise what the top brass does or doesn't do for the bottom line. What should be talked about is what conducts are being supported and which aren't. If people expect to change that system, they have to stop giving money to practices they don't favor. At the end of the day, a company's high ups have to offer products/services to cater to a target demographic in the same way a politician (in a democracy, of course) has to cater to the voting population or else get destroyed in an election. The key difference is that in politics, the public is required to think forward, think of a possible future whereas in business, consumers can analyze existing products or services (much easier than trying to predict the future), which makes the thought process of consumers even more inexcusable.

In short, we get the products we want and businesses will act in the ways we support.


The other reason would be laziness, I guess. However people spend their money is no concern of mine, but when people complain about businesses doing things they don't like, but still support them, it grinds my gears, because the fault lies with us consumers much more so than businesses.


I don't think this solves the real problem but I have to agree that it could be a step in the right direction. We'll have to see what happens.

Remember Me is one of the worst modern games I've ever played. Went in expecting a cool and original adventure game where I'd have to solve puzzles by entering people's memories, having the option of remixing them in various ways that lead to branching paths, with some element of sneaking here and there, not too far removed from Deus Ex... and instead I got an ultra-linear, lame ass clumsy beat'em up with parkour-y shit, broken camera, and a whole bunch of wimpy annoying gollums and chargin' chucks to practice silly combos on. Best things the game had going for it were the setting and the 4-5 memory remixes, and that's it. Everything else is just shit. It's the sort of game that I rather would've watched through a Let's Play instead of spending money on.

What a fucking waste of potential.

If only there were some way of finding out what a game is like before buying it.

Yeah seriously, how did you manage to expect gameplay like Deus Ex?

I actually didn't hate Remember Me, because a) I knew what to expect (simplistic "platforming" traversal and the lame Batman combat) and b) it was free (PS+). It's very, very modern AAA yadda-yadda, but at least it has amazing art direction and fairly decent writing and the memory remixes were pretty neat, so it has that going for it. Give me that over Ubisoft Game, Shadow of Mordor or Tomb Raider any day.

So the creative talent behind Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country made a kickstarter that met it's goal and then some almost immediately for a 3d platformer they are making.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pl ... rare-vival



Looks cool, cute name too.

That's some seriously old school 3D platforming. You don't see a lot of that nowadays.

Looks legit.

Demos are best, but only a small fraction of games provide them nowadays (on Steam anyway). Reviews aren't as revealing, unless the game is obviously severely bugged and everyone is raging to no end, much like when Rome 2:TW was released.


Not in a ripoff manner of course. It was described as a sort of cyberpunk/tech-noir adventure game with fighting, so you could say that I expected exploration, stealth, and conversations in addition to the beautiful setting, but none of those were present, not even in the least.

The return of Rare! I'm not even a huge Banzo/DK64 fan, but it's great to see something like this pop up again. It looks amazing. A shame Sony is sitting on Jak, Crash, Ratchet, and Sly, and not doing shit with them right now. The gaming world needs more color.

It does, but honestly I think the art looks really uninspired, like some mobile crap. Anyone else without the Rare name would have launched this KS and I doubt they'd even gotten funded, but build the proper narrative feeding on nostalgia and you get a million in a few hours. *shrugs* But then I've never been a fan of Rare platformers either, so I'm probably biased.

How dare they be successful.

Um, there's a Ratchet and Clank game and movie coming out this year. The last Sly Cooper game was only 2 years ago, and there's a movie coming out next year so there might be a tie-in game as well. Activision owns Crash, nothing to do with Sony there.

Run around and collect the coins! I thought this sort of thing had died out circa 2002, except for... yeah, those fucking "run forward at high speed and collect the fucking coins" games that I always see people who seem way too old to play that sort of thing play on their phones on the subway.

Um, I forgot about the new "remake" coming to PS4 because I just remember about the upcoming movie and why would anyone want that? Um I want more platformers on the PS4 that aren't Knack. Um didn't know that about Crash but can you blame me. Ummmmmmmm you get my point, 3D platformers are a rarity thesedays if you're not Nintendo.


From their KS page:

You have to admit it's nice they poke fun at that.

Nothing wrong with coins, but yes some of their stuff got ridiculous.

INSERT CO-IN. WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA...

Am I the only one who enjoys simplicity (or even primitiveness) in some games? Variety is the spice of life!

Oh c'mon, it's just the early stages, it's not the final finished look. Plus it's a successor to Banjo Kazooie so yeah, it's gonna look a wee bit cartoony. They built a very large fanbase by releasing many excellent quality platformers under Rare and then finally continuing that tradition after a lengthy gap that ended around Grabbed by the Ghoulies on xbox, so it's not surprising people have funded it super fast.

@raytownian Nope, I enjoy simplicity. I enjoy colourful, simple, non-super serious, non-fantasy RPG, fun games.

Super Mario 3D World was perfection. Straight to the point platforming awesomeness.

Meh, was always more of a Sonic, Ristar and Crash Bandicoot fan myself. 3D Mario and Rare games


Who doesn't?

Some people criticize 3D world because it has hints/invisibility suit but they can be avoided, it's an option not a compulsory thing. 3DS has some truly awesome games, some that grab 3D in interesting ways while others like the Zelda games that don't require it, it's a shame some completely overlook it because it's a handheld.

I wonder if the success of Yooka-Laylee means a 3DS port? Perhaps even Conker's Bad Fur Day/Diddy Kong Racing equivalents. Jonathan Jafari is probably beside himself.

@ Morrigan, I was more of Dash Dingo fan myself.

I did thoroughly enjoy Super Mario 3D World. Nice little mix between the new and the old, with environments that were sufficiently thorough to provide some level of challenge while still providing for casual play. I don't mind that.

This is the first time I've ever seen somebody unironically say that they prefer Ristar and Crash over Mario and Rare.

I've been doing multiple play throughs of Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. I'm so hungry for The Phantom Pain that I need to get my Metal Gear fix somehow. September 1st seems so far away at this rate. I love playing the MGS5 version of Heavens Divide as I extract Paz, and then intentionally get spotted to cue the badass escape theme. So awesome.

Can't speak for Ristar, but Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped was damn fun. Varied, colourful levels and enemies, a decent amount of challenge, and those hilarious death animations Never tried the games before it, and the ones after it I did play were rather underwhelming, but yeah, Warped's the shit.

Really? That seems bizarre. Many people prefer platforming to be about actual platforming rather than collectothons, and the art and music are just better in those games too (I could die happy if I never have to hear Mario music ever again...).


Anyway, here's my NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO *sobs* screenshot of the [indeterminate period of time]:
(To give you an idea, here's a screenshot with the boss HP bar partially full... yep he was dead, fucking game is cheating! )

Same. The only person I know who'd say something like that is the Playstation fanboy I know, because Ninten-don't. No offense, Morrigan but Rare has exceptional music and art (apart from the limitations of Nintendo 64), like the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack has to be one of the most well liked soundtracks of all time.

It really reminded me of a classic arcade style of gameplay, just pick up and go, no instructions/menus/equipping/tutorials required - perfect for casual gamers. Although more than enough secrets and extra items for lengthy run throughs.

I was talking more about Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie than Donkey Kong Country, since we're talking about Rare's 3D platformers and not the side-scrollers on SNES. And nothing beats the art and music of Ristar, and Crash Bandicoot does look better than Mario 64/Banjo games, honestly. But I mostly think that they're just way more fun.

But nice try at turning this into a stupid console war from the 90's.

I wasn't doing that.
Speaking of Sly Cooper, when's that animated movie coming out? World of Warcraft, which is directed by David Bowie's son, is gonna drop well before it now. Haha, it's all in hues of 'war' and 'gritty realism'.

Nuts and Bolts ruled. Woefully under-loved game.

I find the original Crash to be pretty comparable to Super Mario 3D World. Fixed camera angles still work and are awesome when done right. I think 3D World would be the perfect formula and style for a new Sonic, but that'll never happen. As for Crash I never played much of 2-3, maybe someday.

Crash Team Racing was amazing too.

I'm on the fence with the Rare music. The DKC trilogy has some of the best music in gaming, and I love Goldeneye and Perfect Dark's scores, but they're very different and more dramatic than their N64 platformers, which I don't recall having standout music or anything to me.

The Super Mario Galaxy games and 3D World have some of the best music for platformers ever. You cannot deny that Koji Kondo epic jazz.