Feedbackula - The Last of Us Rageapalooza!

@Craminum well done Craminum, you've made very good point, now go to sleep before your mum finds out your still awake..

@NoobNationUK you sir, are a dickhead. that's my opinion

@Warful Are you telling me when you buy a new game, car, computer etc you just choose 'any' based on.... your 'gut' feeling?, rather than check with reviews, friends...? Or do you read reviews for the fun of it?

@NoobNationUK @Warful You expressed yourself in such a way that it sounded like YOUR opinion, like as if you and I were to have a conversation and you'd say:

"Hey mate, did you get TLOU?"
"Uuh no, it's not really my thing.."
"BUT WTF? its 9/10!? It's a must buy, else you're not a gamer man, wtf dude.."

I mean, that is basically what your message sounds like

@Warful A MUST buy in the reviewers eyes, dopey! Or else what is the fucking point of having a grading scheme in the first place , eh?

@NoobNationUK @Warful @Fernin-Ker Where does it say a 9/10 is an ESSENTIAL buy? Little Big Planet got a 9/10, I played it, it wasn't to my liking, I felt I wasted some cash there. Crackdown got a 9/10, I didn't really feel it was a Must buy, I could have lived without it. Oblivion 9/10, I prefer Morrowind and Skyrim of the newer titles.

a 9/10 is NEVER a Must Buy as this all comes down to OPINION and TASTE. Tom McShea might not have liked the whole Zombie affair, or maybe he is not a big survival game fan, OR he doesn't like third person shooters much, who knows!! The main point is, when a reviewer gives an 8 or a 10 or whatever, it is HIS opinion where we can get an idea of what a game offers and what it delivers on, but because a reviewer, from his opinion, gives a 10/10, doesn't make the game a must buy for EVERY LIVING GAMER ON THIS PLANET.

@Warful @NoobNationUK @Fernin-Ker I actually own all the consoles & games you mentioned in the PAST! I based my judgment on the reviews- obviously a high score is a MUST by- and I have never been disappointed with ANY of those games mentioned & im sure I wont be disappointed with any future 9/10 scoring games that are 'near' perfect scores= essentially meaning they ARE essential buys..doh!

@NoobNationUK @Jamoid You CAN'T make an "Un-biased" review... A review is in it's core subjective and therefore there will be biased opinion in it. You can however point out that you (The reviewer) are biased to certain things, but it's overall quite easy to overlook. For example, if the review stated: " I don't like that the game is overly depressing and bla, bla, bla...". It's very easy to think "Well, the reviewer doesn't like a depressing world. But, I do! So it's only for the good! :D".

You need to think about the facts and ask you the question "Do i like [Insert fact]?" What the reviewer thinks is only relevant if you agree with his opinion.

@downloadthefile @Jamoid You have a point, but that's not how any review site I can think of anywhere works, so to blame Tom or even Gamespot seems a bit unfair to me.

@Jamoid @downloadthefile Really then just acknowledge that if its this guy's opinion, he should express his tastes prior to playing the game, as well as whether or not the game surpassed his expectations or fell victim to them. The lack of such a description implies that he's a blank slate, and the game is the only thing that is being factored in. Unfortunately, and quite clearly, that isn't the case. The review itself is, for this reason, of rather poor quality.

@downloadthefile @Jamoid Yeah I've never been a fan of the score system. I don't really agree that it implies objectivity necessarily, but it's fairly broken and usually does more harm than good. Like now for example. A difference of one point and you have this much anger and hatred aimed at the reviewer.

@Jamoid ffs when did you become the peacemaker on these forums? The journalists should make a un-biased review- so that you don't have to get a 'feel' which journalist has a similar taste- Any newcomers or casual gamers reading the review cannot get a 'feel' of the reviewers tastes- WE know the review was underscored cos of the reviewers harshness, wont stop us buying it! but any newcomer to this site may be swayed to rethink if score is just above average..

@Jamoid I dunno that I explained myself that well. I think reviews should be subjective and there are of course objective aspects to all of them. This site, however, presents itself as solely objective by using numbers and stamping its official seal on each review it does, whose scores in turn affect people's jobs. They don't have each reviewer say their prejudices, and whether or not it's implied that it's their own opinion, their lack of acknowledgement of prejudices makes their entire thing again appear objective.

Tom not liking negativity in games is not expressly mentioned anywhere at the top, so his expressing distaste for negativity in this game comes off as ridiculous when such was the intention. I simply don't accept that GS or IGN reviews are subjective because they don't present themselves to be, whereas Angry Joe or RockPaperShotgun very clearly signal that their reviews are subjective. And, as such, I think the right to get angry about the Gamespot score is justified. Obsidian got screwed with bonuses from Bethesda because of Fallout New Vegas scores a while back, and I was angry then because of it.

Whether they state it's their opinion or not, it is. Of course there is an objective aspect to it, but no human can objectively review any form of art or entertainment to a meaningful degree. Aspects of them, yes, but not overall. I'll never, ever budge on that. Even the best movie critics disagree with eachother all the time, it's human nature.

Really there comes a point when the consumer has to take responsibility for making their own judgements and choices. These websites are free, the reviewers are under no obligation to explain every preference they have prior to any review, it is expected that readers take their views with a pinch of salt. After a while you start to get a feel for which journalists have fairly similar tastes to your own and it becomes easier to make informed choices.

@Jamoid My opinion on reviews using numbers is that they should be scored objectively because numbers are numbers. Subjective opinions can come in, but they better be well-explained and they better not be the main variable in a numerical review, especially if you come in not liking zombie games or sad themes. If story has an objective problem like the one I'd alluded to earlier, then that could be mentioned, but not liking how something turned out shouldn't affect it. The numbers are simply too powerful for your prior dislike of zombie games to so powerfully affect how a zombie game is received.

Reviews without numbers are where subjective opinions should come in. The numbers ruin subjectivity for games and certain types of films consistently. If I dislike Sci-Fi, I'm not gonna give District 9 one star because I don't like Sci-Fi. And frankly, I probably wouldn't have taken the assignment to review something within a category I'm generally at odds with anyway, though I don't know how reviews are assigned here.

@Jamoid The flaw with most game reviews is that they don't actually go far enough to reveal prejudices, as well as whether a game was able to surpass them or fell victim to them. Every review should start out with something along the lines of, "I'm reviewing this RPG and I love RPG's," or "I'm reviewing this RTS and I don't really enjoy single player campaigns for these games, only the multiplayer," and then should go into the review. Armed with that knowledge, a person has a context to interpret what they're reading. Without it, a criticism such as "there were bad guys and I don't like bad guys" is really invalid and quite childish.

The reviewers themselves are creating the model for people to think the way they do about reviews, putting them out there as though they are objectively scored, and then retreating back to the convenient defense of subjectivity any time people think they got it "wrong." If anything, you should be blaming the reviews themselves, not the people, because the reviews, intentionally or otherwise, try to appear objective. Whether or not it's Tom's review or Carolyn or KVO, it's Gamespot's review, and the culture created by the numerical values has made people in this industry lose jobs or bonuses. Those numeric values are based on an incredibly wide number of things since games are so different from one another, that they become themselves rather arbitrary at a point. The system is clearly flawed when if you dissect the number system enough, you eventually realize hypocrisies and double standards, even within the confines of just a single reviewer's past and current reviews. The numbers clearly have a ton of value and are seen as objective even if reviewers pretend this isn't the case.

Film reviewers are better in this regard because many of them (not all) explicitly state that it's their opinion, and their opinions and tastes become self-evident after reading a wide enough collection of them. Gamespot and its peers are just some sort of entities which house opinions but put their respective official stamp on them. This practice does both the sites and their readers a disservice if they actually are trying for subjectivity.

That sounds like a pretty fair, well thought out argument really. Perhaps he should have gone into more detail, played the game for longer or factored in his dislike of certain themes more. Those are reasonable complaints.

My real issue is with the aggressive knee-jerk reaction many people have to any opinion that differs from their own (or the status quo), regardless of anything else and with no personal experience. You're certainly not one of those people.

@Jamoid A reviewer not liking something that is technically perfect is fine. A reviewer not liking the story of something is fine. But a reviewer who doesn't like the side characters of a story because they're villainous is a simplistic, difficult to take seriously opinion. I'll give you an example of a subjective problem I had with a game I loved. In Dragon Age Origins, I didn't like that Loghain killed a bunch of people for a reason that basically amounted to "just because." I felt that it was weak writing. But I wouldn't say that I didn't like Loghain because he was a villainous character, and I don't like villainous characters.

Tom didn't like the game because I think he said it had no heart, from what I can remember, and didn't like that the side characters were all basically mean or villainous. Additionally, he felt that he was a criminal by killing these characters. But you're in a world filled with zombies in an apocalypse. Characters of that nature make sense. Perhaps a better criticism would have been that he feels the world is artificially cold in order to create conflict, but even that feels weak because of the plausibility of such a scenario.

Really it comes down to that objectively speaking, he doesn't like games of that nature. Such a prejudice requires mentioning for a review of that kind of game.

Nobody is arguing that objectivity plays no role. What we're saying is that even a perfectly written storyline, or perfectly designed game can be loved by one person and hated by the next, so in that sense they are subjective.

If a piece of equipment is technically perfect with no flaws, you'd expect scores to be roughly the same, but entertainment just isn't like that. Technically it can be perfect but if the reviewer does not enjoy it that is going to influence his review in a huge way. By the same token something can be extremely flawed but loved by a huge amount of people.

Oh and thanks for a decent debate that hasn't descended into umad qq fanboy etc territory.

@Jamoid There is objectivity in story as well as design. If something happens that simply doesn't fit thematically with a story, it can then be viewed as being objectively bad. If The Departed ended with a piano landing on Matt Damon's character from the sky, we could all agree that even if it looked visually amazing, it is objectively a bad ending.

Video games are too frequently flawed both in design and in their story in these ways for me to take them seriously the way movies can be. There's too much variance in games for them to be compared to movies anyway, the comparison is rather dumb. Additionally, video games often don't need story, putting them entirely in their own category. No sports game or FPS has ever NEEDED a story the way a movie does. The comparison between movies and games shouldn't really exist. It's like comparing movies to paintings. All art isn't comparable, especially when video games can vary so greatly. And I don't think all video games are art. Is playing a sport an art? I'd say video games are often far closer to sports than artwork. The games that are art should be recognized, but a game like DOTA or NBA 2k13 or Call of Duty, those are closer to sports.

"People seem to think games can be reviewed objectively like pieces of hardware, purely based on amount of bugs and lists of features. That's not how it works.

Of course those things factor in, but they are only a small part of it. You can have a game with every feature in the book and no bugs at all, yet it falls flat because it simply isn't fun to the reviewer. By that same token you can have a game with many bugs or very little features that ends up succeeding because it's a lot of fun to the reviewer or is greater than the sum of its parts.

Basically for many components of a game (art style, music, dialogue, story line, fun factor), there really is no objective way of quantifying them. It's like expecting everyone to have the exact same opinion on a piece of art, then score it exactly the same without ever meeting each other."

I just completely disagree and while I respect your opinion feel it's pretty bad for the games industry.

@mirage_so3 @Jamoid @SebCrakpot1234 If you take a day to try and notice what people get upset about, you will soon realise people gets most upset about trivial things that really doesn't matter one bit...