What is the deal with Phil Spencer?

[BigMclargeHuge]

i'm disappointed a lot of the games I liked on PS4 went multiplatform. I'll be the first to say that, because if given the choice i'll buy on switch every time, the performance difference means nothing to me.

PS4 destroyed Xbox One in Japanese games with games like Nioh, Yakuza, Persona, and the like. Xbox has now gotten those games, which is a start, but it does very little for those of us who expereinced and supported those games day one. They've also just lost Final Fantasy, which is a red flag.

it's one step forward, two steps back.

Without Final Fantasy day and date, no serious JRPG fan or japanese gamer will ever take them seriously.

point is, getting multiplatforms isn't enough, they need exclusives. When you celebrate also getting WuLong, or getting Persona 5 five years late you expose the quality gap between the two platforms.

It's utterly pathetic and needs to stop. Xbox needs exclusives.

Xbox is begging for PlayStation scraps and celebrating like mad when they get a taste. It's a beggars platform, through and through. I won't support that behavior.

Not to nitpick, but I don't think Nioh ever made it to xbox.

 

[Bodycount611]

Not to nitpick, but I don't think Nioh ever made it to xbox.

yeah it you're right it didn't, which is why they're celebrating getting wulong even just as a multiplat. It's not enough.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

Don't misunderstand me. When I say it's exactly like a Ubisoft open world game, I just mean all the icons on the map, bandit camps to clear out, etc. I don't mean it in regards to the story, characters, setting, etc. Basically, before you really get into the story, characters, lore, setting, world, etc. and just open up the map, the first thing that comes to mind is - it's Ubi!! lol.

This whole thing is mentally tiring and it kills the sense of exploration and discovery.

It was hard for me to finish HFW because of this feeling of dread (OK, I'll go climb a giant robot giraffe tonight, tomorrow I'll do a sidequest or a main quest if I have the time, etc.) it all feels like homework, or a grocery list, after a while. This is the whole "feeling" of these open world games that kills the whole point of being open world.

Make a game with decent landmarks, a few villages, etc. maybe some general pointers for the main story, but leave the whole rest up for grab and meaningful (a good weapon/armor or magic item hidden inside a cave or building that is out of the way... something like that, but make exploration "exploration" again and make it worthwhile.

The dread of this killed my enthusiasm for Days Gone, I felt that was coming so I stopped my playthrough before the game was ruined.

Of course, everything that matters is different and usually better than Ubisoft open world games. Basically, on the surface, it just looks like every open world game is a Ubisoft game but once you dive further in and get beneath the surface, then HFW, Days Gone, Tsushima and even Ubisoft games are all different in this regard. It's just that first/initial look and reaction that makes me always think that it's a Ubisoft open world game but once you really get into the game, despite some similarities, it's truly not.

I think that Elden Ring is different enough in that regard, but I don't have enough time to dedicate a few months of my life to build the skills to kill real enemies and I don't want to grind and rebuild.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I don't think you'll ever get that balance because most review sites want good ratings because it drives traffic. The game simply has to be bad or broken for the score to be low. I do agree with you though. Again, I just don't see anything changing.

Eh, fair enough. I know I'm overly optimistic on that point, but I'll keep holding out on hope at least a couple review spots start to do it more regularly.

I know. The only problem for me is two fold - first, I want to level up, max out my skill tree, etc. and just completing the main story isn't going to accomplish that and second, once I complete the main story campaign, I don't go back to "wrap up stuff". For example, I try to clear out every area before moving on to the next area because unless a main or side quest takes me there, I don't want to go back.

I mean, you can just use the campfires to warp back to a previous spot basically for free, no? I can understand the point tho if playing it on a base PS4 (my platform) or PS4 Pro, due to the load times. And if you're hopping around like that a lot, you'll be spending a small chunk of that time waiting for data to load.

Another example is for AC Origins/Odyssey. I went region by region based on the level until I completed the game. I basically cleared out everything and then wrap up the story because for me, once the story is done, I simply lose all interest in going back to wrap up stuff I missed or didn't do. After combat/gameplay, the main story is my primary driver that will get me to complete the game but once I do this, I would say my interest in returning to the world is minimal to non-existent.

Guess that's how some people view a lot of games really so can't say it's a "wrong" way to play or anything. I know for myself personally, I will likely fire up something like HFW every now and then a few years later, after completing the main quest and whatnot, just to dick around or have some fun for a half hour here or there, maybe take in the sights, etc. I can stick to one or a handful of games for months at a time, so I can probably justify focusing on just main quests for a bit, then taking some time every now and then to do side content in-between putting majority attention on other games.

I know. HZD also added this option in a patch later on. Basically, you can turn off everything and play it as if it was BOTW/ER. Not going to lie, I don't do that because having to look for everything would drive me nuts. Hehe. I think waypoints are only mandatory for the story quests if I remember correctly.

Funny thing is that I do turn off several gameplay HUD options including the compass which I hate in every open world game. I prefer a mini-map which rarely exists nowadays.

Yes, exactly. The next open world game I will be playing is most likely going to be Gotham Knights and I already know when I open up the world map, im going to see a shit ton of stuff littered across the map so in my mind, im like, why? lol

TBF, the teams behind these games (and the publishers) are deathly afraid of irritating most players who might get frustrated getting lost looking for stuff, or not knowing where to clearly go next. That's just the majority of a lot of gaming audiences these days sadly. I know people will say Elden Ring proves this to not be the case, but did it really?

I think if anything, Elden Ring proved people are willing to tolerate the type of obfuscation and challenge that particular series of games bring, even if they've never played it before, either because they were already massive fans (the minority), or it was the trendy game to play and you don't want to look like an outsider to the crowd voicing a type of issue that you might say about another game not of that brand (the majority, especially newer Souls players).

I think time will tell if reviewers, most gamers etc. are willing to give the degree of freedom to other games that delve into obfuscation, hard difficulty challenge etc. they give to Souls games, especially games that do those things but in ways not exactly like Souls games, because outside of a very small handful of games like Cuphead, that same level of tolerance hasn't been afforded.

The only negative I have with the post launch patches and whatnot is that Guerrilla nerfed a lot of stuff, including my bombs which I love using and the tripwires are nowhere near as effective as they were in Zero Dawn which is disappointing. This honestly pisses me off because it's a single player game. What's the point in nerfing shit? UGH.

With that said, I am looking forward to replaying it. Plus, im honestly just trying to waste time until all my new games start releasing in September. lol

Well even for a single-player game the devs probably want an experience reflective of what they set out to accomplish. I usually don't agree with nerfs in general tho, but that's something I maintain for fighting games. Why not just buff other stuff to balance out everything, is power creep a reason this is avoided?

The nerfs to bombs and tripwires don't annoy me much because I rarely use either, plus from what I read/seen sounds like the nerfs are in regards to gimmicky glitch features of those items to cut down on reload times and immunity that wasn't supposed to be there (for the player). Leaving those kind of glitches in maybe would've be seen as giving those skills and playstyles way too much an advantage and cheesing the game though, again, it is a single-player game so point can be made to just let it rock.

Could've maybe been a boost to speedruns and glitchy playthroughs which are actually really popular.

Looking it up, HFW received a 6.5/10 which yeah, is very low but the reviewer Joab Gilroy is basically a journeyman. Only has 11 reviewed games in 6 years on Open Critic. 5 different sites over those 11 games with the most being for Fandom.

To me it sounds like they don't have enough accreditation in terms of body of reviewed work to suddenly be a verified critic in a reviews aggregate. Were any of those other games even similar to HFW in terms of genre or general style?

I think you'd want someone more seasoned in terms of accredited reviews to handle a review for a larger mainstream AAA release, no?

GT 7 scored a 7.5/10 by Hamish Lindsay but he also gave Sea of Thieves a 4.0/10. The only game he seems favored to is F1 which he rated the last two games high.

That GT7 one may not be as controversial due to the single-player still needing an online connection, and the MTX problems tied to the game, would've weighed the score down for a lot of reviewers. So that one was fair.

Matt Gosper rated Ratchet a 9.0/10. They didn't review Returnal as far as I can see.

For Demon's Souls Remake, Luke Lawrie rated it a 7.5/10 but he rated Elden Ring, Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro higher. However, he does mention Bloodborne as the better game compared to Demon's Souls Remake. He rated Crackdown 3 a 4.0/10.

This one's kind of more up for picking because he could very well have given the scores down to what he genuinely thinks of those games, but it's just an interesting coincidence the games he gave higher scores to in the same IP are all multiplatform. You say he mentions Bloodborne, but did they actually review Bloodborne for Stevivor?

As for Crackdown 3, again, it had a known few questionable implementations (like GT7), but unlike GT7 was just utterly broken at the mechanical level in every conceivable major way, so I'm not surprised at the score. It's a bit lower than the aggregate average but quite a few reviewers scored Crackdown 3 obscenely low.

Steve Wright which seems to be their main reviewer by far gave Halo Infinite a 9.5/10 but he also rated Miles Morales a 9.5/10. He rated Psychonauts 2 which is multi-plat a 9.0/10. He did rate Tsushima a 7.0/10 as well as HZD even though this may have been the PC version which did have issues at launch. He rated TLOUP2 an 8.0/10. He rated Death Stranding a 3.5/10 which may also have been on PC but he gave Dreams a 9.0/10. He rated Concrete Genie an 8.5/10.

Yeah some of these seem questionable, NGL. I don't recall Ghosts on PC having any major issues at launch; if it did I don't mind being wrong on that. But the PC version came out well after the console one, and would not have counted towards the PlayStation version of the aggregate score. So the main point is if he reviewed the PlayStation version a 7/10, not the PC one, TBH. Same with HZD.

TLOUP2 is a bit trickier; there are reasons I can understand someone rating it an 8/10 (maybe Joel's death struck a nerve with them, maybe the focus on Abby rubbed them the wrong way, maybe Ellie came off as too much of a prick, etc.) and that's the kind of game that's going to be at the whim of subjectivity a lot more than a Halo Infinite, but someone could also see it being an oddly low score and having valid reasons for thinking so.

I really don't understand their Death Stranding score at all because again, I don't think that game had any big issues on PC at launch, and it is not a technically broken mess. Even if you may not have liked parts of the story narrative or some of the characters, that isn't enough to score it a 3.5/10. It's not a broken game, it's not a technical failure, it's not a mechanical mess. 3.5/10 scores are reserved for THOSE kind of games, IMHO.

To be perfectly honest, I don't believe that there's any pattern or anything because even if you believe there is, it goes the other way to balance things out. Looking at the Steve guy, I simply believe he prefers smaller games instead of massive open worlds and he definitely likes weird quirky games which applies to Genie, Dreams and Psychonauts 2.

If he prefers smaller games over bigger ones, quirky games over non-quirky ones, then maybe Stevivor should direct him to review the games he prefers style-wise over those he doesn't.

Again, it's why I think review aggregates actually coordinating some balance in their reviews would make sense: if you already have someone like a Steve reviewing a game from the perspective of a casual fan (at best), or even a non-fan, and the game's maybe catering to the existing fanbase more than anything else...why would you need two "Steves" to review that game and go into the aggregate? Why would Stevivor put their Steve on the game, then that type of personality/perspective is already being covered elsewhere?

If anything, I think it's PlayStation fans who are looking into this way too deeply and going based on just the score and site as opposed to who reviewed the game(s) and what their preferences are. Because if anything, this shit is all over the place and when you look at other games like RE 8 or Monster Hunter World and many others, it seems like they're more critical than not.

In some ways what you say can be true, but I do think it's important to be critical and unfortunately, there have been some bad-faith actors in even the reviews space pushing certain narratives that are kind of anti-PlayStation, so that's going to make people more suspect. If you didn't have people like Frosk doing what they do on Twitter, literally spreading FUD and concern-trolling over everything regarding PlayStation (like she tried doing with GOW Ragnarok after the date was confirmed), then you wouldn't see people being more questionable about these reviewers.

On that note, both her (being a G4TV reviewer) and other reviewers/journalists getting caught in console toxicity, admitting to being toxic to drive traffic etc. are compounding problems with journalism in gaming and it's making people be more alert to what they might perceive as deceptive review practices, reporting practices etc.

I am beginning to think @peter42O and @thicc_girls_are_teh_best would make brilliant pen pals.

A+ for effort in your posts dudes/dudettes

I only know of pen pals when it comes to crazy women writing to inmates in prison, so I guess I might need to borrow an orange jumpsuit

This whole thing is mentally tiring and it kills the sense of exploration and discovery.

It was hard for me to finish HFW because of this feeling of dread (OK, I'll go climb a giant robot giraffe tonight, tomorrow I'll do a sidequest or a main quest if I have the time, etc.) it all feels like homework, or a grocery list, after a while. This is the whole "feeling" of these open world games that kills the whole point of being open world.

Make a game with decent landmarks, a few villages, etc. maybe some general pointers for the main story, but leave the whole rest up for grab and meaningful (a good weapon/armor or magic item hidden inside a cave or building that is out of the way... something like that, but make exploration "exploration" again and make it worthwhile.

The dread of this killed my enthusiasm for Days Gone, I felt that was coming so I stopped my playthrough before the game was ruined.


I think that Elden Ring is different enough in that regard, but I don't have enough time to dedicate a few months of my life to build the skills to kill real enemies and I don't want to grind and rebuild.

IMO sounds a lot like you are creating that sense of dread for yourself. Break up your gaming sessions into smaller chunks spread out, you don't really NEED to sink 5+ hours a time into an open-world game. Not if you plan to play it over the course of a month or three, anyway.

Might be related to FOMO for wanting the schedule cleared before the next big release but, that's largely something you can control. Open-world games could probably be made a big shorter, though.

 

[Oogabooga]

At this point I don't understand how he is not fired yet? Is he threatening to black mail bill Gates with a sex tape or something...

 

[peter42O]

This whole thing is mentally tiring and it kills the sense of exploration and discovery.

It was hard for me to finish HFW because of this feeling of dread (OK, I'll go climb a giant robot giraffe tonight, tomorrow I'll do a sidequest or a main quest if I have the time, etc.) it all feels like homework, or a grocery list, after a while. This is the whole "feeling" of these open world games that kills the whole point of being open world.

Make a game with decent landmarks, a few villages, etc. maybe some general pointers for the main story, but leave the whole rest up for grab and meaningful (a good weapon/armor or magic item hidden inside a cave or building that is out of the way... something like that, but make exploration "exploration" again and make it worthwhile.

The dread of this killed my enthusiasm for Days Gone, I felt that was coming so I stopped my playthrough before the game was ruined.

I can understand this feeling. I get this way sometimes too. Days Gone bored the shit out of me for the first 10 hours or so which is definitely a negative for majority of people but after that, it kept hitting for me.

I think that Elden Ring is different enough in that regard, but I don't have enough time to dedicate a few months of my life to build the skills to kill real enemies and I don't want to grind and rebuild.

Yeah, im simply not a souls guy and have no interest in Elder Ring.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

IMO sounds a lot like you are creating that sense of dread for yourself. Break up your gaming sessions into smaller chunks spread out, you don't really NEED to sink 5+ hours a time into an open-world game. Not if you plan to play it over the course of a month or three, anyway.

Obviously the dread is something that comes from me, it's like telling someone who doesn't like whatever that the same thing makes you feel enthusiastic or happy. That does not change that the little play time I have I don't want to waste it on things I barely enjoy or dread.

I can understand this feeling. I get this way sometimes too. Days Gone bored the shit out of me for the first 10 hours or so which is definitely a negative for majority of people but after that, it kept hitting for me.

I really liked Days Gone early part, but knowing what was coming I just dropped out in anticipation.

 

[peter42O]

Eh, fair enough. I know I'm overly optimistic on that point, but I'll keep holding out on hope at least a couple review spots start to do it more regularly.

Nothing wrong with hoping for this to happen but at the same time, I would let it go until you see a few websites actually doing it because you may just end up disappointed.

I mean, you can just use the campfires to warp back to a previous spot basically for free, no? I can understand the point tho if playing it on a base PS4 (my platform) or PS4 Pro, due to the load times. And if you're hopping around like that a lot, you'll be spending a small chunk of that time waiting for data to load.

Nothing to do with load times or anything. It's just that the way I play, once the story is done, I rarely if ever go back into the open world because I simply lose the motivation is doing so.

Guess that's how some people view a lot of games really so can't say it's a "wrong" way to play or anything. I know for myself personally, I will likely fire up something like HFW every now and then a few years later, after completing the main quest and whatnot, just to dick around or have some fun for a half hour here or there, maybe take in the sights, etc. I can stick to one or a handful of games for months at a time, so I can probably justify focusing on just main quests for a bit, then taking some time every now and then to do side content in-between putting majority attention on other games.

I'm the type to where I try to complete everything in the current region/area that im in before moving on to the next because in a massive open world, the last thing I want to do is go back to a starting area or something because I couldn't complete what was there at the time for whatever reason.

With that said, when I replay HFW this weekend, I am doing all the story missions first because I want all the equipment and there's no guarantee that I play through everything a second time anyway. I'm mainly just wasting time until my next new game release which if TLOUP1 doesn't have the combat/gameplay of Part 2, will be Steel Rising in early September. A wildcard is Sword and Fairy Together Forever releasing on August 4th. This game looks great. Released last Fall on PC via Steam and I have watched the first 20-30 minutes to check it out and really liking what im seeing so as long as the price reasonable since it's a digital only game, I will most likely buy it. While the PC version has Ray Traced Reflections, Shadows and Global Illiumination, im hoping for just the reflections on PS5 and I'll be happy.

TBF, the teams behind these games (and the publishers) are deathly afraid of irritating most players who might get frustrated getting lost looking for stuff, or not knowing where to clearly go next. That's just the majority of a lot of gaming audiences these days sadly. I know people will say Elden Ring proves this to not be the case, but did it really?

I think if anything, Elden Ring proved people are willing to tolerate the type of obfuscation and challenge that particular series of games bring, even if they've never played it before, either because they were already massive fans (the minority), or it was the trendy game to play and you don't want to look like an outsider to the crowd voicing a type of issue that you might say about another game not of that brand (the majority, especially newer Souls players).

I think time will tell if reviewers, most gamers etc. are willing to give the degree of freedom to other games that delve into obfuscation, hard difficulty challenge etc. they give to Souls games, especially games that do those things but in ways not exactly like Souls games, because outside of a very small handful of games like Cuphead, that same level of tolerance hasn't been afforded.

I definitely agree with publishers and developers in that regard because if I get bored because I can't find anything, the game will be done. lol. I have said on other forums that I believe games should have a mini-map and HUD options for both the world map and mini-map in which everything can be turned on/off. This way, everyone can play the way they want.

I agree with you in regards to Elden Ring and whatnot. All I can say is that Elden Ring is a game that im never ever going to play so I can't say if what it does, it does well or not. Made it world two in Cuphead but game was just too damn hard for me. Great game based on what I played though.

Well even for a single-player game the devs probably want an experience reflective of what they set out to accomplish. I usually don't agree with nerfs in general tho, but that's something I maintain for fighting games. Why not just buff other stuff to balance out everything, is power creep a reason this is avoided?

The nerfs to bombs and tripwires don't annoy me much because I rarely use either, plus from what I read/seen sounds like the nerfs are in regards to gimmicky glitch features of those items to cut down on reload times and immunity that wasn't supposed to be there (for the player). Leaving those kind of glitches in maybe would've be seen as giving those skills and playstyles way too much an advantage and cheesing the game though, again, it is a single-player game so point can be made to just let it rock.

Could've maybe been a boost to speedruns and glitchy playthroughs which are actually really popular.

I didn't know about the glitches and stuff. Whatever the reason is, it's disappointing because I do like using the bombs and tripwires. They were great in Zero Dawn.

To me it sounds like they don't have enough accreditation in terms of body of reviewed work to suddenly be a verified critic in a reviews aggregate. Were any of those other games even similar to HFW in terms of genre or general style?

I think you'd want someone more seasoned in terms of accredited reviews to handle a review for a larger mainstream AAA release, no?

Other than what I posted, I didn't look into what they reviewed and by who. Until earlier this year, I don't remember even hearing about the site. lol

I agree with wanting someone more seasoned but at the same time, every reviewer at one point was a newbie and they all have to start somewhere.

That GT7 one may not be as controversial due to the single-player still needing an online connection, and the MTX problems tied to the game, would've weighed the score down for a lot of reviewers. So that one was fair.

In general, GT 7 would have been reviewed a lot lower if the MTX issues were in the review build but they weren't. Reviewers didn't have access to the online store but gamers obviously did that's when all the MTX stuff was "turned on".

This one's kind of more up for picking because he could very well have given the scores down to what he genuinely thinks of those games, but it's just an interesting coincidence the games he gave higher scores to in the same IP are all multiplatform. You say he mentions Bloodborne, but did they actually review Bloodborne for Stevivor?

As for Crackdown 3, again, it had a known few questionable implementations (like GT7), but unlike GT7 was just utterly broken at the mechanical level in every conceivable major way, so I'm not surprised at the score. It's a bit lower than the aggregate average but quite a few reviewers scored Crackdown 3 obscenely low.

Looking it up on Open Critic, Stevivor didn't review Bloodborne at all. As for the person I mentioned, he only says that he prefers Bloodborne overall in his Demon's Souls review. I know there's a lot of people who love Bloodborne where as with Demon's Souls, it's way more niche and also, it was Bluepoint who did the remake as opposed to From Software. This could always be a factor because when a game gets remade, people simply prefer the original or just don't care for it due to it not being redone by the original development studio.

Crackdown 3 was a disaster and should have been cancelled beforehand but at least the series seems to be dead because of it so I'll take that exchange.

Yeah some of these seem questionable, NGL. I don't recall Ghosts on PC having any major issues at launch; if it did I don't mind being wrong on that. But the PC version came out well after the console one, and would not have counted towards the PlayStation version of the aggregate score. So the main point is if he reviewed the PlayStation version a 7/10, not the PC one, TBH. Same with HZD.

TLOUP2 is a bit trickier; there are reasons I can understand someone rating it an 8/10 (maybe Joel's death struck a nerve with them, maybe the focus on Abby rubbed them the wrong way, maybe Ellie came off as too much of a prick, etc.) and that's the kind of game that's going to be at the whim of subjectivity a lot more than a Halo Infinite, but someone could also see it being an oddly low score and having valid reasons for thinking so.

I really don't understand their Death Stranding score at all because again, I don't think that game had any big issues on PC at launch, and it is not a technically broken mess. Even if you may not have liked parts of the story narrative or some of the characters, that isn't enough to score it a 3.5/10. It's not a broken game, it's not a technical failure, it's not a mechanical mess. 3.5/10 scores are reserved for THOSE kind of games, IMHO.

I didn't read any of the respective reviews but in all honesty, I don't really care what Stevivor or any site for that matter scored any of these games. Not everyone is going to like them, maybe they had other games to review, maybe they had to meet a deadline, maybe they received the code late. Seriously, who knows?

I rated TLOUP2 an 8.5/10 overall but it's completely carried by the combat/gameplay, visuals and audio. If one of these were lacking or subpar, the game would have been closer to a 6 or 7 for me that's how much I disliked all the story elements. I don't see 8.0/10 as a low score though. On my scale, an 8 is a great game. Granted, compared to the original, that would be disappointing but at the same time, I had the same issues with Uncharted 4 after U2 and U3 but yet, I loved Lost Legacy. I think it all comes down to how games hit for certain people.

Death Stranding is definitely very low at 3.5/10 but looking it up on Open Critic, there are lower scores. There's two 3.0/10 scores and some 4's and 5's. I can say just from watching it, it seems so fucking boring, dull, dragging, and just so uninteresting gameplay and combat wise that if you don't get into the story and characters, I can easily see this game getting rated low.

I do agree that 3.5/10 scores are usually for the very bad or broken games but think of it this way, let's say you give visuals and audio a 10/10 in each category while giving the story and gameplay a 5/10 in each category. That already makes the game a 7.5/10 at best. Now, lower those two categories even more so and then subtract a point for either audio or visuals because the person isn't into the game at all and yeah, I can see people giving it very low.

Think of it this way, even low scored games in the 60's for example will still get a few 7's and 8's.

If he prefers smaller games over bigger ones, quirky games over non-quirky ones, then maybe Stevivor should direct him to review the games he prefers style-wise over those he doesn't.

Again, it's why I think review aggregates actually coordinating some balance in their reviews would make sense: if you already have someone like a Steve reviewing a game from the perspective of a casual fan (at best), or even a non-fan, and the game's maybe catering to the existing fanbase more than anything else...why would you need two "Steves" to review that game and go into the aggregate? Why would Stevivor put their Steve on the game, then that type of personality/perspective is already being covered elsewhere?

If by review aggregates, you mean Meta and Open, just like you wanting to see sites re-review games, these sites aren't going to do anything. All they are is basically the review version of N4G. Instead of going to every site, you go to one and can see everything from there.

In some ways what you say can be true, but I do think it's important to be critical and unfortunately, there have been some bad-faith actors in even the reviews space pushing certain narratives that are kind of anti-PlayStation, so that's going to make people more suspect. If you didn't have people like Frosk doing what they do on Twitter, literally spreading FUD and concern-trolling over everything regarding PlayStation (like she tried doing with GOW Ragnarok after the date was confirmed), then you wouldn't see people being more questionable about these reviewers.

On that note, both her (being a G4TV reviewer) and other reviewers/journalists getting caught in console toxicity, admitting to being toxic to drive traffic etc. are compounding problems with journalism in gaming and it's making people be more alert to what they might perceive as deceptive review practices, reporting practices etc.

Who the hell is Frosk???

In general, I think it's more that PlayStation fans simply got used to seeing nothing but high scores and praise last generation and simply expect it to continue where as I believe it's going to be a lot more balanced. Also, outside of Naughty Dog and God of War, vast majority of Sony's games are in the high 80's. They don't really hit that 92-95+ mark. Also, I think a lot of PlayStation fans saw Halo Infinite as an 87 and wanted it to bomb and even more so, for HFW to crush it and when that didn't happen, PlayStation fans started looking for this reason and that reason as to why this happened.

One final note - it's Stevivor. As my friend says, who? And who cares about a no name site. lol. Which kind of applies here. After all, it's not like it's IGN or even GameSpot. Also, when the vast majority and general consensus says HFW or whatever other game is great, does it truly matter if a few sites or people don't think the same? In the grand scheme of things, that doesn't really matter.

 

[Swolf712]

Did this thread get merged with a game design thread or something?

 

[nominedomine]

Did this thread get merged with a game design thread or something?

Not even my deep dislike for Phil Spencer will make me read all that is being written in this thread. Way too much text.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

In general, I think it's more that PlayStation fans simply got used to seeing nothing but high scores and praise last generation and simply expect it to continue where as I believe it's going to be a lot more balanced. Also, outside of Naughty Dog and God of War, vast majority of Sony's games are in the high 80's. They don't really hit that 92-95+ mark.

By definition very few games should be in the 90+ range.

Also, I think a lot of PlayStation fans saw Halo Infinite as an 87 and wanted it to bomb and even more so, for HFW to crush it and when that didn't happen, PlayStation fans started looking for this reason and that reason as to why this happened.

Nah, the reason Halo:I got the meta score it has is because MS has an humongous PR/marketing budget, they broke promises for content and features... Lies, lies, lies. Some people gave scores in part based in the game's potential updates.

You can see this dynamic in what happened to the concurrent online gamers, it fell like a rock as soon as the marketing push was over and the initial, gullible, players failed to do the positive word of mouth the game would have needed to get legs.

 

[peter42O]

By definition very few games should be in the 90+ range.

Agreed.

Nah, the reason Halo:I got the meta score it has is because MS has an humongous PR/marketing budget, they broke promises for content and features... Lies, lies, lies. Some people gave scores in part based in the game's potential updates.

You can see this dynamic in what happened to the concurrent online gamers, it fell like a rock as soon as the marketing push was over and the initial, gullible, players failed to do the positive word of mouth the game would have needed to get legs.

The extreme lack of content is horrendous but at launch, people knew for months what content was going to be missing and the main positive for the game is that the combat/gameplay loop is excellent so that's why it received high scores. Also, the campaign while not excellent is still great. Easily better than Halo 4 and Halo 5 from what I have seen from those who played and completed them. Granted, it's not better than the original Bungie games but that can be seen in the reflected MC/OC score.

Personally, im not an online gamer so this massive issue means nothing to me. I'm hoping for a campaign expansion in 2023 but even then, I wouldn't be shocked if this doesn't happen until 2024.

Currently watching Sacred Symbols crossover with Defining Duke and I agree with Chris who says that he couldn't believe that they launched without Forge. Now, this means nothing to me but he says it's a mode where players can create maps, modes and content which I find hilarious because that's exactly what the multi-player needs right now.

As for the rating and reviews, even if it was to be re-reviewed, I still see a low to mid (82 to 85) rating because the core mechanics and systems are excellent. If the combat/gameplay loop wasn't excellent, it wouldn't matter if they had a shit ton of content or not because why play all this content if the loop isn't fun and enjoyable to play? Also, even if the MP takes a hit, the campaign itself is still great and the best Halo campaign since probably Reach.

Also, every game should be reviewed for what they are at launch which the MP was for the most part good because of the gameplay and combat loop. Plus, it's free to play. I don't see why anyone would complain in the first place. It's a free to play game. Costs nothing. So if it's not hitting for any individual gamer, they can easily quit it and go play something else.

Of course, 343 is for the most part a disaster so however it goes, it goes.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Eh, fair enough. I know I'm overly optimistic on that point, but I'll keep holding out on hope at least a couple review spots start to do it more regularly.



I mean, you can just use the campfires to warp back to a previous spot basically for free, no? I can understand the point tho if playing it on a base PS4 (my platform) or PS4 Pro, due to the load times. And if you're hopping around like that a lot, you'll be spending a small chunk of that time waiting for data to load.



Guess that's how some people view a lot of games really so can't say it's a "wrong" way to play or anything. I know for myself personally, I will likely fire up something like HFW every now and then a few years later, after completing the main quest and whatnot, just to dick around or have some fun for a half hour here or there, maybe take in the sights, etc. I can stick to one or a handful of games for months at a time, so I can probably justify focusing on just main quests for a bit, then taking some time every now and then to do side content in-between putting majority attention on other games.



TBF, the teams behind these games (and the publishers) are deathly afraid of irritating most players who might get frustrated getting lost looking for stuff, or not knowing where to clearly go next. That's just the majority of a lot of gaming audiences these days sadly. I know people will say Elden Ring proves this to not be the case, but did it really?

I think if anything, Elden Ring proved people are willing to tolerate the type of obfuscation and challenge that particular series of games bring, even if they've never played it before, either because they were already massive fans (the minority), or it was the trendy game to play and you don't want to look like an outsider to the crowd voicing a type of issue that you might say about another game not of that brand (the majority, especially newer Souls players).

I think time will tell if reviewers, most gamers etc. are willing to give the degree of freedom to other games that delve into obfuscation, hard difficulty challenge etc. they give to Souls games, especially games that do those things but in ways not exactly like Souls games, because outside of a very small handful of games like Cuphead, that same level of tolerance hasn't been afforded.



Well even for a single-player game the devs probably want an experience reflective of what they set out to accomplish. I usually don't agree with nerfs in general tho, but that's something I maintain for fighting games. Why not just buff other stuff to balance out everything, is power creep a reason this is avoided?

The nerfs to bombs and tripwires don't annoy me much because I rarely use either, plus from what I read/seen sounds like the nerfs are in regards to gimmicky glitch features of those items to cut down on reload times and immunity that wasn't supposed to be there (for the player). Leaving those kind of glitches in maybe would've be seen as giving those skills and playstyles way too much an advantage and cheesing the game though, again, it is a single-player game so point can be made to just let it rock.

Could've maybe been a boost to speedruns and glitchy playthroughs which are actually really popular.



To me it sounds like they don't have enough accreditation in terms of body of reviewed work to suddenly be a verified critic in a reviews aggregate. Were any of those other games even similar to HFW in terms of genre or general style?

I think you'd want someone more seasoned in terms of accredited reviews to handle a review for a larger mainstream AAA release, no?



That GT7 one may not be as controversial due to the single-player still needing an online connection, and the MTX problems tied to the game, would've weighed the score down for a lot of reviewers. So that one was fair.



This one's kind of more up for picking because he could very well have given the scores down to what he genuinely thinks of those games, but it's just an interesting coincidence the games he gave higher scores to in the same IP are all multiplatform. You say he mentions Bloodborne, but did they actually review Bloodborne for Stevivor?

As for Crackdown 3, again, it had a known few questionable implementations (like GT7), but unlike GT7 was just utterly broken at the mechanical level in every conceivable major way, so I'm not surprised at the score. It's a bit lower than the aggregate average but quite a few reviewers scored Crackdown 3 obscenely low.



Yeah some of these seem questionable, NGL. I don't recall Ghosts on PC having any major issues at launch; if it did I don't mind being wrong on that. But the PC version came out well after the console one, and would not have counted towards the PlayStation version of the aggregate score. So the main point is if he reviewed the PlayStation version a 7/10, not the PC one, TBH. Same with HZD.

TLOUP2 is a bit trickier; there are reasons I can understand someone rating it an 8/10 (maybe Joel's death struck a nerve with them, maybe the focus on Abby rubbed them the wrong way, maybe Ellie came off as too much of a prick, etc.) and that's the kind of game that's going to be at the whim of subjectivity a lot more than a Halo Infinite, but someone could also see it being an oddly low score and having valid reasons for thinking so.

I really don't understand their Death Stranding score at all because again, I don't think that game had any big issues on PC at launch, and it is not a technically broken mess. Even if you may not have liked parts of the story narrative or some of the characters, that isn't enough to score it a 3.5/10. It's not a broken game, it's not a technical failure, it's not a mechanical mess. 3.5/10 scores are reserved for THOSE kind of games, IMHO.



If he prefers smaller games over bigger ones, quirky games over non-quirky ones, then maybe Stevivor should direct him to review the games he prefers style-wise over those he doesn't.

Again, it's why I think review aggregates actually coordinating some balance in their reviews would make sense: if you already have someone like a Steve reviewing a game from the perspective of a casual fan (at best), or even a non-fan, and the game's maybe catering to the existing fanbase more than anything else...why would you need two "Steves" to review that game and go into the aggregate? Why would Stevivor put their Steve on the game, then that type of personality/perspective is already being covered elsewhere?



In some ways what you say can be true, but I do think it's important to be critical and unfortunately, there have been some bad-faith actors in even the reviews space pushing certain narratives that are kind of anti-PlayStation, so that's going to make people more suspect. If you didn't have people like Frosk doing what they do on Twitter, literally spreading FUD and concern-trolling over everything regarding PlayStation (like she tried doing with GOW Ragnarok after the date was confirmed), then you wouldn't see people being more questionable about these reviewers.

On that note, both her (being a G4TV reviewer) and other reviewers/journalists getting caught in console toxicity, admitting to being toxic to drive traffic etc. are compounding problems with journalism in gaming and it's making people be more alert to what they might perceive as deceptive review practices, reporting practices etc.



I only know of pen pals when it comes to crazy women writing to inmates in prison, so I guess I might need to borrow an orange jumpsuit



IMO sounds a lot like you are creating that sense of dread for yourself. Break up your gaming sessions into smaller chunks spread out, you don't really NEED to sink 5+ hours a time into an open-world game. Not if you plan to play it over the course of a month or three, anyway.

Might be related to FOMO for wanting the schedule cleared before the next big release but, that's largely something you can control. Open-world games could probably be made a big shorter, though.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

NGL I am tripping up over what this is or what it's in reference to

 

[Bo_Hazem]

NGL I am tripping up over what this is or what it's in reference to

Skipped your wall of text and gave you a like, just like what we do with terms of service as we just scroll down and click "Agree".

BTW, epic avatar.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Obviously the dread is something that comes from me, it's like telling someone who doesn't like whatever that the same thing makes you feel enthusiastic or happy. That does not change that the little play time I have I don't want to waste it on things I barely enjoy or dread.

Hey, everyone's got preferences & habits when it comes to gaming so I can't disagree there.

I'm the type to where I try to complete everything in the current region/area that im in before moving on to the next because in a massive open world, the last thing I want to do is go back to a starting area or something because I couldn't complete what was there at the time for whatever reason.

TBH I don't mind having to retread old ground when new abilities are unlocked, some of the best games ever made are built on that formula, like Super Metroid and Super Mario World. Those are much smaller games, sure, but if an open world game provides a reliable means of fast travel then that cuts out a lot of the travel from A to B to get back to old stomping grounds, which is something HFW does, tho via a map.

I don't know if you can fast travel(ish) in the game world with overridden Stormbird mounts, haven't gotten that far into the game yet. It would be neat if you could.

I agree with wanting someone more seasoned but at the same time, every reviewer at one point was a newbie and they all have to start somewhere.

I guess. But they still need to be a good fit for the reviews they're doing as they're climbing the ranks. It's a balance I suppose.

In general, GT 7 would have been reviewed a lot lower if the MTX issues were in the review build but they weren't. Reviewers didn't have access to the online store but gamers obviously did that's when all the MTX stuff was "turned on".

Forgot the review copies of GT7 didn't have the online store available :/.

Looking it up on Open Critic, Stevivor didn't review Bloodborne at all. As for the person I mentioned, he only says that he prefers Bloodborne overall in his Demon's Souls review. I know there's a lot of people who love Bloodborne where as with Demon's Souls, it's way more niche and also, it was Bluepoint who did the remake as opposed to From Software. This could always be a factor because when a game gets remade, people simply prefer the original or just don't care for it due to it not being redone by the original development studio.

It's sad that too many people have that type of irrational thinking behind them. If they're going to look down on a remake that makes quite a lot of QoL improvements (including 60 FPS support when the original struggled at 30 with some jerky framepacing), retains the atmosphere of the original and adds in new features, simply because the original team didn't make it (I believe FromSoft were consulted during its development in some form, though), then that's irrational thinking.

That's not judging the game on its merits, and I'd hope game reviewers could avoid that type of flawed thinking. They're supposed to be above that type of stuff, if they are professionals.

I rated TLOUP2 an 8.5/10 overall but it's completely carried by the combat/gameplay, visuals and audio. If one of these were lacking or subpar, the game would have been closer to a 6 or 7 for me that's how much I disliked all the story elements. I don't see 8.0/10 as a low score though. On my scale, an 8 is a great game. Granted, compared to the original, that would be disappointing but at the same time, I had the same issues with Uncharted 4 after U2 and U3 but yet, I loved Lost Legacy. I think it all comes down to how games hit for certain people.

Death Stranding is definitely very low at 3.5/10 but looking it up on Open Critic, there are lower scores. There's two 3.0/10 scores and some 4's and 5's. I can say just from watching it, it seems so fucking boring, dull, dragging, and just so uninteresting gameplay and combat wise that if you don't get into the story and characters, I can easily see this game getting rated low. I do agree that 3.5/10 scores are usually for the very bad or broken games but think of it this way, let's say you give visuals and audio a 10/10 in each category while giving the story and gameplay a 5/10 in each category. That already makes the game a 7.5/10 at best. Now, lower those two categories even more so and then subtract a point for either audio or visuals because the person isn't into the game at all and yeah, I can see people giving it very low.

Think of it this way, even low scored games in the 60's for example will still get a few 7's and 8's.

Again, just focusing on Death Stranding here, you're right in the thought that some reviewers probably didn't gel with the game due to various features in it or the story, but again, 3.5/10, 4/10 etc. scores really should not be the domain of games that are technically sound and function well mechanically. Those are scores more in line with complete broken mess, trash games.

So if they're giving those types of scores, they need to be convincing as to why they're so low and a lot of that should involve major technical failures or broken game mechanics, physics, etc.

Who the hell is Frosk???

In general, I think it's more that PlayStation fans simply got used to seeing nothing but high scores and praise last generation and simply expect it to continue where as I believe it's going to be a lot more balanced. Also, outside of Naughty Dog and God of War, vast majority of Sony's games are in the high 80's. They don't really hit that 92-95+ mark. Also, I think a lot of PlayStation fans saw Halo Infinite as an 87 and wanted it to bomb and even more so, for HFW to crush it and when that didn't happen, PlayStation fans started looking for this reason and that reason as to why this happened.

Well it's partly the media's fault if they've conditioned some PlayStation fans to have those expectations, since the media were the ones scoring prior games so highly. Or let's even say, it was just a select couple, like TLOU2 and GoW as you mention. Even in that case, gaming media would've been a major part in pushing a certain perception thanks to those games, possibly combined with exaggerations they made WRT XBO last generation helping to fuel that (not to say said exaggerations may've been lies, just that they might've overemphasized certain failings here and there with the brand, or overlooked bright spots the brand had in software releases during the worst years).

You can't necessarily pin the blame of those expectations on some of the PlayStation fans when a ton of games media helped reinforce an environment, rightly or wrongly, that allowed those expectations to exist and thrive. I think when you combine that with MS's actual failings last gen, some of their failings THIS gen (i.e not having any new 1P games at the launch of Series X & S) and the rise in certain content creators and outlets that at times almost feel like advertisements for services like GamePass, and you can't be surprised at people starting to ask some questions if there are sudden biases against a brand that a lot of the same media absolutely loved last gen, especially when in terms of overall strategy and content quality, said brand has either stayed the pace or actually seen improvements.

Skipped your wall of text and gave you a like, just like what we do with terms of service as we just scroll down and click "Agree".

BTW, epic avatar.

You enjoy the simple, supple things. I like that.

 

[peter42O]

TBH I don't mind having to retread old ground when new abilities are unlocked, some of the best games ever made are built on that formula, like Super Metroid and Super Mario World. Those are much smaller games, sure, but if an open world game provides a reliable means of fast travel then that cuts out a lot of the travel from A to B to get back to old stomping grounds, which is something HFW does, tho via a map.

I don't know if you can fast travel(ish) in the game world with overridden Stormbird mounts, haven't gotten that far into the game yet. It would be neat if you could.

No disagreement here. It's just how I play games.

As for fast travelling with a Stormbird, I don't think you can but if it works, chances are, you'll just be standing where you fast traveled to and would have to call the Stormbird again. But I haven't tried it. If I remember, I'll go into my current save file this weekend and test it out.

I guess. But they still need to be a good fit for the reviews they're doing as they're climbing the ranks. It's a balance I suppose.

True.

Forgot the review copies of GT7 didn't have the online store available :/.

Yeah and no one is going back to review that game. lol

It's sad that too many people have that type of irrational thinking behind them. If they're going to look down on a remake that makes quite a lot of QoL improvements (including 60 FPS support when the original struggled at 30 with some jerky framepacing), retains the atmosphere of the original and adds in new features, simply because the original team didn't make it (I believe FromSoft were consulted during its development in some form, though), then that's irrational thinking.

That's not judging the game on its merits, and I'd hope game reviewers could avoid that type of flawed thinking. They're supposed to be above that type of stuff, if they are professionals.

Perhaps. It depends though. For example, I don't want to ever see Chrono Trigger get remade because I know all the original people are gone and while it would still be Square Enix, they're far from being SquareSoft. So while I agree that the game should be reviewed for what it is, it also depends on the person's feelings towards in this case, the original game.

Either way, Demon's Souls 2020 is still a 90+ rated game overall so it having a few "low" scores, doesn't mean much if anything.

Again, just focusing on Death Stranding here, you're right in the thought that some reviewers probably didn't gel with the game due to various features in it or the story, but again, 3.5/10, 4/10 etc. scores really should not be the domain of games that are technically sound and function well mechanically. Those are scores more in line with complete broken mess, trash games.

So if they're giving those types of scores, they need to be convincing as to why they're so low and a lot of that should involve major technical failures or broken game mechanics, physics, etc.

Depends on the review scale for the particular site. For me personally, a 4/10 is a below average game. 5/10 is literally average on my scale. Of course, it may not even have anything to do with technical issues. For example, if a game has music that I don't like or care for, it's going to be the voice acting and sound effects that carry that category for the game. Otherwise, it's getting a 5 or lower. Doesn't even mean that it's bad. Just that I don't like it and if I don't like it, why would I rate it high?

Also, maybe the reviewer was coming off one hell of game. For example, my friend played and completed nearly everything in RDR 2. Second best game of the PS4/XBO generation for him with God of War being #1. Here's the issue - he then played a few months later, Days Gone. And he dropped it after 15 or so hours because after playing RDR 2, his opinion was, what is this trash? Why doesn't do this or that? Granted, im not saying that happened with the reviewer but anything is possible.

Of course, just like Demon's Souls, a certain reviewer's opinion and low score doesn't mean anything. It still won overall game of the year for 2019.

One last note - I would only see an issue with a site or magazine if it's literally the same reviewer giving low scores to Sony games but rates Ubisoft high for example.

Well it's partly the media's fault if they've conditioned some PlayStation fans to have those expectations, since the media were the ones scoring prior games so highly. Or let's even say, it was just a select couple, like TLOU2 and GoW as you mention. Even in that case, gaming media would've been a major part in pushing a certain perception thanks to those games, possibly combined with exaggerations they made WRT XBO last generation helping to fuel that (not to say said exaggerations may've been lies, just that they might've overemphasized certain failings here and there with the brand, or overlooked bright spots the brand had in software releases during the worst years).

You can't necessarily pin the blame of those expectations on some of the PlayStation fans when a ton of games media helped reinforce an environment, rightly or wrongly, that allowed those expectations to exist and thrive. I think when you combine that with MS's actual failings last gen, some of their failings THIS gen (i.e not having any new 1P games at the launch of Series X & S) and the rise in certain content creators and outlets that at times almost feel like advertisements for services like GamePass, and you can't be surprised at people starting to ask some questions if there are sudden biases against a brand that a lot of the same media absolutely loved last gen, especially when in terms of overall strategy and content quality, said brand has either stayed the pace or actually seen improvements.

I agree with this for the most part but fans of any brand should always go into a new generation with their expectations "reset" because when a new generation starts, it rarely repeats exactly the same as the generation before. Not only that but those who reviewed games high last gen may not be into them as much this generation or perhaps they moved on and it's different reviewers. There's a bunch of variables that need to be taken into consideration in my opinion.

P.S. - Isn't Frosk that woman who went off on guys or some shit and then half the viewers turned off the show??? LOL. Or am I thinking of someone else?