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Is There Something Wrong with Video Game Reviews?
unclethursday writes "GamesAreFun.com has a new editorial about what the Editor in Chief feels is wrong with video game reviews, GamesAreFun's included. The editorial touches on the importance of scores to people, the importance of getting the first review out there, the problem with trying to review online parts of a game before the game is released into the wild, reviewing games in a series, the expectations from reviews about overly hyped games, and review length."
There is also the problem of reviewers depending on the money of the companies they review for income...
That is a biggie, IMHO.
home computers were lucky to be 8 bit, and spectrum owners where fighting Commodore owner, it was exactly the same with reviews in magazines.
Being the first to show grainy black and white pictures of the next great classic was big (for it's time) business for computer games magazines.
You can replace spectrum with Mac, and Commodore with PCs, and magazines with websites and realise that nothing changes.
CJC
The biggest problem with these reviews is that the screen snapshots they choose are just too boring. They'll snap a picture of the female heroine blasting some tank or ghoul away instead of bending over or reaching way up over her head to grab something hanging from the ceiling. So then I have to be stuck with trying to imagine what it will look like if I buy the game, manage to put the character in that pose, and pause the action. Maybe there is horrible pixelation that will completely ruin what I'm trying to enjoy! How would I know?
Anyone remember when the EBGames magazine reviewed Ninja Gaiden months before it came out? When the game REALLY was released, they had an apology and a new review of the game in it's finished state, which mostly consisted of a comparison between the finished game and the build they produced their original review from. WTF?
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
Super Play is a swedish reviewing magazine and when the makers of GTA: Vice City to be on the cover for them to let them have a preview copy so they could review it they refused. I did however see it on the cover on other magazines...
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
There is not a proper focus on multiplayer gaming in ANY of the review sites. I *only* play multiplayer games (with a few exceptions).
There are some issues that simply are not touched. In Burnout2, my wife & I could race against each other using 2 forcefeedback steering wheels. In Burnout3, the same 2 wheels don't work -- only 1 is recognized.
But no reviewer out there even mentions using two wheels at once. They only care about the single-player experience.
Also: Online games. There are games that are 4player locally, and you can play online. But can 4 local players play online? No. You can play online only 1 at a time. So my choice is: Play with wife, or a complete stranger. BUT I WANT TO PLAY WITH MY WIFE *AND* A FEW COMPLETE STRANGERS (like we do when we play Quake3 online--I also wish I didn't have to purchase 2 copies of the game to do that.)
Some sites will say "1-16 players". But that is the online count. It doesn't answer the question of "Will my wife be able to join in?"
Magazines don't mention it. Gamefaqs only gives a # of players that MIGHT be online or MIGHT be in-person.
Also, gamefaqs does not have select-by-controller. For instance, i'd like to see all the Eye Toy games, or all the steering-wheel games, or all the headset games in a category. I'd also like "4 player games" to be a category.
Does anyone have ANY suggestions on a site that might give my wife and I the type of reviews *WE* want???????
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I think one of the biggest problem with reviews (if we ignore the corruption) is that we all enjoy different types of games. If a reviewer is a big RTS fan, he may not understand what's new and speical about a game like HL2. I think the best thing a person can do if they want to read reviews is to find a reviewer that has a similar taste in games. That way you stand a better chance of enjoying a game based on the review. Personally, I don't read reviews (unless you can count Penny Arcade). I will wait for a game to be released awhile, watch public reaction, and if it seems like a game I would be interested in, get if the opinion isn't too negative. You can usually tell the bad ones. No matter how good a game is though, there will always be some l33t game connoisseur who will trash the game for some reason, so take that with a grain of salt. Also, some game companies just make good games. If you like something that they made before, it doesn't hurt to try out some of their other titles.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
more hardware information. For example tell me what my video card can reach in frames per second for a said resolution. Yes I know there are too many combinations to know all video cards but I'd like to have an idea.
- First impressions - After an hour or two with the game, putting down just what things are like early on, and useful for comparison when I'm finished with a game.
- Updated impressions - After several days with a game, revising anything from the first impressions, and starting to really get into the things that are working and the things that aren't.
- Review/Final impressions - If I finish a game, I write a review that summarizes all previous writings and gives a plain English summary of my opinion. No score is assigned, since that seems pointless to me.
To really see how I feel about a game, you'll generally want to read all the parts, and I've tried to keep them as brief as I can. I try not a give laundry lists of features, but instead focus on the experience of playing, story, and quality of the gameplay (e.g. is it fun driving game, does this particular fps work with a console controller, is that puzzle game addictive, etc.) I will also knock a game for crappy production values, load times, and other annoyances that we shouldn't have to deal with anymore.On the other hand, if I decide a game's not worth finishing, I just put up some final impressions and a summary of why the game wasn't worth my time to finish.
The real down side is that I often won't finish writing about a game until several weeks after it's been released, if not months later. They're not always timely, that's for sure.
If a real publication did something like this, I'd be impressed and more likely to read it regularly.
Here's an example with Ace Combat 04: First impressions, Updated impressions, and Final review. The game is old (it was an early PS2 title), the total process took from 10 March to 6 May 2004.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Is this much different than what happens with any media? Look at news corporations...I will assume that at one time they actually understood their job to be informing the public, being a trusted figure, etc. Now look at Rather; rushing to break a story that wasn't properly vetted in order to be the first, and only, person out there with "the scoop".
Sports is the same...it used to be to entertain people and compete (what were salaries in the 20's and 30's?), now it's about how young you can get recruited by a team and how many ridiculous numbers of zero's are attached to your paycheck.
The only reviews that I'll trust come from amateurs...ie, other gamers. Just like most of the sports I enjoy are the amateurs, like college athletes. While they may have agendas, a whole lot of them play just for the fun of it, like me.
--trb
There is nothing mind boggling or new that he's stating here. In fact, most of what he's saying comes across far more as a whiner or an english prof. than an actual analysis of game reviewing.
/end rant
I've found multiple instances where it seems he's either contradicting himself or carrying on some strange arguement inside his own head and translating the results onto paper. He also makes some GRAND assumptions that gamers rely off of reviews to buy games even though they already know about the game itself. Personally, I don't rely on a goddamn thing other than my own opinion for the basis of my like/dislike of a game. The only reason these days to read a review is to find out more about specific features not found on the side of the box or areas of the game that play poorly or I dislike, NOT that the reviewer likes or dislikes...ME.
He also mentions that scores are a bad idea, but then goes back and says (in no certain terms) that we should all adopt a single system of rating, which is all fine and dandy but unfortunately, not realistic in the slightest, since some people want to split their games up like slices of pie (5 pieces) and others like pizza (10+ slices). Along with this he also mentions that for some reason, people seem to be CONFUSED about these different ratings (or at least he is). I could CARE LESS what numbering system people use, personally, I can count from 1 to 5 or 1 to 100 and I also know that 5 is a greater number than 1 and 100 is a greater number than 1. This to me, means that a higher score is better, despite minor differences, this is pretty clear, even between such devious numbers as 89 and 98 which seems to perplex him.
Despite all the stuff he's written, I believe he doesn't really take the gamer perspective into view at all. Which is that gamers KNOW what they like, reviews don't need to be scrutinized to the point of obscruity, because they may help or hinder, but only because they show DEFINITE SIGNS of what people ALREADY WANT. Let me show you an example...
World of Warcraft:
WoW did well, that's a no contest. Reviews were also good for WoW. Did this corelate?
WoW did not introduce anything extremely new or groundbreaking but followed the formulas of other RPGs and did everything RIGHT. Reviewers stated this, and that is pretty much all people need. If a reviewer stated horribly bad things about WoW, they'd probably be stating OPINION rather than fact, which is pretty much all reviewer readers look for. Therefore, if the viewer read a bad review, they could usually tell that the reviewer was using opinion and not fact.
In the end, reviews are simply not needed to undergo the reformat and scrutiny he desires because people simply DONT CARE how they're formated, as long as they get the facts across in a clear concise fashion. Possibly the only thing I would agree with, is that reviewers need to figure out a way to not rely on money from companies who make the same games they review, it obviously creates a flawed view on things.
We just ran an editoral on that ourselves over at . The writer argues game reviews should be more consumer-centric.
Warning I did not RTFA.. I might later but honestly I stopped giving a crap about reviews years ago, same with movie reviews.
Games like movies are a matter of personal choice. God some of the movies and games I have loved the most have been slammed by reviews and won awards for being among the "worse".
Every reviewer will be biased based on their own preferences, tack on some nostalgia related to the old games they loved then given a rating based on what they like - not what I like. Worse than that is the problem (and I do believe it to be a problem) of reviewers catering to game companies to get favors like early review copies, and various free crap.
I rent games, read the manuals online and look at screenshots and make my own opinions.
I can't tell you how many times it's happened. I read a dozen reviews online to hear that a game is great (baldur's gate for mac was a classic example), so I buy said game, and WHAM severe bug. Every time you try to rest (in certain circumstances, which occur about half the time) the game just crashes completely. This now fundamentally changes the nature of the game. Rather than trying to fight bad guys, your primary mission is to find a way to rest without crashing the game, the actual plot of the game becomes secondary to working around the bugs in the game.
Once the game has been out for a little while, this is all over the bulletin boards, nearly everybody (or maybe actually everybody) has this bug, so..... How did the reviewer not know? Did he even play the game? Did he think that a single bug that crashed the game 5 times an hour was insignificant? What exactly is going on here?
For reviewers, first and foremost, actual obvious bugs should be the first thing to look for. If you play the game for a whole day and it ever crashes, that should go in the very first sentence of the review. In addition, include a full list of the bugs you saw, and any game with more than a few obscure bugs (or god forbid a single crasher or severe bug) should get the thumbs down automatically.
I can't stand the reviewers ignoring obvious deficiencies and claiming "this game played like a dream......" when it is a scientific fact that they couldn't have played more than 10 minutes without having a complete crash.
What I'd like to see more of is review sites where a review is written by multiple reviewers, each getting their own say. This way, the readers can decide for themselves which reviewer's preferences most closely match their own.
I used to get all my game reviews from GamesDomain back when they were a non-commercial site, and most of the reviews were submitted by site visitors instead of staff. Heck, I even submitted a few of my own. Nowadays, I don't know of any really good review sites like that, so I generally ignore them and just exchange recommendations with friends that play games.
That's why I skip most of 'em. With rare exceptions, I don't buy games on release day, and wait for a demo. If the demo sucks, the game will usually suck as well. Given time/money constraints, I only want to play what I view as the 'best of the best'.
Which leads into one of the reviewer's complaints: numerical scores. These are an utter waste of time and energy. How can one number (or even three or four) possibly capture a game. I've got two speakers, so who cares about the audio portion? I like the same old shit (mostly) so who cares about 'originality'?
The worst thing about game reviews is something he buries pretty deeply: not slagging companies for unpatched trash. How many of us have read a review that says "I'm sure these issues will be fixed by the forthcoming patch". If we're lucky, the patch shows up quickly. But given the short lifespan of a game company (or the disregard for the customer by the survivors), why should we expect a patch? Much like the movie industry, the games industry seems most interested in the first week(s) of a title's release. If it has legs, fine, if not, here comes Redneck Muthatruckers 17.
Read lots of reviews. Find reviewers who generally agree with you on some titles in your library. Rate those reviews slightly higher than others. Read the support forums for a week or a month, or whatever. Wait for a demo and play it. Then, and only then, do you make a purchase.
If you aren't doing this, you've got enough money that I really don't care about your bitching because you bought a game that sucked, particularly if you bought it within a week of release. I learned my lesson with Black and White: don't trust game reviews.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
re: Scoring
I don't mind seeing scores, so much, as long as I have an inkling as to how they were arrived at. Admittedly, when you see a score (like in PCGamer, for example) you have to take it with a grain or two of salt to begin with. Still, if a 100 point score could be proken down into four categories that offer 25-point rages, that might be helpful. In such a case, having a game score in the 90s would be pretty rare, but if all of the objective criteria added up to that, then it would at least be a bona-fide 90-ish score.
re: Hype/Buzz
To some degree, having hype and buzz in a review can't be avoided, but it can be moderated. Consider a "panel" approach. After the review, you could offer a pithy paragraph from each of maybe 6 other people at the mag/site who also played the game. The hype could be neatly confined to the review and the buzz could be neatly confined to the impressions related by the panel. Maybe the whole review should be made by a panel of players, just to create a little bit of objectivity.
My experience, FWIW
In my LAN gaming group, we always take time to grab any demo we think might be interesting and show it off to the other members. Some in our group are more activist about demoing and sharing their results, while others (like me) tend to wait until there's some consensus in the group as to what looks like a good title to actually go out and buy. By the time I go out and buy something, then, I tend to be satisfied that not only will I play it, but I'll enjoy playing it with the rest of the group.
An earlier post on this topic made the point that there's not much said about the multiplayer aspects of games in moost reviews. I'd agree. If a game has a multiplayer capability, I'd like some description of it. I bought Call of Duty knowing that I'd enjoy the single player part, but also because I thought that the multiplayer game would have some kind of Co-op mode we could enjoy when our group meets... I was disappointed because I was led to believe that the AI was good enough to support a co-op mode. I ended up trying to get Red Orchestra to feed that fix.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Does anybody remember this one? THis is what made me lose faith in all video game magazines. I haven't bought one since. Gamepro swore up and down that the Genesis version of SFII was better than its SNES counterpart in almost every way. It simply wasn't true. I owned both systems. I bought the SNES version when it first came out. I decided to rent the Genesis version since I hear it was so cool. I'm really glad I only rented it. It was pretty bad stacked up to the SNES version. Not only that, but it seems like the things Gamepro touted about the Genesis version were the worst parts (ex. sound, which was downright pathetic compared to its counterpart). I'm sure there have been earlier examples of misleading reviews but this is the one that made me put down the magazines.
There are so many factors that go into how good or bad a review of a game is that there is no way to know if you are getting useful information unless you do some homework. Having worked as a professional game reviewer, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this matter, and discussing it with fellow editors, game developers, and friends. The most important thing you can do is find a source you can trust, be it a web site or magazine, or even an individual editor. Someone brought up the point that some gamers prefer certain genres of games to others, and of course this is going to be reflected in a review. Some organizations have specialized reviewers that only review one or a couple different types of games, I would not trust someone if they seem to always hold most RTS games in high regard but never seem to like many FPS games. Another problem is how committed the reviewer is to gaming. Some reviewers are hardcore gamers, others are casual gamers or have tastes that would cater to that segment. Again, find a source that suits your preferences. I honestly don't think corruption in the form of publisher bribes is as widespread as some people are making it out to be. Sure, publishers will spend a great deal of money to make editors happy, but what happens to your credibility when you give a shitty game a good review? I would say that the vast majority of professional editors and game publications are more concerned with this than getting a cool T-Shirt and mouse pad from a game publisher, I know there must be some swaying of scores due to publisher gifts, but I don't think it is as big a factor as the fact that there are a lot of shitty writers out there who really don't understand how to write an honestly good review.
You're talking about Tommy T from Electric Playground. It really pisses me off when he reviews a game with a really low score and then openly admits on the show that he hates that genre of game. WTF? If you don't like a particular genre, you shouldn't be reviewing it.
What gets me is that most game reviews read more like an infomercial than an actual review. There are usually too many references to how much ass something kicks or how completely cool some stupid eye-candy effect is compared to some other game's stupid eye-candy effect.
Hype and anticipation should have no part in a game review. It doesn't matter if the game has been anticipated for years or it is an unknown that just came to market, it should be reviewed equally.
It seems that there are no real metrics for doing a game review that can be accepted. After all, shouldn't the results be reproducable? How do you review things like playability or replayability? What if the game doesn't deliver everything that was promised at release time? What if the game won't run on half of the gaming hardware out there? What if a game doesn't run quite as fast as a competitor on the same hardware but is much more creative and inventive?
I wrote for a (minor) game news and reviews web site for a while. My experience in gaming leads me to only like games that surprise me by doing something new or doing the same thing better than I've ever seen it done. As such, I wasn't too impressed by most of the games I got to review. The editor at the website admonished me a few times to try and highlight the positive features of a game over any negatives, and really not to mention bugs because they could be as much due to my configuration as to the game software.
I think his problem was that he was basically in publishers' pockets. Without advance materials and interviews with developers (etc), some websites have nothing. Unenthusiastic reviews don't endear you to publishers.
We once ran a set of experiments where we compared subjective taste tests against the physical properties of apples. At first, the tester were told to jot down any number of single words like "crisp" or "sour", as they ate the apple. We started to see some interesting clustering around some of the words.
Well, some people don't like qualitative data, so they switch the experiment to a score. Now testers were told to give the "sourness" a numerical value.
All of a sudden, we had white noise. Data became highly correllated with previous apples, and the clustering disappeared. Why? No standards. People could only measure one apple relative to another.
Similarly, when you're playing a game, you don't have any basis for thinking "Whoah, dude, this is gameplay 4 out of 5!" Except in relation to some previous 3 out of 5 game, itself arbitrarily scored that just happened to be in your mind when you were fabricating the new scores out of pure nothingness.
Play Command HQ online
I want to see a writer who covers games as art, and examines connections between one game and another, or the influence of a developer or studio on games in general. That is, criticism of games as art rather than commercial products. I understand that most people use a review as a buying guide because they only seek entertainment from games.
I would think that some of us longtime gamers would appreciate game critics who reviewed on the basis of more than (say) 5 years gaming. A lot of reviewers might have more than 5 years, but they certainly don't use it. Take a look at any recent "Top x Games of All Time" list to see what kind of time period is getting their attention. To me, a great game that comes first is better than a newer game that does the exact same thing with better graphics. That makes Prince of Persia (the very first one) better than a lot of modern games, but you won't see reviewers go back that far.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
I don't purchase games based on the major website reviews or reviews from any magzine publications. I use www.gamefaqs.com. Nearly every game on that site has a review section where members submit reviews.
A week or two after a game's release, I can get a pretty good distribution of reviews on a 10-point scale. If 90% of the reviewers give the game an 8, 9, or 10, I can usually assume the game is quality.
However, such high scores can be a result of fanboy-ism...which is why I don't read more than two 10/10 reviews. I usually read, a 9/10, a few 7/10 or 8/10 and a few If I deem a game worthy of my consideration, I'll visit sources to obtain a free trial and I'll buy the game if it's good.
We recently got a PS2 as a gift.
When I look for a game review, I am trying to figure out:
- Will it appeal to me (male, 30s, non-stellar reaction speed & manual dexterity)?
- Will it appeal to my wife (30s, prefers non-violent games)?
- Will it appeal to my daughter (7, no gaming experience)?
- Can my son (3.5) participate, or at least watch?
- Can we play together (in any combination)?
- Does the game becomes repetetive (boring) or too-hard (frustrating) as it progresses?
- Will the game still be interesting after it is played N times?
- Etc.
Are there any game review sites that will provide this information?
My problem is the length of the cycle. Seems each stage of game development, from conception, coding, beta and final builds, warrants pages and pages of ink.
I don't understand the reasoning for this except that games magazines would be mighty thin if all they did was print reviews. Instead, how about covering actual industry news? Some site/mag could have built a nice rep by reporting on EA's working conditions, which have been an open secret since forever. Of course, that's not likely to happen for obvious reasons and those sites/mags will continue to substitute access for news. Talk about a vicious cycle but game mags/sites have only themselves to blame for getting too touchy-feely with companies to begin with.
In movies, I check out Roger Ebert, because he knows when a movie lacks artistic merit, but can enjoy it for the action or horror! However, that's most like me!
One of the things EGM does, is they highlight their reviewers and say their favorite games that month. For example, if Sarah J. (fake name!) is playing the hell out of Halo 2 and Unreal 2, you can bet her review of another FPS is going to be according to her standards. If you like the same games the reviewer likes, you're more in a position to trust that reviewer.
However, if someone likes Halo 2, Super Puzzle Fighter, and Def Jam Vendatta, you're not sure whether they just love all video games to the point of all good reviews.
Scores do stink. I'm still trying to figure out how games achieve all 10's. There is always a drawback to every great game.
If you know of any game companies that give money for positive reviews, lemme know, cus' I'm sure not getting any of that cut.
Magazines and online sites are driven by ads, and that's no surprise. What's more important to game companies is circulation numbers and exposure. Doesn't really matter if a game gets a "bad" review, if millions read that medium then it gives them that much more of an opportunity for companies to get exposure for their games.
Had Halo 2 been given a bad review, would it slow down sales? Probably not by much, if at all. Nor did bad reviews hinder the success of Cabela's Deer Hunter, Barbie Fashion Designer, or Zoo Tycoon. System Shock justifiably had great reviews, and did really poorly.
With ever-blossoming budgets that rival the movie industry, it's all in the packaging--timely press releases, etc. It's the same reasons that make mediocre movies like Van Helsing make millions. Ebert and Roper, Gamespot, Gamepro etc. isn't the impetus for success.
Scores bad? Reviews without scores aren't worth reading. I mean, how many people seriously read through the five (or eight pages with Halo 2) of all the blabbering with these online reviews? Many times I'll skip all the frivolous jabber of bump maps and just look at the score. Sometimes despite the issues there's some quality of the game that words can't describe that makes it a great game. And it's a concise way to assess what the reviewer thinks of the game.
Maybe a new editorial should spurt up of "What's wrong with reviews of video game reviews."
If a review really wants to be good, the score shouldn't be matched up against, anything alse, including graphics, sound, previous games, etc. The most important factor in any game is the amount of FUN that you have playing it. I've been reading MaximumPC since just after the magazine started publishing, and so far they're the only ones who get that, and even then they don't get it totally. A game only gets their "Kick Ass" award if it's amazingly fun. No amount of new features or eye candy or sound immersion can replace that. They even had the nerve to give DOOM 3 a bad score (iirc, it was an 8/10) because they felt it got too boring and repetitive during the end. Alas, they don't totally get it, and sometimes will dock points from a fun game because something technical is wrong with it (why should a game like Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield lose points for still being a realistic counterterrorist game?), but as far as I know, it's a good example for reviews. Reviewers should also give a quick summary of the things that made a game fun or not fun at the end of the review, along with the score. A quick summary like that should be standard, and gives out so much more information and goes much deeper than just a score can. That way, if you don't like the things that make a game fun, you know not to buy the game. PS: My review, based on FUN, of HL2 would only be about a 7, because the ending ruined it for me, and after a while the Ravenholm level annoyed me.
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."
Have you actually looked at the explanation of GI's review section? They specifically state that 7 is their "average" score, on a scale from 1 to 10. Whether or not this is sensible is debatable, but the fact that that is the way they do it doesn't change.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
I've found game reviews are a great help. What i do is visit somewhere like GameRankings.com and read the lowest-rated reviews, and take careful note of the negative points that are raised.
It might just be me, but "It's nothing new, but the implementation is ok and kind of fun, i guess" is not 90+% material.
Rottentomatoes' way of doing reviews is far superior to reading individual reviews. Their video game composite reviews are pretty good. All it needs now is a music review section.
Game reviews are funny things. There are things you can point out that will always make a game bad, but not things you can point at that will make a game universally good.
I find the only thing to do is find a reviewer who's reviews of past games fall in line with your views of said games.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
As an avid gamers since my fingers were big enough to mash the Vic 20 keys, I started to get really sick of the rating systems people use. Game themes and engines are spread across such a wide audience that one man's trash may be another's gold. I'd say reading about someone's experience in the game is quite a treat, especially if they really got into it and found things they loved about the game, beyond the usual faults like no story, glitches etc... And it can give you an insight into the possibilities about the game beyond the marketing. I.e. trapping people in doorless windowed rooms in the original sims, try it sometime. I guess it boils down to an example like: Starship Troopers was given bad reviews by local papers, but it still had me singing woohoo for the weeks until it was released simply because I have a hard-on for drop-ships. Everyone's interest in games is as unique as their ars or opinion. At http://www.dontgethurt.ca/ we took a more personal approach to reviewing games and are getting wonderful response to our editorial without rating systems or glitch reports. Screenshots can tell stories as well.
I tend to like teh reviews at gamespy, they seem to be fairly unbiased, and truthfull outside of marketing hype. At least in teh past, they got bought by IGN and the reviews are starting to look more like IGN hype drivel. Gamespy as far as I know was the only reviewer that said wait Halo is great but here are the problems. While everyone else was trying to clean the sticky stuff off of thier hands, while gushing that it was the best game ever. Gamespy also waits at least a week to review MMORPG's to give a more fair unbaised look at the game. Very rarely do I disagree with them. Sure sometimes I question a reviewer who complains about the online component being missing (HL2 reviews anyone) but just read with a critical eye... just my opinion...
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
> I WANT TO PLAY WITH MY WIFE *AND* A FEW COMPLETE
... you're talking about video games, right? With a computer?
> STRANGERS
Uh
My wife and I play plenty of games on our Macs and our Playstation 2, but I have to admit, reading your post made me feel a little dirty
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.