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Trends of launch game review scores across generations
It can be really interesting to look through a bunch of well-organized data even (especially) if there are no easy conclusions to be drawn from it. Gamasutra's gathering of historical Metacritic/Gamerankings review data for home console launch games is just such a collection of interesting, difficult to interpret numbers.Aggregated looks at review scores for the launches of systems from the PlayStation to the Wii U show that the PS3, Wii, and Wii U's launch games had the widest spread of review scores – a phenomenon we might attribute to the larger number of reviewing press outlets that were present for those launches.The average review score was highest for GameCube, and lowest for PlayStation. And surprisingly, the Wii U has almost as many US launch games as the most populated platform, the PS2. That's at least one auspicious statistic for the Wii U's launch lineup, even if many of the games in it are ports.
James Ohlen hits back against critics, defends SWTOR's innovation
Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Director James Ohlen isn't surprised that the game's received the flak it has from a segment of reviews and fans. In a candid interview with Eurogamer, Ohlen addresses both the issues of being a "big target" for critics and the claims that SWTOR's lacking innovation. For the most part, players and critics have praised the game, Ohlen shares, and BioWare is seeing an "exceptionally high" desire among its playerbase for continued subscriptions. But was BioWare prepared for the backlash as well? Ohlen says it was: "We knew that there was going to be people who wanted us to fail. But that's just the nature of the game. If you're going to build a huge game and try to go out to a lot of people, you're going to have people who just react poorly." He does push back hard against claims that SWTOR failed on the innovation front, stating, "We wanted to take the lessons that have been developed in that genre over years and years and years and basically refine them, much like other companies do with other genres. So, I don't know, it's just the way it is, but I don't see us as not being innovative. We're actually a lot more innovative within the MMO space than comparable games in other spaces like the first-person genre, the action genre -- games like that."
PAX Poll: Raise your hand if you like review scores
Okay, so maybe a few hands actually went up when Gaming Nexus Editor-in-Chief Charles Husemann asked attendees of a PAX East panel today to raise their hands if they liked review scores -- but no more than 10 hands. And then, when Husemann asked for a show of hands from those who don't like scores, the room practically exploded in armpit B.O. Interestingly, Husemann observed, a PAX Prime audience last September showed the opposite responses to the same questions. (We should note that Huesmann's polling at PAX East today immediately followed strong remarks from one of the panelists of PR representatives, who basically hates review scores, perhaps influencing the votes of the audience -- "Puppet Masters," indeed, as the panel was titled.) %Poll-43519%
The Last Remnant receives 'platinum' score from Famitsu
If the Unreal-powered RPG sits as well with gamers as it did with reviewers at Japan's Famitsu, The Last Remnant will be the first of more, er, remnants to come. According to a post on NeoGAF, the magazine's four-person Cross Review team lauded Square Enix's Western-focused title, scoring it 10/10/9/9 (38/40) – high enough to earn its Platinum Award.For comparison, the mag scored Infinite Undiscovery 9/8/8/6 (31/40) – it averaged a 68/100 metascore here in the States. Of course, Famitsu has been known to exhibit some ... questionable taste in the past. Take, for example, its 9/8/9/8 (34/40) score for Ubisoft's Haze.
Would You Rather ... Reviews Edition
In our continuing effort to bring you fresh and interesting content, X3F presents Would You Rather ... a weekly feature that asks you the hard questions. The point? If you had to choose one or the other, which would you go for?This week in Would You Rather we tackle the subject of game reviews. It isn't often that we review games here at X3F and when we do, we don't incorporate a number score at the end of it. All too often people focus on the number a game is given rather than the text review itself, and in the most recent case of Metal Gear Solid 4 getting an 8/10 from Edge Magazine [via Joystiq] ordinarily the number overshadows everything.So, while kicking around the X3F office we wondered what you thought. If you could only have one or the other, which would you prefer. A review that was detailed and in depth without a final score at the end or a review that focused on the number with very few bullet points as to why a game received the score it did. Basically, we're trying to figure out if the text even matters to you or if you just check reviews for the final grade. Feel free to share the reasons for your vote in the comments. We'll share the results of the poll during the next edition of Would You Rather ... which hits X3F every Wednesday.Last weeks WUR results can be find after the jump ... come in and check it out for free!
