More concerning than Bethesda’s decision to withhold early review codes from certain outlets is how heavily some sites are relying on the game to drive their business.

  • slaytswiftfan@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    big published reviews don’t mean anything to me and I’m surprised they do to most people. everything is an 8-10 out of 10. how do people not find an issue with that

    • Nilz@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      The only conclusion to make is that the video game industry has matured to a point where only masterpieces are released. Bad games just don’t exist anymore.

      Right??

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 year ago

      Even gollum, by far the buggiest and most boring AAA game to come out in a few years was given a 64% by pc gamer. At least gamespot was honest and gave them a 2/10

    • Mkengine@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Exactly, it feels like 50/100 is the baseline and 75/100 is mediocre. 75/100 tells me I have to be a fan of the genre to enjoy it. This rating inflation really shows how dependent reviewers are. This is one of the reasons I like organisations like Stiftung Warentest instead of depending on some biased product comparison blogs.

      • Stormyfemme@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        You may notice that this parallels the american school grading system to a T. Most major gaming review sites and such are done by americans that spent anywhere between 4-10+ years with that being the what grading/reviewing/scoring was done in almost every interaction they ever had past childhood, there’s no wonder it’s the standard here even if it’s changed the scoring paradigm.

        • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Exactly this. 50/100 looks like an F, because that’s what it would be on a school paper. Often we’d even be given points out of a hundred just like that. So giving a 50 to a middling/okay game feels really harsh, vs 70 (aka a C) or 80 (B).

      • sandriver@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Find an independent critic you respect and listen to the tenor of why they say a game is good. Or ignore critics and develop your own taste and sense of which studios, directors, artists, composers, or otherwise will compel you to buy a game.

      • slaytswiftfan@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        i use word of mouth mostly but its not that all critics are bad, just what seems like most, but if you find that you consistently align with a critics opinion I’d trust them