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[King Zultan]

Seems like most of the reviews for big budget stuff are bullshit and lies now days.

[Chiefwaffles]

Or it's just the result of hyped people being pressured by their audience to publish hype reviews, with some implicit pressure from publishers (less "I'll give you $1,000 to give our game a 9/10" and more "hey here's a review key for our new game, and we're shipping a cool collector's edition to you! Bet that'll make some good content, it'd be a shame if we stopped doing it for future game releases for some reason!").
It's all about nuance. Doesn't have to be some evil men in business suits in a dark back room cackling as they exchange briefcases filled with $100 bills.

Importantly, though, nowadays? It's literally always been like this. Always. Find sources you trust (ideally not sources *identical* to your tastes -- going out of your comfort zone is always a good idea) to give good recommendations, whether these sources are your friends or some people on a social media platform or some influencer or whatever. As long as you enjoy the games they recommend, you're golden.

[JWNoctis]

And then there's of course the obvious xkcd #606 approach, tuned down a bit. You don't have to play the latest and the alleged greatest games. Wait for a patch cycle or two, or the first major mod suiting your playstyle, or the first expansions, or the GotY-edition, or the DRM-free release, or whatever. Wait for the general opinion to settle, stay conscious that general opinion may not translate well to personal experience at all, and media hype cycle becomes nothing more than something interestingly nonsensical to observe - There are already more great games out there than anyone would care to finish in a lifetime, or several. Always try to find balanced reviews, which should be available for anything not too niche and not too new.

Unless there's street cred at risk. Sometimes peer pressure does have a point. _{Seems like there really is a xkcd for everything.}

[Folly]

Importantly, though, nowadays? It's literally always been like this. Always.

Showing my age here, but I still remember when internet product reviews were a novel concept. Big businesses did not take them seriously, and thus did not pay for positive reviews. So reviewers had no reason to be anything but honest.

At first it was just the big name publications who sold out. For a while, you could still trust personal reviews from regular people. But the corporations caught on, and started buying up their own products with dummy accounts just so that they could leave themselves good reviews, knowing that the increased profits would outweigh the costs of their endeavor.

So yeah, the good old days are long behind us now.

[Kagus]

I think the last time I played a game on release was Magicka 2, which was also the first (and last) time I pre-ordered something.

I tend to either play games years after their release, or... Before they release. And then ignore the finished version.


This is not a conscious decision, mind, I'm just scattered all to hell and forget things easily.

[Robsoie]

That's mostly why i like to read user reviews nowadays, there are tons of places in which people post those things, i found that the steam page of a game has a nice way to sort negative and positive user reviews too, helping to quickly check if a game may be up to your taste or not.

Certainly there are more "fuck that" and "it's shit" type of wording to explain a specific feature or a gameplay mechanic but i found that in the majority of cases those reviews are honestly what the user thought of the game he/she played.

Of course there are always trolls that didn't even played a game and will troll/bomb review in many possible ways, but that's the internet and after some years you start to recognize those more easily

But in the past i wasn't looking for reviews but i usually played a demo of a game to judge if it was something i would like or not, it's a pity there's nearly no company that makes demo of their game anymore, or at least demos that are not locked to a specific store i don't use.

[Aoi]

I remember that happened with Penny Arcade like... 18 years ago? They accepted a commission to do a comic and review in exchange for payment and whatever shiny bonuses were available, did the comic, and the review was a lengthy "This is a sponsored post, and wow does this game suck, and we wish we weren't obligated to play it."

Needless to say, the dev/publisher/advertiser was NOT happy, and threatened to cut them off from any further interaction unless they recanted. They refused, and pointed out that what made them a valuable outlet to advertise on was their audience believed they wouldn't be bought. Advertiser accepted the argument and continued to do business with them, at least for a few years after.

[nenjin]

Bought The Unliving last night.

It's been on my wishlist for what feels like a year+. It had a demo out that whole time that I didn't play.

It was supposed to release on Halloween. But they pushed the release back a week because of a feature they wanted to get right.

Well, it released. In Early Access.

And all the complaints I read about the demo, bad minion behavior, bugs, bad game design ideas....are all unchanged in the EA version.

And there's bugs in the input mappings. Like, not even correctly displaying what the thing you're binding for even is, it's just a broken reference.

I put about 4 minutes into it before friends wanted to play other things but.....tempted to just refund it now. Everything about this game says it's half baked, and it's kind of shameful how the EA product is essentially no different than the demo they've had up for months and months.

The thing that originally drew me to the game was the delightful pixel art, but as a game it's pretty shit. It's supposed to be about overwhelming the living with a horde of the undead, but your horde politely stands in line and waits for their turn to attack. So if you have 50 skeletons attacking 5 militia, only about 7 of your guys actually attack while the rest just pack in behind them and stand there, eating damage from archers and what not.

Pretty disappointed and I haven't even actually played it yet. Just debating if I eat the $16 and wait for it be good some day or refund it and wait.

[AlStar]

Pretty disappointed and I haven't even actually played it yet. Just debating if I eat the $16 and wait for it be good some day or refund it and wait.

If you're still under 2 hours, I'd definitely refund and wait-and-see. If it's as bad as you've said, I'd even consider leaving a negative review while you're at it (just copy-paste what you've got here).

You shouldn't give developers money for releasing a broken game, even on Early Access.

[nenjin]

I don't think it qualifies as broken. Just.....bad. People have been commenting for months that minions don't feel good, the player character gets sniped constantly because the AI knows you're the only thing that matters. Although people are also saying the unlocks (it's a roguelite) don't seem to do anything and don't actually enhance your minions, just the necromancer.....

It's like, I don't want to kick a dev while they're down or just legitimately doing their best. I don't think it's a scam. I just wonder if, pixel art aside, their reach extends their grasp and it will never actually be what it ostensibly should be.

[Iduno]

Yeah those AAA/high budget games always get a minimum of 9/10 whatever they are, maybe a part of the high budget is sent to the review websites

Yeah, it's pretty well-known that any reviewer (or company) who gives a low score never gets to review anything again, because companies don't want low scores.

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah, it's pretty well-known that any reviewer (or company) who gives a low score never gets to review anything again, because companies don't want low scores.

Oh. So that's why zero punctuation always gives such glowing reviews.

[nenjin]

Well he may not have a direct working relationship with all the games he shits on. If you want to get that sweet, sweet pre-release exposure for your outlet then you cultivate a working relationship with devs and publishers and have to keep saying what they can live with if you want that access.

If you're just going to review it after it came out, you don't have to play that game. Yahtzee succeeds because of his personality, not because of a lot of insider access.

Speaking of things seen from the inside, and since there's no DOOM Eternal thread the forum search can pull up.....

https://twitter.com/Mick_Gordon/status/1590343092598878210?s=20&t=yNMRLD2E9cgvvAjAq0TJAA

Massive bombshell dropped today by the composer. About 10 months ago or w/e the producer of Eternal did an open letter on Reddit that trashed the composer and blamed him for the shoddy quality of the OST. Composer got the sadly usual toxic fan treatment: DDoSing, doxxing, death threats.

Well the composer has finally responded after protracted negotiations with Id and Zennimax, and god DAMN it is ugly. It's super long but also a very compelling read. You hear about ruthless game executives and producers but to see how they treated this guy and how he kept working in good faith and got even more betrayed.....it's fucking unreal.

[nenjin]

Pretty disappointed and I haven't even actually played it yet. Just debating if I eat the $16 and wait for it be good some day or refund it and wait.

If you're still under 2 hours, I'd definitely refund and wait-and-see. If it's as bad as you've said, I'd even consider leaving a negative review while you're at it (just copy-paste what you've got here).

You shouldn't give developers money for releasing a broken game, even on Early Access.

NGL, I stuck it out and I don't have regrets.

It's easy to peg a game to what you want it to be instead of what it actually is.

It took me a few runs and _a lot_ of puzzling over the UI but after a bit it started to click.

The game is basically Hades meets Okhlos. Or perhaps Overlord but that's a little tenuous. I mostly say Okhlos (which I think was a browser game originally about running a mob of greeks around smashing shit up, that went on to a PC release) because that's how your undead feel. Just a big mass that slides around in a big slippery blob until they hit combat, at which point they kind of stop listening to you. It's also like Hades in that it's got the hub, and npcs, and the new things to say and upgrade every time you come back from a run, and the story unfolds through these one-off interactions every time you come back. It's doing the Hades gag of 4th wall-breaking about playing a roguelike and isn't taking an overly serious tone often times.

But it's also like Hades in that it's lookin to put the hurt on you during battle. And there's a lot to juggle. You gotta be paying attention to how your horde is doing, and maybe sacrificing a specific undead to do a useful thing. While also making the most of your spells. While also using your actual basic attack. While also paying attention to where you're standing, what's coming at you and what's coming up behind you. You think it's kind of a chillaxed game about standing back and letting your minions do all the work, but you have to put in real time and attention to put them where you need them, contribute and stay alive.

It took me a while to see what they were going for but I think I understand a lot of the decisions in the game a lot better now.

The other thing major thing that stuck out to me is that maybe it's a little obtuse about its upgrade and game mechanics. There's some styling things that make it hard to understand what a thing does, or applies to, or takes effect, and upgrades for various things about your Necromancer are scattered about in an overly large hub area, making things feel kind of disconnected. But eventually you realize that most of this is unlocking stuff that you can find during your run, and once you start putting all the pieces together.....

I kinda like it? I'm pretty sure? I got into the flow although maybe that's the just the compulsion of a roguelike. But I went from feeling lost and ineffective to getting it and starting to progress. Highlight was hitting what I think is the end of the first level and raising a colossal skeletal upper torso to smash through a fortress in my way. The game further surprised me when it turned into a "protect the colossal skeletal upper torso from masses of guys and traps and siege equipment while it claws its way through." The game goes from you can mostly set your own pace to now you need to really move and kill and keep up a pace or lose. You're also always kind of being flogged to move forward because your undead are all slowly decaying. Which means you need to get the forward momentum going. And once you've got it going, the game starts to feel legitimately fun.

There's definitely still jank. But a lot of things that I was ready to go "this shit is broke!" was actually me not understanding what it actually does. Once I cottoned on how several things worked I started to see the game in a different light, then got sucked into about 3 hours of it. And there's quite a bit of artistry to appreciate, even though a lot of the writing and character banter is hit or miss for me. It seesaws between starchy dialog and very casual sounding dialog. Would play more if I had the time. It's a tough game at first! And the horde is not super responsive the way I'd like, or feels like you get to utilize all of it when you really need it. And Werewolves are OP as fuck and need to be toned down. But I'm kinda digging it.

Won't be surprised though if a lot of people can't see past what they think it should be doing to what it's actually doing.

[dragdeler]

Party games, like mario party and pummel party, suck. In fact they suck so much, that they are the most consistent method of disrespecting your own time. Spending an hour waiting in line would be equally entertaining than playing a round of a party game, except when waiting in line, at no point RNG intervenes, which seems to be preferable when it comes to stuff as lame as this.


That concludes today's ted talk.