JonCole

Black Friday Deals

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I bought the Oddbox, cause I wanted to try Stranger's Wrath again. Also, Munch's Odyssey which I've never played.
FYI, Stranger's Wrath HD is coming out on PS3 in the next few weeks and on PC about three months later. They're starting to work on Munch HD right now, as well.

Noyb is right though; Munch is kinda crappy. It has moments of fun-ness but it's nowhere near the level of the other games.

Edited by thorn

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It's a bit late to know that for me, but the PC version maxed out will probably look as good as the HD PSN remake and it will be much cheaper.

(I just hope they don't release an HD collection, I'm kinda addicted to collecting collections, you don't wanna know how many different versions I have of the Sega Classics Collection.)

Gamersgate has a Black Friday sale, but it's not as good as Steams, and when it is, it's the same offer as Steam, at least, that's what it looks like from a first glance.

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Dead Island is 50% off, I heard the quests are terrible, but it's kinda "beautifully broken"?

I'm pondering whether to get this as well. But what really appeals to me is that it's open world and it looks beautiful. Zombies were old in Thief 1 and only perhaps Left 4 Dead made them interesting again, but any zombie games before and after that -- meh (disclaimer: haven't played them). However, if Dead Island is a good open world game, I just might get it. I'm reading some reviews right now.

[edit]RPS impressions and GiantBomb review seem generally favourable, I'm buing it. I like the idea of tactical melee combat.

[edit]Hmm, but the Giant Bomb quick look makes it sound like the console version might have better combat controls (analog combat).

Edited by Erkki

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I'm pondering whether to get this as well. But what really appeals to me is that it's open world and it looks beautiful. Zombies were old in Thief 1 and only perhaps Left 4 Dead made them interesting again, but any zombie games before and after that -- meh (disclaimer: haven't played them). However, if Dead Island is a good open world game, I just might get it. I'm reading some reviews right now.

[edit]RPS impressions and GiantBomb review seem generally favourable, I'm buing it. I like the idea of tactical melee combat.

[edit]Hmm, but the Giant Bomb quick look makes it sound like the console version might have better combat controls (analog combat).

Can't you play it with a game pad?

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And I wasn't even bothered to finish the game.

Wow. And the ending was the worst part.

I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling so let down by LA Noire, but listening to everyone, maybe its deserved review score should be in the 40%s? It's amazing what the Power Of Hype™ can do, though. I thought it was a good game at first -- it was only when I finished it that I realised I was waiting for it to become good the whole time I was playing it. Almost enjoying it on its potential, rather than its actual quality.

And it makes me even sadder that there's no big review site that is actually good at their job as they ALL gave it a great review. So either they're too afraid to go against the grain, or they just aren't any good at reviewing games. I wonder which it is.

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You know the answer to this one already: reviewing iThing games (Stu), making comics (C-Monster), training for a marathon (Reader Mil) and tapping out Perl while blind on bathtub gin (J Nash).

The others are probably also doing something.

Actually I didn't really know that... :)

My question is this, though: Why aren't they getting together to create a decent game review site to rival "the best"?

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I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling so let down by LA Noire, but listening to everyone, maybe its deserved review score should be in the 40%s?

So roughly on par with games like [/url]Real Steel, Red Bull X-Fighters and Michael Phelps: Push the Limit, but quite a bit worse than Duke Nukem Forever?

Also, one of my friends thought it was pretty much the most interesting and best game he has played in a long while. So go figure..

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I really like LA Noire. I really like LA Noire's ending, too. So I wouldn't go crazy saying that reviewers didn't do their job because they didn't agree with your opinion, unless you're also saying that I am not allowed to have opinions about games because I went with the "hype train" (I only just beat the game about a month ago).

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Can't you play it with a game pad?

I don't have one that connects to the PC. I think. Does the PS3 controller work? And the quick look made it seem like analog control was disabled in PC version. But I bought it anyway, seemed like a relatively minor thing, although he did say that "if you're not playing with analog combat you are playing it wrong" :)

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I really like LA Noire. I really like LA Noire's ending, too. So I wouldn't go crazy saying that reviewers didn't do their job because they didn't agree with your opinion, unless you're also saying that I am not allowed to have opinions about games because I went with the "hype train" (I only just beat the game about a month ago).

If the vast majority of people think the game is the "let down of the year" (and that's what I seem to be feeling from this thread), then the big game reviewers have not done their job well at all.

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If the vast majority of people think the game is the "let down of the year" (and that's what I seem to be feeling from this thread), then the big game reviewers have not done their job well at all.

It's not a reviewers job to represent the opinion of the majority.

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I don't have one that connects to the PC. I think. Does the PS3 controller work? And the quick look made it seem like analog control was disabled in PC version. But I bought it anyway, seemed like a relatively minor thing, although he did say that "if you're not playing with analog combat you are playing it wrong" :)

There were some drivers that "let" you use PS3 controller on PC, but they worked nightmarishly at best. All I ever achieved with them was 4 consecutive BSoDs. That was a couple of years ago and on XP, but I'm not too optimistic that the situation has gotten any better.

Basically, if you need a PC controller, buy one. And if you do, buy an XBOX 360 one, because the developers seem to have gotten lazy of late and in many cases do not support other controllers properly.

Also: Thunderpeel, your sampling there is quite ridiculous. :)

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So OnLive is doing a deal this week(?) where the first game you buy on their service is 1.07 (USD). Eligible games include;

LA Noire

Batman: Arkham City

Lord of the Rings: War in the North

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Two others I forget.

I picked up War in the North and so far have been enjoying it.

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It's not a reviewers job to represent the opinion of the majority.

Yep. It's a game reviewer's job to help their readers make a decision whether to buy something or not.

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Yep. It's a game reviewer's job to help their readers make a decision whether to buy something or not.

All a game reviewer can do is convey their experience with the game. If you don't value their experience, that's your prerogative.

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My question is this, though: Why aren't they getting together to create a decent game review site to rival "the best"?

Obvious answer - there's no money in it. All you need to do to become a "game journalism blog" is sign up for a bunch of press release lists and blindly repost their text; your advertisers are more than likely going to be the very companies whose games you are writing about, so there's no impetus to be brutally honest.

Everyone has moved on to other things - not necessarily better, but different - and you're assuming everyone still talks and haven't, for example, sworn bloody vengeance while sharpening the neck of a broken beer bottle on their sharp white teeth.

I'm sorry, TP - you can't go home again, you can't resurrect AP, and you can't make a perfect omelet when someone's watching over your shoulder. At least, I can't do any of those things (despite trying to do least 2/3 of them).

(Interesting confluence, I was actually talking about this last night in the context of why AP2 is sometimes so depressing to read - the posthumous scribblings of a giant long dead, etc.)

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My question is this, though: Why aren't they getting together to create a decent game review site to rival "the best"?

C-Monster = Kieron Gillen = 1/4 founder of Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

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Got Dead Island, as I've been looking to check it out for a while now. I've heard that analog control has since been patched into the PC version. There is, at the very least, a fan patch that does it well. I'm not sure about an official one, but I intend to check.

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All a game reviewer can do is convey their experience with the game. If you don't value their experience, that's your prerogative.

I'm not sure what you're saying... You seem to be acknowledging that the vast majority of people who played LA Noire found it to be a let down when all was said and done (which is something I'm only guessing based on the posts in this thread). I'm assuming this because instead of arguing against that, you're trying to say that every major review site/magazine was right to give it high praise.

This means there's only two possible explanations:

1. A small group of reviewers saw something of merit in the game that the general playing populace was unable to appreciate.

I've seen this with film reviews all the time. (Go look at all the complaints on Citizen Kane's Amazon page from people who found the film to be a huge let down -- quite incredible!)

2. A small group of reviewers gave the game an unworthy amount of praise, the general populace picked it up in good faith and were let down.

I've seen this scenario my entire gaming life. Dragon's Lair, Microcosm, etc.

A professional game reviewer's job is to look past hype, technical achievements, general graphical slickness, and focus on the important thing: Gameplay. If we're in scenario two, as I think we are, then they really dropped the ball.

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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As I have tried to point out before, you can't say that vast majority of people found it to be a let down based on the posts in this thread. It seems to be 4 against 2 at this point, and even if it wasn't, the sampling is very small and, most likely, biased (because of the way the question was initially laid out). Metacritic user score, for example, is 7.3 (which is in par with the user scores of most "good" games) and includes a bunch of 0 and 10s as is to be expected.

But of course, if you just assume that vast majority of people shared your experience, then you must conclude that the reviewers dropped the ball.

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A professional game reviewer's job is to look past hype, technical achievements, general graphical slickness, and focus on the important thing: Gameplay. If we're in scenario two, as I think we are, then they really dropped the ball.

This sounds about right. I was completely dazzled by LA Noire for the first two or three days, but the cracks started showing, and the whole thing fell apart soon thereafter.

What's especially damning is that if you look beyond the release-day reviews, the reception is much more critical. In particular, I'm thinking of Kirk Hamilton's article (for Paste, I think), and RPS's review.

To be fair though, release-day reviews are tough, the cracks wouldn't have shown given the timeframe (a day or two, I'd imagine). The failings here lie more with the publications than the journalists themselves.

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I still think it's presumptuous to assume that the reviewers were affected by anything but their own experiences. I think the difference between you and me, TP, is that I go into a review expecting only to read about the time that specific person had with the game. You seem to be going into the review expecting an opinion that's "objective", which is quite ridiculous considering criticism must be at least partially subjective. Whether or not that subjectivity is steeped in personal experience or outside factors, it's the readers job to ascertain whether or not the review is valuable to them. I'm fine with you saying that the reviews failed you in your particular buying decision, but I'm not fine with you saying that they didn't do their job because they couldn't look in a crystal ball to see the popular opinion in the future.

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I'm not sure what you're saying... You seem to be acknowledging that the vast majority of people who played LA Noire found it to be a let down when all was said and done (which is something I'm only guessing based on the posts in this thread). I'm assuming this because instead of arguing against that, you're trying to say that every major review site/magazine was right to give it unanimous praise.

This means there's only two possible explanations:

1. A small group of reviewers saw something of merit in the game that the general playing populace was unable to appreciate.

I've seen this with film reviews all the time. (Go look at all the complaints on Citizen Kane's Amazon page from people who found the film to be a huge let down -- quite incredible!)

2. A small group of reviewers gave the game an unworthy amount of praise, the general populace picked it up in good faith and were let down.

I've seen this scenario my entire gaming life. Dragon's Lair, Microcosm, etc.

A professional game reviewer's job is to look past hype, technical achievements, general graphical slickness, and focus on the important thing: Gameplay. If we're in scenario two, as I think we are, then they really dropped the ball.

I don't agree with you at all. You seem to be speaking for Old Game Journalism (as opposed to the New one) where the pretense is that the person reviewing is mostly irrelevant and the review is objective -- which is actually nigh impossible, in my opinion. I'm much more fond of the other kind of games journalism.

Don't agree with your extrapolation that vast majority of people found it to be a let down, either. And if it's a let down, does that even equal some specific score range -- depends on individual expectations, does it not? *

And also, how can a single site give unanimous praise? It can be unanimous only collectively. Even metacritic doesn't claim "unanimous praise", but "Generally favorable reviews" (I checked the PS3 version).

[edit]Furthermore, if you look at Metacritic, aggregate review scores and user review scores are not vastly different -- about 1.5 points, which is not exceptional in any way.

* even assuming there exists a universally just scoring scale.

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So today's deals are:

Limbo: :tup:

Worms Reloaded: :worm: ?

Kane & Lynch: It might be worth a shot for 4€, but I'm pretty sure we've all picked games we'd rather play that this series.

Fear franchise: I only liked the first one, got bored of the second and never tried the third.

RAGE: I don't know about this one, what do you guys think?

The Witcher franchise: I heard the sequel is kinda unforgiving in a bad way and is very frustrating. Any truth to this?

The whole Tom Clancy franchise: I can vouche for Splinter Cell, but I've never played the rest of his games.

The Witcher 2 seems tempting, is it really that unforgiving? :erm:

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