Anthem reviews are trickling in and they're not good

[Mathemagician]

Yep I discovered Warframe on PS4 two years ago and after about 20 hrs switched to PC so I could be sure I’d have the lastedt content support. And I dropped 200+ hrs over the course of last spring in it just having a blast. They turned farming in the game and it makes me WANT to give them $$$. They got like $70 out of me and I feel it was totally worth it buying the nonessential crap I bought because the game itself is so fun.

 

[wankerness]

I heard a description of it from someone in which they said "this is definitely not Destiny 2, it's more Diablo 3" which made me slightly curious. But, not curious enough to try it until it's a lot cheaper.

 

[beerandbeards]

I pretty much played all weekend. It was a very fun experience. I played with my brother and nephew so we always had a squad to play with. I didn’t experience any bugs or lag during my game play. I’d say the loading was a little long at times but it wasn’t as bad as reported. Look forward to playing again and advancing the story.

I’m starting to think that reviewers only post negative reviews to gain views and clicks....

 

[KnightBrolaire]

anthem has a 60 aggregate score from 52 critics and 43 score based off 2361 user ratings over on metacritic.
opencritic has it at 60% as well based of 62 critic reviews.
even if you filter out the outlier scores like 0 and 10s, it's still getting lambasted by people that paid money for the game.

 

[Xaios]

It's been a long, long time since user reviews were any kind of accurate measure of a game's quality. They are hyperbole incarnate. Granted, I'm not saying that they don't contain accurate information about the problems that a game has (at least if you're willing to spend the time separating the wheat from the chaff), but the way "normal people" weigh specific aspects of games (and movies) is not what I'd call balanced. It's especially problematic with the current Youtube culture of reviews where catering to trendy outrage = clicks = mo money baby. Even without that, you still run into thinking like this: "8/10 gameplay, 9/10 graphics, 6/10 story. However, I had a couple animation bugs that were annoying, even though they didn't impact my playthrough whatsoever. Get it together, Publisher X! 2/10."

 

[wankerness]

anthem has a 60 aggregate score from 52 critics and 43 score based off 2361 user ratings over on metacritic.
opencritic has it at 60% as well based of 62 critic reviews.
even if you filter out the outlier scores like 0 and 10s, it's still getting lambasted by people that paid money for the game.

Seriously. That read like "I liked thing that someone disliked, therefore all reviews are bs" /facepalm

It sounds like something that's fun enough if you're not very discerning. Kind of like Mass Effect Andromeda, which I enjoyed. I'll wait until it hits 20 dollars like I did with that one. Maybe, anyway, I don't do the multiplayer thing.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

It's been a long, long time since user reviews were any kind of accurate measure of a game's quality. They are hyperbole incarnate. Granted, I'm not saying that they don't contain accurate information about the problems that a game has (at least if you're willing to spend the time separating the wheat from the chaff), but the way "normal people" weigh specific aspects of games (and movies) is not what I'd call balanced. It's especially problematic with the current Youtube culture of reviews where catering to trendy outrage = clicks = mo money baby. Even without that, you still run into thinking like this: "8/10 gameplay, 9/10 graphics, 6/10 story. However, I had a couple animation bugs that were annoying, even though they didn't impact my playthrough whatsoever. Get it together, Publisher X! 2/10."

even if you completely disregard consumer reviews and focus on critic reviews, it's getting lambasted. It's not like consumer reviews can't be useful, if anything I'd say they're actually more helpful since these are people that actually paid money for the game, rather than a critic that got handed a review code/copy. Plus, you can pick up on the general issues of a game in the consumer reviews pretty quickly since there's a fair number of people righting truncated bullet pointed reviews, whereas game publications tend to go into more depth and drag reviews out to get you to click on more crap/get more ad revenue.

 

[Xaios]

even if you completely disregard consumer reviews and focus on critic reviews, it's getting lambasted.

Oh don't get me wrong, 60% is definitely not GOTY material, but neither is it Over the Road Racing. It's thoroughly "meh." Despite what more extreme viewpoints might say, "meh" does not equal "lambasted."

...since these are people that actually paid money for the game

Uhhh, not so much these days. Review-bombing of games by people who have neither purchased nor played a game is a commonplace occurrence now, generally because they're angry at the developer or publisher. I guarantee that lots and lots of people who submitted scores for Battlefront 2 didn't actually buy it. For these people, accurate representation of a game's merit is not the point. Even if their grievance with a developer or publisher is legitimate, it's still an abuse of the system.

Plus, you can pick up on the general issues of a game in the consumer reviews pretty quickly since there's a fair number of people righting truncated bullet pointed reviews, whereas game publications tend to go into more depth and drag reviews out to get you to click on more crap/get more ad revenue.

You and me probably won't see eye-to-eye on this, but personally, the part I've bolded is not a positive in my perspective. If I'm going to spend $60 ($80 in Canada) on a game, I want to know as much as I can about it, short of spoilers, because the cost of the game isn't the only expense. Not only is there a significant time expenditure, but also potentially the cost of new hardware. Bullet point reviews are entirely too shallow to give good contextual information. Even after it was proclaimed as the second-coming of open world RPGs, I still read a boatload of reviews of Breath of the Wild before buying it, and while it's true that I also had to shell out significantly more for the price of the console, it's not the first time I've done so for a game I really felt was that worth playing.

 

[beerandbeards]

My comment is based off YouTube reviewers specifically. They seem to create a lot of negativity for every game it seems to me (at least games I’m interested in). Then there are viewers/readers that are easily influenced by said reviewer and will follow that narrative.

I obviously can’t prove how someone reviews a game, also it’s purely subjective. I just think it’s amazing hyperbolic comments can be. Maybe I got lucky and all the issues that others have noticed I just haven’t seen yet.

 

[TedEH]

They seem to create a lot of negativity

I'm sure I've probably said it before, and I still think it's true: YouTube has done some significant damage to how people think they should judge games. There's so much cynicism, sarcasm, anger, etc. in the character of video content - and I get why it happens - but I think it sort of enables people to act the same way. Enable is the wrong word, I can't think of the right one at the moment.

 

[beerandbeards]

Never played Battlefield V. You’d assume the game was terrible from Metacritic scores based on the actual gameplay, or graphics.....

 

[TedEH]

Those scores have nothing to do with any actual gameplay, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, unless you meant to be sarcastic or something.
I think that screenshot does a good job of summing up the politics of game reviews though:
"This isn't MY battlefield."

 

[beerandbeards]

Exactly the point I was making. The scores were not based on gameplay or graphics but on some social bias. Gaming scores seem to be unrealistic and should be taken with a grain of salt. Experience the game for ourselves and you might be surprised.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Review bombing is only one of the reasons I think the gamer community as a whole is pretty cancerous. This level of childish toxicity is pretty much why I don't bother with multiplayer games anymore. Also why I just read professional reviews and take them with a grain of salt. A couple of times I've seen them give a game 9/10 but under Cons they actually listed "none." so wouldn't that make the game 10/10? Basically no matter what you have to sift through several reviews and make you own conclusions.

 

[wankerness]

The fact review bombing is 100% the field of angry nerds (seriously, no one else has ever done it), usually of the incel variety, often racist, makes it so if they ever just disable user reviews across the board on RT/Metacritic I won't be sad at all. IMDB is about the only place where they're really useful, since there are tons of movies (that I watch, anyway) where there will be literally 0 professional reviews and then a few user reviews that are actually coherent and helpful. Just disable them for any movie that has more than about 20 professional reviews and we'll be all good. I guess they'd still bomb the "user score" on imdb, but who cares, no one uses that for deciding anything about new releases.

 

[Mathemagician]

The thing is that at least at larger reviewers they have to maintain professionalism. Back in the day if a fighting game came out and there wasn’t someone on staff who LOVED fighting games they would preface it by saying that, then they would go into detail about each feature and what the did/did not enjoy as a casual fan. An employee who was a hardcore fan may have loved the game & it’s mechanics but still had caveats about the systems not being clearly explained to new entrants, and that the lack of single player content could be a turn off to many casual fans, etc.

Now it’s just “reviews” from regular people who prefer another game and don’t want the new one to succeed.

 

[Leviathus]

I have BFV, it is kinda shitty tbh...

 

[wankerness]

Now it’s just “reviews” from regular people who prefer another game and don’t want the new one to succeed.

What? Most reviews at "big" places are shills in the POSITIVE direction if anything. There's NO benefit to being overly negative other than outrage clicks, but those aren't reviews that hit until after the release since people that do that have to buy their own copies. "Professional" reviews absolutely skew positive. Some developers, EA most notoriously, will not send review copies to reviewers unless they're pretty sure they're going to get a positive review from them, and will cut them off as soon as they don't. People that are paying for their own copies of the games in order to review them are the only ones you can even possibly trust. Game reviews are a clusterf*ck. It's a very different story with movies since all critics can see everything screened for the public no matter what their personal reputation is.

 

[Mathemagician]

That’s the thing. If they skew positive you can take it with a grain of salt.

“The newest call of duty got a 9/10 or 10/10. That means it delivers more COD just like every prior game.” So you know there’s nothing groundbreaking there but maybe that exactly what you want.

If a game has a 7 or 8 out of 10, you know you’ll probably like it if you’re a fan of the genre as a whole, but it may not be your cup of tea otherwise.

I would rather a review skew positive as a know entity, than read about how a game is “crap and bad”.

Perfect example being street fighter 5 at launch.

I only use training mode and online matchmaking. To me people who play fighting games for single player are fucking insane. Like.... why? It’s not rewarding to cheese an AI fight, and when you up the difficulty the AI genuinely reads your inputs so it’s not even like playing against real people.

The game at launch had everything I needed, training and multiplayer. So for me I know that a review that game it 7/10 is fine. But for a casual fan who plays these for arcade and story modes seeing “damn this only got a 7? Pass” is still helpful. You know the reviewer rounded up to a 7 and isn’t some random hater.

Known biases are acceptable if clear. It’s people pretending to be unbiased that suck.

 

[MFB]

I think a large part of reviews being broken is that we've broken our own 0-10 rating metric. If every game is a 9/10, then 9/10 really means nothing and they're all average; realistically, every game review should max out around a 7 or 8 as a "really good" or "great," and then have 9's and 10's drop when something monumental comes out as a franchise entry or is so original it's like "why don't we have more of this?!" I try to avoid .5 ratings just because usually can hard-call whether or not something is +/-1 point, but there's an exception to be made for some things that need it.

A 5/10 isn't a bad game, it's literally an average one, so anything above that quantifies as "above average."