https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqJFL0lH4ZE
Game is getting good reviews, might pick it up.
It's been getting perfect scores across the board. Not too hyped about it personally still, but I'm at least glad to know that the change in direction actually benefited the game, and it does look like a solid game through and through.
I dunno, these kinda games tend to do very well with critics but tend to have flaws that are ignored in their reviews. Dont meant the game is bad though, just to take the reviews with a grain of salt.
It's getting "good" reviews but a lot of those reviews read like fluff pieces that didn't really give a shit, or that are written by people who typically don't like character action games.
Like, some of the shit people marvel over are either things that the series has been doing for years or things that the video game industry in general has managed to do consistently for just as long - I've seen a few reviews notably praise how the story is one continuous narrative and how that's revolutionary... even though all the GOW games up until this point have more or less operated on that logic, and how games without loading screens have been around for twenty years.
As usual, video game journalists have either no idea what they're talking about or are basically out of touch with the industry as a whole, completely unaware of what's already been done.
This is what gaming journalism has been since 2007. This is what Gamergate was initially about. But, y'know. Gaming journalism wouldn't have it so they made it about cooties in video-games and how games are rampant sexist propoganda, neo-puritanism is good and holy shit, don't kill the fucking nuns!
Gaming journalism has always been glorified marketing. If you've ever read any gaming magazine from the 90s or early 2000s the reviews are basically just borderline ads, only difference between then and now is that they where written to be "nerdy" and to pander to such an audience.
Mainstream reviews of popular franchises must be taken with a grain of salt, they are usually inflated to conform with fanboys.
I won't deny that it looks like a spectacular game, but I wouldn't hold them to "should be experienced by every human on Earth".
this review is a total word salad
whenever i hear anything like this, i think of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90frJAHoB8
i find it nearly completely intolerable
that was an 8 minute, and 23 second trailer
Have you actually played the game? I get being sceptic about some reviews but most reviewers are giving the game 90+, still, if you somehow think all of those reviews are wrong then why not wait until the game is out and watch someone's playthrough or (ideally) play it yourself. Besides from what i've seen you are making up your mind about the game based on a video of a boss fight that you posted, which would be pretty ironic.
I'm being highly skeptical because everything I've personally seen of the game was far from impressive besides graphics, and since it's a massive production it's far more likely these reviews are skewed/influenced by the publisher than them being legitimate.
I've been following this game since its initial announcement at E3 and was initially pretty interested but the further it went in development and the more I got to see of the game the more I realized it was just the same old dance.
Far as I'm concerned a AAA game with universally great reviews is far more suspicious than a AAA game with mixed or debated reviews. A game that gets universal appraisal just screams of disingenuous bandwagon to me, especially since we are talking about the video game industry which is known to pull this shit every other day of the week.
Have you ever considered this guy is just bad at his job? I follow multiple English/something like English degree people who are among the best game critics that exist. I.e Super Bunnyhop has a journalism degree, and Writing on Games has an English Lit degree.
If an online discussion about this game starts isn't going to be fun because I'm sorry to say it but gaming is fairly anti intellectual, and we're going to mask it with "I don't trust these people reviewing games" as if somehow people giving their opinions on games is a bad thing. People who somehow want reviews to be "objective" as if a review isn't literally just someone giving their opinions on a game. We often demand less from games that could be more, and attack the people lamenting the fact that they could've been more. I reckon you'll get a bunch of people coming out of the woodwork to talk about those original gamergate concepts but with a poorly thought out understanding of games and games criticism. You'll get trusted critic's words taken out of context on gatcha tweets and posts, where something particularly egregious they say is put in slo-mo and zoomed in on.
i'm not going to say the game is good or bad because i haven't played it and don't know, but that was a really bad review - i feel like i've been spoiled by long form reviews that more dedicated youtubers put out, which actually detail why systems in games are good, rather than just listing them out and then saying "this is good"
Like i said earlier, i get if you are sceptic of some reviews but from what you posted here and on that other thread it seems like you've already made up your mind about the game without even playing it so i'd ask you two questions: What reviewers do you actually trust? surely not every single reviewer on the planet must be in the pockets of Sony or have no idea what they are talking about and will you actually play the game?
These early reviews exist solely because sony allows them to. A large publisher like sony won't allow a darling game to get bad scores so they manipulate review aggregates, especially early on when those impressions matter the most, so they filter out reviews that would potentially know what they're talking about or would have enough integrity to actually look at the game they're playing with a more critical mindset, keep those who are easy to impress and too scared to say anything bad, and then give them review copies knowing full well no game journalist in this position would be insane enough to start trashtalking a game from a major company, since that would get them blacklisted.
Never trust early reviews. They are always bullshit, they are always rushed, they are always skewed by the fact the journalists are put in positions where they cannot say anything negative about a game.
Until the game is actually released and people start showing off the whole game, the only thing you can trust is your own critical thinking and whatever footage is available to you.
I don't even know if you are serious, do you truly believe this is just big Sony manipulating reviews? If this was the case then they why would they lift the embargo one week earlier, isn't that what people critizice about review timing? when developers only allow reviews to come out one day before or even the day the game is being released? This also goes against your whole "not having enough time to have sensibly been able to form an opinion" since reviewers area actually given more than a week to play the game and form their opinion before release.
Also, are you saying that you don't trust reviewers who get early copies and/or release their reviews before the release date? Anyways, you still haven't said which reviewers you actually trust, that would actually be pretty interesting for you to share.
The biggest word salad and stock review I've seen of this so far is the IGN review (which also gave it a 10/10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_MtcOznfM4
Not saying the game is bad, but it is true a lot of these reviews sound and feel very stock. Like a checklist is given to them to mention basic 'all the stuff the makes the game good' with a small sprinkle of 'negatives are there but they're insignificant to the total experience'.
I can't speak for all the outlets, but this one was written by Michael Huber, who might honestly be the most excitable and passionate personality/reviewer in the industry. Yeah, he tends to get swept up in hype easily and is arguably less critical than most, but I've never thought of him being anything less than genuine.
On paper reviewers are given a whole week to review the game but in practice, reviewers churn out a positive review as quickly as possible to get as much traffic as possible on their website before too many people have had access to the title. That's in itself the inherent flaws of standard reviews: they have to be competitive, they have to come out first.
Review copies are, when given out by such massive publishers, a form of bribery as far as I'm concerned. Reviewers are given free shit by an established and powerful publisher who has the power to blacklist them if the contents of the reviews does not fit their needs, and this practice has been known to exist for a long time now. Relatively few of these reviewers even admit or disclose the fact the copy was offered to them by the publishers.
As for the reviewers, I follow relatively few of them and the types of content they speak of is not always console stuff. But I have a particular fondness for Jim Sterling since he has a very consistent way of approaching games and is very honest about what he likes and does not like about games - his rating system also has the benefit of using 5/10 as the actual average mark instead of what many other reviewers do where 7/10 is the least acceptable score and everything below that is trite. Generally speaking, I only trust reviewers who take the time to make their content, actually play the game through and through on a higher difficulty than easy if difficulties are involved (and/or disclose when they play the games on easy difficulty), and who have no stake in pleasing publishers, which includes not receiving review copies every other day of the week.
Even though I agree with a lot of what you are saying I wanted to point a few things out more as clarification, this isn't some sort of attack or anything. Things like review code are tools. I get review code all the time, it's nothing special, it's not a spa treatment it's just part of the job and it doesn't come along with any caveat about what I can say or do with the game (or you bet I'd be refusing that code) because if I had to buy every single thing I want to cover I'd be in bankruptcy court.
There are things I receive that I end up not covering, I've had some higher profile things like Tyranny and Spellforce 3 that I have still been plenty harsh on the flaws of, it doesn't effect your opinion of the product if you've been gaming for this long, it's not like it also comes with a free case of beer and a blowjob it's just that there are tons of games I can't cover that I'd like to because I can't afford it, so review code is an important part of the whole thing. There's no enticement or marketing it's just "here's a game, play it if you want."
The other part is the early reviews part which a good point. This is what embargoes are for which has become a misunderstood concept thanks to the annoying practice of launch day embargoes which can sometimes mean shady things like a publisher hiding poor performance or some such. But what a review embargo is actually for is to give everyone an equal footing. To prevent journos with less integrity from just one-upping each other and posting their "reviews" as early as possible with the least useful and probably least correct information because they haven't had the time or gained the knowledge yet, all for those sweet clicks. This way, everyone has till a certain date to glean the information and play the game before writing and creating their content to help stem the tide of exploitative shitheads.
Like I said I'm not addressing this specifically at YOU so much as just venting the steam a little, I see these misconceptions a lot and it often comes out as misapplied jealousy and anger at something people don't care to understand and video games are an industry I love so it's frustrating to see the information twisted like that and not really applied correctly. It's sort of like watching people create their own problems and walk right past the solution because they are too angry at nothing to see it. The industry has a lot of shady, shitty problems but that doesn't mean everything it does is involved in that I guess is what I'm saying.
I usually just wait for games to get reviewed by some youtubers that my preferences usually fall in line with.
At the same time the bias goes both ways, this game is getting so much negative attention for being different than the previous installments lol
i've always trusted easy allies. been following them since the gametrailer days and i think they've been in the industry long enough to be worth listening to.
I've only seen one video review actually talk about the gameplay to a greater extent, and while the review sings its praises, it's the same guy who says Bayonetta and DMC are button mash games that you can bruteforce through, and he happens to have made a video with the director of God of War, leaving me a bit suspicious that a conflict of interest or a strong bias may be at play, which is far from usual for those early reviews.
Oh no it's gonna be DmC all over again
whats with video game ppl and getting mad at good reviews for games that aren't made for whatever their demographic is
If "mid-20s male who mostly plays video games as their primary source of entertainment, who has owned several consoles and who has played the entire series including spin-offs" is not the target demographic, then what the fuck is ?
Not any game, but this game sure as fuck is meant for the 20s to 30s male demographic. That's been the demographic for God of War games ever since the first one. The initial proxy demographic of teen audiences seems like it's even gone now as opposed to the older games since there's no longer the emphasis on gore and tits like you'd find in the previous games, things which often have a tendency to bring in younger audiences for obvious reasons.
It's probably aimed at someone like me, who's played the three main games and some of the spinoffs and eventually found the games to be stale and boring, as the formula hasn't changed much between each game release.
ive played every game in the series, the psp games and that shitty ascension game and spent actual time in its multiplayer, and i can safely say, this new direction is pretty much a welcome change and the story and characterization looks to be about miles better.
The more level headed reviews tend to agree on the fact that the gameplay is still very derivative, just of a different genre. Seemingly the game doesn't really encourage you to vary your combos and try new things any more than the older games but it gives you a bit more to do with the one weapon you're given as opposed to having slightly less mechanics dispersed over like four weapons.
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