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[Dictator93]

Does this have much to do with trust though? Its a matter of personal opinions afterall.

If the PR machine only shouts praise of the game through vidya game journalists before release, then delays the review till after pre-orders ship... it makes me distrust them more. Regardless of whether their post-shipping review is negative.

Desthiny was drummed up hard by the media and by the massive PR campaign. I trust them even less than I did after TitanFall (which was perhaps even less obvious then destiny).

 

[Wynnebeck]

LOL This thread is funny. Why would you place so much faith in what internet forums and journalists say about a game if you've already had a chance to experience the game yourself and come to your own conclusions? OP is over here sounding like, "Man, someone gave Destiny a bad score! We can FINALLY trust the press again!"

 

[SonyToo!™]

No all games media / PR is a joke.

What good are reviews when a good portion of gamers have a copy in their hand by the time reviews come out. Games media is supposed to act as a buyers guide and not ppl to play the game themselves and see if the review tallys with their own impressions.

AAA, AA & mid tier I've never trusted, gamergate just showed me that the indie side is rotten as well.

 

[ReaperXL7]

Nope, and if I am being honest I think all of this has finally broken me of pre ordering games. The outlets I follow have steadily shrunk over the past few years though to a point where I only really follow Giant Bomb,Classic Game Room, and TotalBiscuit.

 

[cakely]

This time around I don't fully blame the games media for hyping destiny. It was mainly bungie/playstaion/activision with their vigorous marketing that sold people on it.

I honestly think it was the alpha/beta impressions that sold people on it.

I'm surprised that the reviews are as low a they are. Destiny has issues, but it's not the terrible game that the 6/10 reviews seem to indicate.

 

[Salty Hippo]

I've always trusted them for the most part. I feel like the vast majority of games I play usually match the general opinion of the media and review scores. There are exceptions like Skyward Sword, MGS4, Halo 3, but they're a rare occasion.

 

[RK128]

LOL This thread is funny. Why would you place so much faith in what internet forums and journalists say about a game if you've already had a chance to experience the game yourself and come to your own conclusions? OP is over here sounding like, "Man, someone gave Destiny a bad score! We can FINALLY trust the press again!"

I think we are talking about reviews in general, not just Destiny. Remember, not many games have betas/alphas to play before the game launches; most of the time, we get some info about a game, then hear about the E3/Gamescom/TGS/ect demo and then get the review.

Destiny is a rare case; a good deal of the game was in many gamers hands, so they know what they were getting into when they bought the game. I just think that either people expected 'more' from the game due to all the hype it got or thought that it would just improve when the retail version launches. That is why there is such mixed reception on the game; while people had access to the game prior to release, they thought the game was going to be 'more' then what was presented to them :l.

Hype is a powerful tool the press and media has, as it can sell things to people that they thought they never wanted :l.

 

[test_account]

If the PR machine only shouts praise of the game through vidya game journalists before release, then delays the review till after pre-orders ship... it makes me distrust them more. Regardless of whether their post-shipping review is negative.

Desthiny was drummed up hard by the media and by the massive PR campaign. I trust them even less than I did after TitanFall (which was perhaps even less obvious then destiny).

But in the end its all about personal opinions. Even if someone should lie or tell the truth about what they think about a game, your opinion about the game might be completely different.

 

[El-Pistolero]

Euh...The hype was deserved because it had an immense potential and was coming from a very acclaimed developer. Previews were positive, but that's the issue with previews; you get exposed to a controlled slice of a game that may or may not be totally representative of what you would be playing at the end.

 

[v4skunk84]

I have only played Destiny on PS3 and it is amazing, not sure what the PS4 version is like, but so far (just lvl20) i'd give the PS3 version 4/5 or 8.5-10.
I don't understand the Destiny low scores when the same reviewers rate COD as 8.5+ each year when the only interesting thing is zombie mode.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

LOL This thread is funny. Why would you place so much faith in what internet forums and journalists say about a game if you've already had a chance to experience the game yourself and come to your own conclusions? OP is over here sounding like, "Man, someone gave Destiny a bad score! We can FINALLY trust the press again!"

Once in awhile there'll be a game I don't find interesting, that people on here or other forums are talking about in a positive light. It ends up enticing my interest enough to merely check it out, from there the decision is my own. Nothing wrong with that.

Media usually get paid to entice,while the former are simply people who bought and opinionate based on their experience. I also take high consideration of certain opinions on games by people who have completed them.

If we're talking about hype-trains, well... let's just say I get a ticket for those when I've already made up my mind. Hype can be a let down, but certain games just look rad enough to suck you into the hype. (Bloodborne)

 

[Nocturno999]

People on videogame forums and social media hyped this game more than the so called videogame press ever could.

So much this. Makes me wants to leave the Internet a couple of months before Uncharted 4 hits.

 

[Dictator93]

But in the end its all about personal opinions. Even if someone should lie or tell the truth about what they think about a game, your opinion about the game might be completely different.

I think you are making a good point, but it is talking around the discussion of the thread. Of course your opinion in the end will differ, but how does someone inform their opinion about a game before it comes out? Usually by reading about it and watching stuff from it.

This can be heavily colored by the PR and the media (there is scarcely anyone I would name as a journalist). And that is what this thread is getting at.

I, perhaps like you, have little pity for those that pre-order games off of hype and then it ends up sucking. To me it is blatantly obvious when this is the fact.

People on videogame forums and social media hyped this game more than the so called videogame press ever could.

A number of GAF threads were quite evident of this.

 

[Alcahest]

Never have, never will.

 

[DevilFox]

Lol, no, sorry.
Honestly, I think they're going too much in the opposite direction: too severe on the hyped games, or those with an high budget marketing campaign, and too easy on the others. If I felt that consumers decisions were led by reviews that were influenced by factors we all know, now I feel like consumers hype, opinions or, more generally, the attention the game has among the players on the internet, deeply influence the reviews.I feel like they're desperately looking for that "professionals" reputation they lost (or never had), I'm sorry to say such a bad thing but it's what it looks like to me and I wouldn't doubt if they did a good job the last generation.. too bad they didn't..

This consideration helps me to see a lot of scores already, so far it worked pretty well. With a 2015 full of big releases, I'll see if I've been lucky or not.. starting soon with Bayonetta 2 and DriveClub.

 

[Dead]

Is it getting bad reviews?

Games pretty fun and exactly what I expected. If anything if reviewers are harsh it's more reason not to listen to them.

 

[Neuro]

Why would I need to trust NeoGAF when Bungie gave me the Alpha/BETA to try the game for myself? I trust myself, and I trust that I'm really enjoying Destiny (just as I did the Alpha/BETA), and think it's a fantastic, albeit flawed, thus far heavily underrated game.

I bought the game and its disheartening to say that it took Bungie 6 years to make this...I should apologize to Bungie for having lofty expectations, its my fault that I expected a lot more out of a game from a developer I really admired, a developer who gave me fond memories of battling The Covenant and saving humanity.

 

[test_account]

I think you are making a good point, but it is talking around the discussion of the thread. Of course your opinion in the end will differ, but how does someone inform their opinion about a game before it comes out? Usually by reading about it and watching stuff from it.

This can be heavily colored by the PR and the media (there is scarcely anyone I would name as a journalist). And that is what this thread is getting at.

I, perhaps like you, have little pity for those that pre-order games off of hype and then it ends up sucking. To me it is blatantly obvious when this is the fact.

Yeah, its normal that people's opinion is affected by other people's opinion, that is true. Like if someone is excited for something, other might get excited because of that. Or if someone is negative about something, others might feel the same way because of that. I just hope for people's own sake that they trust their own opinions in the end the most when it comes about if a game might be interesting or not. Then they know the best if they like a game or not

 

[Face it Tiger..]

The game delivered.

more or less the same of what I thought was gonna be in there.

 

[OrlanisWorks]

I typically trust them on the objective things: What the game offers in terms of facts. "It has 12 levels." Okay, good, I wanted to know this.

When it comes to their subjective views, The trust has never been too high for most of what I've read, but I take in some writers' views and leave others out. I mean, if something is written well, I'll take their view under consideration and see other views to see if there is correlation.


We also need to get rid of awards for game previews. Giving awards for games that won't come out for years is... they are ridiculous.

 

[staticneuron]

Actually, I'm enjoying Destiny far more than review scores suggest, so if anything it reaffirms my stance of not listening to subjective reviews and making my own decision.

Is it getting bad reviews?

Games pretty fun and exactly what I expected. If anything if reviewers are harsh it's more reason not to listen to them.

The game delivered.

more or less the same of what I thought was gonna be in there.

This. I understand some of the complaints against the game, including storyline or repetitiveness complaints. Other things seem to hedge on expectations or subjective opinions I may not agree with. I don't find the game bland at all.

 

[Sayter]

Crosspost from the Destiny review thread:

That is an awesome read. And, again, my hat off to Bungie for only allowing the press to play it when everyone else could. Maybe it's not the outcome they wanted. But, I believe this is the closet we've come to some honest reviews. Some.

 

[Hagi]

Not sure why i should trust them in general at all and thats not a "gamez jurnalizm" thing it's a I don't know these people why should I give a shit about what they score this game. Theres so much drama when it comes to reviews.

I prefer to follow specific people whose tastes tend to mirror mine than care what the collective says.

I liked Kotaku's way of doing reviews ways back(no idea if they still do it) where it was just a list of positives and negatives and they either recommended or not.

 

[Logash]

I think we should stop blaming the media for hyping games like Destiny and giving them bad reviews afterwards. Game sites write articles about games that people want to play. Destiny came with the hype because of the developer and the massive budget. Destiny articles got the most views so sites made them and the hype just kept getting bigger. The same thing could be said of Titanfall. People were excited and that made sites write about it. You can't expect a site to know everything about a game or predict how good the game is based off the little pieces of the game they get to play in a developer/publisher controlled environment. Blaming them just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and seems really whiny. That's my opinion anyway...

 

[abadguy]

I never trusted the games media, I only believe what I see and what I've tested for myself.

Best way to be.

 

[foxtrot3d]

Even a broken clock is right twice a day... So no.

"Reapers."

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Seems like the entitled journos are mad they didn't get to play their wittle gamey-poo earlier than everyone else.

U mad.gif

You know, this reasoning is, sadly, not out of the realm of possibility.

 

[digoutyoursoul]

You know, this reasoning is, sadly, not out of the realm of possibility.

If that was remotely true then the whole thing needs nuking

 

[someday]

I honestly think it was the alpha/beta impressions that sold people on it.

I'm surprised that the reviews are as low a they are. Destiny has issues, but it's not the terrible game that the 6/10 reviews seem to indicate.

I completely agree. Considering how high some games score, I'm less impressed by the games media after this. I personally am having an absolute blast with Destiny so I guess I realize I'll just continue to ignore gaf game threads (good and bad) and metacritic reviews. The Alpha sold me on the game and that's really all I needed.

 

[LilWayneSuckz]

Listening to different gaming news podcasts, Destiny wasn't hyped by the gaming press but more or less it was hyped by Bungie fans, beta testers, Sony and Activision as "the next big thing from Bungie"

You can't really blame people for being hyped for Destiny since it's the first multiplatform game since Bungie became independent.

I'm hyped for Sunset Overdrive without even knowing whether or not it will be good because of the developer pedigree. And I haven't seen any games media hyping it up.

 

[Euron]

I have only played Destiny on PS3 and it is amazing, not sure what the PS4 version is like, but so far (just lvl20) i'd give the PS3 version 4/5 or 8.5-10.
I don't understand the Destiny low scores when the same reviewers rate COD as 8.5+ each year when the only interesting thing is zombie mode.

But they don't give CoD 8.5+ each year. Ghosts received pretty mediocre reviews. And Black Ops 2 had a surprisingly good campaign that was much more interesting than the zombie mode.

Destiny simply isn't the game that was promised. It isn't comparable to Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Hell, the story isn't even in the same league as Halo. It is much smaller than we were lead to believe (only Old Russia on Earth? Really?) and overall it just seems to be lacking soul, like a game that was focus tested to oblivion.

 

[Krilekk]

I honestly think it was the alpha/beta impressions that sold people on it.

I'm surprised that the reviews are as low a they are. Destiny has issues, but it's not the terrible game that the 6/10 reviews seem to indicate.

Just like Ryse. But 6/10 is still above average.

 

[Metaphor for Giant Robot]

Destiny is probably one of the weirder examples to use in discussion like this, same with all this "PR machine" and "manufactured hype" stuff because most people who got hyped by the game actually had something tangible to get hyped on.

If anything, Destiny suggests that the root of the problem with AAA games maybe isn't the games media. If games media was, we'd probably have less instances where big, aggressive marketing failed to sell a game.

 

[Enco]

This has once again proven that you should never fall for hype.

But people will, and this whole cycle of anticipation and bullshit will continue.

 

[zoukka]

I feel bad for everyone who believe the hype of a 500 million dollar project... goddamn how gullible can people be.

 

[TheXbox]

No, because they were largely responsible for propagating the myth that Destiny would be a sprawling MMO with the gameplay of Halo. Even right after the Alpha and Beta, when it was evident that this was clearly not the case, tons of outlets were still calling it Bungie's MMO.

 

[Dolobill]

It only made me realize that my opinion of a game can differ wildly from the general consensus of critics. Although, Watch Dogs did that too, since I thought it deserved much worse than the reviews it got.

 

[Monocle]

I'm certainly paying more attention to Kevin VanOrd and Jim Sterling now, although I gather they've been pretty solid reviewers for some time.

 

[Mooreberg]

I am enjoying the campaign and strikes, so the answer is no.

 

[AmuroChan]

Review scores don't really impact me one way or another. I've hated games that were scored 8+ and enjoyed games that were scored below that. I'm enjoying Destiny so far. It's not the best game ever by any means, but I'm having fun with it.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

The Escapist: Destiny is masterful game-making from Bungie

6/10


No.

 

[AmaterasuOni]

I'm still enjoying the game. It's about 8/10 for me. It's a good game, nothing amazing, but a solid first part of a long, long story. This is one of the rare games when my score and press score are quite much the same.

Normally when I give game 6/10, press gives it 8/10 or even 9/10. When I give 9/10, press goes 6/10. What does this tell? I don't know. I honestly thought press is going to give it around 9/10.

 

[PeskyToaster]

I played the Alpha and Beta and had fun and I'll probably have fun with this game too. The gaming media outlets are just people with a megaphone attached to their opinion. They are no more qualified to talk about games than any of us (less qualified in a lot of cases) because gaming lacks an academic aspect that gives certain book and movie reviews more credibility.

I don't really see the value in games media in its current state. At worst it's an extra arm for PR departments to use to slap you in the face and at best mildly critical. There was a quote about how uneasy and awkward a room of press and politicians should be and that's true for all journalism. Jason Schreier is doing it right because a developer called him a "press sneak fuck". I don't believe you can give an unbiased opinion of your developer/publisher friend's game that they've worked on for years and that's sort of the core of the problem with games journalism. It's more in their best interests to be nice to publishers and PR than to serve the public.

So no, I don't trust the games media more but Destiny getting 7s instead of 9s (lol 2 points) has nothing to do with that. Bungie gave us the game in alpha and beta form so we all knew damn well what to expect. If anything Destiny shows how most people completely disregard the games media and that their opinions don't really matter in terms of popularity and sales.

 

[Patrick S.]

I want Tom Chick's review.

 

[Exile20]

I feel bad for everyone who believe the hype of a 500 million dollar project... goddamn how gullible can people be.

I think people love getting swept up in hype.

I played the Alpha and Beta and had fun and I'll probably have fun with this game too. The gaming media outlets are just people with a megaphone attached to their opinion. They are no more qualified to talk about games than any of us (less qualified in a lot of cases) because gaming lacks an academic aspect that gives certain book and movie reviews more credibility.

I don't really see the value in games media in its current state. At worst it's an extra arm for PR departments to use to slap you in the face and at best mildly critical. There was a quote about how uneasy and awkward a room of press and politicians should be and that's true for all journalism. Jason Schreier is doing it right because a developer called him a "press sneak fuck". I don't believe you can give an unbiased opinion of your developer/publisher friend's game that they've worked on for years and that's sort of the core of the problem with games journalism. It's more in their best interests to be nice to publishers and PR than to serve the public.

So no, I don't trust the games media more but Destiny getting 7s instead of 9s (lol 2 points) has nothing to do with that. Bungie gave us the game in alpha and beta form so we all knew damn well what to expect. If anything Destiny shows how most people completely disregard the games media and that their opinions don't really matter in terms of popularity and sales.

This is the problem with beta/demo. When something is labeled a demo then you don't expect anything to change much but Bungie made an alpha and beta so people expected a lot of things to be fixed/changed for the better or added for substance.

 

[SmoothRunningGun]

I trust Redbox. Rent the game and try it for myself.

 

[Fox Mulder]

So the game is hyped by the same media that released critical reviews after game is released.

how does that inspire trust exactly?

 

[Seanspeed]

This has once again proven that you should never fall for hype.

I'm routinely disappointed anytime somebody ever suggests that cynicism is the answer after being let down by something.

The gaming world, or at least my enjoyment of this hobby I love, would be so incredibly diminished if it weren't for hype. Will every single hyped game turn out exactly as expected? Of course not. But big deal. We all get it wrong sometimes and it merely proves to me that we *cannot* predict everything and we *cannot* tell exactly how good a game will be just by watching some videos or whatever, and I consider that a good thing. A certain amount of unpredictability makes life interesting.

I also think its unfair to put all the blame on the media for the hype of a game. They actually do feed very much off of what the consumers are talking and hyped about. I do not believe in 'manufactured hype', but rather believe that media hype is often a reflection of consumer hype. It is a business and probably cant be trusted 100%, but if you're really going to blame them for *you* being excited about Destiny and it failing to live up to those expectations, I suspect you are simply deflecting responsibility.

 

[prag16]

These are the same outlets that hyped the game up relentlessly in the first place.

This. If anything this about face makes me trust them even less than before.

 

[Percy]

No. Fuck no!

How soon some of us forget the Titanfall build up.