FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Do you think it happens, or did but not anymore? Just curious.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Do you believe that exclusive games receive a slight “exclusivity” bump with review scores?
- Thread starter FoxMcChief
- Start date
Angry_Megalodon
Member
Only if it fits the agenda or personal bias of the reviewer.
In my country, most media are anti-Sony so in that case it's the opposite.
In my country, most media are anti-Sony so in that case it's the opposite.
Guardian Monkey
Member
Certain publishers, Stellar Blade for example is a good example of that. Sony published game with some TA but really nothing to shout about if you take those two things away you would have never heard anything about it.
Sooner
Gold Member
Stellar Blade is fantastic, what are you smoking?
llLeonhart
Member
For Nintendo there’s a boost for sure.
For others it seems to go both ways to me. Depending on the dev and the game.
For others it seems to go both ways to me. Depending on the dev and the game.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Only if it's also woke
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
One could argue that some of the games get hit negatively because of T&A though.
Hmmm. Maybe the better fitting question in 2025 is, is Woke-flation in reviews real?
ZehDon
Member
It certainly happened back in the time of platform-dedicated publications. Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo dedicated magazines definitely delivered inflated scores for first party titles. Stands to reason that's still happening for the limited number of platform-dedicated publications. For platform-agnostic, it's all about preaching to their choir. Give them what they want to hear and you'll get those 9s and 10s. That's not controversial, that's just logic.
Aenima
Member
It was the other way around, Stellar Blade got some reviwers complaining the characters was too sexy. Game is fantastic.
touchfuzzy
Member
Of course they do, go look at any big exclusive review. A large number of the top reviews are fan sites of specific consoles, and very few of the bad reviews.
Guardian Monkey
Member
There wasn’t enough there to keep me engaged. Plus the levels seemed pretty flat and the texture and models were reused often and a lot of the same enemies. It just felt incomplete to me.
Impacts from both sides most likely.
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Of course. Review scores are worthless and just marketing after all. I assume that paying for good scores or even scaring the shit out of the reviewers with them not getting early review copies of your next games are common practices.
Source? Common sense really. There's nothing stopping them from doing so.
Source? Common sense really. There's nothing stopping them from doing so.
Guardian Monkey
Member
You see more discussion around here about the women in the game or the gameplay?
Aenima
Member
We talking about the reviwers not GAF. Stellar Blade and Eve became a banner among player for bringing back beauty a sexy woman back to the videogames. Reviwers were not happy about that though and thers multiple articles shaming the game and the devs.
Last edited:
owandeseis
Member
Kingdom Come 2 is 47th best PS5 game, not as good as masterpieces like Deathloop, Horizon Forbidden West or Ratchet, but slightly better than Hi Fi Rush tho hehe
Sooner
Gold Member
Incorrect
Guardian Monkey
Member
It rolls up to reviewers just the same.
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Deathloop getting 10/10 up the ass on release was the funniest shit, I don't know how people still take those outlets seriously.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Sebastian1295
Member
The problem is that reviewers have gotten lenient, lazy, and fanboyish 'all of the platform specific review sites' which results in higher scores being easy to get now. Literally anything that isn't a broken mess gets a 75 plus at least when it should be more like like a 65 or below. There's too many mid games nowadays being scored as good to great games. Back in the day it was much much harder to get a 85 plus game grade let alone anything 90 or above.
Cert.in.Death
Member
Implicit bias is rampant in the review segment of the industry. Hence why GTA and LOZ are all-time high scores routinely.
Last edited:
Sebastian1295
Member
Rebirth is a polished and great experience. Even if you hate final fantasy, you can't look at a game like that and think it's mediocre or mid. The worlds are highly detailed, the combat is great, the side activities are plentiful, and the story is subjective.
Last edited:
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
It's a good game, it's not a 92 good game.
How the "xbox tax" meme started, remember? "reviewers are giving low scores to MS exclusives", so some of the MS fanboys with their little social media sites started to review games to counter these supposedly low reviews from the other sites
if biased af, like for example Pushsquare or Nintendowhatever or these new Xbox sites, then yes
Remember how these review sites were pushing these awful games like Veilguard as some amazing game to prop up "the message"?
If agenda driven like what I'm describing above, then yes
if biased af, like for example Pushsquare or Nintendowhatever or these new Xbox sites, then yes
Remember how these review sites were pushing these awful games like Veilguard as some amazing game to prop up "the message"?
If agenda driven like what I'm describing above, then yes
Crayon
Member
Maybe up, maybe down. Whatever it is, it definitely affects the conversation.
"Belda" is a joke, but I think there's a kernel of truth to it. BOTW was an easy game to get a bad impression of, with a lot of people finding the brilliance after sticking to it. If it was "belda", I think plenty of reviewers would have decided to focus on what it didn't have rather than what it had. It was "zelda" though, so at the point where they would have come away from belda with a certain review, they had faith that zelda must be much better than the average game.
So in that example, botw was not overrated, but belda would have been underrated.
"Belda" is a joke, but I think there's a kernel of truth to it. BOTW was an easy game to get a bad impression of, with a lot of people finding the brilliance after sticking to it. If it was "belda", I think plenty of reviewers would have decided to focus on what it didn't have rather than what it had. It was "zelda" though, so at the point where they would have come away from belda with a certain review, they had faith that zelda must be much better than the average game.
So in that example, botw was not overrated, but belda would have been underrated.
BlackTron
Member
Don't most of us agree that OOT earned its status as highest ranking game ever though? Not saying there's no bias, but is that the example?
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Ocarina has its score based on 22 reviews only.
The average game releasing today often has upwards of 100 reviews. Such a large pool would have meant it wouldn't have kept its 99 back in the day either.
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Crayon
Member
Yeah cruddy examples. If I could think of 5 games ever that re-wrote the book, those two would be in there. It's hard to separate how good they are from how important they are.
MiguelItUp
Member
I believe the best review scores/opinions are your own, as any other review is subjective. Which means potentially affected by personal opinions, and bias. It'd be silly to think otherwise IMO. Especially nowadays.
Sebastian1295
Member
Best game ever.. not in my book. These are contenders for best game ever to me.
Last edited:
BlackTron
Member
Is your point that Ocarina actually was reviewer bias or something?
bender
What time is it?
Sebastian1295
Member
I probably agree with that. I do feel like 90s are given out much too frequently nowadays. Alot of games are getting scores bumped up then what they deserve.
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Good taste man. Chrono might be the best of those imo. And damn, Rare during the N64 era was putting out masterpiece after masterpiece.Best game ever.. not in my book. These are contenders for best game ever to me.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
No, just that I don't think it would have maintained a 99 if there were half as many outlets reviewing games now as there were back then.
It's a fantastic game, just making a comment on its near-perfect 99 score.
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
I'm not a numbers guy, but don't statistics "laws" tells us that, if you get a result with 20 chances, you should get the same result with 200?
Sebastian1295
Member
I honestly prefer banjo kazooie over mario 64 which is probably blasphemy to say lol. I even prefer donkey kong 64 over mario 64. Rare were on another level back in those days.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I'm not a numbers guy either but we often see games these days launch with higher scores which slowly trickle down as more outlets get added.
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Don't say too loud lmao, but hey I agree! specially about Banjo. Click Clock Woods might be the best level ever in a 3d platformer, from concept and design to it's execution and, of course, the music.
Last edited:
awwr999999
Member
Exclusives like Returnal, Astro Bot and others are getting better reviews because they're built around DualSense and 100% of reviews are based on DualSense gameplay.
Astro and Returnal would both get much lower scores if reviewed on Xbox via Xbox controllers that just rumble - they wouldn't be the same game.
DualSense games shouldn't have the same name/title as non-DualSense games to eliminate any confusion and guarantee accurate game reviews.
Last edited:
Cert.in.Death
Member
Did GTA: VC, GTA: SA, GTAIV, GTAV, LOZ: OOT, LOZ:SS, LOZ:TP, LOZ:BotW, and LOZ:TOTK all deserve not only 95+ but in several instances 99 and 100 aggregates?
Last edited:
Sebastian1295
Member
Click clock woods is incredible and i also love mad monster mansion. Just incredible level design throughout the entire game.
