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[Muppet of a Man]

Well, can't blame people for being wary...

There's been a "feeling" lately of a general anti - Sony/ PS4 vibe, both on Forums and the media.
Evolution didn't help with the botched release of Driveclub, or Sony itself with the hiccups in the 2.0 patch, but it goes far beyond that.

Case in point, Driveclub was torn to shreds (mostly deserved when relating to online performances) but not even for its actual problems, but for "Lack of Soul". Thing is, Driveclub was almost the story of a predicted failure all year long, as it seemed that most media outlets had already writen it down as a failed "corridor" racer ... cf Giant Bomb.
OTOH IGN had a month long coverage of MCC. The whole frickin' month of October was all Halo, all the time (or so it felt).

Other exemple, Shareplay should have been celebrated, but as soon as a hiccup showed up (not even Sony's fault, it -had- to have a clause for Publishers to opt out), many apparently started to report it as a failed experiment.

Eurogamer's Digital Foundry has had a very interesting way of reporting, particularly lately. Halo's problems were mostly brushed over, while they really reported a LOT it seemed on the AC:U "parity". For GTA V, same, they seem to want absolutely to have both versions to be mostly the same "overall".
One of the most damning comparison was COD: AW. There's no two way around it, read the text, in between lines, and the PS4 version is clearly vastly better.
But read sumaries/ conclusions? Not that big of a difference according to them.
Still about Eurogamer: Where is the PES 2015 comparison? Far Cry 4 is a comparison PS4 / PC, no mention of the XB1. No mention of the Dragon Age: Inquisition tech stuff either.
Instead of that, and while they missed the lack of vegetation detail / quality of shadows/ lighting the first time around, let's make sure to run an update that emphasizes that, in spite of the PS4 version advantages in GTA V, everyone should know that there are some intersections in town that sometime drop a little more fps on PS4 than XB1. Nevermind that at some other points in the city the XB1 drops actually more (pointing out to a lack of optimization). The unmissable sub text: Tech differences -unlike in the PS360 era- aren't that big of a deal, even if "technically" they are actually bigger.

Current week?
LBP3 was demolished in some medias (before day 1 patch) for bugs that were (mostly) solved day 1, while MCC (which is also buggy, and still is) enjoyed a far better reception before it.
6.8 from IGN?
For them BF4 was 8.5. What about Sim City (2013), borderline unplayable at release? 7.

Long story short: Can't really shake the feeling that some media outlets (it's expected from Xbox fans) would like to take Sony down a notch this Holiday.

Not putting it out as fact. It's all about the feels.

I just think Richard Leadbetter wants a job at Microsoft. Remember that dude Luke Smith from 1up? Same deal for him. I think he actually landed a job at Bungie during X360's reign. Come to think of it, I think a couple of the guys landed jobs at MS from 1up. And then there was Shane "#1 Sony fanboy" Bettenhausen. He landed a job at Sony. I think only the Nintendo fanboys (Jeremy Parish?) didn't land jobs at Nintendo.

 

[StuBurns]

This only ever becomes an issue when you come across a game that is simply better than you could have imagined any game to be. So, not that often. But fair enough, it might happen, so what does that mean? Well it means that your standards have been raised. I suppose you'd then ask, "Well does that mean a game you previous gave an 8 to is suddenly no longer an 8?" And the answer would be a 'yes', basically. But only if you were to re-evaluate a game. The only thing you can ever do is rate a game based on how you feel *at that time*.

You might say that makes the whole system messy and in a way it does, but I've said before that people shouldn't take reviews so damn seriously. Some people seem to want and expect reviews to be something they aren't and *cannot* be. People trying to poke holes in reviews by saying, "Oh well they scored this game this and this other game that, so they cant be taken seriously" are treating reviews as if they are based off some perfect metric analysis whereby all games can be categorized neatly and objectively based on quality.

What usually happens after this is that people then claim 'so reviews are meaningless'. Basically, because they cant all fit into some perfectly objective system, then they serve no function whatsoever. Which I find ridiculous. Yes, it does mean that reviews shouldn't be considered the end all be all of how one should view a game obviously, but that doesn't mean they have no utility or value at all. I like reviews because the people writing them are *usually* better able to express in words what they think of something than your average 'user review' can. I appreciate that kind of thing.

It's not even so much expectations of quality, UC2 was very far from the best game I'd played when it came out, it's more about comparative quality between genres. To use the film analogy again, something like Terminator 2 is a really enjoyable film, but on a scale that houses everything from Plan 9 to Tree of Life, it's certainly not in the top half of that scale, but that's not really fair considering its quality versus its genre-peers.

Much like the T2 thing, on a scale running from Superman 64 to Ico, UC2 is like a five, but it was also the best anyone had ever done in that style of game, so it would seem impossibly brutal to give it a five.

I didn't say reviews have no value, I didn't even say scores have no value, I just said personally I struggle with processing scores, because I can't find a rational scale on which they can realistically exist.

 

[John Bender]

But as far as I know, PSNation were never on Metacritic. CVG on the other hand used to have their reviews posted on Metacritic, and they're still included in the publications list here. So what the hell happened?

Update:
"We covered CVG years ago when they did their own reviews. The active tracking list, as I mentioned is in the FAQ section."

 

[Ricky_R]

It's not even so much expectations of quality, UC2 was very far from the best game I'd played when it came out, it's more about comparative quality between genres. To use the film analogy again, something like Terminator 2 is a really enjoyable film, but on a scale that houses everything from Plan 9 to Tree of Life, it's certainly not in the top half of that scale, but that's not really fair considering its quality versus its genre-peers.

Much like the T2 thing, on a scale running from Superman 64 to Ico, UC2 is like a five, but it was also the best anyone had ever done in that style of game, so it would seem impossibly brutal to give it a five.

I didn't say reviews have no value, I didn't even say scores have no value, I just said personally I struggle with processing scores, because I can't find a rational scale on which they can realistically exist.

I guess the most logical thing to do is to take each game separately and try to match the score with the general context of reviews. Try not to compare games and their scores even though it might be impossible.

 

[BlackBuzzard]

95 from Venturebeat calls it the first must own PS4 title.

 

[mrklaw]

It's not even so much expectations of quality, UC2 was very far from the best game I'd played when it came out, it's more about comparative quality between genres. To use the film analogy again, something like Terminator 2 is a really enjoyable film, but on a scale that houses everything from Plan 9 to Tree of Life, it's certainly not in the top half of that scale, but that's not really fair considering its quality versus its genre-peers.

Much like the T2 thing, on a scale running from Superman 64 to Ico, UC2 is like a five, but it was also the best anyone had ever done in that style of game, so it would seem impossibly brutal to give it a five.

I didn't say reviews have no value, I didn't even say scores have no value, I just said personally I struggle with processing scores, because I can't find a rational scale on which they can realistically exist.

I love that analogy. Great post.

 

[Acquiescence]

95 from Venturebeat calls it the first must own PS4 title.

Game has definitely got a surplus of positive reviews as of late.

 

[AgentP]

http://gamengage.net/littlebigplanet-review/

9.5/10