Why PC gaming reviews need to change. A case in point.....
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STALKER, with patch 1.004 installed, along with great mods like raw's onion mod, that fixes the text, and the quest mod that fixes broken quests and unlocks others, to mods that make the human AI a little less god like in their aiming capacity, to others that add lots of lovely weapons, allow for traders to repair your armor/weapons and even a mod that moves the first zombies to the other side of the bridge to make the game a little easier for beginners, STALKER is easily a 90%+ game now.
But without a system to glorify games like STALKER after they're fixed, we have a system that forever more will beat them over the head! No wonder we get little after sales service from developers and publishers - where's the incentive? They can spend millions on patches and improvements, make them all free to download, change the game beyond all recognition and the game's review score will not move one jolt!
It's no wonder PC gaming is shrinking and dying in front of our eyes. Any industry that can describe a product as 'dated but beautiful' is committing suicide. Beautiful is beautiful when it comes to graphics. Period. Another form of beautiful is when a gamer realises a great game will run on their PC. While games like Supreme Commander and Bioshock require very powerful PC's, here we have a great looking, great playing game that will run on many more. Without this range of product PC gaming cannot survive and yet do we recognise that? No. We talk about dated and poor graphics, or we talk about it 'not being state of the art' - well, you know what? State of the art will only work on 5% of home PC's, and I am in the other 95%! And if we in the 95% don't get some support from the PC gaming media and industry, we're going elsewhere - then see what happens to PC gaming and sites like this!
STALKER, another 90%+ game that the gaming media will never let the public know about.
Your overstatement about having to have a state of the art computer is false. While having a new computer helps games, it has always been the case. bioshock and SC, as well as games like M2TW run fine on older computers, as long as those computers are 2-3 years old, or if a 3 year+ computer, they will run with minor upgrading. of course new games run better on new computers, its the nature of the industry. That does not mean that you have to have a "state of the art" computer to run the majority of computer games that are released.
While i agree with you reguarding your issue with graphics, isthat to many people place to much on graphics , vs overall gameplay, when a product is released, its either time to review it or not. When a game like stalker, has a mass of game breaking bugs, does not deliver what it promised, and has rather bland FPS style gameplay, you cant expect a review to be all that promising, or to wait 6-8 months for those issues to be fixed. Additionally, having to install mods from the gaming community, to make the game enjoyable pretty much means there are some inherent flaws with the game itself.
As far as bioshock, quite simply, bioshock is just a better game then stalker. It has nothing to do with graphics, it has to do with the quality of the game overall. Bioshocks FPS combat is not that hard, but all the various elements of graphics, gameplay, sound, setting,immersion combine to create a better game.
no need to have updated reviews.
that should be up to the gaming community. that is why we have user reviews and forums.
in my opinion, Stalker should receive a low score due to all its bugs. Gamespot is trying to appeal to as many gamers as possible. Their reviews should not just be geared to those who want to spend a lot of time downloading patches and mods for games just to make them run acceptably. Most people are not capable of or willingto do that.
I consider myself a die-hard hermit who gamed on a pc since 5 years old with a commodor64 and have finished STALKER and can say it was alright but nothing extraordinary, despite the long production. In fact, I didn't even think about the 5+ years in the making because that would have swayed me to enjoy it even more... it still was just okay for me. I think the review is fine for it.
However, I think Halo is the most overrated game of all time and that's one thing that's converting ppl over to Xbox. Something's gotta be done about that. I sure wish Crysis could come to 360/PS3 as a 3-6 month trial game with keyboard/mouse support.. then back to pc exclusivity. Perhaps then consolites and reviewers would see how pc gamer have it.
I'm not sure if this a PC gaming is dying thread in disguise or just some guy who just thinks stalker should be rated higher.
Although I do agree there should be some form of rereviewing if a game gets knocked because of bugs/performance issues and they are later fixed.
I agree that if a patch makes major changes to a game then it should be reveiwed again if there is a big improvement.
But the games company shouldn't be relying on patches to improve the game they should make the good stuff first time and to fail at launch just shows that companies skillz ain't dope g.
I would recommend develpoers to go the EPIC way.
They released UT2K3 which got a 8.8....that score is no way near bad.....but then they went and added a few features and outright bought a lot of mods and made UT2K4 which scored a 9.4 and remains as one of the best MP focused FPS to date.
UT2K4 sold a lot of copies and scored well...the developers are happy.......Many people who wouldn't have downloaded the mods, got allthe mods packaged in one and got a overall better deal...the consumers are happy:P
I know this couldn't be done to all the games....but games like NWN2 if repackaged with some cool mods and the latest patch with a bit of added content would IMO sell well.:D
I would recommend develpoers to go the EPIC way.
They released UT2K3 which got a 8.8....that score is no way near bad.....but then they went and added a few features and outright bought a lot of mods and made UT2K4 which scored a 9.4 and remains as one of the best MP focused FPS to date.
UT2K4 sold a lot of copies and scored well...the developers are happy.......Many people who wouldn't have downloaded the mods, got allthe mods packaged in one and got a overall better deal...the consumers are happy:P
I know this couldn't be done to all the games....but games like NWN2 if repackaged with some cool mods and the latest patch with a bit of added content would IMO sell well.:D
froidnite
PPl hate rehashes and seeing as UT2003 let down the fans so badly they just had to buy UT2004 to make up for it.
...wait a minute that realy is great business sense lol. uwe boll style!
[QUOTE="froidnite"]I would recommend develpoers to go the EPIC way.
They released UT2K3 which got a 8.8....that score is no way near bad.....but then they went and added a few features and outright bought a lot of mods and made UT2K4 which scored a 9.4 and remains as one of the best MP focused FPS to date.
UT2K4 sold a lot of copies and scored well...the developers are happy.......Many people who wouldn't have downloaded the mods, got allthe mods packaged in one and got a overall better deal...the consumers are happy:P
I know this couldn't be done to all the games....but games like NWN2 if repackaged with some cool mods and the latest patch with a bit of added content would IMO sell well.:D
DrDoomed
PPl hate rehashes and seeing as UT2003 let down the fans so badly they just had to buy UT2004 to make up for it.
...wait a minute that realy is great business sense lol. uwe boll style!
Updates to reviews basd on pathes, thats not a bad idea. Updates to reviews based on mods? No way. Its too much of a gray area and too much work for a reviewer. Take oblivion for example. I'd say its near impossible to do a thorough review of what every mod brings to the game. Besides, if a game requires modification to be good well then doesnt that by definition mean the actual game, the thing you pay for, is bad?
Well I am extremely suspicious of the fact that gaming sites will treat an official mod like it was a game release with full blown editorial, but they have never got on board reviewing mods or re-looking at a game like Vampire; Bloodline after all it's unofficial fixes and doing an editorial on it, if not a re-review. Not all mods have to be reviewed, but it wouldn't be a bad start to just do the more popular of bigger changing mods for games.
There would only be a small number of games at any one time that would need to be re-reviewed, so i don;t see it being too onerus on the sites/magazines.
What I am amazed at how the media and gamers treat 15 hour on the rail scripted shooters prodcued in 6 months on an engine with an open-ended free-form large world 100's of NPC RPG or FPS/RPG hybrid like STALKER. Thesse open ended games are much harder to produce, take longer and are therefore more expensive to produce and they come along very rarely. they should be treated like the Rolls Royces of gaming, and yet they get treated as just another game. That isn't right.
[QUOTE="DrDoomed"][QUOTE="froidnite"]I would recommend develpoers to go the EPIC way.
They released UT2K3 which got a 8.8....that score is no way near bad.....but then they went and added a few features and outright bought a lot of mods and made UT2K4 which scored a 9.4 and remains as one of the best MP focused FPS to date.
UT2K4 sold a lot of copies and scored well...the developers are happy.......Many people who wouldn't have downloaded the mods, got allthe mods packaged in one and got a overall better deal...the consumers are happy:P
I know this couldn't be done to all the games....but games like NWN2 if repackaged with some cool mods and the latest patch with a bit of added content would IMO sell well.:D
Mossad
PPl hate rehashes and seeing as UT2003 let down the fans so badly they just had to buy UT2004 to make up for it.
...wait a minute that realy is great business sense lol. uwe boll style!
Updates to reviews basd on pathes, thats not a bad idea. Updates to reviews based on mods? No way. Its too much of a gray area and too much work for a reviewer. Take oblivion for example. I'd say its near impossible to do a thorough review of what every mod brings to the game. Besides, if a game requires modification to be good well then doesnt that by definition mean the actual game, the thing you pay for, is bad?
I wasn't saying each mod had to be reviewed...I was saying the developer themselves should release another version of the game with the best mods out there.....Take the same example of Oblivion.....Every major reviewer reviewed Knights of the Nine, if they had included some awesome mods in that package, the expansion would have been rated higher and would have sold better.
Had a thought - we get many fewer PC games releases nowadays. (The 5 games mentioned in the slideshow on the main page hardly change week on week, for example!) - I don't see why the media on the web at least, if not the printed press, could have re-looks at games!
Certainly a UK website, PC Zone, has done a couple of 're-looks' at titles like Riddick and KOTOR 2, but not specifically to look at games after patching/modding.
I disagree with the re-review idea, because that will encourage the developers to rush out their games, knowing the score will gets higher after releasing countless of patch. Thats bad practice, software engineering is about producing high quality softwares, including games. There are already companies out there doing great job, so we should not lower the standards, if others can do it, why can't them?furymonkeyman
But don't you see? At the moment if a game is released and scored low because the magazine found a bug 60 hours into an 80 hour RPG for example and downscored it because of the bug, the publisher would know that review score was set in concrete and was never going to change - so why bother with a patch at all? Where's the incentive? So we all complain about lack of after sales service and then we support a reviewing system that makes it ineffective to have after sales service! And I repeat, it's one thing to do a 15 hour shooter with the Unreal engine, it another to do an open world, non linear RPG with 100's of NPC's and a much more detailed story and AI - they are like chalk and cheese and yet they are treated as though they are both cheese!! That's why big RPG's ALWAYS have bugs. Always. Every single one of them.
i agree with the TC. PC gamin is clearly dying :P
[/sarcasam]
nah seriously i think he has a point. games are docked marks (and rightfully so) when they have noticable bugs in em. if those bugs get fixed though then i think the marks that were deducted should be brought back. case in point: ign docked marks and complained about the witcher having long loading times. since the review was written, loading has been greatly improved since v1.2. so thats not really a complaint anymore (personally i also have noticed a huge improvement in loading since the patch was released).
this should also apply to other platforms. patches are becoming more prevelant on consoles also now. if bioware release a patch that fixes texture probs and improve loading performance then, imho, the score for mass effect should go up (or at the least, it should be noted that these issues have been fixed).
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