are websites like IGN to harsh on sonic in reviews?

well this post was supposed to be exclusivley on the sega zone union, but SOMEONE convinced me to put it on sonicspot. *looks at koolkat14 ) but anyways.

in my opinion IGN and sometimes gamespot give a sonic game an unfair review. examples?

http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/14242719/sonic-unleashed/videos/SonicUnleashedReviewn_120208.html

sonic unleashed recieved a lower review than sonic next gen! need another one?

http://wii.ign.com/dor/objects/14268379/sonic--the-black-knight-/videos/sonicblackknight_vdr_030509.html

now i know the game wasnt that good but i got SOME enjoyment of it.

my question is do you also think some sites are trying to bring down sonic?

or maybe its the oppisite!? maybe they want their old sonic back so bad they are postingg such aweful reviews to send a messag to sega.

the motif why I don't like IGN is not because they give low score to games I do like. My problem with them is that they are all the time b*tching around saying Sonic is an overrated hero just because his new games sucks. They think they are the allmighty videogame gods that everything they say is right. Not to forget I got mad over them when they said the 360 is better than the PS3, the Wii and the N64. Anyway, I don't wanna come with a system wars right now.

As a resume, I hate IGN

Sometimes the truth can be harsh, some other times, the reviewer is just a jerk. IGN has it's standards and i use them and Gamespot to weigh my options. Don't let reviews and editor's opinions sway your buying ways. Something 4.5 may be awesome to you, but a 9.0 may look to you to be total crap (just don't tell the fanboys).dandymarsh

i agree with this satetment

well this post was supposed to be exclusivley on the sega zone union, but SOMEONE convinced me to put it on sonicspot. *looks at koolkat14 ) but anyways.

sonichedgehog45

*ignores him*

or maybe its the oppisite!? maybe they want their old sonic back so bad they are postingg such aweful reviews to send a messag to sega.

sonichedgehog45

There's a point there

I would have to respectfully disagree with you on this part (Unleashed only, I haven't played Black Knight so I didn't watch the review).

Yes, the reviewer was a bit cynical, however I couldn't help but feel that everything he said has been mimicked in this very union from the get go.  I myself enjoyed Unleashed, but for the most part that review didn't say anything I hadn't already read here.

I'm not going to disagree wholly simply because I am unfamiliar with IGN's ratings for most Sonic Games, but I will stand by my opinion that the review for Unleashed appeared fair if not for the fact that most Sonic fans seem to say the same things.

I don't quite think it's really ever possible for a review to be "too harsh" because when push comes to shove, a review is simply an opinion.  And frankly, there are very few sources out there that aren't in some way biased towards their own opinion (if not all).  Although as Sonic fans we might think that their reviews are based unfairly, in the end we don't represent every single person who plays a Sonic game.  It's why I try not to use reviews as a source for buying video games, every "reviewer" has some sort of opinion which differentiates them from myself (Unfortunately it makes finding good games a bit difficult).

(Above) BINGO!

At the end of the day, they are opinions. That said, it does anger me, but often because of the socres themselves,a dn not the comments made to the game. usually, they're harsh but I look at the game and agree. But giving games really bad scores just for silly things, or giving them scores worse than games which are just universlly terrible is just the reviewer not knowing his own material.

I have more recently been looking at review sites with a bit more cynicism in general. Not just in regards to Sonic games. There have been cases where in more recent years some devs have put reviewers up in posh hotels with unlimited room service so techinically they're not being paid off but they are pushing them to give a better score. Notice the ridiculous amount of 10s being tossed out this year? I mean no one I talked to thought GTAIV deserved perfect 10s. It didn't offer anything new aside from your cousing calling you every 10 minutes and painting the entire city brown. Honestly if Sega wants Sonic games to get good scores, they need to just put up a reviewer in a posh hotel room. Of course Sega's not like Activision. They don't have those sorts of funds so they're screwed. Nintendo could do the same but they're not whores and as recent sales prove, the critics can bash them left and right and they keep selling.

And we can't forget about the infamous Jeff Gertsman incident. A GS editor who was fired because Edios wasn't happy with his review of Kane and Lynch. This set forth a lot of backlash from the gaming community.

In short I never thought recent games were as bad as some are saying. Unleashed was worlds better than Sonic Next Gen. The werehog sucked but it wasn't a glitch fest with a beastiality storyline. I think the Wii scores for Unleashed were the best and more spot on but I'm not one of these whiny fans who runs around screaming how every Sonic game is the greatest thing ever and how all these evil critics are biased.

One of my favorite Zero Punctuation vids was done way back when Yahtzee did a not so favorable review of SSBB and the fanboys retorted back and he did this response video which still cracks me up (warning contains swearing)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/37-Mailbag-Showdown

I also like this little piece about the state of game reviews.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/going-gold/6908-Going-Gold-Practicalities-Makes-Perfect

Here's the thing. Games are expensive. $60 for the big budget games on the HD twins and that's a lot to spend (one of the main reasons I avoided the 360 version of Unleashed was there was no way in hell I was spending $60 bucks on a series that's struggling). We'll blow off movie, TV and music reviews because it's a lot less to spend. If games were only $20 a piece, we'd put a lot less stock into reviews I think.

But game reviews these days are flawed focusing on fluff such as how in depth is the story and knocking down points for anything that doesn't have online multiplayer not considering that not everyone likes playing online and ironically not knocking off points for lack of local multiplayer. And so many of these perfect 10 games seem to end up in bargain bins within a year of release. If they were so good, why didn't they sell more beyond the first month of release. Look at what has consistently stayed on the game charts week after week: Wii Fit, New Super Mario Bros. Mario Kart Wii, I disregard Wii Play for the whole controller thing but all the heavily hyped, big budget games seem to be in the top 10 for a month or two and fall off. What does that tell you?

IGN often sound as if they are pushing an agenda to me. I remember reading an article about the history of Sega that they published this year that was curiously sympathetic to Bernie Stolar and his role in Sega's downfall. For those who don't know, this is the man who left SCEA in the mid-90's to take over as president of Sega of America. He forced Sega to stop localising nearly all third party RPG's outside of Japan and was also notorious for alienating third party developers. It made it sound as if Sega's role in the hardware was put to an end because they weren't listening intently enough to their US division. In truth, it was Sega of America who were responsible for creating the abominable 32X and it was Stolar who discontinued the Saturn after only three years on the market and set out to get the Dreamcast on the market almost a full year before the PS2, effectively killing the system before it even got started.

So yeah, I try my best to take anything that IGN says with a pinch of salt. They hate Sega for some reason or another and their negative reviews for Sonic Unleashed and Sonic & the Black Knight were incredibly OTT.

They're a bit harsh on their games, but gamespot is twice as harsh then IGN.Dgalmun

any examples?

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Sonic Adventure DXmacrules_640

you mean, those are underrated titles, right?

I never liked IGN that much course of the users their as well.

In short (since I have little to no time) they can be VERY brutal at times, but when it's the truth, it's the truth I'm afraid.

Sonic Unleashed was a step in the right direction, but a few steps back as well.

Sonic Unleashed was a step in the right direction, but a few steps back as well.

macrules_640

if you mean the few steps back as the night levels i dont think so. the night levels were just a way to half ass a game and sell it to the public knowing it would sell well. so i think it wasnt so much a few step backs as much as just not moving ahead.

I don't think they are too harsh. Honestly, the last two sonic games I played that I liked were Adventure battle 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog. I know the Shadow game wasn't that good, but I still enjoyed it. Either way, they are just doing their job, which in some cases means tearing apart a bad game.