The Gamespot Review Of Forza 6 Is Ridiculous

The fact that replays don't run at 60 fps takes off two points?

That's insane.

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/forza-motorsport-6-review/1900-6416239/

InB4 '8' is a good score. Welcome to PS4spot.

Scores around here are kinda irrelevant its a good game I'll be getting the standard edition.

Forza 5 was lacking tons of content and features and was clearly a rush launch job.

Forza 5 got a lower 79/100 metascore but F5 was given a super high 9/10 at GS.

Looking at the Forza 6 reviews, right now F6 has a 88/100 metascore currently (will probably drop in a few weeks). It shows that GS's score is in that range for sure.

The racing market has also gotten more stiff as well since Forza 5 released. In the end, it's not that Forza 6 deserves a higher score than Forza 5 (it does), but rather than Forza 5 should never have gotten a 9/10 in the first place.

I've never been a huge fan of GS reviews, so I wouldn't pay it any attention. However, if we are to pick apart reviews, the Forza 5 review was bad. This F6 review's score is much, much, much closer to the meta average.

That said, everyone has their own opinion and whatever happens isn't a big deal. I personally follow particular reviewers instead of labeling a site good or bad.

Also, you talking about another console only invites discussion that should be reserved for SW. The terrible two reviews of The Last of Us and The Last of Us remastered at GS prove though that this place is definitely not "PS4spot". Those games garnered 200+ Game of the Year awards and are both seperately ranked at an incredible 95/100 each, and both got lowballed 8/10 at GS.

Don't put so much stock in reviews from any one site, but if you do, don't turn a blind's eye to Forza 5 or The Last of Us (twice).

What we know for sure is that this year's Forza 6 game is another good Forza game for racing fans. Despite a new Forza title every year, the series still is doing well with reviewers and fans.

^^^
This. The other admitted "nitpick" was ridiculous too. They must've realized it since they didn't even put it in the bullet list at the end.

Excepts that's not how the reviews have ever worked at Gamespot.com.

The game's don't start at 10/10 and detract points as they go along.

@SolidTy:
And THAT'S the problem so many people have with game site reviews. They SHOULD start at ten, go down for flaws, then back up again for value. (i.e. Standard price before discounts being $60, a game that scores an 8 with 20 hours of gameplay but launches for $10 would still be a 10/10 for value.)Thus, games like the Witcher would not be able to get a 10/10 score since they have significant programming issues.

I need to get off of my lazy butt and start my own gaming site. While no review can be completely objective, a set standard for reviews to follow would significantly reduce the bizarre scoring patterns.

@SolidTy: thats your opinion, I have mine. explain Journey remaster how actually got a 10 and the original got a 9 but Gears remaster got a lower score than the original, when the only major differences with both games was they both got improved graphics and framerates? Review scores are subjective to the reviewer which most of whom on this site favor PS4 as platform. The senior review staff here openly admits it.

@oflow: You seem upset about opinions of this website. I wouldn't pay it any mind because I can play the tit-for-tat bad review game going back a decade and in the end it all boils down to some person's opinion.

That said, I posted facts regarding Forza 5 and Forza 6 above.

Forza 6's GS 8/10 review is actually much, much, much closer to the 88/100 metascore, so really you should be very happy that the rushed content/feature lacking Forza 5 got a 9/10 at GS despite the much lower metacritic 79/100.

That uber-high Forza 5 GS review/opinion that should at least pleased you. Take solace in the fact that Forza 6's metascore is 88/100 (and is going down), it's not the travesty of being a 90+ on metacritic and getting a lower score on GS like what happened twice with TLOU and TLOU Remastered.

Regarding GeoW? It sits at an 82/100, so it's not like only Gamespot.com had issues with the game. The GS Review for GeoW for Xbone was 7/10, which is fairly close to 82/100.

Again though, don't worry so much about GS scores, they've been wonky since the late 1990's as far as I'm concerned.

The problem is that people's livelihood is partly based on the reviews. When someone comes out and does a half assed job it hurts the people who made the game.

That's strange, I was just talking in great detail to someone else today about how people's/developers livelihood is based on reviews (specifically metacritic). That was exactly what I said, I wonder if you read my post as I posted it 6 hours ago in another Forza 6 thread. Maybe it's a coincidence since it's well known the effect of metacritic on the industry for many years now.

At this juncture I will re-post my comment that I made earlier to save me loads of time about developers livelihood to ensure we are on the same page:

Every time I've seen a 70-79/100 on metascritic, I've always associated the 70%-ish scoring game with a "C" rank (over the last decade since Gamerrankings and Metacritic became a thing although I was around before those sites). A 7/10 reads to me as a C. I look at reviews the way a school teacher looks at grades and the way that many reviewers look at games. 90% or higher is magical although I would argue it shouldn't be, that's just the way it's been for years.

For whatever reason, there is a fine line between 89% and 90%, but there shouldn't be as mathematically it's 1%, but even publishers make a HUGE, HUGE deal about that 1%, NO JOKE. Bonnie Ross of 343 made a huge deal about getting 90+ at metacritic and so do EA, Ubisoft, M$, Activision, and many other publishers. It shouldn't be that way, but we aren't dealing with ideals here. Developers raises and livelihood depends on that mystical and sought after rare 90+ metascore. We gamers can pretend it doesn't mean much but I look at the grading and scoring system the way the industry look at it and taught me to look at it over the many years of me analyzing the data. I wish it was all mathematical and ideal, but alas, it's not.

The ranking that a game receives is regarded as a barometer for whether a title will sell well, with many game industry veterans and analysts saying a game needs to score in the mid-80s to be a certified hit.

“I’d be hard pressed to buy a 60-rated game,” said Josh Holmes, “Halo 4′s” creative director.

“Anything below 75–that’s the kiss of death.” (Halo 4 went on to hit 87/100 Metascore)

To respond to your the second part of your post: While I don't condone that developers rely to some extent the metascore for raises and employment, I also think that reviewers have an ethical responsibility to provide a game review on what they actually believe the game to be, not what they feel pressured to post to help some developers get a raise.

GS does not do .5 increments on scores anymore. They only do one point increments now.

The F6 reviewer thought about it after playing Forza 6 and he had to decide on an 8 or a 9, He chose 8/10. It's his opinion on a game, I might remind you, that none of us have even played in great depth. That's a B in school, much like the metascore would be a B.

Perhaps the F6 reviewer (Miguel Concepcion) would have given Forza 6 an 8.5, but GS doesn't do that anymore. Also, times have changed, standards have changed, expectations for car games have changed, there are more racing games today, and the Forza series may have some fatigue in the eyes of the reviewers since going annual between Horizon and the main games.

@SolidTy:
I wouldn't care about their scores, except they have influence over uninformed buyers. Earlier today, at my local target, the Madden 16 display had the Gamespot video review of Splatoon running. Fast foreward to GT7's release and, if they give it a higher score than Forza 7 regardless of quality, shoppers at the various locations where said displays show the reviews may be swayed to an inferior product. It isn't right.

**Note: The GT7 vs. FM7 is hypothetical as neither has been released yet. For all we know, the current news surrounding GT7 could just be to troll and surprise everyone when they release a fully updated GT7. Doubtful, but it could happen.**

What does it matter if the game got an 8 or a 10? The game is great. I recently ordered the new Logitech G920 wheel (plus shifter attachment), and Forza 6 was the main reason why I got it. I couldn't justify the price of a high end wheel before because FM5 lacked content.

That's weird lol

Yes I've been an advocate of this for a while.

An 8 is not going to hurt Forza sales and doesnt seem like an issue.

#WeHateX1Spot

Soccer cars scored more than Forza 6 on this site. That's not ridiculous at all.

@Jaysonguy: The problem is that people's livelihood is partly based on the reviews.

I'm actually not super sure the correlation of that is that 1:1 (bad over all review = layoffs). I've wondered what that looks like (especially since I have family that works in games) but we tend not to talk about that sort of thing.

Also, why is it everyone thinks a game starts at 10 and goes down from there? Reminds me of this every time I see that...

It's not 1:1 of course but it does factor in, working in gaming myself I can attest to that. Especially big places. I'm not talking layoffs either I'm talking more in line of bonuses, opportunities at work, that sort of thing.

Also I'm confused why the way someone comes to a score matters at all. No one in their right mind goes to car physics and says "that's .65 of a point" and looks at multiplayer and thinks "add in 1.3 points". Scores come organically, you look at the parts you look at the whole, etc etc etc.

The point remains (I giggled when I said point) that the only flaw listed is that the replay system doesn't move at the frame rate the reviewer would have liked. So did the reviewer see problems that made the game get 20% less than the total possible score but failed to mention them?

It kinda goes two ways here.

1. There are problems that the reviewer didn't mention

2. The frame rate was the cause for the game missing out on 20% of it's possible 100% of points.

Here's a perfect example that has the same things involved.

A review is an evaluation. If you worked somewhere and your yearly review came up. When talking to your supervisor you were told you scored an 80/100 and in the positives there was "good communicator" "prompt and courteous" "hard worker on the Davis report" and in the negative column the only thing listed was "staples paperwork quarter inch higher than other workers".

Now you wont be fired but only scoring an 8 out of a possible 10 means that the highest tier bonuses wont be yours, you wont be chosen as elite in your area in the company, there will be many opportunities that you wont be picked for because of how you scored.

Would you just look at it and be ok with it?

What it really boils down to is dealing with facts rather than opinion. A reviewer's opinion of a game is meaningless to me. All I want to know are the facts of the game and from there I can form my own opinion. Without even reading this review, I can certainty say F6 is most likely a fantastic game based strictly on the facts of what is and is not contained in the game.

So does that mean that you don't take other people's experiences into the games you play at all?

Because it makes sense to have a starting point and lose points based on flaws, be it technical or otherwise.

Can you stop bringing that up please? That's not how it works. That's not how it ever worked. The game did not lose 20 percent because of one bullet point. I've seen games get 9s with several negative bullet points, and even 10s with negative bullet points. By your logic, any 10 that GS gave with a negative bullet point would have to be scored lower.

The bullet points are only there to bring up issues that are worth mentioning, and those issues aren't always big enough that it will have any bearing on the score. Case in point, the last gen review of GTA V. Carolyn threw a bullet point out there about the game being politically muddled and misogynistic and people lost their shit thinking she docked a point for it, wherein the reality was the game was going to get a 9 anyway. The bulletpoint was something that just stuck out to her. When GTA V was reviewed again for this generation by a different reviewer, no bulletpoint about politics and misogyny was given, and the game still received a 9.

The problem with Forza 6's review is that it wasn't done by the person who did Forza 5, Shaun McInnus, because unfortunately he's no longer at GS. I've heard people say Forza 5 got too high of a score. Miguel Concepcion may have agreed. Let's just say he felt it was deserving of a 7, but since he wasn't assigned to review it (don't know if he was at GS back then), we'd have to defer to McInnus's 9. So, when Concepcion reviews 6, which is all around improved, he gave it an 8, an step up from what he would have given 5 (if that's what he'd actually give it. who knows?). That's the problem with reviewers. They don't and CAN'T all think alike, so you're going to get these inconsistencies when games in series and rereleases and remasters are reviewed by different reviews. That's why you don't put much stock into just the numbers and the bulletpoints. That's why you have to read the reviews and even read reviews at other places to get full picture if you can't figure out whether a game's worth it or not.

Then, you talk about people's livelihoods at stake because of review scores. Do you think Forza 6's 8 actually impacted its sales at all? The scores don't matter that much. The marketing department takes care of that. If they didn't like GS's 8, they'll just go to some other site and use their 9 or 10 to throw into their ads. I know you work in gaming, and therein lies the problem. You can't look at this issue from a neutral point of view. You'll just have to accept the fact that there will be reviewers who will never give a game a high score (and honestly, an 8's a high score. give it a rest) just because hard-working people made a game.

Nothing you said pertains to this conversation at all.

If you would like to try again please, by all means you can because conversation is fun.

Otherwise I'm going to have to say thank you for posting but I don't want to talk about things other than the conversation I'm having right now.