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Space_Lion Blog

Gamespot's Rating system (mainly dealing with Ratchet and Clank)

MisterEngilsh wrote:

After being initially ticked off by the contradiction riddled, lame excuse, half-baked, mentally deficient "review" shoved down our throats courtesy of one, Aaron Thomas, I decided it was time to move on. I never go to Gamespot.com for reviews anyways. I have a link on my toolbar directly to these forums so I don't have to look at the sorry attempt at a video game site. I have always hated Gamespot and their awful rating system, their biased reviewers and their lack of regard for any semblance of journalistic integrity, but a measly 7.5 for one of the best games of the year was not going to be the straw that broke the back of a camel that had died long ago.

I only wished that Gamespot had retracted the review or left it as is. The one thing I really didn't want to see was Gamespot trying to justify the blatantly BAD BAD BAD review with an even worse eplaination that seemed to destroy any credibility that they had been able to retain. By using the reasoning that they did, Gamespot has made all other reviews on this site a moot point. If a platformer, that in the review was said to be too varied with too much gameplay, was appealing to only a platform game fan, then a sports game should not have any mini games because it would no longer be appealing to casual fans. According to Gamespot, the only way to make a good game is to stick to the bare minimum because varying gameplay is gonna drive away the layperson.

Forget about the fact that millions casual gamers that aren't great at FPSs will find the online multiplayer aspect of Halo 3 (9.5) completely USELESS leaving you with a 6-8 hour campaign ripe with repetitive levels that have nothing new to offer. Forget about the fact that other than the 500,000 people in the US that watch hockey, it is a completely foreign entity in which they would have no interest in playing a video game (8.5) of. In fact, forget about that not everyone will like Gears of War (9.6), Bioshock (9.0), Orange Box (9.5) or any of the other million shooters that are in existence with little reason to be. The fact remains, according to Gamespot, the game is on the 360 and 90% of the time, that is enough to warrant a good score. None of this means anything because Aaron Thomas doesn't think that 99% of the gaming population will like platformers and doesn't want them to buy this game under false pretenses. The fact that Ratchet and Clank is amazingly deep, with rich, vibrant graphics, extremely fun, varied gameplay, an original sense of humor, means nothing because Aaron Thomas said so. And in this case Aaron "a little salt is all spice I can handle on my life" Thomas' word is that of the law around this place.

Argh this stupid follow up to that stupid review has only managed to make me mad again. Poor reviews don't normally anger me, but hypocracy and stupidity always will.