THIS IS A PERSONAL RANT THAT I DON'T EXPECT MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF PPL THAT KNOW ME TO READ. WHILE I'M AWARE THIS IS A PUBLIC PLACE I REALLY DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYONE ELSE'S OPINION, WHETHER YOU LIKE OR DISLIKE TOO HUMAN OR ANYTHING OF THE LIKE. IF ANY STRANGERS READ THIS AND HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT, DON'T EXPECT ME TO EVEN READ. DO WHAT I DID IN REGARDS TO KEVIN PEREIRA AND RANT IN YOUR OWN BLOG
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at this point all the rabid TH defenders are hopping on his back screaming "Kevin Pereira shut up all the haters!"
really all Kevin Pereira did was prove how varied opinions are, contrary to what Pereira thinks, not EVERYONE secretly agrees with him. REALLY?!! REALLY???!! yes, really.
let's break down his arguement a bit. he starts his rant with a whole list of issues. from technical gameplay bugs, graphical glitches, design issues. he claims at least they're "servicable" and ppl shouldn't get so uptight about them.
What he wonderfully highlighted was the hypocrisy in the game journalism world that big titles get over the unknown ones. really i suppose its a hypocrisy within a hypocrisy as while the game media holds higher profile games to a higher standard, they then in turn are willing to cushion their negativity of those games with inflated scores and rationalized reviews that no smaller game could hope to benefit from. The irony of how he started off his rant is, everything he listed, added together, would have already dropped any other lesser hyped game down to the 7s, sometimes even the 6s.
He bases his rant on this notion that those things are worth noting, but not worth docking points for, but entire games get TRASHED on the list of issues he stated alone. The fact that TH already gets EXCUSED on most of them (as ppl talk about the creative qualities and the combat system more than any of the issues he mentioned) is already mindblowing from a fair reviewing standpoint. if you drop TH's score simply for its lengthy shopping list of issues, then add on top the more intangible factors? REALLY?! yes, Kevin, really, TH wasn't that good of a game.
"the game was just fun to play! and ppl agree with me on this!"
and suddenly no one agrees that the crap was crap right? everyone simply agree it was good and all thE reviews have been totally offbase right? the averaged low scores from every site from both professional critics and regular consumer gamers is just some weird crazy illusion right? please, this is my "REALLY?!" moment. are you really so vain as to think that way?
there are plenty of ppl that simply found the game NOT fun to play. The combat system IS clunky. it DOESN'T work well. Pereira found the perfect adjective for it all. "Servicable". so since when do we rate things higher when all they achieve is servicable? with all the ranting of how games should aspire to a higher level, much of the ranting from Dyack himself, is "servicable" the new goal?
"it makes you feel like a baddass, and thats what the game is about!"
actually it never makes you feel like a badass. or should i say, it makes you feel bout as much of a badass as Koei's games do, and i'd love to hear how all the TH's "troll patrollers" would rate Koei's games. The weapons never feel very powerful. the combat system puts way too much disconnect between your input and the action to ever feel really viceral and not feel more like its on auto-pilot. and enemies never get much weaker or stronger, leaving you with just wave after waves of things to beat on. a concept that Koei mastered long ago. there was nothing BADASS about it. it wasn't even particularly visually badass.
"and the loot!"
what about the loot. generic items with more and more prefixes and suffixes added on to them. none of which ever feel particularly powerful or make you feel like there was really a need to upgrade other than the number told you to. oh, i'm sure under the table, you needed to. but the next time you got a sword...it felt like a sword...as did the next...and the next....and the next 500 swords after.
never do you feel like you just picked up the bloody Great Sword of World Sundering!!! you just felt like you picked up a sword by a long-winded blacksmith desparate for any kind of product differentiation.
creative side =
here's the thing where i get some personal gripes about all the stuff ppl claim was so awesome about TH. i was thoroughly unimpressed by its creativity. but i'll admit its very much to do with what i personally consider good execution of ideas and not just mind dribble thrown on paper presented to an audience thats expected to figure it out while you preach about the great artistry you managed to achieve if only there were people out there who were grand enough thinkers to understand the complexity of your mind!
ARTISTICALLY - i never felt the world was really norse based. there were a few things here and there yes, but the vast majority of it never screamed norse. If Dyack hadn't gone on ten million interviews TELLING YOU it was norse, i really didn't think you would have seen it and jumped "thats norse!". versus say...Unreal Tournament (even more with Championship 2) where the egyptian influences are so obvious anyone could spot it.
STORY - i'll be the first to say TH had an interesting setting CONCEPT. but there's more to telling a story than simply a neat concept. "anyone can have ideas, only some can make anything out of them", is a saying you might have heard at some point. part of storytelling isn't just the setting but how you present the story telling. the writing, the narration, etc etc. all of which were FAR from top-notch. were they the worse? maybe not, but they're were far from anything i'd rate a 8-10, and once again, once you factor in that there's are games that are creatively 7s but lack half the technical and design issues that TH had.
Yes, Kevin, really.
The bottom line is, if the bottom line is whether the game is fun to play, then Too Human wasn't that fun to play. and there ARE a lot of ppl that agree with me there. in fact considering that, i know this is a shocker, but fans can review as well as critics, and the aggregate score is STILL as low as it is, both in terms of professional and average gamer scores; that would seem to imply more ppl disagree with Kevin Pereira than agree (unless he's planning on throwing a PA Tycho-esque 3-day hissy fit about how everyone that disagrees with him just aren't intellectual enough and too shallow to really look at games the same way he does).
so are ppl serious? really?! well Kevin, i submit to you this.
1) TH had enough technical flaws to have buried games that weren't getting the kind of security blanket that the PR push that MS gave it provides.
2) Creatively, while coming from inspiring concepts, far from delivers
and finally 3) There are games that have one or both of #1 and 2 and are fun to play, TH was not. i've had more fun playing games that had a fifth of the budget TH got, far worse tech specs, and far less hype protecting them.
now any of those 3 would be enough to bury any other game into the 6-7 range, and TH manages to check off all 3.
should it get a 7-8 just because? should it be held accountable for the fact that it DID manage to score all 3 catagories?
apparantly GS felt accountability is the way to go. and considering that outside of a select cadre of small unknown sites looking to sound different, XBox-related sites, and a few other random ppl, the average score for TH IS only in the 6s for BOTH professional critics AND consumer gamers...
oh but i'm sorry, all those ppl are just fanboys. the loud noisy vocal minority haters while ppl like Pereira are...what..the loud noisy vocal minority lovers? they occupy the same minority space and yet the results still turn out the same for Too Human. yes, really....
really Kevin Pereira, who is the real fanboy that needs a bit of a reality check?