Dragon Age: Inquisition - Review Roundup # 3

GothicGothicness said:

Well, it is one thing to agree or not agree, another if they give a game a good score based on that they want that companies advertisement money.

Back when I still read reviews it was not like that…. at least not as bad, for example I usually respected gamespots reviews, before the guys who reviewed games honestly was fired for doing so.

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I don't have the kind of inside information you seem to have.

I have no idea to what extent corruption plays a part in "all reviews". I suspect it's not quite as bad as you're making it out to be.

All I know is that some games I consider great get low ratings - and some games I consider mediocre or crap get high ratings.

There are AAA bigshot games among both of those, so perhaps some suits forget to pay reviewers on occasion

You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann

Sorry to derail the thread, but it is about reviews after all, I think this game might very well be another case of the same… but we'll not know until watchers played it.

In the DA: I review it is strange that some of the reviews are not that positive but still the score is very good.

GothicGothicness said:

You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann

Sorry to derail the thread, but it is about reviews after all, I think this game might very well be another case of the same… but we'll not know until watchers played it.

In the DA: I review it is strange that some of the reviews are not that positive but still the score is very good.

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I think most of us know about that single example.

In the real world, an example of corruption doesn't mean every single reviewer in the world is corrupt.

DArtagnan said:

I think most of us know about that single example.

In the real world, an example of corruption doesn't mean every single reviewer in the world is corrupt.

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No, it just means most others are now better at hiding theirs

This wasn't made by the Mass Effect team. I'm with 4players.de review 59/100 at most.
Trash is nowadays, what most people consume and are happy about.

AvoidWare

DArtagnan said:

I think most of us know about that single example.

In the real world, an example of corruption doesn't mean every single reviewer in the world is corrupt.

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Well, that is an example of several reviews who were not corrupt and got fired. In the recent scandal you've seen a lot of examples of corrupt reviewers as well.

I think it is tough to work for a large gaming site which gets maybe 50% of the revenue from a company like EA, and not in some way be affected by it when writing the review.

That said I don't believe all are corrupt, but how can I know which ones that are not?

GothicGothicness said:

That said I don't believe all are corrupt, but how can I know which ones that are not?

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You don't need to. You shouldn't be relying solely on reviews anyways.

Also for Dragon Age 2, most were obviously corrupted

GothicGothicness said:

Also for Dragon Age 2, most were obviously corrupted

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I'm convinced they were for Risen 3 as well.

I have seen at least 2, if not 3 threads at at the DAI forums at the Bioware forums where fans complain about how bad the controls for pc is. Mainly the tactical camera seems bad at what is is supposed to do. Egervari has this to say:

I don't think the game is particularly bad, but I don't like the direction it has gone. Now, it's possible if the PC controls, looting mechanics and UI was overhauled to be a pleasure to use, I may feel entirely different about DA: Inquisition. But as it is, I am immensely disappointed. The overly pointless large areas, endless loot scanning, the lack of easy loot highlighting, the lack of an auto-attack, the lack of paper dolls to easily equip items, etc. just doesn't make for a fun Dragon Age game for me.

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In this thread at the DAi forums Johnsen1972 asks Bioware to fix the UI for PC and the tactical camera as well.

http://forum.bioware.com/topic/519989-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-combat/http://forum.bioware.com/topic/519989-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-combat/

It feels like its lagging like hell, characters sometimes wont listen to my commands (ordered Varric far back, in few seconds he stays near boss, Kassandra just stuck in place doing nothing), one time after I died character stayed like he is alive. Its not fluent at all.

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I can't tell, of course, it they are correct or not. But from I've seen in the DAI gameplay videoes on youtube, they may just be...

GothicGothicness said:

Well, that is an example of several reviews who were not corrupt and got fired. In the recent scandal you've seen a lot of examples of corrupt reviewers as well.

I think it is tough to work for a large gaming site which gets maybe 50% of the revenue from a company like EA, and not in some way be affected by it when writing the review.

That said I don't believe all are corrupt, but how can I know which ones that are not?

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You have a lot of interesting conjecture and fantasy about numbers and stuff.

My point is that you can't know.

Assuming all the reviews that you don't agree with are corrupt, however, is not my personal approach.

But to each his (or her) own

What I would like to address is the corrupt nature of the user reviews that are currently littering Metacritic.

The game was released on the 18th, that's today, and yet hundreds of people are writing user reviews... today.

Since the game has a minimum playtime, that of the main quest, which is going to be well above 35 hours even for a dedicated, distraction free, main quest barger, it's physically impossible for any of these early reviews to be in any way meaningful to anybody. And lo and behold, upon reading many of them, they are claiming 10/10 after 5 hours of gameplay or declaring 8/10 after the intro screen.

While the reverse is also true, that it's ludicrous for people to be voting 0/10 in such a short exposure window, the only valid reason why anyone would report on a final verdict on the game within a few hours would be because they hated it and stopped playing. I think perhaps therefore that people are rushing to depress any early negativity with pointless battling.

Metacritic refuses user reviews prior to release date, perhaps they could even push this further and refuse user reviews until at least three days after a game's release, maybe even a week? This probably isn't the best answer, but, as it stands, the hundreds of user reviews going up today are even more misleading than paid official scores, at least paid official scores can subtly hint at major flaws while kissing a pay-cheque's ass.

DArtagnan said:

You have a lot of interesting conjecture and fantasy about numbers and stuff.

My point is that you can't know.

Assuming all the reviews that you don't agree with are corrupt, however, is not my personal approach.

But to each his (or her) own

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I didn't say that I am assuming that all the reviews I don't agree with are corrupt... I am not sure where you read that. What I did say is that after the corruption scandals I don't trust a lot of the major review sites.

If you meant regarding dragon age 2, I haven't even played it, but the user feedback and review scores are just so far apart for this game, and so many issues are reported that was ignored in giving it the score, so this is based on information I have received rather than my own opinion.

Kotaku has their review up finally:

​Dragon Age: Inquisition: The Kotaku Review

"You can climb up hills and boulders, slide down dunes and rock-faces, and generally explore like you would in most other open-world games. The true test: You can do that one RPG thing where, by stubbornly jumping and mashing forward on your joystick, you get your character to climb a hillside that is technically too steep."

Whoa, 4Players rating 59%! Shut me down! I just read the Review, the points seem to sound legit, so not made up. But I will have to play the game to know. Usually I tended to agree with their ratings, so I am surprised. But I think a tester should rate things bad, if he thinks it's bad and not bend to mass pressure.

If you look at SWTOR, you see creating alife and believable worlds is no strength of Bioware. Never have I been so disappointed in how alife and buzzing with life I expected Coruscant to be, and the Ebola-killed planet with 20 people left alife in the empty streets we got. So I guess it simply isn't Bioware's strength. And it was what Skyrim did great. Guards react to what weapon you wear! What gear! What you did! If you sheath your sword! There is so much life in Skyrim, so much NPC reaction and interaction. Bioware games have always been only like theatre stages. And it is sad aparently DAI isn't much different.

Personally I hate the idea of potion healing. No heal spells and only camping and potion is a HORRIBLE idea IMVPO, and a silly fallback to Icewind Dale times, when your party camped every damn 5 minutes.

elikal said:

Personally I hate the idea of potion healing. No heal spells and only camping and potion is a HORRIBLE idea IMVPO, and a silly fallback to Icewind Dale times, when your party camped every damn 5 minutes.

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I do too, however it sounds like this was a lot more thought out, and promotes actually using all 4 of your party members, and proper use of buffs, rather than always keeping someone at the back spamming heals.

aries100 said:

I can't tell, of course, it they are correct or not. But from I've seen in the DAI gameplay videoes on youtube, they may just be…

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Lots of complains steam from the fact that people are terrible are learning new control scheme and rebinding keys.

Or they expected the game to be playable only with the mouse...but I have no idea in what the dev showed that suggested that was remotely possible.

GothicGothicness said:

You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann

Sorry to derail the thread, but it is about reviews after all, I think this game might very well be another case of the same… but we'll not know until watchers played it.

In the DA: I review it is strange that some of the reviews are not that positive but still the score is very good.

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I found that interesting in the german Magazine PC Games review of DA2.
I read the full review before looking at the score, the review was fairly critical mentioning all it's flaws and just from the review I would have figured the game to be a 60 - 65.
There was a glaring 90 at the end of the article though.
Seemed to me the guy reviewing was hiding his actual critic in the text, well knowing the guys from the big publisher won't read it.
I learned it's worth to read the review and ignore the score.

For DA3 the metacritic score seems not so far off. About the same amount of haters and fanboys.
If you sort both out the actual fair user reviews seem to point to a 6.
No clue in the end if it's true, but not willing to shell out money to EA to find out.

Now I am curious how Angry Joe will review the game. XD

Despite his odd demeanor, I usually agreed with his opinion.

I never use reviews to purchase a game, although I might use them to not pick up one if the scores are all below the 50% mark … sometimes a game truly sucks.

I based my decision on DAI mainly on videos, forums, comments, reading the details behind the reviews (not the opinion or verdict but instead just what the game is about).

I also have to admit I find it a bit irrational that because someone happens to hate game X they then decide anyone who gives game X a great review must obviously be corrupt and an invalid review site. Because we all know if the reviewer doesn't agree with your personal opinion that a game sucks that they were then brought out. Perhaps a more rational approach would be to assume that the reviewer just happens to like a different style of game than you.

I pretty much take any review with a grain of salt. Even if the there was no corruption there is the simple fact that the reviewer may not like your style of games or find something about the game that turned them off … which might be a major plus for someone else.

Unless the score is very poor I ignore the score and instead see if the game has things I like in it. Probably why I prefer reviews that avoid scores and opinions and focus more on factual mechanics and game play.

Ah well I will be able to make up my own mind soon - as I will be playing it in less than 5 hours and have a day off tomorrow to fully explore it. It could suck for sure and I will be vastly disappointment if it does but at the moment it still sounds pretty cool to me.