Five Games 'Overscored' by Reviewers

WeasteDevil said:
What a load of total nonsense!
Click to expand...

There's no correlation between the size of a game world and the amount of content with the number of bugs then?

Its easier to bug test a game when you roughly know the experience that every player is going to have and limit the game's content. They could have bug tested a game like Skyrim for 3 months straight and things would have slipped through.
 
Plan M said:
ORLY.jpg
Click to expand...

I know you're not the sharpest tool in the box but this isn't a tricky one. You could start by finding out the release date of MGS4. Now compare it to the date of the post you quoted. The penny will drop eventually.

If you're still struggling I'll give you one last hint. The last PS3 game I bought was Red or Dead Redemption.
 
Anything made by Rockstar and Bethseda is an isn't overating opportunity.

In general though, it's even easier to buy good reviews these days, since all it takes is a review copy sent to someone with more opinions than actually knowledge sitting behind his desk feeling all important. It's largely how Gamespot operate nowadays anyway ;)

Back in the day you had to tour people round the office, let them have a go in the shiny motion capture suite, and take them to a pub lunch and pretend to be interested in any of their great ideas for the next title. Now that was always excrutiating.
 
Drainy said:
There's no correlation between the size of a game world and the amount of content with the number of bugs then?

Its easier to bug test a game when you roughly know the experience that every player is going to have and limit the game's content. They could have bug tested a game like Skyrim for 3 months straight and things would have slipped through.
Click to expand...

The world, no matter what its size is a map, and objects, living or otherwise can be placed onto the map. There are optimal and sub-optimal ways to do this, but in the end it's simply a massive data structure of some kind. Living objects within the map for gameplay purposes will have scripts incorporated within them to define how they behave under different conditions. All of this should be testable in any location on the map. No matter where you place an object in the map it should behave the same, so no, for technical purposes you don't need to test the game on the basic level by wandering around all of it - if something walks through walls in one part of the map it will walk through walls in another part of the map most likely. You have to remember that game testers are not playing retail builds, they will have multiple options from god-mode to being able to change parameters to being able to jump to anywhere in the world. Testing on the technical side will overlay vast amounts of statistics on the screen showing performance and other attributes.

So, no, a large open world game is not that more difficult to test during development than a corridor shooter is. Testing can be done in blocks anywhere on the map. Scenarios could also be created that may not exist in the retail build, but for testing purposes can easily be done - say 2000 enemies of all types surrounding you. If you can put test scenarios together you can test them anywhere within the world very easily.

Where you are right is in the final retail build and testing for flaws in the game design and balancing, that would need to be played properly, but it's quite different than testing for technical bugs which is what I was talking about. A game falling on its arse to the point that it's not playable due to the size of the save file is not acceptable.
 
SharkyMcShark said:
I think you're slightly underrating the sheet amount of interactions in an open world game using a system like RadiantAI.
Click to expand...
It's certainly an open world, but it is just a lot of interactions (easily testable) multiplied by several thousand.

If, say, The Sims increased the lot size of their houses to be several thousand times bigger than they are right now, it would still be roughly the same amount of testing because the thing that matters is the actual logic, rather than the scale. Additional testing might be required for things like ensuring the game doesn't run out of memory or for gathering performance statistics due to increased size, but that is not of the scale of standard testing.
 
x42bn6 said:
It's certainly an open world, but it is just a lot of interactions (easily testable) multiplied by several thousand.

If, say, The Sims increased the lot size of their houses to be several thousand times bigger than they are right now, it would still be roughly the same amount of testing because the thing that matters is the actual logic, rather than the scale. Additional testing might be required for things like ensuring the game doesn't run out of memory or for gathering performance statistics due to increased size, but that is not of the scale of standard testing.
Click to expand...

I'm speaking as someone who admittedly has no real knowledge of programming so I'm very open to being proven wrong. I'm only speaking out of what makes logical intuitive sense to me, so maybe I'm wrong :lol:

Thats not really a fair analogy since The Sims has limited interaction with the world. Skyrim applies physics to an insane number of objects from apples, books and plates to Wolves, People, horses and bears to Trolls, Giants, Mammoths all with different physical properties and all can interact with the vast world and the game doesn't limit where these objects can appear.

The Sims has generally simple flat surfaces and limits physical interaction whereas Skyrim is very angular and the objects may hit the surfaces at different speeds and angles so testing all possible scenarios and have a high degree of confidence that unusual reactions wouldn't occur would seem more difficult.

I agree with Weaste that the PS3 problems are unacceptable though, the ps3 is a platform Beth seem to not care about and thats ridiculous.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I know you're not the sharpest tool in the box but this isn't a tricky one. You could start by finding out the release date of MGS4. Now compare it to the date of the post you quoted. The penny will drop eventually.

If you're still struggling I'll give you one last hint. The last PS3 game I bought was Red or Dead Redemption.
Click to expand...

No mate, I'm sharper than you think. ;)

Pogue Mahone said:
Best PS3 game? Pffft... Not even close. All three Uncharted games shit on it from a great height.
Click to expand...

You've obviously been playing Uncharted 3, which was released just a few weeks ago.

But when you were having a pop at me in the Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 thread, you posted:

Can't be arsed with computer games any more. Too old for that shit.
Click to expand...

So you're obviously a liar - and a bad one at that :lol:
 
MGS4 wasn't overrated, it tied the series up nicely. Yes it was convoluted, yes it was silly at times, but then that's what MGS is all about. Fantastic game with a bit of a let down during Act 3, but that game had so many incredible moments.
 
esmufc11 said:
MGS4 wasn't overrated, it tied the series up nicely. Yes it was convoluted, yes it was silly at times, but then that's what MGS is all about. Fantastic game with a bit of a let down during Act 3, but that game had so many incredible moments.
Click to expand...

Was MGS4 on PS2? The last MGS game I played was on that system and I loved it.

MGS 1 on the original Playstation was :drool:
 
Ah that's right, that means I haven't played MGS4.

I don't think it's an overrated franchise though, not a chance.
 
Resident Evil 5 was good fun and nothing more. Those complaining should remember the series was starting to get a bit tiresome with 3, a lot of repetitive stuff and Capcom needed to change it up a bit. They did that brilliantly with 4 but 5 fell a bit short, and was basically the same game.

I think the best RE game to date was the remake for the gamecube, or Code Veronica.
 
Plan M said:
No mate, I'm sharper than you think. ;)



You've obviously been playing Uncharted 3, which was released just a few weeks ago.

But when you were having a pop at me in the Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 thread, you posted:



So you're obviously a liar - and a bad one at that :lol:
Click to expand...

Nah, you're dumb as a bag of rocks. I haven't played nor do I own the latest Uncharted game. Hence I haven't joined in the discussion in the massive thread about it. You know? The thread in this same forum?

I do know, however, that it's a continuation of the high standards set by the previous two (which I have played) having browsed that same thread I just mentioned. Hence my comment about the trilogy.

Now run along and grow a brain before your next bout of amateur sleuthing.
 
esmufc11 said:
MGS4 wasn't overrated, it tied the series up nicely. Yes it was convoluted, yes it was silly at times, but then that's what MGS is all about. Fantastic game with a bit of a let down during Act 3, but that game had so many incredible moments.
Click to expand...

All the best bits were cinematic non playable bits. It was seriously the most pointless game I have ever played. I cannot believe anyone could enjoy that many cut scenes
 
Well Heavy Rain and LA Noire were more pointless since you at least do shit in MGS4.
 
Zen said:
Well Heavy Rain and LA Noire were more pointless since you at least do shit in MGS4.
Click to expand...

I played the demo of that (cue Plan Moron frantically googling the release date) and it was pretty pointless. When you've got games that rely so heavily on cut-screen dialogue you need a zinger of a plot/script to pull it off. For all it's clunkiness, Heavy Rain had quite an original atmosphere and decent dialogue.

MGS4 cut-scenes were just a load of convoluted drivel spouted by cardboard cut-out characters with all the charisma of potted plants. And they went on and on and on and on and fecking on. On balance a much better game than Heavy Rain, of course, because of the bits in between death by cut-screen boredom. Still an absolute ball-ache of a game to play, overall, mind you.
 
MGS4 was great when it actually let you play it, the cutscene issues have damaged peoples recollection of the game no end. the gameplay, level design and environments are every bit as good as the others MGS' imo feck me did it have a lot of long boring ass cutscenes though

not having the LBP bashing, its an absolutely brilliant game. Its about so much more than the base game, its probably the most sophisticated (and yet simple) level design tool ever given to home users and the creativity of the user content can be incredible. a groundbreaking game, deserving of every top mark it received
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I played the demo of that (cue Plan Moron frantically googling the release date) and it was pretty pointless. When you've got games that rely so heavily on cut-screen dialogue you need a zinger of a plot/script to pull it off. For all it's clunkiness, Heavy Rain had quite an original atmosphere and decent dialogue.

MGS4 cut-scenes were just a load of convoluted drivel spouted by cardboard cut-out characters with all the charisma of potted plants. And they went on and on and on and on and fecking on. On balance a much better game than Heavy Rain, of course, because of the bits in between death by cut-screen boredom. Still an absolute ball-ache of a game to play, overall, mind you.
Click to expand...

You are correct. 45 minutes cut scenes? feck off. If I want to watch a movie I will rent one.
 
Lance Uppercut said:
You are correct. 45 minutes cut scenes? feck off. If I want to watch a movie I will rent one.
Click to expand...

Thing is that Uncharted did a perfect job of taking a movie and turning it into a game without boring the shit out of you.

I quit playing Xenosaga about halfway through because of the cutscenes (the total length of which was actually advertised on the game I think). I remember one part of the game where there was a big long cutscene followed by you making your way down a hallway which then triggered another cutscene at the end of the hallway.
 
Drainy said:
Thats not really a fair analogy since The Sims has limited interaction with the world. Skyrim applies physics to an insane number of objects from apples, books and plates to Wolves, People, horses and bears to Trolls, Giants, Mammoths all with different physical properties and all can interact with the vast world and the game doesn't limit where these objects can appear.

The Sims has generally simple flat surfaces and limits physical interaction whereas Skyrim is very angular and the objects may hit the surfaces at different speeds and angles so testing all possible scenarios and have a high degree of confidence that unusual reactions wouldn't occur would seem more difficult.
Click to expand...

As I said before, where these things happen doesn't matter in terms of testing on the technological level. What the object is also doesn't matter. If a bear walks up and down one hill, it should be able to walk up and down all hills. If it can walk on the flat, it should be able to do that everywhere. You don't need to test it in every possible scenario, that's impossible. A game is the same as any piece of software, because that's all it is, software. Systems that run aeroplanes, space shuttles, satellites, banks, anything mission or life critical are far more complicated in terms of scope than any game is. How do you think those software systems are tested? Ok, we're sending a probe to Mars - this is its software - lets test it...... Well you don't test it by attempting to send it to Mars 100 times, and yes, things go wrong there as well, but in most cases the failure is mechanical rather than down to the software. You don't test software, of any kind, by simply playing with it.

x42bn6 said:
It's certainly an open world, but it is just a lot of interactions (easily testable) multiplied by several thousand.

If, say, The Sims increased the lot size of their houses to be several thousand times bigger than they are right now, it would still be roughly the same amount of testing because the thing that matters is the actual logic, rather than the scale. Additional testing might be required for things like ensuring the game doesn't run out of memory or for gathering performance statistics due to increased size, but that is not of the scale of standard testing.
Click to expand...

A problem that all games have is efficient memory management, and for open world games that is where the big difference lies, as you can't have the whole world in memory all of the time, and if you want everything persistent within the world then it gets even worse as the data structures have to be far more flexible.

Considering Pogue is getting a bit of a jibbing over his MGS4 vs Uncharted comments, here's what happened 3 days before Uncharted 3 went gold. It shows not only the pressure that developers are under (Publishers set dates for release, need to organise disc pressing runs, packaging, advertising, all sorts of marketing events, etc. so normally the developer has to ship on time or else all hell breaks loose - the only recent game I've seen that has been given real slack very close to its release date is GT5)

"[For] this project, everything ended up being done at the last minute. You're talking about the difference between Uncharted 2 and 3; this one was more tight in terms of getting things done and shippable." Even when it was time to stop working and submit a disc to Sony, things would crop up.

Wells relates, "We were three days from gold master -- a [few] weeks ago -- and our lead programmer comes in with Christophe and [game director] Justin Richmond, and they shut the door. I'm like, 'Why are we having a closed door conversation so close to gold master?' He sits down with the most depressed look on his face, and he says, 'Guys, I took the game home, and it's a mess.'" The problem: the game performs just fine -- for the first half. After reaching the halfway point, numerous bugs would crop up. Objects would disappear. Walls would flicker in and out of existence. Nathan could find himself in a hall devoid of anything -- geometry, texture, lighting, etc.

Wells continues, "All of these bugs point to the exact same problem in our streaming system. We are streaming stuff constantly; we're abusing the PlayStation 3 like a bad child. We're streaming audio, music, animation, video, levels, textures, everything. We're filling the memory, and about halfway through, it gets jammed up so that when we ask for a texture, it's not there; we ask for an animation, and it's not there." Balestra interjects to note that the reason this bug came up was because the programmer happened to play the game on an older test unit -- most of Naughty Dog's Quality Assurance team were using newer debug hardware and hence weren't running into this issue. The developers realized that a lot of fans still probably play games on launch-era PS3 systems, and this bug could end up ruining a lot of players' experiences.

Balestra remembers having an intense two-hour-plus discussion with lead programmers Travis McIntosh and Christian Gyrling to nail down exactly what triggers the game's meltdown at the halfway point, and they concluded that somehow, the streaming system was causing the PS3's hard-drive to fragment, which therefore led to lots of seeks when requesting data, and said seeks would cause the "traffic jam" that Wells described earlier. Wells notes, "Even though it's literally past the day that we told Sony, 'We're not changing the code anymore, trust us,' we went in and changed the most fundamental and frequently called function in the game."

The lead programmers made a tweak to the code and then burned a new disc with the revisions. Then they had two testers play the old and new code side-by-side; one tester played the old code on a relatively old system while the other tester played the freshly fixed version on the oldest PS3 in the office. Wells finishes, "Right away, we notice that one system is doing better while the other is pretty bad. There was this [specific] threshold we were looking for, 3000, and we knew that was when things would get bad. The number kept creeping up and up, and right when both systems hit 3000, we saw that one guy would go around a corner, and nothing in the world existed -- while the other guy went around the corner, and everything was fine."

Two days after that, Naughty Dog submitted the Uncharted 3 gold master for active production.
Click to expand...

Now, all of this mad rushing around caused other problems, one being that on the retail disc the per object motion blur was missing. It was in the code, but wasn't being applied. It's now been restored through a patch, however, even a "linear" game like Uncharted had issues with its memory management. It can't hold everything for an entire level in memory, not possible, so it streams things in off the HDD and the BD drive. However, Sony changed certain configurations of the hardware between PS3 launch and the units on sale now, and in the office, Naughty Dog never tested the game on launch hardware where it completely went bonkers. Luckily they found it on time, because otherwise there would have been a shitstorm about it.

Testing is a complicated business, but there are methods to do it in an ordered fashion as I've described or even the mathematical proofing of algorithms through the use of formal methods. Either way, you'll always get bugs. A tree appearing right in front of your face is one thing, dropping frames to 20fps is another, screen tearing is another, but they aren't game breakers or even bugs as such. A game that drops to 5fps because of the size of a game save file thus totally rendering it unplayable is not excusable.
 
Metal Gear Solid 4 was fantastic but I can understand some people not taking to the amount of emphasis on cut-scenes. It's a format I have always enjoyed if done well.

So, does Uncharted 3 fall under this category? It got a 10 from IGN. I thought Uncharted 1 was pretty good and Uncharted 2 was very good but I always think of Uncharted games as ranging between 9-9.5 at best for me. Anyone finished the latest one?
 
amolbhatia100 said:
Metal Gear Solid 4 was fantastic but I can understand some people not taking to the amount of emphasis on cut-scenes. It's a format I have always enjoyed if done well.

So, does Uncharted 3 fall under this category? It got a 10 from IGN. I thought Uncharted 1 was pretty good and Uncharted 2 was very good but I always think of Uncharted games as ranging between 9-9.5 at best for me. Anyone finished the latest one?
Click to expand...

No game deserves a 10/10 or a 100/100, it's a silly scoring system as it suggests perfection and nothing can achieve that. Not even that, most of the publications/websites that use such systems hardly ever use the entire scale, it always seems to be between 6 and 10 apart from shovel ware such as that kick him in the dick Kinect game. They should really just use a review system similar to film reviews.

* - Poor
** - Average
*** - Good
**** - Very Good
***** - Excellent/Outstanding

By using such a system you are never stating something is perfect, just giving an idea regarding general quality. It's not easily mapped though for comparison purposes, but even if you did map such a star system to a numerical one, 3/5 or 6/10 should mean good, not crap! I don't know why people think that 6/10 should mean crap. 1/10 means crap. Look at the degree system, in my day 7/10 was a First Class, and not many people got one (a first class degree).

If numbering systems must be used, then each game should be reviewed by at least 3 people and the score then averaged, but 6/10 should mean something is good and 9/10 should mean best in its class.

There is a famous review that gave Gears of War 10/10 on the score, yet the review text kept highlighting faults in the game. That's just stupid!
 
WeasteDevil said:
No game deserves a 10/10 or a 100/100, it's a silly scoring system as it suggests perfection and nothing can achieve that. Not even that, most of the publications/websites that use such systems hardly ever use the entire scale, it always seems to be between 6 and 10 apart from shovel ware such as that kick him in the dick Kinect game. They should really just use a review system similar to film reviews.

* - Poor
** - Average
*** - Good
**** - Very Good
***** - Excellent/Outstanding

By using such a system you are never stating something is perfect, just giving an idea regarding general quality. It's not easily mapped though for comparison purposes, but even if you did map such a star system to a numerical one, 3/5 or 6/10 should mean good, not crap! I don't know why people think that 6/10 should mean crap. 1/10 means crap. Look at the degree system, in my day 7/10 was a First Class, and not many people got one (a first class degree).

If numbering systems must be used, then each game should be reviewed by at least 3 people and the score then averaged, but 6/10 should mean something is good and 9/10 should mean best in its class.

There is a famous review that gave Gears of War 10/10 on the score, yet the review text kept highlighting faults in the game. That's just stupid!
Click to expand...

I think its the pressure of the gaming/film/music industry on the media. Was about to post this: i give a 6/10 to a film I enjoyed quite a lot. I dont think there are more than 40-50 films made ever that I could rate 10 out of 10.
 
WeasteDevil said:
No game deserves a 10/10 or a 100/100, it's a silly scoring system as it suggests perfection and nothing can achieve that. Not even that, most of the publications/websites that use such systems hardly ever use the entire scale, it always seems to be between 6 and 10 apart from shovel ware such as that kick him in the dick Kinect game. They should really just use a review system similar to film reviews.

* - Poor
** - Average
*** - Good
**** - Very Good
***** - Excellent/Outstanding

By using such a system you are never stating something is perfect, just giving an idea regarding general quality. It's not easily mapped though for comparison purposes, but even if you did map such a star system to a numerical one, 3/5 or 6/10 should mean good, not crap! I don't know why people think that 6/10 should mean crap. 1/10 means crap. Look at the degree system, in my day 7/10 was a First Class, and not many people got one (a first class degree).

If numbering systems must be used, then each game should be reviewed by at least 3 people and the score then averaged, but 6/10 should mean something is good and 9/10 should mean best in its class.

There is a famous review that gave Gears of War 10/10 on the score, yet the review text kept highlighting faults in the game. That's just stupid!
Click to expand...


Rating systems are flawed in every industry.

Three star hotels are dog rough, yet they're given a rating that implies they're above average. Is it even possible to find a one or two star hotel? If not, why have five stars up for grabs?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Rating systems are flawed in every industry.

Three star hotels are dog rough, yet they're given a rating that implies they're above average. Is it even possible to find a one or two star hotel? If not, why have five stars up for grabs?
Click to expand...

In Spain at least it is, yes, you do get * to ***** hotels, but the problem there is that the stars mainly reflect the array of facilities on offer rather than the quality. I've been in brilliant ** hotels that are clean, comfortable, and warm/cool, with friendly efficient staff, but they don't have a laundry or a swimming pool, or a shoe shine service, or a gym, or a sauna, etc. etc. etc. Then you get **** hotels that have those things but are far less enjoyable to stay in.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Rating systems are flawed in every industry.

Three star hotels are dog rough, yet they're given a rating that implies they're above average. Is it even possible to find a one or two star hotel? If not, why have five stars up for grabs?
Click to expand...

I've been to nice one and two star hotels. Stars are not based on quality, but the amenities they have.

One star: 100% of the rooms with shower/WC or bath tub/WC - Daily room cleaning - 100% of the rooms with colour-TV together with remote control - Table and chair - Soap or body wash - Reception service - Facsimile at the reception - Publicly available telephone for guests - Extended breakfast - Beverage offer in the hotel - Deposit possibility

Two star: In addition to the single star (*) hotels: - Breakfast buffet - Reading light next to the bed - Bath essence or shower gel - * Bath towels - Linen shelves - Offer of sanitary products (e.g. toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving kit) - Credit Cards

Three stars: n addition to the standard star (**) hotels: - Reception opened 14 hours, accessible by phone 24 hours from inside and outside, bilingual staff (e.g. German/English) - Three piece suite at the reception, luggage service - Beverage offer in the room - Telephone in the room - Internet access in the room or in the public area - Heating facility in the bathroom, hair-dryer, cleansing tissue - Dressing mirror, place to put the luggage/suitcase - Sewing kit, shoe polish utensils, laundry and ironing service - Additional pillow and additional blanket on demand - Systematic complaint management system

Four stars: In addition to the comfort star (***) hotels: - Reception opened 18 hours, accessible by phone 24 hours from inside and outside - Lobby with seats and beverage service - Breakfast buffet or breakfast menu card via room service - Minibar or 24 hours beverages via room service - Upholstered chair/couch with side table - Bath robe and slippers on demand - Cosmetic products (e.g. shower cap, nail file, cotton swabs), vanity mirror, tray of a large scale in the bathroom) - Internet access and internet terminal - "À la carte"-restaurant

Five stars: n addition to the first class (****) hotels: - Reception opened 24 hours, multilingual staff - Doorman-service or valet parking - Concierge, page boy - Spacious reception hall with several seats and beverage service - Personalized greeting for each guest with fresh flowers or a present in the room - Minibar and food and beverage offer via room service during 24 hours - Personal care products in flacons - Internet-PC in the room - Safe in the room - Ironing service (return within 1 h), shoe polish service - Turndown service in the evening - Mystery guesting
 
You must log in or register to reply here.