I'm making a huge deal out of it???  I'm explaining the principle behind it.  You're trying to deflect that into a 'no harm, no foul' argument.  Take, as an example, students who cheat on class work and tests in high school.  You can argue that they aren't causing any harm, but the principles behind what they are doing is most definitely morally objectionable.  The same goes for plagiarism and the like.  The Bioware employee in this case is fraudulently misrepresenting himself to knowingly mislead people.  If you can't see that...

Except that the metacritic user reviews were already 'defrauded' by an organized campaign to post low scores.  I find that morally objectionable as well.  Unfortunately, the nature of the internet and metacritic leaves little alternative but to fight fire with fire.

 

First sentence, I agree with you, but it is irrelevant.  Second sentence, I agree on that.  The third sentence?  You completely lost me. 

 

That's like saying the only way to respond to a situation is to emulate the party causing the problem.  If someone cuts you off on the road, do you then chase them down and escalate into a road rage scenario?  If the Chinese offer knockoff products, with many of them tainted with lead, do you then decide that the only way to compete is to release your own knockoff products, complete with lead tainting?  Etc, etc.

 

So, instead of calling out the trolls on metacritic for being trolls you instead join in and further ruin any usefulness the site might have? Or in this case excuse, and perhaps support, further fraudulent behavior? 

The name is "Metacritic."

Since when have the creators of something been considered critics for the purpose of informing consumers?

They never have. That's why there's a booming industry of ghost reviewers. Because your average consumer has no reason to trust a critical assessment of something from its creator when they stand to benefit from influencing them. People have no reason to trust advertising. Advertising is clear about its goals: it's there to influence your decision to buy under any circumstances.

"Reviews" imply a totally different kind of information. Factual, unbiased and with no vested interest in the outcome of the reader's decision.

Metacritic is convenient because it allows them to add to the weight of perception without saying anything. Or are DA2 devs really going to cop to the short-comings of their game? Of course not. Advertising never tells you "Play an engrossing, fully realized world....that has optimization issues and may not be fun for all gamers." Advertising will tell you a game will get you laid and cure cancer, if you let it.

Critics provide critical assessment. Metacritic is being treated as another form of advertising, under the guise of critical review. That's disingenuous to the consumer, no matter how you slice it.

Devs should be as willing to rake in the cash as they are willing to accept what "the market" thinks of their work.

Calling out trolls on metacritic would only have an effect if a ) metacritic could identify the trolls and b ) metacritic gave a damn.

There's no way they can do the former and no evidence of the latter.

So you tell me, what do you do when a site as big as metacritic looks the other way when people are stuffing the ballot box?

You can't convince people to stop paying attention to metacritic, at least not in a time-frame that helps your game.

You can't get them to take down the bad reviews.

Metacritic made their own bed.  Now they have to lie in it.  Accepting anonymous reviews was dicey terrain that was bound to bite them in the end.  So there isn't any usefulness being ruined, it's just a cesspool of bias.

I was in agreement with you until you got to this part. What garbage single player story? Can you give me a few better stories from RTS games?

Can you name me one RTS that has more interesting and more diverse missions?

Sterile multiplayer? Are you kidding me? It has a extremely competitive MP and a whole system to support it. Then it has many modes and user made maps for more casual players. There is nothing like it except other Blizzard RTS games.

StarCraft II is a fine game that has a few problems that StarCraft/Brood War didn't, but it is still pretty good and if I can get a computer of my own, that will be one of the first things I buy. I say this even though I am terrible at the original. The story looks pretty good, maybe not as good as its predecessor or the likes of the original Command and Conquer and Homeworld, but still solid none the less. I am not exactly thrilled with some of the changes made, but it was bound to happen. Multiplayer is a little bit messed up at the moment, Terran is a little OP and Zerg needs some help, but it is still one of the best RTS games and will be one of the classics like its predecessor if patches and the other chapters can fix the problems.

I don't need sites like Metacritic to tell me what is good or not, I buy what I think will be good when it is relatively cheap, and take it from there.

As always, YMMV.  I thought the SC2 story had its high points and low points, and can see why some people would love it or hate it.  In that sense, it's a poor example of reviewer bias, since opinions do vary dramatically.

Personally, I thought the campaign started relatively strong, lost a little steam on some of the story arcs (Prophecy was surprisingly weak), then completely dropped the ball on the final arc.  In particular, the characters for Tychus, Kerrigan, Warfield, and Valarien were horribly botched, and came across as being melodramatic and forced.  There was a lot of production value in the final missions, but very little in the way of actual story or strong characters.  Even Raynor, which had been fairly strong all game, suddenly degenerated into sputtering semi-profound non-sequiters rather than advancing any plot or character development.

So the campaign ending on a bad foot filed the story into the mediocre category for me.  Mechanically, the missions were well-done, and it makes points there, but the story dropped the ball towards the end.

Heh, that's definitely a YMMV moment, because this is my least favourite mission in the game.

I thought this plot-line had potential, but was executed in a way that came across as corny.

I'd say Starcraft 2 is, more than any other Blizzard game, a sequel.  Up until now, they've really been in the business of making successors.  This is the first time I felt they stayed within the confines of the predecessor's territory, and felt they needlessly inherited many of its flaws as a result.  Still a good game, but not the genre-defining products I usually expect from Blizzard.

Oh, I liked that bit, and the more I think about it, the more it rings true to me.

Happy to:
Starcraft.
Homeworld.
Battle for Middle Earth.
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
Dawn of War II.
These are just the few that I've played.  Starcraft II's story is the weakest story Blizzard have ever told, however it features the highest production values Blizzard have ever produced.


This all depends on your definition of "interesting" and "diverse".  Starcraft II's single player campagin featured a variety of mission designs... all of which lacked any real strategic requirement.  You never out-thought anything or anyone - you merely did what the mission told you to do.  Seige Tanks here.  Bunkers there.  Build this missions new Unit to counter the Units the mission throws at you.  When in doubt, build Marines and Banshees and you'll win through sheer force.
Starcraft at the very least required the player to play the strategy card a few times throughout the course of the game.  Starcraft II spends more time setting up gimmicky missions with arbitrary requirements on the player than it does allowing the player to stretch their strategic muscle.
Again, it featured very gimmicky missions that didn't require a great deal of thought to get through.  Compare that to something like Rome: Total War or ever the original Starcraft, and Starcraft II is essentially a collection of the kind of maps players would make using the World Editor rather than a series of 'missions'.  They're simply very polished.


The gameplay is fine - and it would want to be, being it's copy and pasted whole sale from Starcraft.  The multiplayer environment is devoid of social interaction.  The chat rooms are terribly implimented and clearly shoe-horned in after the massive backlash they received for not putting them in the first place.  Apart from the chat rooms, the "GG" messages you get during the game, there is no social interaction of any kind.  It's sterile; they might as well populate the regionally restricted servers with bots, because you'd never know the difference.  They billed Battle.net 0.2 as a social network, and it has NO social features.  No profile customisation, no community to interact with - nothing.  You click "Find Match", cannon rush your opponent, rinse and repeat.  They had 10 years to get this right, and what we get is a gimped version of Xbox Live coloured Space-Cliche-Blue.

My issues are all reasonable issues to have.  Yet, no professional review reflected this.  Why?  Because it's a major entry in a major franchise from a major publisher who spent major bucks on major production values at the cost of everything else.  For example, Tychus was added into the game after the reveal trailer went public.  Considering the time frame involved, and how many cut-scenes feature Tychus, it's clear Blizzard spent more time ensuring their regional restrictions worked and couldn't be circumvented than they did on ensuring the single player campaign was entertaining.  It was thrown together.  Blizzard spent one hundred million dollars on Battle.net 0.2 and Starcraft II, and it received massive review scores despite being a mere copy paste from Starcraft with better graphics and cut-scenes, and a multiplayer component that is devoid of social interaction.  An 8/10 in my books.  Not 10/10, and certainly not better than Starcraft.
Production values = review score.  This is the issue.

In all fairness, while I wouldn't give Starcraft a 10/10 myself, I have many friends who would. There are enough people who love that game, that I don't think you can say that the glowing reviews are unreasonable and biased just because you didn't like it quite as much as they did. Clearly there are plenty of people who agree with it getting very high scores.

I am sorry, but only Starcraft 1 on that list is legit. All other games have a crap story with 0 character development or choice that affects future (well I cannot remember the story for Homeworld). Even the raynor that decided to save Kerrigan is more believable then the death knight story from WC3, and Xel'Naga arc is so much more interesting then Burning Legion one.

Maybe try to play it on higher difficulty? I played all missions on all 4 difficulties and you certainly need to "outhink" to win. Starcraft 1 had either similar missions as SC2 with limited team or limited time or it had turtle and build 200/200 of carriers/BCs/Guardians and win. SC2 has maybe one mission that promotes get 200/200 BCs and win (and that one has a interesting twist with damage over time in most of the map). Every mission was unique in some way and asked for a different approach to finish. Nothing like that was ever seen in any RTS before. 

Rome: Total War is not a RTS like SC2. That game is a different territory. 

Sterile multiplayer? Are you kidding me? It has a extremely competitive MP and a whole system to support it. Then it has many modes and user made maps for more casual players. There is nothing like it except other Blizzard RTS games.

Well, it is a sequel. What fans wanted fans got. I would hate to have got a completely changed game (see what happened to DA2). They changed enough to make the game different but still similar (actually I see competitive players arguing all day that game was changed to much in comparison to SC1 and lost the greatness of SC1 because of it). As for social interaction It is a RTS game, if you want social interaction go to Facebook. Or better go to Team Liquid website. 

Well reviewers thought like many many fans that story and single player missions are great and like me didn't see a problem with social part (- lack of chat). I agree that the game is not worth 10/10 but 9.5 it is.

Indisputably:

Myth 1

Myth 2

Probably:

Homeworld

 

Thats just off the top of my head.  I'm sure that I could think of a lot more if I wanted to.  I found SC2's single player good but certainly not great.

Homeworld has one of the best stories I have ever seen in a game, combined with music that makes you feel the story, and the great gameplay with a lot of variety from being out gunned by frigates when you only have strike craft in the beginning to navigating veins of gas to survive the radiation from a supernova to reach the enemy, it is a masterpiece.

I am not sold on Cataclysm and Homeworld 2. I got Homeworld by the time the others had come out, I did know about Cataclysm thanks to the trailer with Homeworld but I never purchased it, and I never knew about Homeworld 2 until I heard about the Warlords mod. I have played the demo, but am not really impressed with some of the changes.

I have no idea what you are talking about. While I will agree that Battle for Middle Earth is probably the odd man out in that list, all of the other games listed have incredibly interesting stories. Home World had a touching story with single player gameplay featuring armies and resources that persisted between levels. Starcraft and Warcraft III both have well thought out stories that were well told through the games missions. DoW II had a complete inventory system for its characters with RPG style leveling and skill points, while its first expansion Chaos Rising had 5 different endings and a variety of side missions. I am not really sure what games you played but these particular 4 games are amongst the greatest single player games of their genre.

Battle for Middle-earth really doesn't belong in that list, it is alright but if it wasn't The Lord of the Rings, it would have been terrible.

It's too bad too... I remember the days of playing NWN all night long... That game was made with gamers in mind.

People are generally disgruntled from less than honest activity due to the entire professional game review industry as a whole.  The only reason this case made news is the developer company got caught red handed so to speak.  It's a natural backlash for something long coming.

This is what I think of about the Battle for Middle-earth series.

Battle for Middle-earth was just cheesy, you couldn't command as many units as the trailer advertised, not that I let trailers control my decision to buy a game, they influence it but generally aren't the deciding factor. The unit selection was pretty limited, there were too many levels of veterancy for units, though the way the building system worked was interesting.

Battle for Middle-earth II, on the other hand, was a little better but still disappointing, you still couldn't command very many units, the addition of command point requirements for heroes further exacerbated the command point situation, the resource system was terrible because the farm efficiency system severely limited the number of farms that could be built, which is a major cause of the next problem, save a long stalemate scenario there was absolutely no practical way to take advantage of the fortress/wall system, I absolutely hate the 1.06 patch changes to the powers and making banners block formation for the Men of the West, War of the Ring mode was less than stellar, and they made a lot of lore mistakes. However, the limiting of levels of veterancy for units was a welcome change.

The Rise of the Witch-king expansion to BfME2 was virtually identical, but many of the changes made it a little better than BfME2. The Angmar faction was a refreshing addition, though not adding a full-functional Arnor alongside it was silly. War of the Ring mode was much better with the addition of persistent armies, siege weapons, another hero army, and the mechanics changes. However, it still had virtually all of the same problems BfME2 had, you still couldn't command very many units, hero command point requirements were still there, and the fortress/wall system was yet again still virtually impossible to utilize unless it was a long stalemate scenario.

On another note, should I buy the Master of Orion Collection? I am considering buying some of the Atari classics in the Impulse offer that came out today.

I like The Angry Joe Show for honest reviews. Gave DA2 a 7/10 with great explanation and honesty.

They are not making games like Dragon Age (meaning turn based battles), but they do seem to try for depth in the gameplay.

 

Utter Darkness was amazing.  A chilling prophecy with a sad ending--but it didn't actually happen.  It certainly chilled me.  I think that's an awesome storyline.  And I could identify with it, because I remember the dark feeling I got from the "new" Kerrigan emerging victorious in Brood War. 

I don't take too much stock in storylines, though.  But I still like Utter Darkness purely because of the gameplay.  It's another "Hold back the barbarian horde" scenario--lots of games have those.  The difference is, this time you lose.  There are people who might not like losing.  There are people who just might not like "fend the horde" battles or turtling in general, either. 

wow... that EA is actually backing the goof that posts this is embarrassing.  I wonder if the dev's on DA2 get some sort of bonus if X units are sold.  Anyway, shameless.  Let your praise come from the mouth of others.  My opinion, but DA2 deserves 6 or 7 out of of 10.  Here's a recent quote from the link in the op.

 

edit - also... I doubt Barack Obama would have gone so far as to say "Hi - I'm Barack Obama.  You might know me as the greatest person that ever lived.  Best president in the history of the united states.  I'm better than anyone.  I execute plans better than anyone.  If I have anything less than a 100% approval rating, then that's actually my fault.  The uneducated masses don't know any better."  Or he just voted for himself in the election instead of writing a bunch of rot.  Again, EA...

I'm embarrassed for your lack of ethics and accountability.  Maybe think a little before responding... if you want to hire someone that's apparently more intelligent than the smart guy that made this response, let me know. 

Man, that brings back some Old School Goodness right there!!! Good call!!!

Aside from Karl above mentioning "Myth", RogueC's comment right here Wins the Thread.