Games you absolutely love but are below 80 for some reason

The element of external aspects to the game being woven into scores it another big problem. At the risk of sounding the horn on persecution complex or whatever, I’d agree there definitely seemed to a sorta ‘xbox tax’ last gen. SoT and Gears 4/5 and Quantum Break come to mind here. The Cyberpunk reviews also are riddled with crap like meta-politics that are totally unrelated to the game itself.

I also think ‘value’ or game cost needs to be eliminated as an element of a review. Nobody actually takes proper account of it in reviews anyhow. Many Sony titles have no replayability at all and are largely worth 1-2 playthroughs tops. No reviewers dock pts for this. Nor do GaaS or other MP titles offering many hundreds of hrs of entertainment get some huge boost for that ‘value’.

Review content should ideally just try to convey how good the game is and let the individual sort out if they can afford it or not and make that value judgement themselves. Hell with Game Pass that ‘value’ argument is totally moot anyhow. Should a game get higher scores for being on Game Pass since the ‘value’ is better when ya pay nothing for it?.. >.>

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Alpha Protocol, Bleeding Edge, Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn (sinful it’s the lowest rated localized game), Halo Wars 2, Rune Factory 4 (original), Tell Me Why.

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I agree with some of your points, including the Xbox Tax, but I disagree that value shouldn’t be taken into account. Games like Miles, while good fun, could be beaten in 4.5 hours tops. Similarly, I’ve played some truly delusional indies who feel their 2 hours of unpolished content deserves a $45 price tag. Value is important, and I do think that Game Pass should mitigate some of the concerns.

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For you $50 for MM might not be worth it but for someone else it might totally be worth it for the experience. It might be a drop in the bucket for that person, while for someone else it’s a notable expenditure. That’s the issue. A reviewer should not be making cost-value judgments since they are not meaningful to the purpose of the review (which should be to inform audiences so that THEY can make the informed purchase decision). That should be left to the audience since they will make that judgment again on their own anyhow.

My point wrt Game Pass is that the games no longer cost anything to play, so a review that is harshly critical on the basis of the game being “overpriced” does nothing but lower the score artificially. Readers might see a great game rated as a 7 on the basis of cost-value, but if the game is on Game Pass and costs the reader $0 to try out then the review score is totally misleading.

There is this paradigm in how some gamers view reviews that seems weird to me, where ppl think of them akin to product reviews where cost-value has meaning. That’s flawed though, because products compete with each other by offering the same experiences whereas games compete by tryna offer unique experiences.

A leafblower from one company might perform better and last longer and have a better warranty than one from another company and be cheaper. In that sense, an objective case can be made that the former is a better value than the latter. You can’t do that with games though, since they aren’t trying to offer the exact same experience. Generic products are designed to solve problems whereas games are built to entertain.

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For me, it comes down to the quality. Miles Morales is a 20+ hour game if you do everything. If you do just the main story missions, it’s around 6+ hours depending on the difficulty level you’re playing on but I can see it…Miles is a high quality game. I’m expecting an easy 9.0/10 for me personally because I know the story/characters are excellent, the visuals amazing and the combat/gameplay superb plus the audio is great. I see the same thing in Gears 5: Hivebusters. Sure, it’s 3 hours but is it 3 hours of shit or 3 hours of greatness? If it’s greatness, that’s all that matters because quality matters.

If people care more about quantity, monetary value and replay value, then every Ubisoft open world should be a 95+ but they aren’t because for the vast majority of people, the quality and polish simply isn’t there.

Me…I prefer quality. Give me 6+ hours in a game that I see as a 9.0/10 instead of 20+ hours in a game that I see as no better than a 7.0/10. Quality > quantity.

Recore and Ryse

OK here are some games that I love and believe that are severely underrated IMO.

  • God Hand: 73%
  • P.N.03: 63%
  • Killer7: 74%
  • Fatal Frame: 77%
  • NIER: 67%
  • Shadows of the Damned: 76%
  • Binary Domain: 74%
  • Outrun Online Arcade: 79%
  • Warhammer 40K: Space Marine: 76%
  • Singularity: 76%
  • The Wonderful 101: 78%
  • ReCore: 63%
  • Prey (2017): 79%
  • Wolfenstein: The New Order: 79%
  • Wolfenstein: The Old Blood: 76%
  • Dragon’s Dogma: 75%
  • The Evil Within: 75%
  • The Evil Within 2: 76%

And I am sure that’s not all of them. This list is the reason I stopped caring about metacritic scores a long time ago.

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Evil Within and New Order certainly deserve better than that

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I don’t pay any attention to review scores. If I’m not buying a game day one I pay attention to what the general consensus is from the gaming community as I believe I’ll get a more honest and diverse opinion.

Binary Domain is a game that’s been mentioned that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was so much fun and I wish it was backwards compatible so I can give it another play through

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Im also one of those people who dont care for review scores. I tend to go with experiences from games on forums, which I know have similar taste than me.

Not sure what the score for Mad Max is, but that one did not review very well. But with the upgradable car, upgradeable strongholds and the interesting setting/story it brought a lot to the table.

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Ryse
Dead Rising 3
Crackdown 3
The Order
Warhammer Space Marine
ReCore
Sonic Generations
Killer instinct (OG)

That’s off the top of my head and with a few that reminded me after reading them in the thread. I’m sure there’s more

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I love Blue Dragon. It had lukewarm response but it’s a game that still stands up today. Just played it again a couple of months ago. Very charming and still looks great. I think kids would also love it.

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Single player games tend to review better among game reviewers (that’s fine!) So it’s usually the multiplayer games we see in the high 70s and low 80s. Sea of Thieves would definitely have a higher score if it was re-reviewed. I don’t think review scores are completely meaningless but they definitely get used by the wrong types to start console wars or to attack journalists/publishers. Ryse Son of Rome was a game i played through 3 times and enjoyed quite a bit.

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One of my favourite games of all time and definitely a top 5 of the gen for me.

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I agree tho that isint meant as a dig against journalist. More a feeling you have once you played a game and see how poorly it got rated. Then you ask yourself HOW. We Happy Few gave me this question several times.

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Honestly, I’m not sure what games are rated above 80. It’s probably harder to find games I consistently play that are rated above 80 than are rated under 80.

Reviewers for the last 10 years tend to favor games with top notch presentation (even if it means shallow gameplay/mechanics) and length, they rarely comment on things like replay value and depth/quality of the mechanics simply because they play on the easier difficulties and/or don’t invest the time that is actually required to have an informed opinion about them.

That’s why you see games like TLOU2 being praised for it’s value even if 1. if it is a game that has no replay value at all and 2. is longer than it supposed to be because the game’s mechanics, enemy variety and combat scenarios can’t support the 30+ hrs plus content (same as Uncharted 4). This is one of the biggest reasons that we hardly see 5-8hrs campaigns anymore from the big publishers and the few that we do see nowadays are probably being shred to pieces for the lack of content like Resident Evil 3 where most reviewers didn’t even bother with the replay value aspect of the game and now the general consensus is that it’s a “4 hour game” not worth more than 20 euros.

Of course there are rare exceptions like Miles Morales but that’s another topic which is more about bias than anything else which is an entirely different problematic aspect on the subject.

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Vanilla Destiny Wolf TNO

Days gone on ps4 Vampyre Quantam break Ryse