Oh, also I noticed you gave Mass Effect 3 a 99, one of the most unpolished major RPG releases in history, one which was also ridden with many times the bugs of Original Sin, oh I also noticed that review was quite a lot longer than the Original Sin one, despite the fact that Mass Effect 3 includes less content, and not a single one of the terrible flaws (not just the ending) was mentioned in it. Sounds like marketing $$$ played a part in that review, or you guys just have extremely lax quality standards on who reviews and game and how he goes about it.
Dude, relax and get off your high RPGcodex delince horse...
There are people who like Mass Effect 3. Personally, I love Mass Effect 3. And before you ask, no, I don't care whether it's a good RPG and I don't care if its features where sufficient to even be called RPG. It was a great game which offered a lot of fun and entertaining, ending included.
The review of D:OS on Gaming Trend had obvious flaws because it both stated some just plain wrong facts (like price, features, very old screenshots,..) and the reviewer refuses to review core elements of the game at all (like co-op mode). None of these "technical" failures are apparent in the Mass Effect 3 review. Also the Mass Effect 3 review was done by another person so the comparison is bollocks. You can argue that a score of 99 is stupid in general but then all the 10s from users on metacritic are stupid as well (and even then you have to give reasonable arguments why you think so). Imo it's perfectly valid to give a game a "perfect" score if you really like/love it and if you think that the entertainment value is so good that minor flaws doesn't cloud the overall picture over all (minor, non-game breaking bugs included). You might disagree with various points in a review and of course with the final verdict and score based on your own tastes and expectations for Mass Effect 3 but that doesn't make your opinion more valid or more correct than any other opinion, the one from the Gaming Trend reviewer included. H might be a Mass Effect fan, someone who exactly likes the experience which this game offered. So what? Apparently people expect the same for D:OS, that only fans of old-school isometric party RPG should review the game and that everyone else doesn't have enough information to do it properly. I can agree with that, since it's in fact better or needed that the reviewer at least has an affinity for the type of game he is going to review. But that doesn't mean that he has to believe in some dogmatic and bigotted "decline vs incline" philosophy...
On top of that the owner of Gaming Trend alredy stated here that they changed their review policies recently in order to use the full scale instead of only the 7-10 range like some sites like IGN for example. That makes every comparion to "old" review scores pretty much pointless in general.
About the D3 review: every review is a product of time, taste and expectation. There is nothing wrong with making a late review. If I play a game and make review of it on Steam, I don't care whether it was released yesterday or 10 years ago. I make a review based on my personal tastes and expectations at a certain given time. Reviews are also not about fairness, it's not a tournament in which only the best reviewed game can win a prize. A review is a work of critique that tries to evaluate the value of a product at a certain time. It's not the fault for Gaming Trend or other websites that comparison sites like metacritic are unable to offer a differentiated review scale based on time. It's the flawed metacritic philosophy which is the problem here, not "late" or "early" reviews.
1) Like Mass Effect 3 all you want, but objectively speaking it's not a 99/100 game or RPG. 2) Yeah, they wouldn't be apparent in a shill review. 3) The fact that they were done by different people doesn't matter at all, reviews have to carry some air of objectivity, reviewing something means to critique it, not to just post if you like it or not. 4) "The everything is an opinion argument" I wish people who use this argument were never allowed on the internet. No, in fact a lot of things carry objective value such as plot structure, gameplay elements, graphics, environmental diversity, encounter design etc. Games can and should be judged comparatively, as objectively as possible by critical individuals, otherwise there is no difference between a professional review, and someone's Tumblr page. 5) An affinity isn't needed, a familiarity with the genre, it's conventions and understanding what fans of the genre like and expect is needed. 6) They changed their policies, ok, so their old reviews won't be changed to reflect this, even for high profile games? Talk about a lack of journalistic integrity. 7) I agree, there is nothing wrong with a late review, but when your reviews go up on metacritic, which you know full well has influence in the industry it means you should strive to judge games fairly, after all, review scores serve a purpose, that is to compare games, because they aren't isolated, they exist in an industry and the only way of knowing if game X is better than Y is to play and judge for yourself, or in an ideal world have actual critics, and not teenagers who can't even be objective about anything. 8) I agree, meta critic should never have the influence it does, but it has it, and if reviewers continue to ignore it, and continue shilling for that all important marketing $$$, the industry will never change. Luckily kickstarter came along and several experienced development studios managed to get funding to make video games, not committee designed hamburgers like Mass Effect 3.
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