I’ve been playing Fire Emblem Awakening. I had the dumb idea of playing hard/classic for the first time (having also not played much FE before), so a few of the last chapters have been a bit too challenging: I got stuck on chapter 17 for a couple of days. It’s been enjoyable, I think I’m near the end (chapter 21).
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth came out on PC, so I played that for most of the weekend, and I’m rather disappointed with a couple of things: the open world in the first area is the usual dull ubisoft-like checklist of chores. Luckily it doesn’t take too much to get past it, but then there’s my other complaint: the pacing and tone of the story feel off. There’s been a few too many breaks which IMO ruined the momentum. I’m now at Costa del Sol, and I’m already tired of the minigames.
Initially I had planned on playing Emio, since I played the demo and liked it, but the copy I ordered got delayed, the lost, so I’m gonna get it some other time.
I am playing and forever willbe playing Hello Kitty Dream Village. It’s a shitty gacha game but I love it. I alos play Torn but I really don’t like it. I’m literally just signing in and collecting points. I don’t like that it’s centered around violence and drugs. No, I’m not mormon. I do belong to the Church of Mr. Rogers. ;P
Just grabbed Thronefall and have been playing on the Deck a lot. It’s really fun; tower defense meets RTS with great economy. You’re always debating defenses vs scaling and some of the challenges are downright hard
Not to say this necessarily isn’t the case, but are your drivers all up to date? I don’t know how often I’ve heard people complain about shitty performance or weird artifacts in a game only to hear that the player hasn’t updated their graphics card drivers in 8 months.
Of course, I had to run it back in Baldur’s Gate 3, Honor Mode, after I failed right before the finish line. This time I went four Fighters, two melee, two ranged. My run ended in Act 2, not because of my party comp, but I let Isobel die in Last Light Inn. I forgot to block a door and the enemy crit three or four attacks on her. I did survive the fight with all the zombies afterward, got into another fight and ended it there. I’ll do another run like this, but probably after Patch 8, when Fighter gets a proper ranged sub-class. No idea, what my next run will be, but it will have to wait a bit.
Then, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth finally released on PC. I’ve been looking forward to this, and just recently re-played the first part. I’m at the beginning of Chapter 4 and it’s good. The big zones are kinda meh, pretty empty, and I don’t think the devs ever used a Chocobo to run around. Unless you only follow the roads, there are small ledges everywhere, and your Chocobo either slows down or stops completely, which is a pain. I still have fun, although the constant short breaks are kinda annoying. Like in the first game, you need to wait for certain animations to finish, before you can go into the menu, or when you completed a “World Intel” objective there’s a 10-second jingle and animation you have to wait for. Often you also get a call from a dude, who tells you he’s found another one, and you just have to stand there and listen. Like I said, I still have a good time, so it’s not a big deal.
Xbox had a sale so I picked up “Ravenswatch”, an action rougelike game where you play as fallen versions of fairy tale characters. For example Red Riding Hood is a playable character, but this version is a werewolf.
The other day unlocked Carmilla, a dhampir based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella. I really like her playstyle.
This is much older than 2023. I remember Fallout 4, the console version was apparently almost unplayable at launch, so Giant Bomb actually lowered the score, compared to the PC version. And even that example isn’t when this started.
Similarly, what if the reviewers don’t get a specific version, that runs like shit? Like what happened with Cyberpunk, where nobody was able to play the XBONE or PS4 versions.
The thing is, as always, a review is subjective. If the game has problems, but the reviewer can look past them or doesn’t care, why should they change the score.
Someone mentioned it already, but review copies might also run outdated code, and reviewers are in contact with the publisher or devs, and they might say some problem is fixed on release. If the reviewer believes them, it probably won’t affect the score.
What should they do about it if it actually runs great on their systems though?
A lot of games only play well if you take some time figuring out a certain combination of graphics settings for your own computer. Then there is bugs and stutters that really is only happening with certain settings. Particularly these days with the four common upscaling models, you never know which games are best optimized for which model, but none of them are optimized for running without upscaling.
So for a regular reviewer to really give a game a fair score, should they run at the default settings? Would be unfair to expect them to know how every weird setting impacts the game. Should they try the game at 4+ different systems to make sure there are no performance issues and stutters dragging it down in certain cases? Leaving performance testing to dedicated performance reviewers and just focus on reviewing the game itself might be the best option.
They should have the insight to use a system comparable to the average user. Or at least attempt to understand the perspective of the audience they’re reviewing for
In my experience it’s largely been unreal engine 5 games.
The issues with both Doom DA and Indiana Jones is that they have mandatory ray tracing that can’t be disabled. I generally think that ray tracing is a often a waste, it’s far too resource demanding, other lighting techniques can offer very similar visuals for a fraction of the cost.
I’ve heard the reasoning before that reviewers typically only have access to a, well, pre-release version. A day-1-patch is pretty common now.
So, as reviewer, you have to decide whether the performance problems look like they might be fixed on release day, and therefore whether you want to incorporate them into your review/score or not.
Good idea if you don’t want publishers to send you any advanced copies of their games in the future, which is just as well since your review won’t be relevant to anyone. At that point it’s just a preview.
it is today that nearly no reviews are worth anything. what even is that bullshit that they only rate from 7 to 10 because below 7 is somehow already the worst of worst
Reviewers don’t get these games and then play them in complete isolation. They are in contact with the devs or publisher and might get told which problems are fixed at launch or something.
You kinda have to believe what you’re told, and maybe adjust your score accordingly. Maybe if one dev burns you again and again, you might discard whatever they tell you, but I don’t know who could fit the bill.
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