It all comes tumbling down, tumbling down.

[miceelf]

Question I would pose to others --a rhetorical question meant for self-reflection-- is: Are the rest of you absolutely certain you have not fallen to the same kind of hypocrisy?

Interesting question. Though I think a more pertinent question - if slightly off-topic - is what's wrong with being a hypocrite? Let's challenge perceptions...

I don't believe - for one split second - that there are people who act and think entirely along the lines of their beliefs as they progress through life. In fact, it can be argued that our ability to adapt and change to various situations and developments is what makes humans so successful.

It seems that people - especially online - hold some lofty impression of the internal logic of their own beliefs and it almost becomes like a cult. You have to like certain things and dislike certain things to fit them into your belief system, regardless of the individual merit of the things you're considering. It seems awfully limiting to me.

By saying I'm a hypocrite, I'm not saying that I don't have beliefs or values. It's just that I am happy to go outside of them if I think I might benefit from it. It's a question of degrees. If someone is hypocritical about everything they do, they probably aren't worth your time, but similarly, if someone is so uptight that they can't expose themselves to experiences outside of their sphere of influence then to me that person will be boring, dogmatic and a waste of human potential.

If being able to experience a range of contradictory things makes me a hypocrite then I am proud to wear that label, as I'd rather be someone who is the sum of a wide range of experience than be someone who lived a hermit like existence, only enjoying a narrow and restricted range of the world's offerings.

 

[Mr Fish]

Developer X changed the franchise I like to something I don't like! They're awful!
Developer Y changed a franchise I didn't like into something I now do like! They're great!
I fail to see how hypocrisy is a good thing in this regard.

And I fail to see how hypocrisy is a good thing elsewhere in life.

I don't think that violence is the solution to problems. If a friend of mine gets pissed off at what someone else is saying and proceeds to break his nose I ain't going to side with my friend. If anything he's down on a path to lose me as a friend.

I believe that cheating is wrong, period. So if some guy who's in a relationship comes up to me and starts flirting with me then the moment I figure out he's already in a relationship I will then break it off because if I find it appalling to be cheated upon then I'm damn sure not going to help someone else cheat.

I hate it when a co-worker of mine steals lunch and shit from others. Why the hell would I want to be as much of an asshole as that guy?

I think that stealing is wrong, so if I see that a customer must've dropped a 20 kronor bill then I won't pocket it, I'll put it to the side of the cash register and wait for someone to come up and claim it, if they don't then I assume it must've been from a transaction and so I put it in the cash register.

A co-worker of mine has over the past year grown increasingly lazy. I ain't going to stoop down to that level because I don't want to be a lazy shit that expects others to do my work for me.

I don't give a shit how much you love your little sister, if she cheated on her boyfriend and even slapped him around then you should absolutely 'not' take her side just cause she's blood-related to you. You wouldn't take some random person's side in an equitable situation so taking your sisters side is hypocritical and you're enabling her.

I would say that yes, it is bad to be a hypocrite.

 

[miceelf]

I doubt I'll persuade you of my point so I won't do a point-by-point breakdown. We're all busy people.

All I'll say is that my belief over hypocrisy is purely based on my own experiences in life. I started living a more fulfilled and enjoyable life once I let go of certain dogmas I held when I was younger. It's ok to make mistakes if you learn from them. The most successful people in the world are the ones who take risks, go outside of their beliefs and learn from their experiences. If you stay the same, you'll only ever be the same person.

 

[Mr Fish]

Yes, not being a hypocrite means I cannot grow as a person and will stagnate.

 

[Severite]

Damn, its been a week, now, and the user metacritic score is still 5.2....

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Damn, its been a week, now, and the user metacritic score is still 5.2....

The majority of those negative reviews provide actual reasons, whereas the majority of the 9's and 10's just complain about the "trolls" and "entitled gamers."

It's 5/10 across ALL PLATFORMS in user score. That isn't "metabombing" like Jim Sterling wishes it to be, that is just a bad game. It was the same with Dragon Age 2. To quote TotalBiscuit: "I am sick of the Borderlands series." (Fallout 4 basically is Borderlands with worse writing and characters).

Still only 2 "Critic" reviews below 80 which is hilarious.

 

[Severite]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

If it was just more of Fallout 3 I wouldn't be so disappointed and upset about the game. Fallout 4 feels like a game made by someone trying to troll Fallout fans. It is everything I feared it would be, and is a repeat of my experience with Dragon Age after the first game.

It wasn't "dumbed down," it was given a pre-frontal lobotomy.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

Yeah it's a big gap. Suspicious...

 

[Ilosar]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

Yeah it's a big gap. Suspicious...

Review bombing is definitely a thing on Metacritic. The game has loads of 0s that it frankly doesn't deserve at all. 0 is for something that plain doesn't work; FO4 is buggier than most Bethesda releases but it's not Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing or like the countless broken indie title on Steam using Unity assets. Of course, it also has loads of blind 10s, but that only means that these days any semi-contested game gets close to a 5 on Metacritic user scores because of the troll vs fanboy wars.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

Yeah it's a big gap. Suspicious...

Review bombing is definitely a thing on Metacritic. The game has loads of 0s that it frankly doesn't deserve at all. 0 is for something that plain doesn't work; FO4 is buggier than most Bethesda releases but it's not Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing or like the countless broken indie title on Steam using Unity assets. Of course, it also has loads of blind 10s, but that only means that these days any semi-contested game gets close to a 5 on Metacritic user scores because of the troll vs fanboy wars.

I'm surprised at the number of anti Bethesda trolls. Why is that?

 

[Ilosar]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

Yeah it's a big gap. Suspicious...

Review bombing is definitely a thing on Metacritic. The game has loads of 0s that it frankly doesn't deserve at all. 0 is for something that plain doesn't work; FO4 is buggier than most Bethesda releases but it's not Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing or like the countless broken indie title on Steam using Unity assets. Of course, it also has loads of blind 10s, but that only means that these days any semi-contested game gets close to a 5 on Metacritic user scores because of the troll vs fanboy wars.

I'm surprised at the number of anti Bethesda trolls. Why is that?

It seems that any big name publisher brings out the trolls these days on that site. EA, Activision, Bethesda, SEGA, Ubisoft among them. I mean, sure, many of them deserve flak to some degree or another, but slapping a 0 on a game mere hours after release date? How can that be considered valuable feedback in any possible way?

The only user reviews I ever read are those on the mixed scale. They are usually fairly critical of the game and more verbiose than ''omg deathclaws 10/10 game of the millenium'' or ''no skills 0/10''. Other than that, to me user score is more or less worthless. Dragon Age: Inquisition getting fairly lousy Metacritic user scores, but winning like 25 GOTY awards given by consumers and running away with the press rewards as well, is an egregious example of how the website seemingly doesn't aggregate the opinions of the population at large.

I also think this is true for FO4. Even with the fairly low user scores, I wouldn't be surprised if most people enjoyed it.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I'd rather trust a user score then journalists, because users buy the game and don't get paid to make a review.

 

[RangerBoo]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

Yeah it's a big gap. Suspicious...

Review bombing is definitely a thing on Metacritic. The game has loads of 0s that it frankly doesn't deserve at all. 0 is for something that plain doesn't work; FO4 is buggier than most Bethesda releases but it's not Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing or like the countless broken indie title on Steam using Unity assets. Of course, it also has loads of blind 10s, but that only means that these days any semi-contested game gets close to a 5 on Metacritic user scores because of the troll vs fanboy wars.

I'm surprised at the number of anti Bethesda trolls. Why is that?

It seems that any big name publisher brings out the trolls these days on that site. EA, Activision, Bethesda, SEGA, Ubisoft among them. I mean, sure, many of them deserve flak to some degree or another, but slapping a 0 on a game mere hours after release date? How can that be considered valuable feedback in any possible way?

The only user reviews I ever read are those on the mixed scale. They are usually fairly critical of the game and more verbiose than ''omg deathclaws 10/10 game of the millenium'' or ''no skills 0/10''. Other than that, to me user score is more or less worthless. Dragon Age: Inquisition getting fairly lousy Metacritic user scores, but winning like 25 GOTY awards given by consumers and running away with the press rewards as well, is an egregious example of how the website seemingly doesn't aggregate the opinions of the population at large.

I also think this is true for FO4. Even with the fairly low user scores, I wouldn't be surprised if most people enjoyed it.

You also have to remember that 2014 was a bad year for games. While DA:I was not a really good game it was probably the better AAA title game to come out that year. Since AAA are the ones who usually win these GOTY rewards it was really no surprise. That and people were desperate to give Bioware another chance and prove that they still have writing talent after the Mass Effect 3 fisaco. It really pathetic how people keep making excuses and giving a pass to shoddy game devs who only care about their own ego and the bottom dollar.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

Yeah it's a big gap. Suspicious...

Review bombing is definitely a thing on Metacritic. The game has loads of 0s that it frankly doesn't deserve at all. 0 is for something that plain doesn't work; FO4 is buggier than most Bethesda releases but it's not Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing or like the countless broken indie title on Steam using Unity assets. Of course, it also has loads of blind 10s, but that only means that these days any semi-contested game gets close to a 5 on Metacritic user scores because of the troll vs fanboy wars.

I'm surprised at the number of anti Bethesda trolls. Why is that?

It seems that any big name publisher brings out the trolls these days on that site. EA, Activision, Bethesda, SEGA, Ubisoft among them. I mean, sure, many of them deserve flak to some degree or another, but slapping a 0 on a game mere hours after release date? How can that be considered valuable feedback in any possible way?

The only user reviews I ever read are those on the mixed scale. They are usually fairly critical of the game and more verbiose than ''omg deathclaws 10/10 game of the millenium'' or ''no skills 0/10''. Other than that, to me user score is more or less worthless. Dragon Age: Inquisition getting fairly lousy Metacritic user scores, but winning like 25 GOTY awards given by consumers and running away with the press rewards as well, is an egregious example of how the website seemingly doesn't aggregate the opinions of the population at large.

I also think this is true for FO4. Even with the fairly low user scores, I wouldn't be surprised if most people enjoyed it.

You also have to remember that 2014 was a bad year for games. While DA:I was not a really good game it was probably the better AAA title game to come out that year. Since AAA are the ones who usually win these GOTY rewards it was really no surprise. That and people were desperate to give Bioware another chance and prove that they still have writing talent after the Mass Effect 3 fisaco. It really pathetic how people keep making excuses and giving a pass to shoddy game devs who only care about their own ego and the bottom dollar.

And their ego depends on how much money they made, not how good the game is.

 

[Ilosar]

I thought it was funny, when I looked at it.....5.2 for user scores, and and 86 for "professional" scores. That's kinda ugly. If it was really just people bombing it cause NMA guys suck, the score would have picked back up. NMA is realistically a pretty small crew. Granted, I have not yet gotten to play, but I suspect more of the same from the past series.

Yeah it's a big gap. Suspicious...

Review bombing is definitely a thing on Metacritic. The game has loads of 0s that it frankly doesn't deserve at all. 0 is for something that plain doesn't work; FO4 is buggier than most Bethesda releases but it's not Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing or like the countless broken indie title on Steam using Unity assets. Of course, it also has loads of blind 10s, but that only means that these days any semi-contested game gets close to a 5 on Metacritic user scores because of the troll vs fanboy wars.

I'm surprised at the number of anti Bethesda trolls. Why is that?

It seems that any big name publisher brings out the trolls these days on that site. EA, Activision, Bethesda, SEGA, Ubisoft among them. I mean, sure, many of them deserve flak to some degree or another, but slapping a 0 on a game mere hours after release date? How can that be considered valuable feedback in any possible way?

The only user reviews I ever read are those on the mixed scale. They are usually fairly critical of the game and more verbiose than ''omg deathclaws 10/10 game of the millenium'' or ''no skills 0/10''. Other than that, to me user score is more or less worthless. Dragon Age: Inquisition getting fairly lousy Metacritic user scores, but winning like 25 GOTY awards given by consumers and running away with the press rewards as well, is an egregious example of how the website seemingly doesn't aggregate the opinions of the population at large.

I also think this is true for FO4. Even with the fairly low user scores, I wouldn't be surprised if most people enjoyed it.

You also have to remember that 2014 was a bad year for games. While DA:I was not a really good game it was probably the better AAA title game to come out that year. Since AAA are the ones who usually win these GOTY rewards it was really no surprise. That and people were desperate to give Bioware another chance and prove that they still have writing talent after the Mass Effect 3 fisaco. It really pathetic how people keep making excuses and giving a pass to shoddy game devs who only care about their own ego and the bottom dollar.

We'll just have to disagree on that. I liked Inquisition a lot even if it had several problems and was inferior to Origins. True, 2014 was not the best year in terms of games, but it still had several solid releases such as Shadow of Mordor, Alien: Isolation and The Banner Saga. And given that in 2013 Journey managed to be second best in fan-given GOTY awards (losing, of course, to GTAV if memory serves) not only AAA games can win those. Besides, next to the sale numbers of Bethesda games, or AssCreed or CoD, Bioware titles are very far behind even if they boast AAA production values.

@ Dr Fallout: while that's true to a degree, a (good) reviewer who makes money out of his craft can manage to be less passionate and more objective than a lot of gamers, who let's face it are very often impulse buyers with all the backlash this can entail. Sure, the likes of IGN and Gamespot are absolute crap that I refuse to visit, but other websites such as Gamebanshee, Rock Paper Shotgun and Destructoid usually manage to post better reviews since they are less shackled by big publishers giving them access to exclusive events.

The best paid reviewers are probably Youtubers, who can manage to make money out of their channels without selling out, and often clearly announce when they do promotional events. I particularily like Totalbiscuit (even if he claims not to be a reviewer) and if you can get past the fratboy antics Angry Joe can have some good points too. Superbunnyhop is one I discovered not too long ago, and his Fallout 4 review is, I feel, very fair and lucid. So I would suggest not putting everyone in the same basket; there are legimately good paid reviewers and there are (loads, on Metacritic) of bad user reviewers.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I was more or less talking about the gaming journalists, because yes I like Super Bunnyhop and Total Biscuit, but the place where people think show fair and unbiased reviews are usually bullshit.

 

[shengar]

Honestly, the fanboy and the troll should already even out each other in quantity. The one who will determine a game user score is your average-to-good-but-honest guy who will wrote review and giving score based on his experience. If these guys can't even tip the scale, that only mean the game really deserved that score, more or less. Of course user metacritic score isn't the end of all score, but it is a good measurement when there is differing opinion on the game.

Also, personally after such high score and praise and continuous questionable GOTY candidate over the years, I don't trust "professional" reviewers any longer. Their argument in their reviews tends to be terrible too.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I'm going to be honest: I agree with every single mixed and negative review I have seen on Metacritic user scores. If that makes me a troll so be it, at least I can recognize a game made by marketing executives instead of developers. This game reeks of Far Cry and Borderlands - they clearly looked at market trends, focus groups, and played it by the sales numbers rather than trying to make a good game that would sell based on its quality. Every time I pick up a magazine or open a locked door and the main character says "YES" and that weird music plays, I'm reminded that it is directly taken from Far Cry 3.

As Elon Musk said: The path to the CEO's office should be through research and development, NOT the CFO or marketing department. Now we have Bethesda seemingly with the marketing department and CFO in charge of game development and creativity and originality has been stifled with the goal of producing a game that is mediocre for everyone and amazing for no one.

If CD Projekt Red puts out Witcher 3 with THAT kind of quality and Bethesda thinks people are going to give them 10/10 reviews on metacritic for what they shat out on us, I fail to see how that makes the negative reviewers "trolls." It seems to me like they're the only ones who see Fallout 4 for what it is and not what it's marketing department wants everyone to think it is.

 

[Doctor 0]

Honestly, the fanboy and the troll should already even out each other in quantity. The one who will determine a game user score is your average-to-good-but-honest guy who will wrote review and giving score based on his experience. If these guys can't even tip the scale, that only mean the game really deserved that score, more or less. Of course user metacritic score isn't the end of all score, but it is a good measurement when there is differing opinion on the game.

Also, personally after such high score and praise and continuous questionable GOTY candidate over the years, I don't trust "professional" reviewers any longer. Their argument in their reviews tends to be terrible too.

My favorites are the ones that list many flaws and still give a 10/10.