The Rybicki Maneuver

Well said, Brother... *BUT* I have a single qualm with it.

I cannot seem to remember "Rybicki" for the life of me. Henceforth, I shall dub it, "That one manuever". But other than that, excellent work. :ok:

Edit: I can't seem to spell it either, hehe.
 
Cough cough, been there, done that. In a slightly less researched fashion, I'll grant you.

Neat article, I hope it gets some attention, though we're relying on games journalists to report it. If there's one thing the recent spate of FO3 previews has shown, it's the nasty state games journalism is in. I'm glad that it's not just me who feels this way.
 
This game review site gave Oblivion a negative review, but because they were reviewing the PS3 version you can't really say that they are timely. http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=24 Of course, they also have a reputation of being excessively negative - see what they gave God of War II (another universally praised video game). Really they aren't exclusively negative like http://yvgs.com/Category:Game, but they severely punish lazy or uninspired game design. Still it's just another small time review site.

Honestly it's unlikely (at least in the near term) to expect that most reviewer websites and magazines to become more critical than they currently are. Movie companies give reviewers free advanced screenings sometimes, but other times - when they know it's going to suck - they don't allow any advanced screenings. The difference is that movie tickets cost $10 (U.S.) and take 2+ hours to finish while video games cost $40+ and take 20+ hours to finish. Just those logistics mean that getting a free advanced copy for every game is vitally important to the finances and deadlines of every reviewing magazine and website.

It would be great if eventually a very critical game reviewing site became popular enough (rivaling Gamespot, IGN, etc.) so that they could be critical in their game previews while still garnering advanced copies. It would also be great if eventually all games came with good graphics so people actually judge them based on art style, realism, story, and gameplay. Or if people stopped caring so much about the shiny.
 
Of course the PS3 version adds the fact that it's an amazingly half-assed port to Oblivion's existing flaws.
They really got hosed on that one, at least PC users can try to mod the crud out.
 
Araanor said:
Brother None said:
PS: and another magazine that claims BIS made Fallout. Ugh
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How about this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_(computer_game)

"Developer: Black Isle Studios". And the reference (the [1]) is Cheong, Ian (yes, Exitium) through a faq on his Lionheart site.
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Also, Bethesda's press releases are claiming Black Isle as the developers of Fallout.

(Since I did mention this forum's concerns about that kind of info in regards to the mention of BI on our "picture of the day", and was pointed at the press release I got.)
 
Kyuu said:
Excellent article, and, in general, I very much agree with the points you're making.

However, there's one thing that stuck out at me involving your quotes from various places. It involves the quotes from GGL:
And, thankfully, the horrid level scaling of Oblivion has been more or less phased out. - GGL on Fallout 3 (ref)

For all the excellence within this game, there are some flaws. Firstly there is the annoying and unpredictable issue of crashing. Both of my test machines experienced random crashes to desktop. (...) The other issue is more understandable and can be largely forgiven. The NPC interaction suffers from some rather illogical and disjointed verbal exchanges. - GGL on Oblivion (ref)
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Not only do both quotes seem to be negative statements about Oblivion (although they do seem to be trying hard to gloss over the issues in what I assume to be their review of Oblivion), but they're talking about completely different issues. I suppose if you were just going for a general negative/positive contrast I understand it, but most the other quotes involved them directly contradicting themselves on the same issues. I dunno, I just thought that part was a little bit weaker than the rest.
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They're fine. The first is an example of previously unreported now subsequently manifested flaws; a good demonstration of the fallibility of reviews. the second is a particularly egregious example of the sugarcoating of flaws. disjointed and illogical NPC interaction destroys immersion completely but according to the reviewer that is A-OK. a demonstration of the corruption, deception, manipulation and untrustworthiness of reviewers.

As is stated in one of the linked articles you are either a good or excellent writer or you are not. Hopefully we all know by now where we stand and I suggest advice be proferred (or not as may be the case) accordingly
 
seanmike said:
Also, Bethesda's press releases are claiming Black Isle as the developers of Fallout.
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Lovely.

Good move, tho', it'll make us waste more time swimming against the misinformation.

PS: though on checking, it seems BIS claimed Fallout 1 as their game too in the end. It's factually incorrect, but I guess I'll have to cave in and consider it "not that important"
 
Brother None said:
PS: though on checking, it seems BIS claimed Fallout 1 as their game too in the end. It's factually incorrect, but I guess I'll have to cave in and consider it "not that important"
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Wait, wait, wait!
...
I thought NMA was about picking the nits of unimportant matters (you know, like gameplay, design, canon, etc.).

You disappoint me, Brother None... Kharn (:wink:) would have continued the never ending battle for Truth, Justice, and-er... wait, that's someone else. :D
 
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