Bad Game Reviews - Did you actually play the damn game?

[Red Hood]

PLAY IT LOUD IN STEREO, DOOOOOOOOOOD!
Edit: His suggestion about Tomb Raider 3 being about Lara getting breast cancer could legitimately be put into a modern day gaming journalist article about the Tomb Raider franchise. I dunno if I find that hilarious or saddening.

It would be a fun experiment to just rewrite GITCY takes into modern journoshit.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

"Too much water"

For context, this relates to an IGN review of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire... a game where half the region is nothing but water, and the legendary is a water type that produces rain all the time.

 

[ChucklesTheJester]

GITCY is like if Stephen Colbert reviewed games.

Counter point, GITCY is far more funny then current year SC wishes he could be.

 

[Negotiator]

There was Gamespots review of Spider Man: Miles Morales. I didn't find anything egregious about the review other than the way he speaks and these couple of lines.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Where is Flip Minuchin's plagiarized Dead Cells review for IGN? AFAIK he hasn't worked since.

 

[Neo-Holstien]

That time Polygon thought that it was a good idea to have Ben Kuchera review a VR gun game.

View attachment 2866198

Polygay had a guy who had no prior knowledge or skills review a gun game, and after a shallow glance at the guys media, he is a complete homo fag. The problem most these shlomo businesses are having is some dick weed with a camera can do better work. Schrödinger (after the Hellsing Schrödinger) is a gun guy and would probably just do Bens job better with other games as well.

I thought this was kind of funny.
View attachment 2866676

Acerthorn actually gave me an aneurism when he made his Skyrim video. He changes the title of the video every year, despite the game in 2019 and 2022 being completely different beast. Not to mention the coldest Morrowind video this side of the pond.

 

[winterfag]

For context, this relates to an IGN review of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire... a game where half the region is nothing but water, and the legendary is a water type that produces rain all the time.
View attachment 2866861

Ehhhh this is commonly seen as an infamously bad review but it's mainly just "too much water" looking really silly as a bullet point out of context. You could make the same complaint about bad encounter rates in an RPG and nobody would bat an eye. Otherwise its main sin is criticizing pokemon for being the same old shit as always. Probably one of IGN's saner takes all things considered.

This one's another really obvious one, but I figure I ought to at least bring up their God Hand review. I can understand being frustrated with these sort of demanding games if you're literally just doing it for a job, but a reviewer really is supposed to just critique a game on what it's going for

 

[KokoroKoroki]

A rather interesting case with this video essay:

If I were to list every problem I had with this review we'd be here forever as it's 5 fucking hours long.

I'll just go over some of my most major gripes with it and let you decide for yourself

1. Despite claiming to have played the game for 100 hours and playing other games in the SMT series he seems to struggle with the press turn mechanic, you know, that mechanic that's been the bread and butter of SMT for years? There is an explicit tutorial teaching him how to do this and he missed it twice.
2. He complains that the enemies in the area keep respawning so there's no point in killing them but that's only because the security level is consistently above 50% because he is dashing around like a madman not making use of the game's very simple stealth mechanics.
3. Complains that there's no point to using magic because physical attacks are so much stronger but later in the footage it shows he is around level 90 in the game's penultimate dungeon meaning he used an exploit to power-level himself to make the game easier, no shit your physical attacks will be stronger when you're around 30 levels above what you're expected to be at that point in the game.
4. To add to the previous point he then goes back on it and says that magic attacks are actually OP once you get an item that refills your mana by a small amount each turn, he can't decide whether they're good or bad and seems to flip flop throughout the entire gameplay section.
5. He calls one of the characters (Haru) a healing battery despite not having any healing moves whatsoever and chastises any boss that challenges him because his "100% objective best team builds" didn't account for an actual change in strategy.
6. Says there is no good reason to keep weaker versions of spells on your movelist once you get the stronger variations yet his own gameplay footage shows him keeping both variations numerous times.
7. He calls out the game's localisation as being poor by citing a website that was infamously clowned on for being done by a group of amateurs who didn't even play the game and even defended other infamously bad localisations such as Fire Emblem Fates.
8. Complains about the way the character's names are pronounced despite the English VAs confirming that the Japanese clients wanted them to say them that way
9. Lies about several plot points including some major ones like the interrogation plan after the casino palace by misunderstanding the plan that the game put forth and then blamed the game because he couldn't understand it.
10. Says certain plot points don't make sense because they don't come from a rational point of view but fails to account for his different perspective as an American reviewing a Japanese game and not realizing the standard for what is considered rational over there may be quite different, best example is when he questions why one character wasn't fired but didn't account for how difficult it is to get fired in Japan.

There's plenty more to mention but this is enough of a ramble as is. There are a lot of genuinely decent long form critiques of P5 out there but this is probably the worst of them all and it happens to be the most popular one which sucks because some of the points he makes actually do have some merit but he sandwiches them with the worst possible takes that it feels like he's almost trying to hate the game in every way imaginable.

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

GameSpot giving Mario Party Superstars a 6/10 as opposed to Super Mario Party’s 7/10 because the former DOESN’T have motion-controlled minigames, which the reviewer’s kid enjoyed.
GameSpot DuckTales Remastered 4.5/10 (pretty sure the complaints were the nebulous “outdated game design”).
GameSpot Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated 2/10 (not a great remake by any sense but 2/10 should be reserved for games that actually hurt to play).

 

[Titos]

Almost all Easy Allies reviews. Half the time the content of the review doesn't match up with the score and the other half they sound like obvious paid shills. Things like giving The Last Guardian a 10/10 despite it's framerate, controls, and camera being shit and mentioning it in their own review.
They also tend to give reviews for games to their most easily impressed member who gets hyped for everything under the sun and then goes on to say hyperbolic stuff like "This game should be played by every person on earth" about stuff like the God Of War reboot.

 

[AssManWaitingInTheSkies]

Can I gripe about how most reviews these days aren't actual reviews but just abridged playthroughs?
You didn't tell me if I should bother playing the game, you did it for me from beginning to end while bringing up all the twists and now I don't have to.

I'd rather look at somebody's sorry ass playing through the entire game in a long ass video than do it myself. Plus points if that faggot doesn't whine.

 

[Caddchef]

How about this classic where the reviewer was filtered by the tutorial for the fishing minigame in Nier.

Hook, Line and Stinker: My failed Nier review | Engadget

I played four long hours of Nier with the full intention of completing a review of the game.

www.google.com

For the record the game marks the correct location on the map.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Every single game review by every major outlet is universal trash. They should never be clicked on and never read. So by proxy, all of them are bad

 

[Evil Peter Griffin]

 

[Haramburger]

GameSpot Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated 2/10 (not a great remake by any sense but 2/10 should be reserved for games that actually hurt to play).

I guarantee this score is a punishment for their(THQ Nordic's) community managers posting an AMA on 8chan's /v/ shortly before the site was mulched thanks to Christchurch

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

IGN Pokémon X and Y 9/10
IGN Pokémon Sword and Shield 9.3/10

 

[Anon88]

Here's a review from some 90s gaming magazine on Bubsy 3d, a game that many say is one of the worse to ever had been made.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Surprised no one brought up Jim Sterling, his famous two is Zelda BOTW where he gave it a (relatively) low score purely to generate controversy, and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice where he gave it really bad score for a game breaking bug (due to faulty sequencing coupled with auto saves) which was probably patched a week afterwards, so the fatass could have either just waited for a fix or replayed the 3-4 hour game for his review. Razorfist could also be put here for game reviews that focus on whether the guy liked the devs/console the game on rather than the product itself.

A rather interesting case with this video essay:

If I were to list every problem I had with this review we'd be here forever as it's 5 fucking hours long.

I'll just go over some of my most major gripes with it and let you decide for yourself

1. Despite claiming to have played the game for 100 hours and playing other games in the SMT series he seems to struggle with the press turn mechanic, you know, that mechanic that's been the the bread and butter of SMT for years? There is an explicit tutorial teaching him how to do this and he missed it twice.
2. He complains that the enemies in the area keep respawning so there's no point in killing them but that's only because the security level is consistently above 50% because he is dashing around like a madman not making use of the game's very simple stealth mechanics.
3. Complains that there's no point to using magic because physical attacks are so much stronger but later in the footage it shows he is around level 90 in the game's penultimate dungeon meaning he used an exploit to power-level himself to make the game easier, no shit you're physical attacks will be stronger when your around 30 levels above what you're expected to be at that point in the game.
4. To add to the previous point he then goes back on it and says that magic attacks are actually OP once you get an item that refills your mana by a small amount each turn, he can't decide whether they're good or bad and seems to flip flop throughout the entire gameplay section.
5. He calls one of the characters (Haru) a healing battery despite not having any healing moves whatsoever and chastises any boss that challenges him because his "100% objective best team builds" didn't account for an actual change in strategy.
6. Says there is no good reason to keep weaker versions of spells on your movelist once you get the stronger variations yet his own gameplay footage shows him keeping both variations numerous times.
7. He calls out the game's localisation as being poor by citing a website that was infamously clowned on for being done by a group of amateurs who didn't even play the game and even defended other infamously bad localisations such as Fire Emblem Fates.
8. Complains about the way the character's names are pronounced despite the English VAs confirming that the Japanese clients wanted them to say them that way
9. Lies about about several plot points including some major ones like the interrogation plan after the casino palace by misunderstanding the plan that the game put forth and then blamed the game because he couldn't understand it.
10. Says certain plot points don't make sense because they don't come from a rational point of view but fails to account for his different perspective as an American reviewing a Japanese game and not realizing the standard for what is considered rational over there may be quite different, best example is when he questions why one character wasn't fired but didn't account for how difficult it is to get fired in Japan.

There's plenty more to mention but this is enough of a ramble as is. There are a lot of genuinely decent long form critiques of P5 out there but this is probably the worst of them all and it happens to be the most popular one which sucks because some of the points he makes actually do have some merit but he sandwiches them with the worst possible takes that it feels like he's almost trying to hate the game in every way imaginable.

I listened to it when it came out couple of years ago and I remember it also had the usual leftist "problematic" arguments where no fun is allowed with characters because we need to take situations as if they're happening in the real world rather than the usual escapist setting.

 

[Articles and Nudes]

SkillUp's TLOU2 review was even funnier afterwards, as he tried to play both sides of the divide - claiming that negativity was only coming from bitter chuds who hadn't played it, bit then quietly trying to ignore his own complaints were identical to theirs!

I stopped watching him soon after that as he became incredibly whiny and pre-emptively defensive in his reviews (self aware or not, crying "before you point out..." half a dozen times makes you look bitter over getting called on shit you know is shit, it doesn't make you look prepared for criticism).

 

[Judge Dredd]

This Parasite Eve: The Third Birthday review from 2008. One of the first reviews from a mainstream gaming site to dock points for not being woke. Timestamped.

"Aya is one part hero, one part submissive sex object, and it's a combination that doesn't work in the games favour."

482 likes, 657 dislikes.

That time Polygon thought that it was a good idea to have Ben Kuchera review a VR gun game.

View attachment 2866198

I like this edit.

SkillUp's TLOU2 review was even funnier afterwards, as he tried to play both sides of the divide - claiming that negativity was only coming from bitter chuds who hadn't played it, bit then quietly trying to ignore his own complaints were identical to theirs!

For me, the last straw was when he started promoting Warframe as a looter shooter with no grind, despite getting all the boosters and paid content given for free by devs and fans.