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ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak

I've said this for 20 years +. Where there are humans and money involved there will always be bias and palm greasing.

I will always think a prime example was Rome Total War and its like 95% score when it was a horrible non-challenging game and the AI was just plain pitiful even on the hardest settings. I finally found that turning off morale and giving archers unlimited ammo and rarely using archers myself that the game became more fun and challenging but at the expense of gimping myself and giving the AI more resources than me.

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

quote:

ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak

I've said this for 20 years +. Where there are humans and money involved there will always be bias and palm greasing.

I will always think a prime example was Rome Total War and its like 95% score when it was a horrible non-challenging game and the AI was just plain pitiful even on the hardest settings. I finally found that turning off morale and giving archers unlimited ammo and rarely using archers myself that the game became more fun and challenging but at the expense of gimping myself and giving the AI more resources than me.

warspite1

Wow. I always found Rome the best of the series; a great game, really challenging, even on moderate settings [X(]

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ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak

Back in the day when William Trotter was reviewing wargames for PCgamer I believed what he wrote. He was/is a wargamer and knew what he was talking about. So I can presume he left because they wanted him to tweak some of his reviews for the betterment of the companies revenue.

I also am a Tom Chick fan and I wish some of these old school wargame reviewers would start up their own magazines because I'm really tired of reading from just out of college toddler reports or these biased I don't like this game so I'm screwing it in the reviews types.

Then we have the children who vote 1's or 10's on games I would bet many of them haven't even played. I'm a firm believer now you shouldn't get an opportunity to vote on a game unless you own it and can prove so with some receipt code or cd key of purchase. Playing a demo does not count as owning it either. Most demos never give you the full feel of a game.

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ORIGINAL: Fallschirmjager

IGN has responded and said this this is a former employee who was recently let go and has an axe to grind. So who knows?

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ORIGINAL: Fallschirmjager

So this charge of bias could very possibly be this no name website trying to garner some publicity with bias of their own. [:D]

In general I agree with professional reviews to a certain extent. For instance, the EU series of games usually gets 7.5-8.0
Compared to the fulls spectrum of games I would agree with that score. But since I like that particular genre it adds a point or two for me.

I generally don't like Japanese pop culture or games. But those games sometimes get strong scores. Just because I don't enjoy them does not mean they are not well made games.

Game reviews like movies and music are opinions. Professional reviewers by virtue of being professional try and look at the games from a neutral standpoint but of course bias and human emotion gets in the way sometimes.

I worry less about bias from the big review sites because they get good treatment from every game company.
I worry more about bias from the small review sites because since they are small only some game companies send them review copies of games and if 1 out of 10 game companies sends your small struggling site a review copy, arnt you going to be biased towards that game?

I find reviews at most sites dedicated to wargaming to be utter garbage. Most of those sites are so small and struggling so much that when a wargame maker reaches out to them there is a tendency not to bite the hand that feeds them.

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ORIGINAL: parusski

I just ate an artichoke.

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I find reviews at most sites dedicated to wargaming to be utter garbage. Most of those sites are so small and struggling so much that when a wargame maker reaches out to them there is a tendency not to bite the hand that feeds them

quote:

ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak

I've said this for 20 years +. Where there are humans and money involved there will always be bias and palm greasing.

I will always think a prime example was Rome Total War and its like 95% score when it was a horrible non-challenging game and the AI was just plain pitiful even on the hardest settings. I finally found that turning off morale and giving archers unlimited ammo and rarely using archers myself that the game became more fun and challenging but at the expense of gimping myself and giving the AI more resources than me.

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ORIGINAL: flanyboy

quote:

ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak

I've said this for 20 years +. Where there are humans and money involved there will always be bias and palm greasing.

I will always think a prime example was Rome Total War and its like 95% score when it was a horrible non-challenging game and the AI was just plain pitiful even on the hardest settings. I finally found that turning off morale and giving archers unlimited ammo and rarely using archers myself that the game became more fun and challenging but at the expense of gimping myself and giving the AI more resources than me.

The stock campaign was poor true but the genius of Rome was the engine imho. The engine allowed phenomenal mods. Rome total Realism or Barbarism or w/e were called were some of the best games I ever played.