MEA scores higher than GTA5 and the dangers of online reviews

Never played GTAV (nor would I want to) but the experience of 4 MEA playthroughs c.300 hours tells me MEA is a good game.
We all have our personal views on this, and that's surely what matters, not what some online mob mentality may determine.

The two situations aren't really comparable. MEA was a potentially good game that ended up under cooked, and had a disastrous release that was simply done to get it out in time for the end of business year, instead of putting it off to get it in a more respectable state. That's all completely in EA/Bioware's hands, they could have done things differently, but actively chose not to despite knowing they had much to prove with Mass Effect after the severe hits they took from the ME3 ending debacle. MEA had to be extremely good and extremely well done to keep any fallout to a minimum, they got nowhere close and it didn't need to be like that. They made their bed, and are rightly getting criticism for it as they simply should have known better.

The GTA mod mess came about just 10 days after Take 2's CEO made comments on how they aren't monetising extra content enough. I quote:

"We are convinced that we are probably from an industry view undermonetizing on a per-user basis. There is wood to chop because I think we can do more, and we can do more without interfering with our strategy of being the most creative and our ethical approach, which is delighting consumers.

You can't give stuff away for free in perpetuity; there's no business model in that. But we're not trying to optimize the monetization of everything we do to the nth degree. My concern is, if you do that, the consumer knows. They might not even know that they know, but they feel it."

No doubt this is partly down to Bethesda's new mod club, Take 2 have realised most of the mods you see available for free, they could put together and flog for a few bucks to make EVEN more profit. That's despite the game selling in illiterately in the 10s of millions, but when I guess you have loads of money, there's nothing else to shoot for but to have even more money!

Err...besides only spending 18 months of the 5 years doing actual core development, knowingly releasing the game in a beta state with all the issues that would cause people, game-play showing no real lessons or advancements from Inquisition. Yeah apart from that what on earth is there to be annoyed about? After playing my trial, I gave it 3/10, and even minus the technical issues, I would have grudged giving it more than 5 or 6 out of 10. The writing was all over the place, and contradicting itself right from the opening scene, the combat and driving mechanics aside, there's nothing really new that built on what Inquisition/ME3 brought us.

Now the subsequently revealed 18 month core development time may explain why nothing really new was brought to the table, but that cannot excuse it. We can only judge by what they actually put in the game, not what they would have liked to do.

If you like/enjoy the game, that's fine and not a problem, at least have some perspective and understanding of the situation. MEA objectively is not a good game due to the bad job they made of making, and it got botched (perhaps fatally so) by such a horrible quality of release. As I mentioned earlier in this post, that's down to Bioware & EA. Bioware for not managing the development process well enough, and EA knowingly pushing the release of a game in a bad state.

For the rest of my post, I'll just say what I've said elsewhere:

After the fallout from the ending to ME3, anyone with a brain knew the very next Mass Effect game was going to get a much sterner eye put upon it to see if the lessons were learned. It was going to have to be very good in order to stand up to that scrutiny and to have a chance at being a hit. Yet it would seem despite that knowledge, it's development cycle was allowed to drift aimlessly for far too long.

They have made their own bed and are justifiably paying a price for doing so. Is that price "right"? Maybe, maybe not but that is what can happen when you majorly annoy/insult a fanbase of this nature twice running now.

The two situations aren't really comparable really. MEA got shitty reviews on release because it's a mediocre game, GTAs fanbase is dragging it because the company did something they dislike. Same is happening with Paradox at the moment, actually. There are people who like taking a steaming dump on absolutely everything Bioware does but I dunno if it's fair to attribute genuine, well articulated critique to them. Generally their vein of criticism leans more towards the "WHY DOES THAT WOMAN HAVE SHORT HAIR STOP PUTTING GAYS EVERYWHERE WHY ARE ALL THE STRAIGHT MeN MANLETS etc." As to what the fans of GTA and Paradox are doing: meh. Sure it's not really the point of reviews to air grievances not directly related to the games but user reviews are also some of the only ways to make your voice tangibly heard as a consumer.

If you don't bother reading the bandwagon fans who hate the game and the fanboys who love it no matter what you can find great reviews. The game don't deserve a 4.8 user score but there are good reviews to be found.

You accusing my defence of being hollow is about as ignorant as your appearance right now.

Indeed you behave like you are one of them. It gives your claims very little soil to grow on. Not to mention your behaviour makes you one of the group that is on that side of the fence - not one of those who actually make the extra step.

But as I said, you're not appearing as a trustworthy person right now.


Thank you.

I haven't heard anyone cry about Cora since pre release and no one cares about gay characters in Bioware games. No one gave DAO a 4 because "I don't like f*gs in muh gamez" 

The point being made is that the metacritic score is based on a whim. Whether that is justified (in the case of MEA's release state, for example) or it isn't (in the case of ME trolls) it isn't reflected in the score, meaning you can't really take anything solid from the user score. There's nothing in place to police or curate the score.

It's exactly the same principle why a scientific paper that has been peer reviewed is considered far more highly than one that is not.

I think this is somewhat of a simplification.

I've spent enough time online and on game and YouTube forums to know that there are plenty of homophobes out there more than willing to wail about gay characters being 'pushed down their throat'. My usual reaction to this is to suggest to those individuals that if they don't want a gay romance, they shouldn't flirt with the gay characters.

I'm not going to speak for homophobic folk, but my humble assessment is that DAO got less heat is because to your average homophobic person, bisexual women (Leliana) are ok because they are 'hawt' and Zevran was bi but more 'straight-bi'. The other difference between now and when DAO released is that there seems to be a group of asshats much more willing to share their hate online, but lets not get into the politics of that emboldening.

I don't particularly 'care' about the gay characters or the straight characters. What I care about is that lots of people get a fair shake at enjoying a game I also enjoy.

So I'm concluding that most of the online 'noise' is from the extremes of opinion, with most folk (more quietly) in the middle.


Based on what assumptions?

Most polls I've seen of people who actually played it, suggest the reverse, not great but good.

No it isn't. This is.

Gah. GTAV is one of those games where you can tell the devs are absolutely shit-hot and it's a technical marvel, but was obvious that it would attract the dregs of the internet.

I enjoyed it enough, though.

Story became increasingly important to me over the past few years.

Gone are the days I could just jump in GTA SA and shoot stuff without a care in the world, I want a good story now. Substitute them for books, really - and often ending up reading related books later, if it's not the Bitcher.


Eh, in MP with friends, fucking about, sure...

Bingo!