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Ok So I got my Gamecube and I was pleasantly surprised, I knew the Gamecube would be the greatest Games console on earth but I didn’t expect it to happen yet, Super Monkey Ball and Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader proved me wrong. But despite how good the games present at Gamecube’s launch were, I still know now what I’ve known for the past 6 months, the best is yet to come.
Whilst we play with our Monkey Balls, Fly in our X-wings and suck things up with our hover, people such as myself are looking at the bigger picture. By the end of this year we won’t be playing Super Monkey Ball (Now I know someone will pop up and say “yeah we’d be playing Super Monkey Ball 2”) we will in fact be playing Starfox Adventures, Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness, Animal Crossing, Super Mario Sunshine, Soul Calibur, Turok Evolution, Metroid Prime, Vexx, F Zero etc… etc… now these games are and will be AAA smash hit games that we will love, treasure and herald as the greatest games ever and compare them to games like Luigi’s Mansion and Wave Race? I am shocked at the majority of magazines and websites awarding Luigi’s Mansion a whopping 90% (CUBE magazine were more realistic with 75%), we have given Luigi’s Mansion a high score yet adventure games such as Virtual Fighter RPG, Zelda, Zelda Ocarina of Time remake, Super Mario Sunshine, 6 Resident Evil games, Eternal Darkness, Animal Crossing, Vexx, Final Fantasy, Kameo Elements of Power and Wario’s World, which will be many times better can only improve on the formulae by 10%.
Lets face it Resident evil: Biohazard will receive around 95% going on the reviews that I’ve read but this game is much more than 5% better than Luigi’s Mansion. Super Mario Sunshine will be the biggest Nintendo release this year (there are several major Nintendo releases this year but that is the biggest). But according to NGC and Nintendo Official Magazine it can only be 10% better than Luigi’s Mansion and there is no way Mario Sunshine will be perfect. CUBE magazine awarded Super Monkey Ball 93% and NGC magazine awarded it 92%, now I doubt very much Super Monkey Ball 2 will be as high as 96% and so Super Monkey Ball 2 won’t seem much better than its prequel. What I do not understand is why magazines and certain websites think that some games deserve 91% e.g. Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader in NGC and others will reach 95% + like Zelda and Resident Evil when clearly the latter’s deserve to be more than 4% higher. To be honest we cannot blame magazines though it’s more on how their percentage system works. Many magazines still use the 10/10 system, it is the most basic system that is useful for quick reviews such as the ones you can read in Special Reserve, it simply tells you that the game is excellent, but in magazines we want to know which game is the best and a percentage tells all. For example lets say one magazine awards Mario a huge 10/10 score which it probably will get then the 6 months later we get our hands on Zelda, which for arguments sake is much much better than Mario Sunshine, how will people know this by the score, 10/10 yeah so its as good as Mario then? Edge awarded Halo 10/10 so when Halo 2 hops along what will that get 10/10 as well???
A Percentage has to be used but then needs to be a overhaul of the system, so far Luigi’s Mansion has got mainly 90%, a score it does not deserve, the 75% CUBE magazine awarded it is far more accurate. Unfortunately 75% is seen as a very poor grade indeed, Luigi’s Mansion is a very good game and 75% is a very good score but nobody ever see’s that. 50% is an awful grade to some people when in fact it is telling you that the game is average, 51% is above Average! There needs to be a lowering of scores or we will be getting 95.6% score lines soon, it is amazing how small a gap it is between 75% and 76% than compared with 91% and 92%. When NGC magazine was N64 magazine they did something very clever, as the games got older their mark was reduced, some games that got dated by a far superior sequel went down, so when Mario Sunshine is released it would get 93% for example and Luigi’s Mansion will drop (these are evident from the mini reviews of all games at the back of the magazine). So when Halo 2 comes out Halo the original could drop to 9/10 in Edge magazine. I still believe there needs to be an awareness that a 75% game is good, Conker’s Bad Fur Day got 88% and I was mortified, why? 88% is a storming must have title but I didn’t see that as all the other adventure games around it was scoring in the 90’s even if they didn’t deserve to be there.
The fact is Super Monkey Ball, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2, Luigi’s Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Burnout and Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 all received 90% or above and this is on a console where the greatest games, the most memorable titles don’t come out until the last 5 months of the year and deep into 2003 and beyond… it simply doesn’t make sense but if those titles didn’t score into 90% then the Gamecube would be seen as a bad console with no good launch titles which is simply not true… I hope to see the re-release of NGC will sort out the percentage problem magazines worldwide are suffering from.
Here’s to the future
Dringo.
Whilst we play with our Monkey Balls, Fly in our X-wings and suck things up with our hover, people such as myself are looking at the bigger picture. By the end of this year we won’t be playing Super Monkey Ball (Now I know someone will pop up and say “yeah we’d be playing Super Monkey Ball 2”) we will in fact be playing Starfox Adventures, Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness, Animal Crossing, Super Mario Sunshine, Soul Calibur, Turok Evolution, Metroid Prime, Vexx, F Zero etc… etc… now these games are and will be AAA smash hit games that we will love, treasure and herald as the greatest games ever and compare them to games like Luigi’s Mansion and Wave Race? I am shocked at the majority of magazines and websites awarding Luigi’s Mansion a whopping 90% (CUBE magazine were more realistic with 75%), we have given Luigi’s Mansion a high score yet adventure games such as Virtual Fighter RPG, Zelda, Zelda Ocarina of Time remake, Super Mario Sunshine, 6 Resident Evil games, Eternal Darkness, Animal Crossing, Vexx, Final Fantasy, Kameo Elements of Power and Wario’s World, which will be many times better can only improve on the formulae by 10%.
Lets face it Resident evil: Biohazard will receive around 95% going on the reviews that I’ve read but this game is much more than 5% better than Luigi’s Mansion. Super Mario Sunshine will be the biggest Nintendo release this year (there are several major Nintendo releases this year but that is the biggest). But according to NGC and Nintendo Official Magazine it can only be 10% better than Luigi’s Mansion and there is no way Mario Sunshine will be perfect. CUBE magazine awarded Super Monkey Ball 93% and NGC magazine awarded it 92%, now I doubt very much Super Monkey Ball 2 will be as high as 96% and so Super Monkey Ball 2 won’t seem much better than its prequel. What I do not understand is why magazines and certain websites think that some games deserve 91% e.g. Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader in NGC and others will reach 95% + like Zelda and Resident Evil when clearly the latter’s deserve to be more than 4% higher. To be honest we cannot blame magazines though it’s more on how their percentage system works. Many magazines still use the 10/10 system, it is the most basic system that is useful for quick reviews such as the ones you can read in Special Reserve, it simply tells you that the game is excellent, but in magazines we want to know which game is the best and a percentage tells all. For example lets say one magazine awards Mario a huge 10/10 score which it probably will get then the 6 months later we get our hands on Zelda, which for arguments sake is much much better than Mario Sunshine, how will people know this by the score, 10/10 yeah so its as good as Mario then? Edge awarded Halo 10/10 so when Halo 2 hops along what will that get 10/10 as well???
A Percentage has to be used but then needs to be a overhaul of the system, so far Luigi’s Mansion has got mainly 90%, a score it does not deserve, the 75% CUBE magazine awarded it is far more accurate. Unfortunately 75% is seen as a very poor grade indeed, Luigi’s Mansion is a very good game and 75% is a very good score but nobody ever see’s that. 50% is an awful grade to some people when in fact it is telling you that the game is average, 51% is above Average! There needs to be a lowering of scores or we will be getting 95.6% score lines soon, it is amazing how small a gap it is between 75% and 76% than compared with 91% and 92%. When NGC magazine was N64 magazine they did something very clever, as the games got older their mark was reduced, some games that got dated by a far superior sequel went down, so when Mario Sunshine is released it would get 93% for example and Luigi’s Mansion will drop (these are evident from the mini reviews of all games at the back of the magazine). So when Halo 2 comes out Halo the original could drop to 9/10 in Edge magazine. I still believe there needs to be an awareness that a 75% game is good, Conker’s Bad Fur Day got 88% and I was mortified, why? 88% is a storming must have title but I didn’t see that as all the other adventure games around it was scoring in the 90’s even if they didn’t deserve to be there.
The fact is Super Monkey Ball, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2, Luigi’s Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Burnout and Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 all received 90% or above and this is on a console where the greatest games, the most memorable titles don’t come out until the last 5 months of the year and deep into 2003 and beyond… it simply doesn’t make sense but if those titles didn’t score into 90% then the Gamecube would be seen as a bad console with no good launch titles which is simply not true… I hope to see the re-release of NGC will sort out the percentage problem magazines worldwide are suffering from.
Here’s to the future
Dringo.
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Maybe Edgy, i still believe Famitsu's score system out of 40 is good by adding graphics, gameplay etc... scores together... sadly Resident Evil got 39 /40 so how can Resident Evil 0 or 4 improve greatly on that score?
Damn, sorry about that double post. Don't quite know how that happened seeing as I only clicked "submit post" once :S
I think it's all down to first impressions which are giving these rediculously high percentages.
When I first played South Park on the N64 I thought it was a brilliant multiplayer game and deserved a high percentage, but it lacked fun in the single player mode, which is where it deserved to have a lower score in Nintendo Official Magazine.
NOM claimed to be "First, biggest and best for Nintendo exclusives", but they obviously weren't. I heard most my news printed in N64 magazine, got lots of new information from GBX magazine, and read the best news in all magazines but NOM. Sure, they are official, but that doesn't make them the best.
Because of their claim, the magazine had to suffer terribly. Reviews had to be cut shorter and pictures bigger to make the magazine look longer, despite the fact that NOM rushed their reviews. News articles seemed to be really old news, the only claim that NOM had of it being exclusive was that it had been officially announced and not just a really strong rumour.
Most of the magazine's length was based on it's section featuring every game they had already reviewed with their scores next to them. Although that was a good feature if you wanted to compare similar games, the rating system was flawed due to the incapabilities of the NOM staff.
However, now Tim Street has taken over the editing scene, and the traditional new-look magazine for a new console, has been released, the magazine seems to have improved a lot.
The reviews are longer, with more words than pictures for a change, though the scores are still high, but what do you expect them to say? "Luigi's Mansion is too short to be classed as a 90+ game." Technically, they wouldn't be lying if they said that, however, along comes Mister Paycheck from Nintendo and the reviewer has his wage cut along with a letter from Mr. Big-boots Nintendo saying "I'm terribly sorry but because you didn't give our first Mario-esque title a nice high score, we're going to have to deduct your pay." Maybe that wasn't going through the reviewers mind, maybe the reviewer (I can't be bothered to look) really thought the game deserved 9/10.
That's another thing, Nintendo Official Magazine have become slightly more realistic with their ratings system than they were before. How can you rate a game as 14%, or how can you rate one as 87%? Surely to the nearest 5% would've been sufficient enough. How many people actually care about a couple percent? I thought it was silly for any magazine to review games like that. It's not as if there's a universal reviews scale which we can all compare the games to. So why not just rate them out of solid figures instead, like NOM are doing now? The same question can be asked to NGC magazine, GBX magazine, Gamesmaster magazine and any other magazine who bother with percentages. It just doesn't make sense.
The best way to rate a game is to play it yourself, and THEN ask for other's opinions. Reviews can give you ideas on which games to try, but you never know, there might be a completely under-rated masterpiece right under your nose when you're in that shop choosing your next game. Just don't be like my brother who, having only seen one picture of Luigi's Mansion, and never actually played the GameCube, considers the GameCube to be, in his exact words "Pfff it's crap!"
When I first played South Park on the N64 I thought it was a brilliant multiplayer game and deserved a high percentage, but it lacked fun in the single player mode, which is where it deserved to have a lower score in Nintendo Official Magazine.
NOM claimed to be "First, biggest and best for Nintendo exclusives", but they obviously weren't. I heard most my news printed in N64 magazine, got lots of new information from GBX magazine, and read the best news in all magazines but NOM. Sure, they are official, but that doesn't make them the best.
Because of their claim, the magazine had to suffer terribly. Reviews had to be cut shorter and pictures bigger to make the magazine look longer, despite the fact that NOM rushed their reviews. News articles seemed to be really old news, the only claim that NOM had of it being exclusive was that it had been officially announced and not just a really strong rumour.
Most of the magazine's length was based on it's section featuring every game they had already reviewed with their scores next to them. Although that was a good feature if you wanted to compare similar games, the rating system was flawed due to the incapabilities of the NOM staff.
However, now Tim Street has taken over the editing scene, and the traditional new-look magazine for a new console, has been released, the magazine seems to have improved a lot.
The reviews are longer, with more words than pictures for a change, though the scores are still high, but what do you expect them to say? "Luigi's Mansion is too short to be classed as a 90+ game." Technically, they wouldn't be lying if they said that, however, along comes Mister Paycheck from Nintendo and the reviewer has his wage cut along with a letter from Mr. Big-boots Nintendo saying "I'm terribly sorry but because you didn't give our first Mario-esque title a nice high score, we're going to have to deduct your pay." Maybe that wasn't going through the reviewers mind, maybe the reviewer (I can't be bothered to look) really thought the game deserved 9/10.
That's another thing, Nintendo Official Magazine have become slightly more realistic with their ratings system than they were before. How can you rate a game as 14%, or how can you rate one as 87%? Surely to the nearest 5% would've been sufficient enough. How many people actually care about a couple percent? I thought it was silly for any magazine to review games like that. It's not as if there's a universal reviews scale which we can all compare the games to. So why not just rate them out of solid figures instead, like NOM are doing now? The same question can be asked to NGC magazine, GBX magazine, Gamesmaster magazine and any other magazine who bother with percentages. It just doesn't make sense.
The best way to rate a game is to play it yourself, and THEN ask for other's opinions. Reviews can give you ideas on which games to try, but you never know, there might be a completely under-rated masterpiece right under your nose when you're in that shop choosing your next game. Just don't be like my brother who, having only seen one picture of Luigi's Mansion, and never actually played the GameCube, considers the GameCube to be, in his exact words "Pfff it's crap!"
ghoul wrote:
i would have to agree that
> the best place to get honest opinions of games is from other games
> players
> why would they lie
Yeah but games appeal to different ones, you need to make sure you like the style of game.
For me i follow the progress of the game, learn about its features, read 3 reviews and then look at what the americans think... then i get it...
i would have to agree that
> the best place to get honest opinions of games is from other games
> players
> why would they lie
Yeah but games appeal to different ones, you need to make sure you like the style of game.
For me i follow the progress of the game, learn about its features, read 3 reviews and then look at what the americans think... then i get it...
Fuzzy wrote:
> I still like NOM
I didn't, i liked their Pokemon coverage but the rest was rubbish, now meanwhile i do the overhaul is looking quite good.
> I still like NOM
I didn't, i liked their Pokemon coverage but the rest was rubbish, now meanwhile i do the overhaul is looking quite good.
not quite bribery but such things as maybe a magazine giving a game a bad review then no longer being given free copies of future games to review. Or being given free items to maybe make the reviewers that little bit more appreciative towards the games developer, increasing there score a little.
AliBoy wrote:
> I wouldn't take to much interest in the scores that games get in
> magazines. A lot if not all the main magazines out for all consoles
> get "Bribed" (maybe a little strong use of the word there)
> by free copies of games and merchandise etc. Official magazines
> usually are the worst for this, they provide good info but always make
> things seem better than they are. Everyone is different so getting a
> percentage score to suit what the majority of people will think is
> hard. You just have to look on the forums to see how everyones tastes
> in games differ.
i'm not sure about the bribery thing but i would have to agree that the best place to get honest opinions of games is from other games players
why would they lie
> I wouldn't take to much interest in the scores that games get in
> magazines. A lot if not all the main magazines out for all consoles
> get "Bribed" (maybe a little strong use of the word there)
> by free copies of games and merchandise etc. Official magazines
> usually are the worst for this, they provide good info but always make
> things seem better than they are. Everyone is different so getting a
> percentage score to suit what the majority of people will think is
> hard. You just have to look on the forums to see how everyones tastes
> in games differ.
i'm not sure about the bribery thing but i would have to agree that the best place to get honest opinions of games is from other games players
why would they lie
I wouldn't take to much interest in the scores that games get in magazines. A lot if not all the main magazines out for all consoles get "Bribed" (maybe a little strong use of the word there) by free copies of games and merchandise etc. Official magazines usually are the worst for this, they provide good info but always make things seem better than they are. Everyone is different so getting a percentage score to suit what the majority of people will think is hard. You just have to look on the forums to see how everyones tastes in games differ.
it's allways the same new console nicer graphics and everybody in the games press goes mad on scores for a bit.
i think maybe they cant help comparing to the n64 which is never gonna bring about fair appraisals of games for the gamecube.
but as time goes on and we start to see what this console can really do reveiwers will start giving more appropriate scores.allthough it would seem that cube is allready quite accurate.
i think maybe they cant help comparing to the n64 which is never gonna bring about fair appraisals of games for the gamecube.
but as time goes on and we start to see what this console can really do reveiwers will start giving more appropriate scores.allthough it would seem that cube is allready quite accurate.
Too many numbers?!?! :c&
Magazines all have different rating systems, I usually find user ratings better though because they arn't biast, The SR reviews are good but it annoys me when people review a game without either playing it and give it 10/10, SSBM for example.
The only way really to judge a game is to rent it out yourself, if you like it, buy it, if you don't... Well..... don't buy it!
Magazines all have different rating systems, I usually find user ratings better though because they arn't biast, The SR reviews are good but it annoys me when people review a game without either playing it and give it 10/10, SSBM for example.
The only way really to judge a game is to rent it out yourself, if you like it, buy it, if you don't... Well..... don't buy it!
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