StarTopic Famicritic |ST| We'll make our own damn review aggregator

[WestEgg]

The first batch of review Famiscores are in!

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: 86 (26 reviews)
Metroid Dread: 85 (23 reviews)
Pikmin 4: 89 (16 reviews)
Super Mario 64: 80 (15 reviews)
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: 71 (14 reviews)

Full details can be found in the review index.

Collating these took a lot longer than I realized*. I'll have some follow-up thoughts tomorrow and will post the second batch of games in the coming days.

*To add to that, when I was 75% done editing the review index post, I hit CTRL+R (why?!), reloaded the page, and lost everything. However, I realized the Google Sheet I had all the info in was laid out in such a way that formatting the post within the sheet itself was actually super easy. I think I ended up redoing the whole thing faster than finishing that 25% would have taken!

Thanks for doing this! Might be a minor nitpick on my part, but why convert the aggregate 5-star ratings into a 100-point scale instead of just giving the results as a 5-star rating as well (with decimals obviously)? The consistency is one thing, but also people tend to have different expectations for how they read these different formats, as illogical as it can be.

 

[Bobo]

Oooh I wish I would have seen this post early enough to share my thoughts. Excited to contribute to the next round of games reviews.

 

[AngryAlchemist]

Pikmid too high. Midtroid too low. The Legend of Midna just right. Super Midio 64 deserved to be lower.

I'm once again surprised at how controversial / divisive Xenoblade 3 is on this board. I haven't played it yet, maybe I'll agree when I catch up to the franchise. I am a bit surprised because I thought the opinion on this forum approved a lot after Future Redeemed, I remember people being really conflicted the first few months, then I've heard almost nothing but positivity about Xenoblade 3 since Future Redeemed

 

[Neverx]

Damn a 71 for Xenoblade 3 is wayyy too low lol. Pikmin the goat tho.

 

[Thunder84]

That Xenoblade score is a scam smh my head

 

[Metroid]

I'm sorry Xenobuds, if I gave it a score, it might have helped a lil

 

[Pillydillsy]

Here are the first batch of games to review! Reviews must be in by October 3rd, 2023, at 12PM Eastern Time (US).
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Pikmin 4
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Metroid Dread
Super Mario 64

TOTK: 5 Stars
Pikmin 4: 4 and a half stars
Metroid Dread: 5 stars
Mario 64: 121 stars (4 stars)
Xenoblade 3: Never played LMAOOOOOOOOO (but the music slaps, so I would rate the music 5 stars)

 

[hologram]

Thanks for doing this! Might be a minor nitpick on my part, but why convert the aggregate 5-star ratings into a 100-point scale instead of just giving the results as a 5-star rating as well (with decimals obviously)? The consistency is one thing, but also people tend to have different expectations for how they read these different formats, as illogical as it can be.

Two reasons:

• We're doing a Metacritic, so we're copying the Metascore lol
• More serious answer: having a different scale for reviews than for aggregates is, IMO, a useful way to meaningfully distinguish between the two and what they are intended to convey. I don't know about you, but I never really see anyone complain about the Metascore of a film or album, whereas it's very common to see people claim a video game didn't "deserve" its Metascore (whether it's too high or too low). To be blunt, that's partly just because gamers kinda suck, but I think it also has something to do with the scale. Films and albums usually use either a 4- or 5-star scale or a letter grade, so its less meaningful to compare the Metascore to a typical review. Games, on the other hand, are often graded on a 10- or 100-point scale, so the Metascore doesn't look so different from a review score and IMO that contributes to the outrage. I'd hoped that by having the reviews and aggregates using quite different scales, we'd avoid some of the reactionary "wrong aggregate score" stuff we see a lot of. As you can see from some of the posts here, that has not worked!

 

[Derachi]

Submissions for the first batch of games are now closed!

I will collate the reviews and post the results later today. In the meantime, please feel free to suggest other games to review and discuss how you think this first round went. Specific questions you might want to ponder:

• What did you think of the scale? What did you think of people's adherence to the scale?
• What did you think of the timeframe (2 weeks)? Was it too long, too short?
• What did you think of the game selection?

I enjoyed it! I wish real life stuff didn't take up too much time haha

I think the game selection was good, but I think I might like a bit more of a mix of old and new going forward? Maybe 1-2 brand new, 1-2 medium, and 1 real old game. Like a Switch game or two, one for Wii, one for Gamecube, and then one for SNES or something.

 

[Aurc]

Metroid Dread
Watching that reveal trailer made me almost scream and cry in at my old job's break room. Playing the game did the same thing for the entire run as long as I wasn't paying attention to the music which was very easy!

What about the lore? The lore doesn't deserve six stars. Biased reviewer due to your username and avatar? Questionable ethics? Abuse of the thread? Corruption of The Process?

 

[Derachi]

Pikmin 4: 89 (16 reviews)

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: 86 (26 reviews)

 

[Metroid]

What about the lore? The lore doesn't deserve six stars. Biased reviewer due to your username and avatar? Questionable ethics? Abuse of the thread? Corruption of The Process?

Yes it does, also I live for the Corruption of the Process, thank you

 

[Aurc]

Yes it does, also I love for the Corruption of the Process, thank you

Conflict of interest? Review sabotage? Hypocrisy? Energy draining?

 

[AngryAlchemist]

What about the lore? The lore doesn't deserve six stars. Biased reviewer due to your username and avatar? Questionable ethics? Abuse of the thread? Corruption of The Process?

Conflict of interest? Review sabotage? Hypocrisy? Energy draining?

#MetroidGate

 

[doodlewhizz]

Two reasons:

• We're doing a Metacritic, so we're copying the Metascore lol
• More serious answer: having a different scale for reviews than for aggregates is, IMO, a useful way to meaningfully distinguish between the two and what they are intended to convey. I don't know about you, but I never really see anyone complain about the Metascore of a film or album, whereas it's very common to see people claim a video game didn't "deserve" its Metascore (whether it's too high or too low). To be blunt, that's partly just because gamers kinda suck, but I think it also has something to do with the scale. Films and albums usually use either a 4- or 5-star scale or a letter grade, so its less meaningful to compare the Metascore to a typical review. Games, on the other hand, are often graded on a 10- or 100-point scale, so the Metascore doesn't look so different from a review score and IMO that contributes to the outrage. I'd hoped that by having the reviews and aggregates using quite different scales, we'd avoid some of the reactionary "wrong aggregate score" stuff we see a lot of. As you can see from some of the posts here, that has not worked!

Not sure about albums but I'm not sure I've ever really seen people talk about a film's metascore like ever.

I think I would have preferred sticking to the 1-5 scale for aggregate if it's mandatory for the reviews but it's not a huge deal

 

[NabiscoFelt]

Pikmid too high. Midtroid too low. The Legend of Midna just right. Super Midio 64 deserved to be lower.

I'm once again surprised at how controversial / divisive Xenoblade 3 is on this board. I haven't played it yet, maybe I'll agree when I catch up to the franchise. I am a bit surprised because I thought the opinion on this forum approved a lot after Future Redeemed, I remember people being really conflicted the first few months, then I've heard almost nothing but positivity about Xenoblade 3 since Future Redeemed

I guess that for some people FR counts as part of 3 and/or FR improved their view of 3, but personally speaking I consider the two separate titles and FR didn't really impact my view of the base game of 3 at all

But that said, FR is phenomenal and since discussion around 3 has been more focused on that it probably lends the discussions a more positive bent in general

 

[PixelKnight]

Just to pitch a variety ballot of options for next time around @hologram

Switch pick: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Other recent pick: Dragon Quest XI
Multiplat pick: Mass Effect 2
Retro pick: Megaman X
Retro pick: Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

I think it made sense for a first batch! But also that it would be good to decide on a slightly more structured way to pick in the future, whether that be through having a set spread each time (ex. always having 1 retro game and 1 indie, or spreading across genres, etc) or by having themes (ex. this biweekly theme is "games with boats").

I enjoyed it! I wish real life stuff didn't take up too much time haha

I think the game selection was good, but I think I might like a bit more of a mix of old and new going forward? Maybe 1-2 brand new, 1-2 medium, and 1 real old game. Like a Switch game or two, one for Wii, one for Gamecube, and then one for SNES or something.

I think we’re all thinking along the same lines. I like the idea of having genre of the fortnight /indie/retro picks etc, just so there’s as much chance as possible of people having played stuff, and sheer variety makes for interesting discussion

 

[PixelKnight]

The first batch of review Famiscores are in!

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: 86 (26 reviews)
Metroid Dread: 85 (23 reviews)
Pikmin 4: 89 (16 reviews)
Super Mario 64: 80 (15 reviews)
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: 71 (14 reviews)

Full details can be found in the review index.

Interesting results. I wonder if we’ll see over time that Famicritic tends to average out away from extremes, especially away from the review/hype cycle where it’s largely members who’ve played the game and had time for their thoughts to coalesce. Put your favourites up for famicritical reception at your own risk

 

[doodlewhizz]

Interesting results. I wonder if we’ll see over time that Famicritic tends to average out away from extremes, especially away from the review/hype cycle where it’s largely members who’ve played the game and had time for their thoughts to coalesce. Put your favourites up for famicritical reception at your own risk

It's an interesting disparity - I do think time away from initial release and an enforced 1-5 system may move us away from the extreme high end. I see 90s becoming a lot rarer than on OC/MC

At the same time, the majority of those who review the game here are going to be those who wanted the game beforehand, fans of a particular genre/series or were convinced by other reviews around the time of release. They're also very likely to be people who put down money on the game - in that regard, we could see fewer lower end scores too (the old 'sunk cost' argument).

Of course that's all hypothetical, just some random musings. Nothing to take too seriously just mildly interesting to geeks like me

 

[PixelKnight]

It's an interesting disparity - I do think time away from initial release and an enforced 1-5 system may move us away from the extreme high end. I see 90s becoming a lot rarer than on OC/MC

At the same time, the majority of those who review the game here are going to be those who wanted the game beforehand, fans of a particular genre/series or were convinced by other reviews around the time of release. They're also very likely to be people who put down money on the game - in that regard, we could see fewer lower end scores too (the old 'sunk cost' argument).

Of course that's all hypothetical, just some random musings. Nothing to take too seriously just mildly interesting to geeks like me

Oh likewise, mildly interesting indeed

 

[hologram]

I think I generally like the scale, my only concern with it (that wasn't very applicable for this first batch) is how to interpret the "would you recommend this" part of the descriptions. For mass-appeal games it totally makes sense, but for more niche games, it might be good to specify whether you had it in mind as say, for 5 stars, "even people who aren't familiar with this niche should try it" or more "you would recommend it to fans of the niche".

Truthfully, the "would you recommend this" part was more pointed towards the lower end of the scale. Reviews should be the opinion of the reviewer, but they still should be written for a general audience; a one-star review which discusses only how the narrative themes weren't well-executed and doesn't talk about gameplay isn't really that helpful as a review. Of course, it isn't exclusively relevant to negative reviews - there was one review in the first batch which read quite negative, but ended with "but I still loved the game so 5/5", which I also don't think is super helpful - but I do think people tend to have these hang-ups more when they have negative opinions than when they have positive opinions. So overall, I think if your review is very glowing and you have minimal complaints, a high score is warranted even if you feel the game might be a bit niche.

I'm mulling over some more directives for the reviews (some of them are just more uniform formatting, since collating them was more work than I anticipated), but I think I'm also going to elaborate on the scale a little.

As for adherence, there's a couple reviews that had me a little confused because the text of the review struck me as matching a different spot in the scale as the rating they then chose, but I'm not sure what the reaction to that should be. Maybe double-checking with them if you feel like that's the case?

Agreed. My hope is that people get better at writing reviews as they get more practice, but I also encourage constructive feedback of reviews (e.g. "hey I'm not sure the score you gave really matches your review") and will probably start doing some of that myself. I figured I wouldn't for the first batch though, since I wanted to turn people off right away haha

I agree with the people saying the end time should try to aim for around "end of the day" for as many people as possible. General timeframe seems fine to me though.

Good idea! Noted!

I think the game selection was good, but I think I might like a bit more of a mix of old and new going forward? Maybe 1-2 brand new, 1-2 medium, and 1 real old game. Like a Switch game or two, one for Wii, one for Gamecube, and then one for SNES or something.

Maybe this is something we can do down the line, but I'm a little hesitant to do so at this point. We ended up getting a last-minute rush of reviews for Mario 64, but there were very few at the start, and I'm wary of having too many "classics" that might attract fewer reviews in a single batch

 

[lightning16]

Submissions for the first batch of games are now closed!

I will collate the reviews and post the results later today. In the meantime, please feel free to suggest other games to review and discuss how you think this first round went. Specific questions you might want to ponder:

• What did you think of the scale? What did you think of people's adherence to the scale?
• What did you think of the timeframe (2 weeks)? Was it too long, too short?
• What did you think of the game selection?

I think the time frame and game selection were good.

As for the scale, I'm fine with it. I think the distance between a 3 star and a 4 star maybe feels a bit large. But maybe that's intended if we're working off the assumption most games should be a 3 star rating. I mentioned it before but the way I read the 3 star rating it'd include everything from "pretty good" to "very good" and that's a lot of games that I ultimately feel very differently about. I guess I could just put some of those higher end cases as 4 stars going forward, though. I'm probably just reading too much into "complaints few and far between." I've got personal GOTY's that I have plenty of complaints with.