Jawbreaker
Member
It's not Jim's job to care about how his score will impact a game's MC average. His only job is to convey his thoughts on the game and give it a score he feels aligns best with how he came away from the experience.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - Review Thread
- Thread starter Savantcore
- Start date
It's not Jim's job to care about how his score will impact a game's MC average. His only job is to convey his thoughts on the game and give it a score he feels aligns best with how he came away from the experience.
ScaryShark
Banned
Sterling did exactly what people should want him to do if he experienced what he did.
He doesn't say this at all. He says if and when this gets patched, you'd be looking at an 8 or so. He doesn't say he will update his score.
And while the issue might be made preventable by a patch, I doubt Jim's save would be influenced.
Messofanego
Banned
Has any other developer ever tried to thematically frame their permadeath? That's ballsy.
OrbitalBeard
Member
Won't you think of the developers and their MC score?
If this is your angle in any way, take a step back and reflect.
If this is your angle in any way, take a step back and reflect.
SomedayTheFire
Member
Seems people would prefer him to score it 8/10, not mention it and protect the developers bonus if the OT is anything to go by.
Actually it's a very good case study on how people react differently to a review score depending on how deep into the hype bowl they've slurped.
Sounds to me like that system is explicitly designed not to be enjoyable and like disabling it would make you literally miss the experience
ChaosSmurf
Member
I think it's a mistake, especially the way they tell you about it, but it isn't really an issue in practice, particularly if you leave the difficulty on auto (in my experience along with the other people I've talked to who have played and finished it). A colleague wrote about it, if anyone's interested.
Yeah god forbid people think about the folks who slaved away on this game for years.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
Reading reviews, I am honestly surprised to see the battle being praised for its battle system, I thought from what we have seen the battle would be very basic, but apparently not.
Happy to see Ninja Theory apparently does right with this game.
Happy to see Ninja Theory apparently does right with this game.
Freeman76
Member
Rubbish. Calling it unplayable is simply not true. Why are you defending such bullshit?
Jim Sterling has a responsibility to be mature about his reviews, this affects peoples lives. He is was out of line here and I hope his credibility is affected by this in the same way he has affected the credibility of the game.
OrbitalBeard
Member
I think it's totally ok to disagree with review scores and content (Lord knows I've had my issues with many Jim Sterling reviews), but when it comes to a broken experience, we should not be harping on someone for trying to protect his audience. Yes, it's very possible this bug is extremely rare, but the reviewer can only report on the experience he or she had.
This has never been the purpose of a review. Ever. If you took my post in this review thread to mean we should never care about the developers we love....come on.
Serious Sam
Member
Do we have any other confirmed report, besides Jim's, of this game-breaking bug? Maybe some of game files on his hard drive were corrupt or he had some other hardware issues. If there was at least one other reviewer having the issue it would be more reassuring, but now it seems very odd.
Acquiescence
Member
SomedayTheFire
Member
Sounds like 99% of games. Do they all deserve good reviews simply because they were made by people?
Because it literally was for him...
GhostTrick
Banned
Eh yes it does. If he knew long time ago and kept it just for the headline, that's rather weak.
You're right, we don't know. If he did, props to him. If he didn't, that's lame. Sure, this is Ninja Theory's fault as the bug shouldn't be here. All I'm saying is it's a small team, of humans, who could've missed a bug that doesn't even seem to be widespread. The game isn't inherently broken by design, choices, gameplay or story but because of a bug that could be easily fixed if told beforehand.
It just feels weird to me to give a game that you think is an 8/10 a 1 because of what is potentially a 1 in a million bug is all
SomedayTheFire
Member
It ruined his save. He couldn't continue to play the game because of it. He would have had to restart it. He's reviewing his experience and it's justified in that case.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
Yea, has any other reviewers encounter this game breaking bug? Seems odd to see that only Jim is saying it--logically speaking, if he's the only one, then its more likely that there's something wrong with his system instead of the game itself.
when you decide to make a game with a perma death feature, and somehow a bug slipped Q&A that made the game impossible to finish, then that should be reflected in a score. The game was broken for him, and the embargo is on the same day as the game releases.. his job is not to "look after" the devs, but to educate possible consumers about a product before they buy it.
And the game was broken to him... he used the scale just as it is supposed to be used. !
OrbitalBeard
Member
Doesn't seem like it. And they scored the game appropriately because of that. If they had encountered the bug, I would hope their review would reflect that.
KZXcellent
Member
I ain't gonna get on Jim's case for this review. The bug shouldn't have existed and he shouldn't have to contact Ninja Theory about it. It's cold sure, but he shouldn't have to worry about how this will affect Ninja Theory or the game..
A textbook example would be a game that has bugs and stuff like a bad framerate all the time. You cant say that about Hellblade (at least I cant with two hours into the game). The game was perfectly playable up to that point. It sucks to lose a save file, no doubt. And it is absolutely ok do give it a lower score, but from hero to zero is absolutely to much. I lost my Persona 4 savestat 3 times, one of them after almost 67 hours. It is still not a 1/10 for me because I hade huge fun with the game and so on.
The review is based on his experience. He has no way to know that bug doesn't impact everyone.
This is like the "objective reviews" argument again. You can only review something based on your experience with it. Guessing "well, maybe this bug is super rare, so I'll ignore it" isnt useful to anyone.
Laurel_McFang
Member
Ok off to check the Asian psn store to see if I can buy this yet. If not then Amazon.
xrnzaaas
Member
I'm pretty sure if that was the case the devs would be all over his ass right now.
Besides reviewers most likely got the PS4 copies so that makes it almost impossible to have a compatibility problem.
matrix-cat
Member
A bug made it so that he was unable to continue playing the game. What other word do you want to use?
Seriously, Jim is 100% transparent about his experience with the game and even what score he would have given it if it hadn't broken on him. He's done his due diligence here; it is absolutely not his job to talk to the developers about how he should review the game they sent him.
Necro900
Member
Crossposting:
So, let's suppose you review books for a living. You get sent an incredible book, everyone is loving it in your industry and people are writing great reviews. You're loving it but.. you're missing the last pages, infact, the book stops in the middle of a sentence. It's obviously a printing issue: do you review your experience with the book so far (which sucks, given there's no ending) or do you at least get in touch with the publisher who provided you with the copy and sort things out to get to the end and give your readers the most accurate and fair review of a product?
I guess we'll see if the issue is widespread. Amazingly, among reviewers only Jim appears to have encountered this bug. Right now this score is largely undeserved and almost offensively clickbaity, since he actually enjoyed the game when it was working as intended.
(Before "but he doesn't get money for clicks", you're delusional if you think this is not giving him free publicity and a few patreons)
So, let's suppose you review books for a living. You get sent an incredible book, everyone is loving it in your industry and people are writing great reviews. You're loving it but.. you're missing the last pages, infact, the book stops in the middle of a sentence. It's obviously a printing issue: do you review your experience with the book so far (which sucks, given there's no ending) or do you at least get in touch with the publisher who provided you with the copy and sort things out to get to the end and give your readers the most accurate and fair review of a product?
I guess we'll see if the issue is widespread. Amazingly, among reviewers only Jim appears to have encountered this bug. Right now this score is largely undeserved and almost offensively clickbaity, since he actually enjoyed the game when it was working as intended.
(Before "but he doesn't get money for clicks", you're delusional if you think this is not giving him free publicity and a few patreons)
Sangetsu-II
Member
Look at the bright side guys, at least Jim didn't gave it a 0/10 
MadLaughter
Member
Game reviews are, generally, purchasing advice. There are exceptions, which is fine, but reviewers can't really take the developers into account when they're telling consumers if this is worth their money or not.
Cross posting:
https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/894823497557475328
You can see Jim run past the torch he's supposed to grab, twice, but it looks like it is a bug, that it didn't respawn the last time before the autosave.
https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/894823497557475328
You can see Jim run past the torch he's supposed to grab, twice, but it looks like it is a bug, that it didn't respawn the last time before the autosave.
MightyKAC
Member
Sorry man, but in this world you don't get graded on your level of effort but on your level of execution.
texhnolyze
Banned
How should the game stands on MC currently if Jim's review is not counted?
It's just one review, I doubt it'll boost it that much. He were supposed to give it an 8 anyway.
It's just one review, I doubt it'll boost it that much. He were supposed to give it an 8 anyway.
MarineMountie
Member
How about review the actual game and not just one bug that can easily be fixed ? A missing torch? A 1/10 to hurt the average for a missing torch. He's a joke. Just another reason to ignore Sterling. Not that I needed another one.
Rest of the reviews look fair, from the many 9's to the 6.5.
Does not compute...
Jim encountered a bug where he died and an object didn't spawn. But it's the games design with permadeath, where the developer chose to only allow one save file that really fucked him.
Jawbreaker
Member
I get where you're coming from, but I can also put myself in his shoes. Here I am, thoroughly engrossed in a game, nearing its climax, when a bug happens to destroy my save file. There's nothing I can do to retrieve it, and my playthrough has been utterly soured. There's no telling how common the bug is, but in the interest of my audience, I'm going to strongly caution against purchasing the title as is until it's patched. I think a 1/10 sends that message quite strongly, and it's a reasonable score given what Jim experienced.
True, but since publishers pay bonuses based on MC, that kind of review does have an impact. It would be better to postpone the final verdict, because the game could not be completed or something. Especially since initial reviews by gamers on Steam are quite positive and don't indicate above-average (or any) bug encounters.
However, if that's an issue around the final part of the game, it might be that many review sites didn't play it to the end. So it's a harsh verdict for a game which in his eyes would be 8/10 material.
So his scores get aggregated on MC? If so, that sucks. And it's really not fair on the developers, given this bug won't affect everyone and will be patched out in no time I'm sure.
There's a difference between giving a good review and NOT giving a terrible review that will tank a game's MC score forever.
OrbitalBeard
Member
Hellblade is self-published.
But that doesn't even matter, because it is not a reviewer's job to make sure the dev team gets their bonus.
I can't even believe some of the stuff I'm reading right now.
Savantcore
Unconfirmed Member
Reviews are weighted so it depends on how highly Metacritic rate Jim Sterling. I'll throw out a guess and say it'd probably be floating around 80-82.