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Halo 5 Review Thread

I'm looking at the reviews again and the positive ones far outweigh the negatives, It's like the insecure and the shit stirrers have took presidence over the discussion of what seems to be a very good game about to be released.
 
Looks like scores are great, but not amazing. It's hard to not see 85 as kind of underwhelming for a "big" title. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Now, before you jump on me I don't think reviews are an accurate measure of a games quality. They are good for making a general distinction between a good game, an average game, and a bad game but that's where it ends.

That said, you also can't judge the quality of a game by how the fan base reacts immediately following release. You need to wait until the new game smell wears off before you can get a real sense of how good a game actually is. For example, I was convinced that GTAIV was amazing for the first 10 hours... but then the initial high wore off, and the flaws became more apparent. For a real appraisal of this game, especially the multiplayer, you're going to have to see how people feel about it a month from now.
 
Story's contentious, campaign is controversial and the gameplay & multiplayer are almost universally lauded? Sounds like Halo's back to me.
 

Euron

Member
The average casual gamer isn't going to drop $400 for a game that isn't getting 9.5's and 10's on the major review sites
I can't even tell what is sarcasm in this thread anymore.

Do you realize that the only games people would be buying this year then would be MGSV, The Witcher 3, and Bloodborne? How come CoD, Madden, and FIFA are still selling systems then? What about Battlefront?

I really hope you and a bunch of other people in this thread are just kidding. This is getting out of hand.
 

Mattenth

Member
On the numbers front, I also think that people are just being way too quick here...

OpenCritic has 38 reviews, 27 with scores, 11 without.

10 of those 11 will probably issue verdicts by the end of this week. We'll also start to get a lot of reviews from publications that didn't get review copies, but still have a voice.

I imagine that we're still waiting on 40% of total numerical verdicts. That's enough to potentially swing back up to 90, or enough to pull it down into the 70s if the servers shit the bed.



Yeah, the campaign is a mixed bag, but if major gaming publications like GameSpot, IGN, Videogamer, GameTrailers, GamesBeat, and more are all holding off full judgement, maybe we should hold off too?
 

Detective

Member
MGSV is mentioned because mechanically it is peerless. It destroys every stealth game out there. The number of combat options in MGSV is greater than almost most AAA games released this gen combined.

What stealth games are you talking about?
Its the most repetitive game out there.
Rescue him. Kill himm. Extract him. Fulton him.
Tranquilizer.sniper. Or go fully COD.
The endless running. Empty spaces. Or waiting for pick up, loading, choose mission, loading, waiting and drop off, running.

Over and over and over aaaand over again.

Don't get me wrong. I love MGS games. But saying MGS 5 deserve a 10 is really out there imo.
 

Spirited

Mine is pretty and pink
Why is everyone so obsessed with this game needing to get over 90 in metacritic?

Almost feels like those uncharted review threads, you know what I mean by that.
 
What stealth games are you talking about?
Its the most repetitive game out there.
Rescue him. Kill himm. Extract him. Fulton him.
Tranquilizer.sniper. Or go fully COD.
The endless running. Empty spaces. Or waiting for pick up, loading, choose mission, loading, waiting and drop off, running.

Over and over and over aaaand over again.

Don't get me wrong. I love MGS games. But saying MGS 5 deserve a 10 is really out there imo.

It's an amazing game. I'd give it a high 8 or 9. Had the story been much better, then maybe a ten.

Why is everyone so obsessed with this game needing to get over 90 in metacritic?

Almost feels like those uncharted review threads, you know what I mean by that.

Not sure, it's really strange.

Checked the uncharted thread, this one is bad, but that one is way way out there.
 

Nerokis

Member
The average casual gamer isn't going to drop $400 for a game that isn't getting 9.5's and 10's on the major review sites

You're projecting a GAFfer-seque sensitivity to the precise movements of a certain number onto the "average casual gamer," which is inherently contradictory. I doubt the average gamer is keeping track of Metacritic scores, and making $400 decisions based on whether a specific game falls into some arbitrary range.

The casual gamers who were going to pick up an X1 for Halo 5 were big Halo fans, or have a group of friends who intend to pick up the game. In this case, word of mouth and network effect are far more relevant than the aggregation of dozens of review scores.
 
What stealth games are you talking about?
Its the most repetitive game out there.
Rescue him. Kill himm. Extract him. Fulton him.
Tranquilizer.sniper. Or go fully COD.
The endless running. Empty spaces. Or waiting for pick up, loading, choose mission, loading, waiting and drop off, running.

Over and over and over aaaand over again.

Don't get me wrong. I love MGS games. But saying MGS 5 deserve a 10 is really out there imo.

Come on man, you can reduce practically any game like that. You're in a thread for a first person shooter here. What do you think you'll spend most of your time doing in Halo 5? Shooting things, from a first person perspective.
 

arevin01

Member
Before you guys take metacritic as the means to all, the Oscar winning movie Gladiator has a 64 metacritic score which is a absolute joke of a score.
 

Lingitiz

Member
Before you guys take metacritic as the means to all, the Oscar winning movie Gladiator has a 64 metacritic score which is a absolute joke of a score.

The score will mean little in the grand scheme of things and years from now people won't be looking at that. Halo 4 has a 87 but from the way people talk about it you'd think it was a 70.
 

Schryver

Member
All of this bums me out, but the lack of big open levels like Halo or Silent Cartographer is the biggest disappointment for me.

Yeah reading the room to room description in the Digital Foundry article made me say WTF. Never played Halo 4 but apparently that was the same...crazy
 
The average casual gamer doesn't look at game reviews. They buy what their friends are playing. Look at Destiny.

Very true.

Whether or not Halo sells, is down to whether or not the franchise still has the cache it used to, and whether it holds the zeitgeist. Great reviews can help a game like this, but middling reviews won't hinder it.

In fact using the word 'middling' for an 85 metacritic is pretty shameful. It's not middling, it's favourable at least, probably even great.
 
I can't even tell what is sarcasm in this thread anymore.

Do you realize that the only games people would be buying this year then would be MGSV, The Witcher 3, and Bloodborne? How come CoD, Madden, and FIFA are still selling systems then? What about Battlefront?

I really hope you and a bunch of other people in this thread are just kidding. This is getting out of hand.

When people think xbox, they think halo. If halo isn't what it once was, they're more inclined to buy a ps4, especially if the majority of their friends are playing the games you mentioned on the ps4 (judging by console sales).
 

fallingdove

Member
in terms of "metacritic" you do realize there are plenty of Oscar winning pictures with 85 scores, right? movies deemed absolute classics.

now you're saying you'll hold off because a score of an 85, in a game, with what is still considered laughable metrics of critical reviews by "journalists" with a lot to prove on the integrity front....... hmm, i dunno. seems silly to me.

but ya do what ya think is best for you.

oh come on - critic scales for movies vs games are completely different. comparing Halo 5 to an Oscar winning movie is entirely ridiculous.
 

Ishan

Junior Member
Yea, but that seems to be because you see a few changes to graphics to be more substantial than meaningful changes to the actual gameplay systems. I'm stunned you'd actually bring Zelda into an argument like this... Halo 5 has done more to build on Halo 4 than Zelda has since the N64 days.

And hell, speaking of colour palettes, many Nintendo IPs not only have basically the same colour palette between sequels, but extremely similar colour palettes between different series as well. Cut random parts of screens out from various Mario, Mario Kart, Smash Bros etc games out, and I'd probably struggle to tell you where each is from (and probably even which gen if you run them through an emu).

Yes, you can shake up a franchise. That doesn't always mean you should though, rather than iterate on it and improve the things that fans want to see improved. Resident Evil 4 is basically a new series, lacking much of what classic RE fans loved about the franchise. Arkham Asylum, City and Knight have constant heated debates about what they've changed between each. I don't even need to mention something like Tomb Raider.

Again, if you want to see such drastic changes, then fair enough... this probs ain't for you... but you know this, and your "so what's different?" is complete insincere BS. You know damn well Halo 5 didn't somehow become an open-ended espionage game under your radar, so don't pretend that you're simply enquiring about it. If it were going to be a Resident Evil 4 situation, then you'd already know.



Again though, these are weighted averages. So you're asking groups of people for their subjective opinions, and then assigning a higher value to some of them based on the outlet they're aligned with (despite individuals not even having consistent view, let alone different people working for the same outlet). The weight in your example is something factual... people may not know exactly what it weighs, but they're all comparing it mentally to other weights that they've felt in common. And you'd consider each of their answers as equal. You wouldn't get one saying it's 2kg, another saying 5kg, and deciding that averages out at 2.4kg because you value the first guy's estimate more.

Agree. First off I agree with you used as a rough guide it's fine . Too much dependence can become tricky .

On the note of weighted ness and miss representations . You would be surprised how far off ppl are in their weight perception . You can give someone 1kg and get them answerig 3-4 etc . Now weighted ness can be used as a factor say if a certain subset of ppl has been closer to the actual average more often than others weighting them higher can result in more accurate answers something of a middle ground between expert authority and purely wisdom of crowds approach . The question of subjective vs factual delves into the whole notion of why are we assigning a score in the first place were trying to quantify a subjective view anyway ... Anyhoo . My entire point is while metaceitic is not the be all end all the downplaying of review scores on gaf is also pushing it to the other end . Imo as a rough guide metaceitic is just fine .
 

IzzyF3

Member
in terms of "metacritic" you do realize there are plenty of Oscar winning pictures with 85 scores, right? movies deemed absolute classics.

now you're saying you'll hold off because a score of an 85, in a game, with what is still considered laughable metrics of critical reviews by "journalists" with a lot to prove on the integrity front....... hmm, i dunno. seems silly to me.

but ya do what ya think is best for you.

It sounds like FairFight wanted a good story. At an 85 with reviews that praise the story, FairFight would probably buy it now, but an 85 where most of the complaints are coming from the story mode, I can see why he'd wait.
 

Ishan

Junior Member
I can't even tell what is sarcasm in this thread anymore.

Do you realize that the only games people would be buying this year then would be MGSV, The Witcher 3, and Bloodborne? How come CoD, Madden, and FIFA are still selling systems then? What about Battlefront?

I really hope you and a bunch of other people in this thread are just kidding. This is getting out of hand.

There are many ppl like me who buy their staple game related stuff (in my case cs/dota stuff, friends case FIFA , other friends case cod) and beyond that we will buy only a super critically acclaimed /word of mouth game . So yes if you remove FIFA cod etc from the equation many ppl will only buy witcher3 bloodborne etc. This analogy doesn't work in halos case as it has it's established fan base too . But def works in something like witcher 3 . I had heard about the old witcher games but wasn't interested in buying any till it breached 90 on meta . It's my personal filtering system and works just fine if I only have time/money to invest in 1-2 games outside the time sinks of cs/dota (FIFA resp for my ex roommate etc)
 
Wait some people are now treating 85 as bad? Man..
I guess relative to a mainline Halo game. Especially when the series has declined with each release.

Of course, I do not look at it like that. 85 is a damn good score. It is just going to get tougher and tougher to crack that 90 barrier.
 
It is just going to get tougher and tougher to crack that 90 barrier.

Which is fantastic.

I think review scores are now readjusting themselves to use more of the scale after years of 9-10 = good, less than 9 = bad mentality.

An 8/10 isn't a bad score, it's a good score, but review scales didn't reflect that.... and now theyr'e starting to.
 

DrBo42

Member
I can't speak for the MP yet but the campaign is definitely pretty mediocre. The hunt hype of the marketing campaign etc is absolutely unwarranted. It's a step in the right direction from 4 (which I thought was pretty awful) but it still has nothing on Bungie Halo campaigns.
 

GnawtyDog

Banned
The average casual gamer isn't going to drop $400 for a game that isn't getting 9.5's and 10's on the major review sites

That's odd. I could swear to god I'm seeing a $500 console stay in the Top 30 on Amazon and likely moving a solid amount of units at retailers as well. Considering the alternative is $350 w/bundled games there must be something causing them to waste more money on an Xbox One?

Perhaps MS are buying it themselves to inflate NPD.
 

Sirim

Member
Shame about the story. Halo's in-game story has never been incredible or anything, but I've always found the Chief-Cortana relationship to be woefully unexplored and also the most potentially interesting thing about the series. I was excited that Halo 4 started some progress down that road and was hoping this release would fulfill the promise and really do a good job with it.

But I'll watch the cutscenes anyway, there might be something interesting in there (don't have an Xbox One). This is the only part of the Halo story I'm really interested in, so I was already let down when I heard you had to play as some other guy for a good portion of the time.

Edit: What Jeff Gerstmann says in his review sounds like what I was worried about all along:

Jeff Gerstmann said:
After a few early levels that make Locke's side of things seem more interesting than they are, the game quickly settles into a rhythm where I was following the Master Chief storyline pretty closely, but Locke's missions feel like busywork, like combat for the sake of combat. Like padding. Those missions are still engaging in the same way that Halo's action usually is, but I just wanted to skip over that to find out what the Master Chief is up to.
 
Which is fantastic.

I think review scores are now readjusting themselves to use more of the scale after years of 9-10 = good, less than 9 = bad mentality.

An 8/10 isn't a bad score, it's a good score, but review scales didn't reflect that.... and now theyr'e starting to.
I completely agree. The games in the 80s should be considered really good. Not okay or decent. The 90s and up are for truly great/GotY contenders/potentially classic games.

Of course, some games are going to slip through the cracks.
 
I am absolutely done even reading reviews. They're all fucking friends with the developers. Yes, I know it's unavoidable considering how the industry works, but goddman after TPP was proclaimed to be the greatest thing ever when it actually was a shitty ass open world with literally one good mechanic (the actual stealth) it just makes me lose faith in at all.

Shit, sounds like i'm implying i took them seriously before. I just glance at them out of curiosity, but now I'm dunzo. Unless it's developed by some unknown piece of shit with no pull in the industry or is the game is an absolute disaster no one really gives an actual accurate review. Reviews are shit and most reviewers are annoying, unqualified dinks who think they know it all anyway

edit^: TPP had the potential to be a 10/10 but the barren open world shit and copypasted main/sideops are inexcusable. LAFFO And I'm the biggest MGS dickrider there is.
 

Euron

Member
When people think xbox, they think halo. If halo isn't what it once was, they're more inclined to buy a ps4, especially if the majority of their friends are playing the games you mentioned on the ps4 (judging by console sales).
People will go where their friends are, simple as that. If somebody's CoD crew was big on 360 and the group wants to stay with MS and XBL, they'll move on to Xbox Ones. Halo isn't massive anymore so it is not typically the deciding factor. People have grown accustomed to the online infrastructure. But most importantly, Xbox Ones were cheaper last year, that's what matters for most people since the two systems have very little differences now.

There are many ppl like me who buy their staple game related stuff (in my case cs/dota stuff, friends case FIFA , other friends case cod) and beyond that we will buy only a super critically acclaimed /word of mouth game . So yes if you remove FIFA cod etc from the equation many ppl will only buy witcher3 bloodborne etc. This analogy doesn't work in halos case as it has it's established fan base too . But def works in something like witcher 3 . I had heard about the old witcher games but wasn't interested in buying any till it breached 90 on meta . It's my personal filtering system and works just fine if I only have time/money to invest in 1-2 games outside the time sinks of cs/dota (FIFA resp for my ex roommate etc)
That's not what he appears to be saying though. He's saying that casual gamers won't buy anything that isn't averaging 9.5+ review scores. If somebody is researching review scores and cutting out games that don't meet their standards, then they are not a casual gamer. If somebody just buys Witcher 3 based on a friend's recommendation yet knows almost nothing about it, sure that can be called casual.

I honestly hate saying "casual" and "hardcore" but honestly researching game reviews and news and setting standards for yourself is what differentiates the two.
 

BokehKing

Banned
Do casual gamers even look at review scores? I never do, I buy games I know I want from description



For example, I bought halo 5 for warzone
 

SwolBro

Banned
oh come on - critic scales for movies vs games are completely different. comparing Halo 5 to an Oscar winning movie is entirely ridiculous.

it is ridiculous. movie critics have had decades to learn and hone their critiques. they've had many years of examples from great movie critics to follow.

gaming critics are just.... bottom of the barrel "journalists" for the most part. there's very few out there with any bit of integrity. why some people still give them any stock is the really ridiculous part.
 

Hugstable

Banned
Do casual gamers even look at review scores? I never do, I buy games I know I want from description



For example, I bought halo 5 for warzone

I doubt alot of casual gamers even know what metacritic is. I know with my friends they either go with what their other friends are playing or what's big.
 

robotrock

Banned
games_halo_header.jpg
 
i know "fact" gets thrown around a lot, but if someone can be smug about just saying "fact" about a a game not being a legit 10/10, it's MGSV.

It's not even finished. They had 80 mil and 5 years to make it too.

MGSV has a lot more content than most games. I've played for around 30 hours and I'm only at mission 15 odd. Even if the game drops off badly or gets super repetitive (and honestly I'm expecting both to happen) it would still be a 9/10 for me.

This thread is NOT the place to get salty about MGSV.
This is the place to get salty about Halo 5
 

Hawk269

Member
I read some of the reviews, those glowing and not so much and at the end of the day, what mattered to me the most was the "USER" here on Gaf that already played the game and the impressions they have given. Those are worth a lot more than a website I never heard of with a good or bad score.

Seems like many users here that have played the game seem to really like the Story and the visuals. While I thought the scores would be higher, it is also 7 or 8th if add in Halo Wars so here are a lot of people that have in their head on what they wish the story would be and the direction etc.

For those saying "the metacritic" score is too low, I am not going to get it...talk to a few people you know that have played the game and base it on that if you are unsure.
 
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