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Star Fox Zero & Guard - Review Thread

About expected in terms of scores and reviews. Still interested in playing it seems like a fun game that is highly replayable and a steep learning curve with unorthodox controls the game is built around like Splatoon, KI:U and W101. Also SF64 was my first video game I received so I'd be willing to give the franchise another shot.
 

Nanashrew

Banned
None of the reviews comment on Slippy

I just want to know about Slippy

Just how Slippy is he this time?

Hope they didn't skimp on the Slippy

*concludes post with random Slippy noises*

But what about Grippy? I have to know more about Burt Reynolds the frog.

Also any time Slippy freaks out now, I'm always going to start saying "get a Grippy, Slippy!"
 

Sirim

Member
Is there are review thread on GAF without a movement to delegitimize reviews that don't validate expectations?

edit: I mean I'll add to this that of course I disagree with a shit ton of reviews, but I disagree with them after I, like, play the game?
 

Jobbs

Banned
I don't care about review scores particularly, but I'll never play something that requires me to move the gamepad and look at it in order to aim. Not to mention it looks visually bad.

THis is coming from someone who was a big fan of the original Star Fox on SNES when I was a kid
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I don't understand. First you say...

...and now you say...

I think you do understand. But fine, you caught me! I find common sense and statistics to be on the same side of the story. I'm sorry for that.

Edit: or maybe you don't understand, so let me explain to you. If a media outlet labels a rating as Good, but more than 50% of the games are rated above that for a large sample, that label is bullshit. But it's understandable, because you wouldn't want to label more than 50% of the games you review as average or bad from the business point of view.
 

-TK-

Member
"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.
 

Shpeshal Nick

aka Collingwood
Man that Polygon non-review is brutal and kinda confirms all my fears.

Every time I kept hearing about the motion controls being forced, game being delayed to shoe horn in motion controls, it worried me more and more. Might find a way to try this before I buy it.

If I buy it.
 
Is there are review thread on GAF without a movement to delegitimize reviews that don't validate expectations?

Ha! Next you'll tell me there's going to be a gaf thread where people don't argue the meaning of a 0-10 scale.

Scores are ending up about where I expected them. Worth picking up in the future but not at full price launch.

"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.

That's a little extreme don't you think?
 
You're completely free to do that. But that doesn't say anything about the game itself, it talks only about your personal value scale.

Exactly. In order to get anything of value out of ratings in the 6/7 range, you need to know and be comfortable with the scoring and review history of the outlet you're looking at. You can't assume a 7 is mediocre or average unless you know that said outlet has a history of scoring games like that. I've generally used EDGE since 1997. In the past, I could buy pretty much any game they scored a 7 or higher and know it would be good. I also knew that some 5s and 6s were worthy of my time.

In short, my advice would be , find an outlet you like and stick to it. Don't compare apples with oranges. Don't assume a reviewer values the same things you do. Above all, read the text and form your own opinion. Oh, and don't be pissed at a score that an outlet you barely read gives. Be pissed at the text of a review of you want a debate. End rant.
 

Nanashrew

Banned
Star Fox was going to land in this spot regardless. Its score is still good, better than Assault's even. I'm sure I'll like it as I liked all the other previous Star Fox games despite their flaws.
 
Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.

giphy-facebook_s.jpg
 

Ad0ve

Banned
"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.
hate is a strong, especially for someone you have never meet
 
"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.

lol

these are my favorite absurd posts
 
"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.

Did he touch this post or is this really all your own work?
 

El Odio

Banned
None of the reviews comment on Slippy

I just want to know about Slippy

Just how Slippy is he this time?

Hope they didn't skimp on the Slippy

*concludes post with random Slippy noises*
Slippy had an enemy on his tail and was unable to be reached for a comment.
 
"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.
He touched Pikmin 3 and it was praised by critics and gamers alike.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Exactly. In order to get anything of value out of ratings in the 6/7 range, you need to know and be comfortable with the scoring and review history of the outlet you're looking at. You can't assume a 7 is mediocre or average unless you know that said outlet has a history of scoring games like that. I've generally used EDGE since 1997. In the past, I could buy pretty much any game they scored a 7 or higher and know it would be good. I also knew that some 5s and 6s were worthy of my time.

In short, my advice would be , find an outlet you like and stick to it. Don't compare apples with oranges. Don't assume a reviewer values the same things you do. Above all, read the text and form your own opinion. Oh, and don't be pissed at a score that an outlet you barely read gives. Be pissed at the text of a review of you want a debate. End rant.

That's true, Edge is known to be less generous with its ratings. As opposed to IGN for example.
 
"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.

Yeah, like Pikmin 3. Oh wait.
 
"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.

dc15ac7fd4d371d4f4607911c19fe1f9.jpg


A little rough, don't ya think?
 

joecanada

Member
I don't use "translated" academic scores. I've been through school using this kind of rating. 6 and 7 are mediocre. Or average if you want. The same is with games, if you like it or not. Good games are rated 8 and above. Average games are somewhere around 7. Bad games are 6 and below. The games rating scale is even more drastic than the academic ones.

You are free to disagree with a rating, though. You are even free to totally ignore the common sense of games ratings and use your own scale. But that's not the scale on which the media rates them. Everything can be twisted through one's own interpretation. I had colleagues who considered a 6 being a great grade for some disciplines.

You don't use "translated " scores ? what does that even mean? each country/school/state , etc all have their own grading systems, in most a 50 % is pass and everything else is varied.... in some a 70 percent is "good" in some its average or below 50 is moot as it's all a fail so I don't find the scales comparable at all to media.

your scores of 6 and below being "bad" is based on what? movies that are rated 3/5
are not generally rated as "bad" they are average. 2.5 in fact would be average.... for example here is a write up on a random 2/5 stars movie........

"And yet it’s not overtly “bad,” per se. It’s one of those movies that’s easy to describe as “fine.” The performances are fine (and some rise above that description). "

5/10 is objectively average. however someone interprets a game is less important as numbers but more important in write up.... but all scales in media can vary too which is why one persons view on a score is only really good if it comes with a scale .....
 

NotLiquid

Member
Exactly. In order to get anything of value out of ratings in the 6/7 range, you need to know and be comfortable with the scoring and review history of the outlet you're looking at. You can't assume a 7 is mediocre or average unless you know that said outlet has a history of scoring games like that. I've generally used EDGE since 1997. In the past, I could buy pretty much any game they scored a 7 or higher and know it would be good. I also knew that some 5s and 6s were worthy of my time.

In short, my advice would be , find an outlet you like and stick to it. Don't compare apples with oranges. Don't assume a reviewer values the same things you do. Above all, read the text and form your own opinion. Oh, and don't be pissed at a score that an outlet you barely read gives. Be pissed at the text of a review of you want a debate. End rant.

This is pretty much why I don't really subscribe to the idea that the reception is necessarily mediocre either. Reading some of the reviews that have given the game the more general reception of a perceived tepid rating is fairly informative.

So, Star Fox Zero is a pleasant return for Fox McCloud and his merry squadron, albeit one with a few flaws that stops it from sitting alongside the Wii U's best.

While I don't like the new control scheme, it's a small price to pay to hop into the seat of an Arwing. Though I feel like I've seen most of this adventure before, Zero is a good-looking homage with some new locations to find and challenges to overcome. It doesn't supplant Star Fox 64, but it does its legacy justice.

Star Fox Zero follows the classic structure of its predecessors and tops it off with a new control system that will make or break how the players perceive Nintendo's latest opus in the Star Fox series. It could certainly benefit from a more luxurious visual environment but once its new control system has been mastered, the players will find this new collectables-packed journey across the Lylat system nothing short of rewarding and satisfying.

And that's just fine by me, really. Even though I could have hoped for a lot more, it still seems to be a game to find a lot of things to enjoy about. When I think "mediocre" I think a game that's functional as a game but completely unremarkable, but I don't really get that implication from what's being written.
 

dt2

Banned
I think you do understand. But fine, you caught me! I find common sense and statistics to be on the same side of the story. I'm sorry for that.

Edit: or maybe you don't understand, so let me explain to you. If a media outlet labels a rating as Good, but more than 50% of the games are rated above that for a large sample, that label is bullshit. But it's understandable, because you wouldn't want to label more than 50% of the games you review as average or bad from the business point of view.

We are not talking about metacritic though. Metacritic is an aggregate score that has additional weights, calculations, and conversions applied to it. It's hard to draw true statistical data out of that kind of database. We are talking about individual media outlets who curate their own individual reviews and create their review scale. From what I've seen the majority of them consider a 7 to be good. Like you said earlier, there's personal value to be considered here and I'm just saying that for the majority of reviews I've seen 7 is usually used to indicate a good score.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
You don't use "translated " scores ? what does that even mean? each country/school/state , etc all have their own grading systems, in most a 50 % is pass and everything else is varied.... in some a 70 percent is "good" in some its average or below 50 is moot as it's all a fail so I don't find the scales comparable at all to media.

It means that I actually learned in a school that used grades from 1 to 10. The rest of the points I already covered in the previous points.

We are not talking about metacritic though. Metacritic is an aggregate score that has additional weights, calculations, and conversions applied to it (i.e. they have to convert a 4 star rating or a grade rating to a 100 point scale). It's hard to draw true statistical data out of that kind of database. We are talking about individual sites who curate their own individual reviews and create their review scale. From what I've seen the majority of them consider a 7 to be good. Like you said earlier, there's personal value to be considered here and I'm just saying that for the majority of reviews I've seen 7 is usually used to indicate a good score.

Metacritic has the biggest statistical sample though. But fine, if you don't want to use it, I already learned that you want to use only what suites you.
Individual sites, you say? Let's take 7 on IGN. Which is labeled as Good. How many games did they gave a 7 or above? Out of how many games reviewed?

Do you at least agree in principle that you can't have 50% of games as Good? Because then the Average loses completely the meaning?
 

Gurish

Member
Is there are review thread on GAF without a movement to delegitimize reviews that don't validate expectations?

edit: I mean I'll add to this that of course I disagree with a shit ton of reviews, but I disagree with them after I, like, play the game?

No such a thread will ever exist on GAF for any anticipated game.

Can't way to the U4 review thread, only one big site needs to give that 6 and it's going to be a bloodbath...
 

Neff

Member
I expect a starfox game. So 7/8 is what I expected

I honestly can't see a situation where a Star Fox game nets a critical average higher than 9 in 2016 unless it looks like a movie and lasts 15 hours from start to finish.

From my first couple of hours with the game, it seems like Nintendo and PG did a good job. It's a legit Star Fox.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Attempting use ranks like this as indicators of quality is about as stupid as you can get.

Thank you for your elaborate explanation, you convinced me. You can't use ranks based on qualitative ratings as indicators of quality. Especially when we talk about average quality. Got you!
 

Crono27

Member
I honestly can't see a situation where a Star Fox game nets a critical average higher than 9 in 2016 unless it looks like a movie and lasts 15 hours from start to finish.

From my first couple of hours with the game, it seems like Nintendo and PG did a good job. It's a legit Star Fox.

Yup what I expected. Will be fun to play and mess with. Just like 64 and original.
 

ChaosXVI

Member
This is pretty much what I was expecting from the reviews. Platinum Games usually receive mixed reviews, but nothing that I've heard so far has dampened my anticipation of SF0. It probably helps that I'm not overly hyped to begin with, just expecting a bit of fun.
 
This is pretty much what I was expecting from the reviews. Platinum Games usually receive mixed reviews, but nothing that I've heard so far has dampened my anticipation of SF0. It probably helps that I'm not overly hyped to begin with, just expecting a bit of fun.
Which PlatinumGames titles receive mixed reviews?
 

xevis

Banned
Thank you for your elaborate explanation, you convinced me.

Your "analysis" assumes game scores follow a normal distribution. They do not. Your expect that a game which appears in close proximity to the median will also be close to the average. It will not.

All this before we even begin discussing all the shit wrong with metacritic and their attempts to make fine-grain distinctions about the quality of entertainment from subjective criticism.
 

Golgo 13

The Man With The Golden Dong
Watched a bunch of gameplay footage to me and the game looks really fun. These reviews concern me, and I don't usually watch gameplay footage unless I'm conflicted but unless the game regularly controls way different than it looks to, I'm going to like it.


Anyone else feel this way? Almost like "How can it suck when it looks that fun?"

To be clear, you play the majority of the game without motion controls, right? It's only for certain precision shooting segments (like bosses). Or am I getting it all twisted? Like left analogue is for movement/aiming the cursor, right analogue for maneuvers, RB to barrel roll etc
 
Attempting use ranks like this as indicators of quality is about as stupid as you can get.

I would agree there but then again I think giving grades to games in general is pretty damn stupid. It's an exercise in laziness, that way we don't need to read the text, we can just look at the score and since we have Metacritic, we don't need to read anything anymore because 50 or so journalists atributed it an arbitrary score. That's bad for everything involved.

To be perfectly fair, this system works to point out those awful bug filled pieces of shit, like THPS 5, and the games that are truly masterpieces and define their generation, like Uncharted 2 or Super Mario Galaxy. For the middle ground, games that are between 90 and 60 or so, I tend to think it's all in the same category: try it out because it works and should be fun. Whether it has a green score or a yellow score is a bit elitist.

I like how Eurogamer does it for instance with their own scale, and I loved how Joystiq reviewed the games with as little negativity as possible, and very much enjoy reading Jim Sterling writing weird funny shit. Besides those, gaming journalism right now usually is a bit too negative and a bit too enamored with itself and I'm not a fan of that.
 
Watched a bunch of gameplay footage to me and the game looks really fun. These reviews concern me, and I don't usually watch gameplay footage unless I'm conflicted but unless the game regularly controls way different than it looks to, I'm going to like it.


Anyone else feel this way? Almost like "How can it suck when it looks that fun?"

To be clear, you play the majority of the game without motion controls, right? It's only for certain precision shooting segments (like bosses). Or am I getting it all twisted? Like left analogue is for movement/aiming the cursor, right analogue for maneuvers, RB to barrel roll etc

No, aiming is motion controlled throughout. You use the sticks to fly and move the GamePad for precision shooting.
 

dt2

Banned
It means that I actually learned in a school that used grades from 1 to 10. The rest of the points I already covered in the previous points.



Metacritic has the biggest statistical sample though. But fine, if you don't want to use it, I already learned that you want to use only what suites you.
Individual sites, you say? Let's take 7 on IGN. Which is labeled as Good. How many games did they gave a 7 or above? Out of how many games reviewed?

Do you at least agree in principle that you can't have 50% of games as Good? Because then the Average loses completely the meaning?
I don't want to use it because that's besides the point.
But that's not the scale on which the media rates them. Everything can be twisted through one's own interpretation.
My point is that most media outlets use the full 10 point scale. If you interpret a 7 (even with them labeling it as "Good") as a mediocre score then that's your own interpretation of their score. I don't think we're really going to get anywhere with this back and forth so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Your "analysis" assumes game scores follow a normal distribution. They do not. Your expect that a game which appears in close proximity to the median will also be close to the average. It will not.

All this before we even begin discussing all the shit wrong with metacritic and their attempts to make fine-grain distinctions about the quality of entertainment from subjective criticism.

Well, I can't get now the whole dataset to do a proper analysis. But looking very superficially through the top layers and the bottom ones I could bet that the average is quite above the median. If I would be convinced it would be actually useful I would probably could lose some time and calculate an average. But it's not really worth it for a review thread in the end.
 

TrueBlue

Member
"forced reliance on the Gamepad's screen and motion controls"

Yup, no buy for me. "innovative" motion controls and Miyamoto's "great" gimmick ideas can fuck off. He used to be my hero and now I hate him with a passion. Everything he touches, turns to shit.

Christ on a bike.
 
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