At best, critical scoring systems can be used as coarse-grain indicators of quality. It's possible, for example, to categorise something as "good" or "crap" or "mediocre". Attempting to make finer categorisation, especially using a 100 point scale, is misguided as it creates the appearance of meaningful distinction where none exists. Worse still is trying to use these scores to create rankings. Ugh. So bad, I can't even.
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Star Fox Zero & Guard - Review Thread
- Thread starter maxcriden
- Start date
At best, critical scoring systems can be used as coarse-grain indicators of quality. It's possible, for example, to categorise something as "good" or "crap" or "mediocre". Attempting to make finer categorisation, especially using a 100 point scale, is misguided as it creates the appearance of meaningful distinction where none exists. Worse still is trying to use these scores to create rankings. Ugh. So bad, I can't even.
DearestJuliet
Banned
Disappointed with the reception, was hoping for something better.
That probably sounded alot worse in their heads.
Incitemaybe
Member
Love motion controls, especially in Splatoon as of late...very much looking forward to that aspect as my partner and I also want to play through in co-op.
Some of the complaints about replayability have me a bit worried but overall I think it looks great.
Some of the complaints about replayability have me a bit worried but overall I think it looks great.
Herbspiceguy
Member
Disappointing.
Guess the signs were all there that it was going to be a mediocre entry in the series, but the review copy sneak impressions got me kinda hyped.
Guess the signs were all there that it was going to be a mediocre entry in the series, but the review copy sneak impressions got me kinda hyped.
Theognosis
Member
Nintendo should not have released a 60 fps arcade shooter with new controls in 2016. If Star Fox Zero was a 30 fps walking simulator with dual analog support, the "critical" media would have awarded the game scores of 9's and 10's across the board!
joecanada
Member
huh? so what was 3/10 then? not a fail? the problem with that is that you haven't learned "much" or most of the concepts, so whether or not it is a fail it makes you virtually unemployable anyway...... in some programs an 8/10 is pass so academic scales should not be compared to media scales, even if they are for some reason.
whatever scale they use its pretty clear the numbers as of now mean virtually nothing. especially if they can't even stick to a simple average which is actually defined as average. most movie reviews that I see make sense as a simple 3/5, 4/5 , 5/5 where 3/5 is okay and 4/5 is good, 5/5 is excellent , etc. video games, not so much it seems.
Poimandres
Member
Yeah... whatever you say man...
Parapraxis
Member
Well that seals the no deal for me. And that really makes me question all the high scores it got, I mean some reviewers want me to believe the game is a 10/10 lol...the unbiased sources (ones I trust) are stating the exact opposite.
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
I didn't have any issue with DK Returns, Uprising, or Skyward Sword despite those controls dividing a lot of folks so I'm not worried about that...
I do wish this game had a bit more depth though, I know story isn't the point of Star Fox perhaps but I am kind of disappointed they're just remaking 64's plot basically instead of doing something fun. Before this game came out I was totally hoping we'd have perhaps segments where you'd play as James (I thought the portals would serve this purpose and take you into the past or something), or an alternate route where you play from Wolf's side, but none of that happened.
Probably gonna pick it up because I do wanna support Star Fox since I have tons of fond memories of 64 and I hope a good reception towards this might make the next one a bit more fleshed out.
I do wish this game had a bit more depth though, I know story isn't the point of Star Fox perhaps but I am kind of disappointed they're just remaking 64's plot basically instead of doing something fun. Before this game came out I was totally hoping we'd have perhaps segments where you'd play as James (I thought the portals would serve this purpose and take you into the past or something), or an alternate route where you play from Wolf's side, but none of that happened.
Probably gonna pick it up because I do wanna support Star Fox since I have tons of fond memories of 64 and I hope a good reception towards this might make the next one a bit more fleshed out.
Even if you had all the data and were able to perform a detailed analysis of central tendency the results would still be meaningless. What separates a "72" game from a "73" ? Is a "72" 10% better than a "66" ? What does that even mean?! In short, it is pointless to attempt to create rankings from reviews. Simply put, games that are crap are crap games that are good are good. Beyond a very coarse level of categorisation you cannot make any further distinction. They are equivalent.
In this particular case the most anyone can say is that Star Fox Zero appears to be good.
EOF.
Edit: oh, I got it now. No, 1-4 are different degrees of fail. 5 is pass, 6-7 average, 8 good, 9 great, 10 perfect. Or thereabout.
It wasn't my point or my scope to make a difference between a 72 and a 73. The whole discussion started about 6-8 being a mediocre rating for games.
edit: anyhow I go to sleep now, so I will step out from this discussion.
Glass Rebel
Member
Ouch. The only reason to pre-order this seems to be the sweet shirt I'd be getting:
Think I'm gonna pass tho.
Think I'm gonna pass tho.
Lionel Richie
Member
Yes, I very much agree, I personally think it's reasonably possible to create three distinct categories in any medium basically: fantastic stuff, awful stuff that's poorly done (like doesn't work and shit) and everything in between that should be tried when you can if you enjoy that genre. When people start ranking and saying for example that like Ratchet & Clank is 9 points better than Quantum Break, which in turn is 5 points better than Star Fox Zero (3 radically different games no less), and take it as gospel or as indicative that it means anything at all, well that's just something I just don't agree.
Yeah that top scale has basically how it's always been if you exclude Gamespot and EGM. A 7 or lower has been deemed 'shit' since pretty much the dawn of game reviews.
There's loads more to the game that unlocks. Alternate paths etc.
Also as someone who actually has the game and is playing all I can say is that if Polygon think the game is full of bugs etc and unfinished then, quite frankly, they must never have played a game before.
It's a good game and a lot of fun.
So Polygon refuses to review Star Fox Zero because the guy thinks it's so bad he can't bring himself to finish it and won't review a game he hasn't finished.
That reminds me of that time one of their guys was sent to a Guitar Hero Live Preview event but the guy never wrote a preview and instead talked about how bored he was and uninterested in the game he was.
That reminds me of that time one of their guys was sent to a Guitar Hero Live Preview event but the guy never wrote a preview and instead talked about how bored he was and uninterested in the game he was.
wild wild rice
Member
Edit: I actually don't know
Poimandres
Member
A good/bad distinction with nothing in between is probably even worse than a 100 point scale.
No....you don't have to look at the controller the whole time. Link to the stream? If they are looking at the screen during on rail sections, then that is by choice.
Vampirolol
Member
Unbiased yeah. That quote about the "2/3 hours" is just wrong, that's it. You could say that about every Star Fox and every other arcade game. This is probably the longest Star Fox game if you want to unlock everything and just finding all the secret levels.
Lmao this is the funniest part about these threads
Depends what you want to get out of it. I'm over 15hrs and still haven't unlocked everything.
Parapraxis
Member
So it's wrong, but right, but wrong because of a specific definition of "completing" a game, which isn't what the reviewer said.
Okay, what if a player just wants to beat the game, like complete the story as the reviewer said?
"The Lamestream media is out to get us fam"
Is SF5 only 15minutes long because you can beat the "Story" of one character in that amount of time? If you play to unlock all the stages in SF0, it'll take longer than 3hrs.
Vampirolol
Member
That doesn't make a lot of sense. This is a genre that requires you to replay the game again and again to improve your score and find hidden paths, it's that simple. When you review something you should at least know what kind of game you are talking about. You could play a racing game for 3 hours and see every track and then stop... would that make sense? Now, if he says that the game is so bad that after 2/3 hours he didn't want to keep playing, that's fair.
Take whatever you remember about slippy in 64 and copy/paste right on to Zero.
The game's story and dialogue are almost exactly the same, and honestly, I feel like 64 had more dialogue.
On Length: If it didn't bother you in 64, it won't bother you here. End of discussion. I'd have been fine with it if I actually enjoyed the gameplay, which I didn't.
64 launched in 1997, shit's changed a lot since then.
Rail shooter lengths in general have not.
While I agree with this sentiment, that dated feeling shows up more in the Gameplay and how the game is presented more than the length. I've played plenty of games recently that were short and had no qualms about it because the replay value was high and there were lots of challenges to unlock. StarFox fits this category, but I just didn't really like the actual game.
There were 60 hour games back in 1997 as well.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I quite enjoy the quick, pick up and play nature of these arcade games, but I understand why some wouldn't want to purchase a game like this. I've always loved shooters, so I'm pretty jazzed to play another one.
orthodoxy1095
Banned
Actually I'm surprised Gies didn't score it or label the post he wrote a "review."
As an outlet at least, Polygon has actually scored/reviewed games they haven't finished, like McElroy's Codename STEAM review. I guess Gies has different personal standards for reviews.
Schnozberry
Member
This and the Giant Bomb review are bordering on self parody. It seems like the people who couldn't grasp the controls all decided that their Star Fox review must also be a solipsistic commentary on Nintendo's place in the industry.
What a dickhead.
Nah, Giant Bomb review is legit. I might have come down a little softer, like a 3, but the point remains: playing Star Fox Zero made me seriously question if Star Fox was ever fun or if I was just too young to know what I liked. Ryckert's last paragraph is directly in line with how I thought about the game after completing it several times. Gies is being melodramatic, but his individual points aren't far from my experience.
I honestly had to go back and play the SNES versions and 64 to fully understood how I felt.
What's wrong with that though? I walked out of terrible movies and stopped playing games which I didn't like. On the one hand, people say reviewers aren't critical enough, on the other hand, if they are honest, that's also not ok if it does not fit one's agenda?
It would be interesting if Nintendo blacklisted Polygon from receiving future review copies.
I mean it's one thing for receiving either negative or lukewarm reviews, but to not even bother doing the review at all is something else.
Thats better than slapping 2-3/10 on it and bringing down the precious metacritic isn't it? If you read the review, you would know he thinks its shit. If you don't read the review, you wouldn't be happy with the score anyway.
Agreed, I was excited when Nintendo announced that they were making a new Star Fox game but it lost wind when I found out that it was the third reboot.
It just feels like that instead of letting the series progress Nintendo just keeps hitting the reboot button because they think that the fans wants more of the same.
I am still getting the game and I am excited for it but I do not want to see Star Fox get rebooted for the fourth time.
If he had given a score, you could be sure that B2YK would be the first to point out that the guy did not finish the game and is thus not qualified to review it.
It's just so disappointing to see that something I've always deeply loved (games that I can start up and beat opening to credits in one session, under 2 hours or so, but requiring finesse and mastery to do well) is now considered a bad thing. For years I've had to put up with games ballooning in length and scope, which I've never really been a fan of outside of RPGs (which I play on and off with other games in between). Now, finally, a game of the style I really like comes out, with a 2-3 hour campaign that requires you to come back to it again and again until you feel like you've totally mastered it 50 or 70 or 100 times through, and people are saying that's "archaic" or somehow a waste of money.
I'd much rather have a high skill ceiling 2 hour game I can sit down and go from opening to credits in one session and hone my skills at it for months, learn all the tricks, and achieve maximum possible scores at than a 20 hour game that I play once and never touch again, but no one makes games like that anymore. Now Nintendo has. I am so excited to finally get my hands on this on Friday.
I'd much rather have a high skill ceiling 2 hour game I can sit down and go from opening to credits in one session and hone my skills at it for months, learn all the tricks, and achieve maximum possible scores at than a 20 hour game that I play once and never touch again, but no one makes games like that anymore. Now Nintendo has. I am so excited to finally get my hands on this on Friday.
Velcro Fly
Member
Kid Icarus Uprising all over again