Especially the dialog options I loved about the game. I would go with it that it is the best dialog system I have ever used in any game. The Dialog on the other hand was not that great but then again Bethesda has never made a game with good dialog and to me they have made improvements in that as well. Portions of each game has some great moments but just moments.

I like all of Bethesda's games and each one for a different reason.

Reviews on new games or movies I take with a grain of salt unless it's a game or movie that I've seen that the critic has reviewed then I'll either agree or disagree.

No, it is not. Not for an Elder Scrolls game. A great many of us play these games for thousands of hours. Look up one of the many "How long have you played?" threads in the Skyrim General Discussion forum and you will encounter post after post of people who have played for anywhere from 1000 to 5000 hours. Myself, I have played over 6000 hours of Morrowind over the years. And I have probably clocked about 3000 or more hours in Oblivion and about 2000 hours in Slyrim.

A mere 100 hours is not "absurdly long" for an Elder Scrolls game, not by any stretch of the imagination.

I still don't understand what you're trying to say. What is meant by an "obvious alternative viewpoint" to playing 100+ hours? Sorry, but I give up. I don't have the time or energy or even the will to decode the inscrutable meanings behind your posts. I don't think we speak the same language.

This right here is pretty much my list. I would add on top of that: Tropico 5. I don't know why, but I enjoy it immensely.


Also Quest for Glory 3: Wages of War was my favorite of the series and it got the worst reviews.

This thread is not specifically about Elder Scrolls/gamesas games (one could even argue that it is implicitly exclusive of them), and I did note that there are games into which one can invest a great deal of time -- such as the (non-gamesas) game I mentioned as an example.

There are perspective (viewpoints) other than yours (alternatives*) which should be obvious to you, even if you disagree with the opinions/arguments which come from them.

I've not been particularly opaque here (aside, perhaps, from that four-letter post), and I read enough of my posts to know opaque when I see it .

*If you speak American English, you may think the word for this is "alternate", but you'd be wrong . "Alternate" means switching back and forth (like in "alternating current").

I do read reviews, but, I treat them as one persons view.

Reviews do influence me, a bad review can make me want to sample a product

as much as a good one.

Someone has mentioned Bladerunner. When it came out alot of people did not like the

forties detective movie-style narration. I loved it, most of the people I knew loved it as well.

Reviews can depend on the nature of the thing being reviewed.

Once upon a time I worked in a cinema. It's chief projectionist was one of the industry's

most respected practitioners of the craft and he told me this story. He had previously been employed at

a cinema in Derby. The cinema had been purchased by the local authority and because

of funding rules, it was required to show art films. One such was an Andy Warhol creation.

In the cinema there are people who like films and people who like cinemas, as a rule projectionists tend to be the latter.

As all projectionists do when they receive a film print he went through it frame by frame removing

all the frames that were scratched or appeared to be damaged. This resulted in the film having a much shorter runtime.

The film was exhibited to a full house, Andy Warhol being a rare treat in provincial English cinema.

None of the audience noticed the cuts, even the local newspaper's reviewer. He reported that he had seen

the film before but this was first time that he had really understood it.

The fact still remains, that 100 hours is more entertainment, then you'd get going to 6 movies which would be the same price you likely paid for Oblivion(assuming $10 per movie ticket and no snacks). At 100 hours, you really kind of lose the right to complain that a game is bad. Which oblivion really wasn't, it was just buggy as all get out until the major "unofficial" patch made by modders.

I'd amend that to "At 100 hours, you really kind of lose the right to complain if a game turns bad."

Although I'd also add the condition of one having to have finished a playthrough -- if a game is designed to go on for 150 hours, and the last third are a chore to get through, that absolutely is a valid time to complain big time. Same as if a movie going on for, say, two and a half hours, but wastes about an hour of it.

I will just add this about reviews, specifically game reviews. Most svck at actually presenting the game in a review, and are either just full of praise or slam, and based on opinions picking only a few things here or there to judge the entirety of the game. Also most reviewers leave out MANY aspects of the game, and which ones they leave out seem arbitrary with no explanation why.


Reviews, IMO, should be somewhat standard regardless of the game is being played and broken down into segments, summarized, and graded. Lastly, the heading part is the last significant. As a consumer, focus on the parts being reviewed and how important they are to you and give your own preview/review grade.


One person in particular on YouTube does great reviews. Search for ACG and his style. He does a great job.

I know Red Letter Media's Star Wars "Pizza Roll" reviews are a give and take, although not an official review of the prequels they still give a nice insight on why the prequels are failures not only as to the Original Trilogy but what happens when one guy has too much control over a project.

Dragon Age 2 i suppose..



I had alot of issues with Dragon Age Origins (it was a blatant and somewhat poor Neverwinter Nights 2 knock-off, you rename the arch-demon in Origins to "The King of Shadows" you have the entirety of Act III and part of Act II of Neverwinter Nights 2.. most of the groups you have to get as allies, and NPC personalities are near exact copies as well.. seriously, your better off just going through NWN2, if you liked Origins you'd probably love it)..


so when I heard everyone saying 2 was so much worse than Origins, I said to myself "it must be absolutely atrocious!".. it was on sale one day, I had some money to waste, so I bought it and gave it a try.. and I actually enjoyed 2, they actually did a good job in making the story setting and characters their own, rather than just going "hey, remember that game people seemed to like? lets pallet swap it!"..





Heroes of Might and Magic 4..


Heroes 4 wasn't well received.. many fans were upset about the loss of Enroth (even though we knew it would happen, we didn't stay on Xeen or VARN forever), and just some of the game design decisions they made..


and I'll admit, there were some terrible design decisions (they screwed up siege combat hard), but what they were trying to do was amazing in theory.. having your Cities Buildings branch (having to make choices on what to build for teirs, rather than being able to just build everything, and having to choose a magic type for your mage guild), having your Heroes take active part in combat, being able to move units without assigning them a hero, the caravan system, and having skills more inter-related were all amazing ideas for enhancing the series..


even with its flaws, those new mechanics provide a completely different and engaging playstyle than the other entries in the series..


If New World Computing's parent company 3D0 hadn't been forcing them to push out games prematurely in hopes of saving themselves from bankruptcy (M&M 9 wasn't even a finished game, M&M 8 had alot of content cut including the druid class, and Heroes 4 was pushed out prior to being able to properly polish it), and they had been able to spend the time to properly polish and finish the concepts they were going with in 4 i really think it could have been an all time classic (surpassing even HoMM3s acclaim)..



as is, HoMM4 isn't as terrible as people make it out to be (and it has the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDXNSWJLuo in the franchise), it just doesn't live up to its potential..

Everybody hates Pacific Rim but I absolutely love it. I'm glad i ignored the naysayers.

I have my grunges againts Dragon Age II, because what I absolutely loved in Dragon Age Origins was the European gothic like atmosphere - it was more European than most of mediaval games, that tried to be like that. Dragon Age II was rip off that, so I wasn't really happy about it. But still with some mods covering the graphic, I could enjoy the story masterpiece.

Maybe that is a theme for another thread - should a franchise stay the same and if yes, then how much it should change and in what area - because changing a successful franchise just because some players didn't enjoy the style is sad - they are leaving their fans outside of their next project...

And that is exactly what I was told - that some players wanted more of colors and more of comics look. Shouldn't they create a new franchise, that would fit that new style and leave this one in the same tone? What players of Final Fantasy would say if they would change the graphic style, because some players don't enjoy anime? Or WoW would became very gray and ordinary?

But yes, reviews shouldn't be based on a grunge against one aspect of the game.

The same is with Fallout 4 - most of reviews were really very subjective, just bashing the game. But then again - is it because of the company giving players false hope, or they do change the franchise main aspect, should they expect something like that or not?

perhaps? What was he supposed to get from "ummm..."? Why didnt you just write what you wanted to say?

While I agree with origins being a copy of nwn 2, my biggest complaints of dragon age 2 is precisely the carbon copy thing. Half of the dungeons and maps are recycled maps from earlier in the game, with hoards of spawning enemies that negates the whole strategy of combat and placing your characters in certain spots, because enemies just spawn in spots they shouldn't be.


Three quarters of the game was a carbon copy of the one quarter of the game of original content.


Then of course there's the pre set protagonist, which for some isn't a big deal, but is for others.



But like said above, I think a big thing is your expectations going into games. My expectations pre oblivion release were huge, and so when I got the game and realized all of the cut content that they advertised before hand (and my pre conceived notions of a morrowind on crack), I was burned by oblivion (even though I put in at least 2000 hours into the game).


So for skyrims pre release, I stopped paying attention to promised features and following the game so closely, I was pleasantly surprised with skyrim. The same thing went for fallout 3 and new Vegas. When I first played fallout 3, I was so surprised the steps they went back towards morrowind, like not giving you all the cities marked on the map and fast travel ready at the start of the game, or how the main quest goes cold if you blew up megaton without getting information from Colin Moriarty. It seemed to do less hand holding than oblivion at the beginning and I thought that was a good first impression.

Star Wars prequels, Wild Wild West movie, and Godzilla 1998

Dragon Age 2

If I had listened to the opinions of other people, I wouldn't have discovered my favorite game in that franchise.

Or you could have just explained why you said "ummm" and also looked at the context of what Pseron was saying. For somebody who is expecting another person to look at differing perspectives in a more nuanced manner, you failed to notice the nuances and context of his post. He did not say "Oblivion is a bad game" (in fact, as I have seen from his posts in the Elder Scrolls section of these forums, he does not think Oblivion is a bad game).

He also made a good point. Some reviewers don't look at the whole picture or don't play a game long enough to give an overall score of the whole game. And with how jam-packed with content TES games are, this is relatively easy to do. You have to play quite a while to truly experience everything the game has to offer. The "100+ hours" sounds like more of a random number thrown out than a hard dividing line where you throw your hands up and say "The game is unraveling! It's complete crap!" It sounds like it is more to signify that it can take a longer time to notice some of the bigger flaws, at least to some people.

Perhaps if you are going to criticize somebody for not offering something constructive to the conversation, you may want to do the same thing.

But you can still criticize the game, or really any game. Not a single game ever made is perfect, or anything made by human beings. I think many criticisms of Oblivion are overstated, like how "generic" it is, and overall the I think it is a great game although I think Morrowind and Skyrim are better. The original point that was made was not "Oblivion is garbage" but that some faults were missed because there is so much content in the game that the reviewers missed some of them. With games as big as those in The Elder Scrolls, that's likely to happen.

Edited because a piece of my response for some reason got changed to something completely different...

I think if the game would be perfect, there would be nothing to talk about. So it seems like players are complaining, but they are actually trying to have a discussion about something

Everyone knows, that it is not going to change anything and if it does, it is most likely going to be something else, than would be players expectations, so no win

I sometimes pitty devs for accidentally stumbling upon some especially ugly thread about their beloved part of the game, but still I cannot help it, I will still write subjective reviews and will listen to others and argue about something terrible pointless

And maybe if youtubers have to do reviews for living - I have the feeling that they have to complain about something atleast, so it would looks like they are objective.

But truth is that I started to play games with negative reviews only because of a time when I had nothing else to play, so if there would be enough of games I do like, then I would probably never try games, that got bad reviews, which is sad.

Depends on the critics and what they say. However, there's a difference between getting an enjoyment out of something and liking something. To me, I personally ONLY like things which are up to quality and were really taken care of. BUT something can still provide some sort of laugh while I ended up disliking it.

For example, the new Ghostbuster might give me a few laughs, but I still am going to hate it and think that it's a cash-in piece of trash, due to horrible dialogue, boring character, poorly written script, etc. I may get some enjoyment from the new Warcraft but still dislike it because it is everything that Warcraft isn't, for the most part, and Blizzard really should've done what they do best instead of making an "advlt movie" that isn't at all like their product.


I even manage to get some minor laughs from Minions, and that movie is utter trash to me. Though, the laughs were mostly from references (such as The Beatles reference in it).

A good example of "The review." Is Lady pvssyrley's Lover . After many years of being banned the aforementioned book was reviewed in many places.

One of these places was Field and Stream a fishing and shooting magazine.

Part of the review read: "Unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour these sidelights

on the management of a Midlands shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion this book cannot take the place of J.R.Miller's Practical Gamekeeping.

The type of review a thing receives depend's where it is reviewed. A review of a film that appears in a cineaste magazine is going to be different from one

that appears in cinema trade magazine. The cineaste review will talk of writing, cinematography directors influence etc, the trade magazine will suggest

what kind of audience the film will get, and what kind of cinema Should be suitable for the film.

The only film I know that appeared to receive across the board reviews of the positive kind was probably Das Boot.

I should add the above quote is often used in connection with Lady pvssyrley's Lover and has appeared in many serious articles connected

with DH Lawrence, the man who wrote it, was a humourist, he was sending up the book!

Am not too much of a mainstream person when it comes to most things so i usually dont pay mind to reviews and just do my own research. Thanks to the internet screenshots seem to be the best way to go most times to see if something is worth checking out. Fortunately the past few years has made the unusual and weird part of the mainstream with things like True Blood, The Walking Dead, Dying Light, Unloved etc so i have not had to go far to make a decision.

Well...

At the risk of getting back on topic...

Not sure what all the hate over "Naughty Bear" as about.

One of the funniest games I have played in a long time.

So glad I ignored all those reviewers that clearly never even played the game and just jumped on the band wagon.

If it had been people instead of Teddybears it would have been the most controversial game ever made.

Just watched the Dukes of Hazzard movie last night (the one with Sean William Scott and Johnny Knoxville) and despite it being rated at 14% on Rotten Tomatoes, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and plan on watching it again soon!

Other examples of "bad" things that I've enjoyed the hell out of include:

Dragon Age II

Elder Scrolls Online

Halo 4

Opinions are fine, but when one opinion is given authority over others, that's when I get annoyed.

What there was a Dukes of Hazzard movie. I might have to check it out sometime.