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Entry tags:	reviews, videogames

AV Club gives C grade to Uncharted 3; fanboys go ballistic
Scott Jones of the AV Club gave a mixed review of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, a hotly anticipated game for PlayStation 3. Jones praised the storyline and dialogue but criticized the gameplay mechanics:

[T]he story still zips and characters are still conflicted, but targeting is as twitchy as ever, bad guys still require three or four shotgun blasts to the head before they’re deterred, and the game’s star, Nathan Drake, still has no clue whatsoever about how to crouch. Two years after Thieves, Uncharted’s gameplay mechanics and conventions are no longer dated; they’re borderline archaic.

His final grade for the game was a C.

In the comments section, things started out innocuously enough. There was a minor kerfuffle over whether the game's protagonist was a serial killer. A couple of people speculated about what would happen when the review showed up on Metacritic. "Frankly," said one, "if I had the power to fuck with metacritic like this, I don't think I'd be able to resist giving an F to every single triple-A title. It's like having nuclear launch codes for internet fanboys."

And the internet fanboys did not disappoint. You see, elsewhere on the internet, game critics were creaming themselves about how wonderful Uncharted 3 was. Every single other review on Metacritic was positive; Jones's review was the only mixed one. When the Uncharted fanboys saw the AV Club review, they realized that one bad review was not a threat to their beloved game franchise, and moved on with their lives.

--

Just kidding. They registered for the AV Club so they could comment about how Scott Jones is WRONG WRONG WRONG. The sarcastic hipster types who populate the AV Club comments section were only too happy to bait them.

Some highlights:

Let me tell you how much I don't care about this review! (p. 2)
"Another worthless 'review' by Scott Jones. This guy is a troll and a pure idiot and it's unfortunate this this reviewer and website get attention, hits and web traffic that it doesn't deserve." (p. 2)
A surprisingly thoughtful thread on grade inflation in game reviews (p. 2)
An AV Club staff writer responds to a stupid comment with an allusion to Shakespeare. Unsurprisingly, the commenter doesn't get it. (p. 2)
"It just sounds like DRand is pissed off that this review doesn't spend 6 paragraphs blabbering on about how amazingly well the light bounces off Nathan Drake's immaculately modeled crotch bulge." (p. 2)
I am better than everyone else here because I am a second year med student. (p. 2)
People make fun of IGN's sycophantic reviews and grade inflation (p. 2)
"You are not the Roger Ebert of computer games" (p. 3)
Some asshole named Eric D. Molino doesn't understand formatting or threads (pp. 3-4)
Everyone likes a good Commie joke (p. 4)
I know the gameplay is good, because I watched a walkthrough! (p. 4)
"I could pull a bunch of hard facts out of my ass to prove this guy is an idiot, but I'll just state my opinion." (p. 4)
Microsoft or Activision must have paid Jones to give this game a bad review! (p. 5)
"Sony is going to sell millions of PS3s with this game and you losers will still be in you're moms basement... HAHAHAHAHAHA" (p. 5)
"Are you insane? And by 'insane,' I mean clinically, non-ironically, eat-your-own-shit-and-strangle-kittens batshit nuts." (p. 6)

Here's the best part: the angry comments were posted on October 30 and 31, but Uncharted 3 wasn't released until November 1 (November 2 in Europe). That's right: these valiant fanboys were defending the besmirched honor of a game they'd never played. Except for this guy. Maybe.

EDIT: I just realized that my links to "highlights" aren't working. That's just the AV Club comments system being difficult -- I can't link to anything past page 1. I've put in some page numbers to help out a little.

Also: Eurogamer, which published an 8/10 review of Uncharted 3, has also been overrun with angry fanboys lately. 8/10!

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meagenimage
2011-11-03 11:31 am UTC (link)

The major games review sites seem unable to score any game below 7/10 unless it's catastrophically bad (we're talking the gaming equivalent of Manos: The Hands of Fate). But then, those sites are often being paid for advertising the same games they're reviewing, leading to some obvious conflicts of interest.

There wa a case in 2007 where a fairly critical reviewer was fired from Gamespot soon after giving a 6/10 to Kane and Lynch, which Gamespot was also heavily advertising.

And this leads to a situation where fans of a highly-anticipated game can be driven to rage by a review that scores 9.3/10. (Those comments may be a bit tough to navigate, but just start from the last page to go in chronological order and find plenty of wank, preserved in a prisine state since 2008.)

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kedase_derragar
2011-11-03 12:11 pm UTC (link)

And that's nothing compared to the epic backlash against a Gamestop reviewer who gave the Wii version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess an 8.8. To this day, if you Google "8.8", it's the second result - just above one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history, and just below the TV Tropes page named after the fiasco. It's hard to find any evidence of it on Gamespot anymore, but there are plenty of write-ups about it around the internet.

(It's worth noting that it wasn't just the 8.8 that caused the ruckus - the fact that the same reviewer gave the GameCube version an 8.9 a few weeks later while simultaneously saying that he recommended the Wii version certainly didn't help matters.)

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	sol 2011-11-03 12:26 pm UTC (link)
	I believe that you're talking about the same person; Jeff Gerstmann (the person in the first link up there) was the one who gave it an 8.8, which caused fanboy insanity. The fact that he got fired for the Kane and Lynch review is very ironic. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

kernelm
2011-11-03 10:11 pm UTC (link)

Heh, Gerstmann's been at the center of quite a few review controversies, especially in his Gamespot days. He currently runs Giant Bomb (along with a whole bunch of former Gamespot guys who left shortly after he was fired) which hasn't been too controversial as far as I know in terms of reviews. The main thing I've seen complaints about is that they review on a 5 star scale, no fractional stars.

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	lady7jane 2011-11-03 03:01 pm UTC (link)
	I also seem to remember some hassle about how game companies only give out review copies on the promise that reviewers don't give low scores, so on launch day it's impossible for a game to have anything but a good score. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	cosmosin_strife 2011-11-03 04:31 pm UTC (link)
	Lol look at Dynasty Warriors, my favourite series. Play UK (the official Playstation magazine) gave DW7 only 32%, while they constantly give every FPS a mimimum of 70% at worst. IGN likewise love to bash the series and always give every 'Warriors' low scores. While yeah, the games aren't perfect but they're definitely not as bad as the reviewers think. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tofuknight 2011-11-03 07:35 pm UTC (link)
	Just looked at the 8.8 TVTropes page and saw an example where FE:Radiant Dawn was panned cuz it was too hard. I thought that was the point of the FE games? (I admit I haven't played RD, but only bcuz all my Wii time is currently spent on Donkey Kong...) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	iris 2011-11-03 07:57 pm UTC (link)
	RD also got knocked in one review for failing to include Mii support. \o_O/ (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	deliciouschaos 2011-11-03 08:33 pm UTC (link)
	How...I don't...that's a whole new kind of special. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)