Samurai Warriors 3 and Video Game Reviewing Etiquette

[LordSimaYi]

I've recently been playing a lot, and I mean A LOT of Samurai Warriors 3 for the Nintendo Wii recently and I decided to just look around online to see if anyone had anything to add to my experience.

The first thing I noticed, however, is video game reviewers; IGN gave this game a 3/10. I was confused at first, I started to wonder if I was a suck up or if I just didn't see the game the way anyone did. So I clicked the IGN link and read one of the most awful examples of Video Games Reviewing of all time. Now granted, I'm sure a lot of people don't like the game but being platformed on the Wii, I'm sure a lot of Samurai (and maybe even Dynasty) Warriors fans were on the fence whether or not wanting to buy this and this review surely pushed a lot of people to the wrong side of the fence.

You can read the review for yourself if you want but basically the whole review is bashing the game for, you guessed it, "It's just the same as the other games in the franchise", which is fair enough, I know that some people only like a couple Warriors games and, myself, I like many of them because I can find the smallest differences to be at least something new and exciting to what I already know and love. But the fact that the review only talks about the negatives and makes them even more negative but the author's word choice is just wrong.

And what's wrong with this is, like I said, the author makes everything a negative within the review. Instead of saying something like "The character models seem to be quite repetitive" they say "It's just the same fat ugly muddy guys" that is no way to review a game. Now I believe Video Game Reviewing should be all about telling people how good a game is , rather than is this game good or bad because everyone has an opinion and, and by saying the game is "not good" instead of "could be better" really throws away a lot of people and it shouldn't be like that people should choose for themselves if the game is good enough for them and not have someone else choose for them.

I know I ranted on for a bit and there's still a lot I want to get covered here, but imagine if this was for Call of Duty,or a Fifa game, I bet a ton of people would be thrown off and get angry at IGN. Like I said, I know some people don't like it, and I know many people would give it a 3/10 but to say the game is "awful" instead of "It's not fantastic but fans of the series would like it" is just horrible Video Game Reviewing Etiquette that people have gotten into.

[LiuBeiwasGreat]

Despite owning a Wii, I never got Samurai Warriors 3, however I have read reviews of Dynasty/Samurai warriors games and understand a degree of your frustration with reviews. The main problem in my opinion is that this series isn't as big or as popular as games like Call of Duty. Most people understand that Call of Duty, or Fifa, or the 2k series (regardless of sport) are basically rehashes with minimal changes but since they primarily focus on multiplayer people still lap them up. So the reviewers cannot really bash them. On the rare times that they do they are ignored and mocked as when you insult something really popular you tend to be considered wrong. On the other hand Koei games are a lot more niche and have a smaller fanbase who are very dedicated and will buy the games despite the reviews, often ignoring them completely. Also lets face it, most American gamers don't really care about ancient China and Japan, while sports are something that are shoved in their faces all their lives along with the glory of war/guns
Personally I stopped reading reviews for Koei games because I know that the review is going to be bad and I know that I will most likely enjoy the game.

[Bush Leagues]

I'm at work and can't provide a direct link, but if you want, consider checking out Destructoid.com's review of Dynasty Warriors 7. I remember the first paragraph goes something like this - "It's that time of year again, when another Dynasty Warriors game in the long-running series, when everyone lambastes the game as being repetitive, no different than it's predecessors, and with no innovation or creativity in this new installment. Except here at Destructoid, where we actually play the games we review."

They may have one up for Samurai Warriors 3, but they got my respect by giving the game a fair shake, and a fair score now that I've played through most the game and can look back on it. But they judged the game on it's merits, and said "This is the kind of game it is. If you like this kind of game, it's pretty good for what it's doing." The DW and SW games are obviously not going to appeal to people who want a sandbox-style game, and the ROTK games won't appeal to action gamers, etc. For what they mean to be - a fast-paced, action-oriented, flavorful beat-em-up, both games do pretty well overall. I thought 7's story mode was pretty top, having you jump from character to character, and experience the growth, rise, and fall of all the kingdoms. It told you the (novel's version) of the real story, and it makes it only more interesting by doing that.

So, I would recommend checking them out to see if they reviewed SW 3 yet, and see what they have to say about it.

Also, IGN is shit, do not trust them for anything. It's my understanding that's it's an open secret that companies can buy good reviews from them, and I heard this from a trustworthy source, so I'm very much inclined to believe it.

[Dong Zhou]

Not played the game. As for the review (pre verdict), a little strong in places: Idiotic story seems a bit strong, "Even if you do somehow kid yourself into still thinking you like these games,", use of crap seems unprofessional, a lot of it is fine but it is going over the line too much. The verdict is a disgrace and downright insulting to the fanbase. I do use ign. I have tended to find their reviews reliable, and so was surprised but then saw the date, that was a time where it also a bit "laddy"

If a game if awful to the reviewer, a game is awful. Just like if they review a film or a book or any other thing, they should be polite and considerate (unlike the ign review) but if it is awful, they shouldn't try to alleviate it by saying "could be better." The reviewer should always set out why said game is awful during the review, paint an overall picture of the game. That doesn't mean people won't enjoy it (or vice versa, I have played 9 or 10/10 games and not liked them) but that in the reviewers view, it was an awful game. People should read the reviews, learn who they trust and yeah, people will be put off by bad reviews, people use said reviews to help find games they like or games to avoid. There are problems with the ign review, labelling it awful rather then something less mealy mouthed is not one of them.

I think were DW/SW suffers a little (only a little) is that if your playing it once a year (due to expansions) for review purposes, your probably not picking up the nuance of the changes. Fifa and so on do more changes usually but chances are someone in the office has played it regularly enough (without being hugely biased) to pick that up and if game is big enough+there isn't someone in the office, they can always find someone who does. DW also perhaps gets hit by bad rep for being repetitive (not entirely undeserved in the past) which doesn't help.

[Tao Qian]

Sometimes reviewers are just tired of writing... I had to test Samurai Warriors 3 some years ago at the office and in my opinion:

1)It's repetitive and it has to be.
Let's face it, all the other franchises can change scenario, but Samurai/Dynasty are based on history so the characters are the same and the battles too.

2)But it has a couple of strategic variations that are really good.
On the contrary of previous games, I had the feeling that my decisions were important for the battle's development.

3)Spanish translation was terrible
Probably no one cares, but it's true.

[Iain]

I recall talking about DW2 and how reptitive the gameplay was back in that much more basic game and once DW3 came out all it offered (besides of course 2 player mode) was more officers, more levels, better bodyguards and items now each DW game since then has offered a new spin on each of these but to the dedicated DW fan that's exactly what we want.

Dynasty Warriors and Samurai warriors are in their basic form simple beat them up games, something to play to kill a few hours and amuse us somewhat. And game reviewers cant understand what the great fascination is or why these games have done so well over the years. Those reviewers will vote the next GTA game 10/10 though despite in its base form all the GTA games are the same format.

I've given up reading reviews I make my own choices what I want to spend my time on.

[Dong Zhou]

Dynasty Warriors and Samurai warriors are in their basic form simple beat them up games, something to play to kill a few hours and amuse us somewhat. And game reviewers cant understand what the great fascination is or why these games have done so well over the years. Those reviewers will vote the next GTA game 10/10 though despite in its base form all the GTA games are the same format.

and even though I tend to get bored with GTA's, they deserve the high scores whereas DW which I tend to really enjoy deserves 7's at their best. Sure, the format of GTA is not going to suddenly change, that's fine, GTA takes years and years to make and one can see why given the quality that comes out at the end is highly impressive.

I've given up reading reviews I make my own choices what I want to spend my time on.

Reviews don't force you to buy a game, using them or ignoring them, the choice to buy is your own. I am curious as to how you decide what game your going to get?

[DragonAtma]

Sometimes official reviews are absurd.

Maybe a decade ago, RoTK4's official gamespot review was a whopping 3.8/10 -- and the fan reviews averaged out to 8.3/10. Gamespot eventually removed their official review (surprise, surprise).

In both cases, I imagine they had someone not interested in the genre handling the review -- which would almost guarantee a highly inaccurate review.

[Gray Riders]

I've mentioned this story before, but some site had a review for ROTK XI saying it's almost the exact same as ROTK X, so if you've played X there's no reason to get XI. Yeah.

Honestly, nowadays I find if I'm interested in a game some videos and a look at what people are saying on the boards are usually much more reliable than professional reviews.

[Dong Zhou]

Sometimes official reviews are absurd.

Maybe a decade ago, RoTK4's official gamespot review was a whopping 3.8/10 -- and the fan reviews averaged out to 8.3/10. Gamespot eventually removed their official review (surprise, surprise).

In both cases, I imagine they had someone not interested in the genre handling the review -- which would almost guarantee a highly inaccurate review.

Yeah there can be. Even now when the review organizations are more professional and in some cases less of a lads mag, going to get some horrors. I guess it is difficult always finding the right reviewer, if a franchise you need someone familiar enough to see the changes (or if there hasn't) but without being a fanboy and even then....

Honestly, nowadays I find if I'm interested in a game some videos and a look at what people are saying on the boards are usually much more reliable than professional reviews.

Glad that works for you. Personally I use reviews at least as a starting point for something though sometimes my already built up interest (DW, Warhammer Total War) means it would have to be major bad reviews here and on a few boards I go too but I tend not to use forums for buying purposes.