IGN's ORAS Review #TooMuchWater
- Thread starter Onilink89
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My knee-jerk reaction was that it was a terrible score that was surely based on reviewer bias and was a perfect example of IGN at its "finest".
After I calmed down a bit and remembered that I'm a Pokemon fanboy who's more biased that pretty much anyone else in favor of the series, I came to see the review as just a bad piece of journalism. The final score doesn't even really bother me that much, and although I certainly think her negatives held some merit, the rest of the review just wasn't up to par with what we should expect from one of the biggest names in gaming journalism. Plot details, such as how the games would integrate the Emerald plot into the remakes, were scarce. No mention of the new mega evolutions and how they impacted gameplay. No mention of the robust post-game and how it offers an insane amount of replayability, especially when compared to X and Y's lackluster post-game.
Also, it's difficult to justify a 7.8 based on two "negatives", especially when the wording of one of them was of very poor choice. I don't know if the writer was just inexperienced or not, but it's hard to believe that she didn't know she would catch internet hell for all of this.
After I calmed down a bit and remembered that I'm a Pokemon fanboy who's more biased that pretty much anyone else in favor of the series, I came to see the review as just a bad piece of journalism. The final score doesn't even really bother me that much, and although I certainly think her negatives held some merit, the rest of the review just wasn't up to par with what we should expect from one of the biggest names in gaming journalism. Plot details, such as how the games would integrate the Emerald plot into the remakes, were scarce. No mention of the new mega evolutions and how they impacted gameplay. No mention of the robust post-game and how it offers an insane amount of replayability, especially when compared to X and Y's lackluster post-game.
Also, it's difficult to justify a 7.8 based on two "negatives", especially when the wording of one of them was of very poor choice. I don't know if the writer was just inexperienced or not, but it's hard to believe that she didn't know she would catch internet hell for all of this.
Um, I think it's kinda dumb how the original version was rated a 9.5 and now the remake is rated a 7.8. I mean, I can tell the lady who reviewed it seems kinda like she was trying to be fair, and just by checking it you can find that she's not the same person as the guy who reviewed the first versions, so yeah, that does make it seem a little dumb.
I get the indication that, since this is mostly a remake, she should have just poked at how much they did with it and what seemed like things the game developers should have added. Not what issues the game had from the start.
I get the indication that, since this is mostly a remake, she should have just poked at how much they did with it and what seemed like things the game developers should have added. Not what issues the game had from the start.
That struck me as odd as well. In fact, there probably needed to be clarification on why a remake, especially one that boasted nearly universally all the critically acclaimed 3DS updates of XY, somehow got an average worse than its predecessor on two generation old hardware. I would understand if they clearly outlined that they were evaluating it under a different standard according to the current games we have on handheld system, but that's really the only way I would accept it. If the game's original flaws were somehow able to completely overshadow its current upgrades to the point that it resulted in a net loss of final score points, I severely question the competency of the reviewer.
I also realize that you could play the "different reviewer" card, but, again, keep in mind what the actual review contained, or lack thereof in this case; if the reviewer is going to destroy a precedent set by a relatively large margin (A 1-to-10 scale means the nearly 2 point difference is quite large), she needs to justify, clearly and concisely, why the "negatives" of the game result in that. Again, I just point to the theory that I think this was a inexperienced writer who might not have known what she was doing.