I think the reason you're seeing high scores from TA is generally down to the fact that TA just will not review 90% of the trash submitted to appstore. Check these metrics: http://148apps.biz/app-store-metrics/ That's 57 games submitted every single day. I don't want to even begin to figure out how much spam TA gets from people with dire clones or ms paint iap laden shovelware. Like it or not, the vast majority of iOS titles being submitted are terrible. So TA has to pick what they think looks "promising" that won't waste the reader's time and energy, and won't waste their own time. Usually these picks turn out to be pretty good games. If of those 57 games submitted a day, they reviewed them, it's likely a lot of one star heroes would emerge. So I don't think TA has a bias, I think it's the nature of picking good titles to review that actually turn out to be pretty good.
I pretty much have 4 criteria for buying a game:- i. Metalcasket recommends it ii. Andy C83 likes it iii. Psj posts something positive about it iv. Bigavelli has it as winner, runner up or honourable mention in the game of the week thread. And then I know it's good if:- i. I enjoy it or:- ii. Andy C83, Syntheticvoid, Bigavelli or Terry Cavanagh are in the top 25 on the game centre leaderboards.
Plus, they've said it again and again, but they never wanted to add scores. At first, it was just a written review.
I'm an RPG fan and luckily Undeadcow our resident RPG guru has fanatically analysed and listed almost every RPG in all their sub genres for me to gain the benefit of his dedication to feeding this community. The front page I read for entertainment only. I rarely base a buying decision on a TA review. No disrespect to the reviewing system it's just that I've usually researched and bought most everything I'm interested in before the review comes out anyway :/ With regard to Pockef Gamer I was disenchanted with their reviews as far back as 2010 as they seem random to say the least. I still read Pocket Gamer via the app on my phone but its usually just to reassure myself I'm on the right place to get gaming news and reviews right here in these forums. Lol
Nah they review a lot of crap, they skip a lot of reviews of awesome games because it is considered to niche.just an example they review just about any crap runner or platformer but if it's a Strategy or board game without magic in the title it gets nothing even if the title in question is considered the best that iOS has to offer. And if they do review it they will be overly harsh because it's not magic . The dude has a thing for magic we get it already.
I get your point and they do occasionally ignore titles that the forum are going mad for. As a balance though they are individual people and they are bound to have their individual preferences despite also having to appear objective to some degree. When they ignore a game I'm mad for it wounds me but I try not to take it too seriously. It's different strokes for different folks ...
Ah I'm cool with it, I just don't come here for the font page content anymore, I go to other sites for that, the forum here though is always entertaining, and filled with generally good people.
+1 to that my friend. Also card games get short shrift here as you rightly pointed out. I remember everyone in the forums buzzing about Shadow Era which I thought was great fun myself but the game got no front page promotion/love which seemed off because it was well recieved in the forums. I guess this begs the question ... Is the front page supposed to reflect the views of forum posters religiously or what the team at TA personally enjoy or find interesting ? Is it a mix of the two right now ? (Sorry for not talking about PG as the thread intended, but come on, they are way off point compared to TA, only useful as an inferior reference point!)
Tons of pressure to remain consistent right here, folks! *starts to sweat* I really hope anyone who's bought anything I've recommended has always been happy with their purchase.
After a while you kinda know who to rely on to gauge a game; you can do that with websites and reviewers too.
I totally agree with Pocketgamer reviews, the app store is saturated with hundreds of "retro games" (games with poor graphics), endless runners, IAP, ect, so any game that comes in that category has to be really good, and so far the reality is that very very few of the games that are coming out are good. (Fester Mud and the other brothers are examples of those few). We had for sometime dual core processor phones, now we have phones with quadcore processors and advanced GPU and still we are getting crappy games. The latest phones have the power to do PS2 style Graphics, anyone of you had played uncharted on vita?, the latest phones have the power to do that and more. so why we are still getting shitty endless runners games? and shitty final fantasy remakes?, (final fantasy V), we deserve an original full 3D Final Fantasy game or a full AAA title. Also, I don´t know how fun can it be playing a game like AvP when all the levels are the same stuff over and over again, it´s good for 1 hour only, after that it´s plain boring. (90% of the games of the app store are like that sadly). I think IOS Gaming is stalling, in the early days we saw games that were pushing the capabilites of the phones but not anymore, nowadays it´s the same kind of games over and over (retro games, retro rpg, endless runners, IAP ridden games, ect).
The best reviews don't end with a score. But it's funny the topic creator felt Super Hexagon was rated too low, because I feel it's been massively overrated. It's quite a boring game. I dunno if you're referring to The Other Brothers, but the graphics on that are fantastic. Far better than games that try to do photorealism and fail horribly. With those you're looking at a poor attempt, with TOB you're looking at exactly what was intended. Artistic perfection.
As someone who frequents review sites frequently and checks reviews for pretty much anything, I agree. On review sites I'll often browse by rating, but typically middling and above to get a sense of things. (I did this when I first got my iPad and was deciding what to get.) TA's front page reviews are often helpful, as are the first impressions here. I don't frequent other iOS app review sites, but the PC section of Gamezebo was often very helpful to me. (Less so with iOS games, I think because less things get full reviews due to volume/time.) I'll read the review for the content & information it gives me about the game. First impressions/reviews on the forum are often very helpful as well, even though they're not Official Reviews. I'm sure some of my beloved games are middling to low on some sites, and some fantastic games just aren't my thing. I can't speak about PocketGamer personally because as I mentioned I'm not there much, but that's my overall opinion on app reviews.
Internally I've got tech that is just nuts. That runs really well on rubbish hardware - essentially xbox 360 quality but with some tricks. I've been coding for 30 years now and know my way around hardware. I'd love to do a crysis/halo style game and show some bad ass game dev off but there's a reason why I haven't done that yet... .. All the engine muscle in the world can't help you if you don't have the budget to afford great art to go with it. Like it or not, retro is within reach of a smaller team which hasn't got that budget. After TOB I will probably have to make another retro title - something risky/exciting - but then we'll look at our budget and see if we can make a splash. I appreciate the comments about TOB's art btw - it doesn't look nearly as nice without the vignetting, screen burn (discoloration) and other tricks we use to make it really pop. I can see (without being arrogant) that it'll get copied somewhat. But the credit for TOB's pixel work is probably mostly down to the excellent Bjorn Hurri with help from the rest of the team. The engine can only take you so far without the art. But really what holds devs down is that it's really expensive to upgrade the art. If you want to take a look at our artist's main page: http://www.bjornhurri.com/ You'll see he's worked on anything from devil's cartel and upwards. We just can't afford to put that to 3D just yet unfortunately. But it is coming.
I felt it was rated a bit low but not by much so just gave a point up to subjectivity and left it at that. I'm sure no one in here actually goes off scores but to think the majority of people don't would be incorrect. If you list Metacritic as a related site on your front page, grade 85% of new games and have a Buyers Guide I think you've made it pretty clear the score counts. Yes we don't use them and subjectivity is an issue but scores DO effect sales. As Mrs Castleton said in Grade 8 "If you're gonna score, do it responsibly and make it mean something"
