Why are critic reviews of CoD: Black Ops so good but customer reviews so bad?

[whistleclient]

Honestly, I've been out of games for a while and I haven't played Call of Duty: Black Ops yet. I was looking on metacritic and noticed the striking difference between critic and user reviews. Can someone please explain?

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-black-ops

 

[ViviTheMage]

paid off?

 

[postmortemIA]

Regardless of what they say, neither critics or publishers would have jobs if critics would stop rating every franchise game with 8/10 or 9/10

 

[Liet]

They'd have a job - it just wouldn't be tied so fucking inseparably from advertising dollars and "selling" the mag by making every upcoming game THE game you need to get, and therefore THE magazine you need to buy so you can read the article.

 

[zinfamous]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[NikolaeVarius]

On on instance, CoD Blops is a huge game meaning if a reviewer doesn't give good scores, that site could lose TONS of ad revenue. There is also the fact that it may also be a game that does well for reviews, but meh for normal players.

On the other hand, there are also tons of trolls who rate stuff down for the sake of rating it down.

 

[zinfamous]

They'd have a job - it just wouldn't be tied so fucking inseparably from advertising dollars and "selling" the mag by making every upcoming game THE game you need to get, and therefore THE magazine you need to buy so you can read the non-substantive yet pic-saturated article about THE game to get splattered between ad upon ad for THE NEXT game to get.

fixed

 

[Wardawg1001]

Consumers rate things differently than magazines and review web sites. If you want to see a stark difference in ratings, check the metacritic score for CoD MW2 for PC. Main reason for that (and it used to be an even lower user score than it is now, if I remember correctly) was the whole dedicated servers issue. People don't have to be objective in rating a game, and something like a feeling of betrayal from a change in core mechanics or just a lack of changes overall for the $60 price tag of the new game are enough to get people to throw out a 2 or a 3. I won't go into the tons of scenarios and differences between how a "professional" critic rates a game versus an end user, but suffice to say that they dont use the same metrics, and thats how you can end up with different scores.

 

[Arkaign]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Correct.

Mediocre single player combined with uninspired multiplayer featuring tiny claustrophobic 1997-tech maps FTMFL.

BFBC2 is twenty times the game BLOPS is, and I don't even like BC2 that much (prefer to wait for the full meat and potatoes BF3).

 

[sandorski]

Publishers don't pay the Gaming Public enough.

 

[zerocool84]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Yup, I remember the Kane & Lynch fiasco over at Gamespot that got the reviewer fired.

 

[pontifex]

on once instance, cod blops is a huge game meaning if a reviewer doesn't give good scores, that site could lose tons of ad revenue. There is also the fact that it may also be a game that does well for reviews, but meh for normal players.

On the other hand, there are also tons of trolls who rate stuff down for the sake of rating it down.

winnar!

 

[RavenSEAL]

A lot of people that came from MW2 got pissy dizzy because they couldn't knife lunge 100ft for a kill, that's how i see it.

 

[Arkaign]

winnar!

While I agree that there are trolls abound, Black Ops is a mediocre FPS with a lot of flaws (many of which have been patched, some are just inherent though), it certainly doesn't deserve glowing reviews. Maybe when a new engine (better detail / range / smoothness) drops in and some more complex maps can be implemented. There's a lot of promise in the series, but the past couple editions have been ca$h grabs by the publishers and not much more than expansion packs / mods for an existing game. Hell, mods like the WW2 one for Half Life are more legitimately different than the original game than going from MW1 > MW2 > Blops, when you take the single-session beaten single player game out of the equation.

 

[pontifex]

While I agree that there are trolls abound, Black Ops is a mediocre FPS with a lot of flaws (many of which have been patched, some are just inherent though), it certainly doesn't deserve glowing reviews. Maybe when a new engine (better detail / range / smoothness) drops in and some more complex maps can be implemented. There's a lot of promise in the series, but the past couple editions have been ca$h grabs by the publishers and not much more than expansion packs / mods for an existing game. Hell, mods like the WW2 one for Half Life are more legitimately different than the original game than going from MW1 > MW2 > Blops, when you take the single-session beaten single player game out of the equation.

i was going more for a general idea. Black Ops certainly wasn't good in the beginning for me. took 4 patches before i could play without problems.

 

[marmasatt]

I agree that there are like smear campaigns out there for various games. I also agree that the reviewers are often magazine or publishing whores. If I have to get off the fence I'd say the former. I really think this game is fine. If you like the genre, you'll like it. Sure nothing revolutionary, but it is a fine game. Certainly one of the best shooters of 2010.

 

[Barfo]

Call of Duty: Black Ops review event, press gifts detailed

When you work for a gaming outlet with a large audience, Activision can make your life very good. The publisher has made a habit out of offering posh "review events" for the press instead of simply sending out early code. When the reviews arrive, few discuss the free vacation they were given.
This is why we were so impressed to see a full description of the event held for Call of Duty: Black Ops reviewers in GamePro. The short story: Activision spent a lot of money to make sure reviewers were impressed before they even played the game.

 

[Mike Gayner]

Game reviewing has been a complete joke for at least 15 years now, and it's getting worse. Pay no attention to professional review scores - particularly for high-budget franchises.

 

[shortylickens]

Regardless of what they say, neither critics or publishers would have jobs if critics would stop rating every franchise game with 8/10 or 9/10

Bingo.

Far Cry 2 sucked balls. In fact it sucked so badly they had to buy the Far Cry name in order to get any sales at all. And the critics had to pay their bills so it got rated well.

Why do you think the last Call of Duty game had nothing to do with the first Call of Duty game? They just need the name to keep going, and they get sales. Those games were probably going to be called something else until someone realized they needed the safety of a familiar title to keep it profitable.
Ditto Fallout 3 and most D&D games.

 

[sandorski]

One problem reviewers have is that they just don't get in enough Play time to see the flaws, especially in Multiplayer where they will be exploited ad nauseum.

 

[Mike Gayner]

Far Cry 2 sucked balls. In fact it sucked so badly they had to buy the Far Cry name in order to get any sales at all. And the critics had to pay their bills so it got rated well.

I disagree - I enjoyed Far Cry 2 and think it was rated appropriately.

 

[NoSoup4You]

I believe Activision no longer ships out review copies of their Call of Duty series, instead they invite the reviewers to come to Activision's HQ where they can play the game on-site during a 'Call of Duty is the greatest game ever Extravaganza!!'.

Either the review website agrees to this and reviews the game under these ridiculous circumstances, or they wait until the game launches and purchase a retail copy for review, which means they lose tons of views based on the fact they don't have a review up for the latest Call of Duty game.

If you've ever seen what these amatuer vlog'ers on YouTube pull in for subscribers/views by simply uploading their Call of Duty videos w/commentary, you can imagine how damaging it would be for a review site to not have that review ready to go on launch day.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Just go to the IGN or Gamespot and look at all the ads. The amount advertising on there is ridiculous. Its an advertising site that also happens to have some game-related articles in it. . . which are also advertisements. Read the reviews? They are terrible.

See more here:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Juts_beaumont/topic/3074931/1/


If you want good, robust reviews, check out actionbutton.net

 

[JoshGuru7]

Certainly there could be a source of bias in some of the reviews when the publisher is advertising on the review website. I think you guys are taking it a little far though - most of the reviews I read on metacritic I find to be quite fair.

Black Ops wasn't the best game of all time, but it wasn't reviewed as such either. IGN's review gives it one of the higher scores (85/100) but it clearly mentions the poor AI, linear gameplay and how the game plays part of the singleplayer for you. I would have probably given it about an 85 myself, and nobody is paying me.

The main difference between the critic reviews and the customer reviews when it comes to Black Ops is the discussion of bugs and glitches. The very first customer review as I type this states that "Black Ops is unplayable on a PC". I played it just fine on a PC and while I sympathize with posters who have had many troubles, there are also plenty of us who have had few. I don't know what the common denominator is but with the hodgepodge of computing hardware and drivers that people use, I tend to discount complaints about bugs heavily.

Also, look at how many of the user reviews are either 0 or 1 on metacritic. They need to employ a formula like IMDB does to eliminate the low and high scores from the hordes of internet monkeys who can only think in binary.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Because the game is fucking terrible and the gaming media has absolutely no integrity.

/Haven'tReadTheThread