I stopped playing console games when I discovered sex, now I just play games.
Ten... console games you may have missed
Although the release schedule for console games hasn't been quite as unenventful as its PC counterparts, Q2 has been pretty quiet with the majority of top titles shelved to swamp the autumn setlist. Indeed, you'd usually expect a steady flow of quality retail games, but this has all but evaporated. While various disappointments …
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Tuesday 7th August 2012 09:19 GMT Maxson
I hate to be that guy, but £2k is phenomenally expensive, even for a brand new extremely high spec gaming PC if you build it yourself.
£600 will do for a good gaming PC. I realise that's still a lot of money, but I'm posting in the interests of accuracy, not sanity. My current machine was about £1300 in total, but it'll last me 4-5 years unless I get the itch to be a bit childish and go spunk more cash on it.
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Tuesday 7th August 2012 08:29 GMT MJI
Still playing 2011 games
I am still playing catchup with my games, 2012 has not been as good as 2011.
Trying to finish not the last Assassins Creed game but the one before, one of my boys bought Skyrim but it doesn't excite me at all.
The most recent release I have enjoyed was Uncharted 3!!!!
Also I am fed up of Move knocking, it works incredibly well in FPSs, I will not buy a FPS on console without Move support now, pity there are only 2 decent Move supported FPSs, and only one has a decent multiplayer.
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Tuesday 7th August 2012 11:37 GMT Studley
In fairness, Dark Souls was released on consoles last year, rather than Q2 2012.
Spec Ops was much better than it had any right to be. Ignore the "just another FPS" trailer, it has a surprisingly deep story and a superb ending. There's a multiplayer mode too, but meh, and importantly none of the game's achievements/trophies are tied to multiplayer, so you can ignore it altogether (like I did).
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Tuesday 7th August 2012 08:48 GMT Greg J Preece
Are you guys allergic to giving a game less than 70%? This is another reason why I can't take you seriously on gaming (the Halo reviews aside...). You basically called several games on this list crap, then gave them 70%. And El Reg is hardly alone in doing this,
This is why I prefer the scoring of people like Angry Joe. Dude isn't afraid to mark your game down. If a game is average, it gets 50%, if it's great it gets 70%, and it has to be ball-bustingly brilliant to get 90% or above. Otherwise you can't differentiate between the scoring on the games, and you end up with a bunch of games with the same score that vary wildly in quality.
TL;DR - knock it off. Stop being afraid to give games crap scores if they're crap.
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Tuesday 7th August 2012 09:19 GMT Caleb Cox
These are only a selection of the games I have played over the last few months. There were definite exclusions - some mentioned in the opening para - which would have scored below 70%.
We didn't want to give you a list of poor games - the idea is to point out some that you might like. While many of these still have their shortcomings, it would be harsh to drop them below the 70 mark, which isn't exactly a thrilling score anyway.
When you start getting into 60s and below, it generally says a game is pretty awful and it would be harsh to label these ten so unfairly. So yeah, while I have pointed negatives out with some, they still warrant a score that reflects their respective 'comme ci, comme ça' status. They might not all be exceptional, but none are a complete waste of time and money.
Then again, it is games, so it's all somewhat subjective anyway.
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Tuesday 7th August 2012 11:31 GMT Greg J Preece
When you start getting into 60s and below, it generally says a game is pretty awful and it would be harsh to label these ten so unfairly
That's the point I would argue. 60% shouldn't mean "awful" to me. If all so-so games make it to 70% and above, it gets much harder to differentiate quality. It means there's a huge section of your percentage range that never gets used, if a truly dreadful title can still score, say, 50%.
It's all down to where you set the average point, IMO, and I would say that if you establish "average" at 50%, and make that clear to readers, then you can differentiate between "misses the mark", "average", "good but nothing amazing", "recommended", "excellent", etc with appropriate scores.
There are games I've thoroughly enjoyed that earn 70% on MC, and truly dreadful stuff that earns exactly the same mark*. I just think that too many reviewers hover around this upper scale. The perception within the gaming community (not the reviewer's fault by any means) is that anything below 7/10 is shit, and that really makes no sense to me. It certainly isn't that way with other media, such as films. (Jim Sterling probably makes this argument far better than I'm doing.)
*OK, OK, Metacritic arguments aside. I know a lot of reviews, especially for movie-licenced games, are *ahem* sponsored.
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Tuesday 7th August 2012 13:13 GMT Caleb Cox
Take your point entirely, but the public also sees 50% as below average, so if we rated an average game 50%, there are plenty of people who see the score, think it's complete turd, then switch off.
In my school days anything below 60% was an F.
then it worked its way up with D (60-69%), C (70-79%), B (80-89%) and A... and the scores of gaming reviews are very similar in my opinion.
I think in general, these are our rough guidelines FYI..
If a game scores less than 25% it means it is faulty and shouldn't have been released.
25-35% waste of time, pretty unplayable
40-50% Not much cop, unlikely to enjoy
55-65% Playable, but don't have high expectations
70-75% Average game, run of the mill
80% Good game
85% Great game
90% Tremendous game!
95% Seminal work that excels in almost every area
100% Acme of gaming in the moment.
Makes sense, no?
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Wednesday 8th August 2012 06:46 GMT Richard 81
The Witcher 2 continues the story, so it might be a bit jarring if you haven't played the first one. Then again, the first one was pretty jarring, since Geralt's lost his memory.
The controls are very different. Combat in the first one involves pausing, clicking on your target and timing your attacks. The second one takes the more conventional "press X to swing sword" approach.
That all being said, The Witcher 2 looks significantly better on PC. Assuming you have one that can handle it.
...wish I did.
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