Board 8 > Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon Review Zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

LtM there is a difference between this is not for me and this is bad. Not every game is going to be designed around your personal taste!

Of course, I think you are incorrect here anyway. There are loads of crap open world games that review poorly, TotK is so well received because its an excellent instance of it and pushing the medium forward. There still havent been any non-TotK open worlds as advanced in terms of interactivity as BotWs and TotK pushes that even further. You even point out Resident Evil 4 as an example of a recent high scoring non-open world game, but of the top 5 rates games (more than ten reviews) this year, only one is an open world game. The same was true last year as well.

Open world games dont dominate the top reviewed games and never have. Nor are games scored highly because theyre open world. These games score highly because critics (and audiences) think they are excellent.

foolm0r0n posted...

Truly a game 96% as good as the best possible game
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/3/3/AAZVUhAAEx8N.jpg

I can't really tell if foolm0r0n is trolling or what, but whats with this post?

Visual novels generally suck, but House in Fata Morgana was pretty great. Also, it's metacritic score only has like 10 reviews. I think it's good form for anything with less than 30 reviews to be taken with a grain of salt. There's only a handful of crazy people in the world who actually professionally review visual novels, and they were always going to praise Fata Morgana no matter what lol.

There's a visual novel on the top 2023 for opencritic right now - Jack Jeanne, but again, it only has 10 reviews... so i personally don't really consider it top anything of 2023, even if open critic does.

For a decent period of time Steam had The House In Fata Morgana rated as the #1 game on the platform with over 1000 reviews.

I may joke about User Reviews, but it's often where you have to go for to get a good shake on VNs.

TomNook7 posted...

I can't really tell if foolm0r0n is trolling or what, but whats with this post?

There's a character called The Man

That's a weird translation. Wonder why they went with "The Man" instead of "Trader"

That's from the first trailer for the 4:3 PC release of the game I think, things were still pretty wonky back then.

God I can't wait for that new game.

Ah, gotcha. Makes sense.

Aggregate review scores are an extremely useful tool for deciding how I spend my time and money. They're not perfect, but nothing is, including the alternative methods that people who get up in arms about them suggest. I find demos to be poorly indicative of how much I'll like a game, and watching gameplay videos can't emulate the feel of what actually playing a game is like. Are people here seriously trying to suggest that I give every 65 on metacritic the same mental consideration as an 85? That's absurd.

Also open-world games score well because people generally like them, even if you don't. Part of making use of aggregate scores is by curating them via your own interests. It's not hard!

MacArrowny posted...

That's a weird translation. Wonder why they went with "The Man" instead of "Trader"

It's really weird because Michel Bolinger is da man, not whoever this random guy is

KamikazePotato posted...

They're not perfect, but nothing is

This made me realize, aggregator users are the centrists of gamers. There's no helping them...

Just gonna be intentionally weird about this one, huh?

Back in my day we chose what games to play next based on how cool the pictures on the back of the box were.

I would play based on what Hollywood Video had in the rental section

Psy Ops was crazy good

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

GamesHub - 10/10
Armored Core 6 is an unsympathetic and cold-blooded game. It's a cup of bitter, black coffee and thankfully, that suits my palate perfectly. It's full of moments that make you feel very powerful in both effortless and hard-fought ways and moments that make you very, very small. In the face of it all, you're pushed to overcome the impossible. And you'll come out on the other end wearing an exhausted, wry smile.

This writer is incredibly talented at saying nothing, lol.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

This writer is incredibly talented at saying nothing, lol.

gonna guess that the full review has more specifics on what the game is like

No that's the whole review

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Good to see my favorite game of all time hanging out there with that hot 96 with only 10 reviews though, NGL.

All visual novels are bad and not even video games

I'm only half serious

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

All visual novels are bad and not even video games

I'm only half serious

but shine those are easy platinums you should be all about it

https://youtu.be/kA21BgwiXuc?si=c1KEXima4H9Lla6T

The House in Fata Morgana is legitimately moving and for that reason should be reviewed highly. Very few (in my experience, no other) games are able to play to your emotions that well.

I don't exactly agree with calling it a good 'game', but...the medium they chose is what it is. I think ratings are entirely arbitrary to begin with, so even if something that doesn't quite fit the mold becomes a topic of conversation, it should be rated based on its merits. Its commonly understood that different genres are rated on different criteria: just as an easy example, nobody expects FPS games to have a good story as a primary consideration, and nobody expects the common AAA open world game that we are all familiar with today to have a completely bug free experience.

to that point just to drive it home, if you were playing a puzzle game and there were a bug where your piece just fell through the board, with any level of replicable frequency you would consider that completely unacceptable. but in todays AAA open world RPG/action game environment, if you get a bug where your character falls through the map thats just understood as a necessary symptom of ambition and handwaved away. I'm not making a judgement point on whether that's right or wrong, but it is the reality of how we review games in the modern era.

Given that we all agree that video games are things that you have some control over the outcome over, VNs are just always going to be included in that. I don't really see any future where they are separated, it doesn't make sense from any perspective

I have not cared about critic scores in a good 10-15 years.
Then the whole Cuphead and Doom 2016 things helped seal the deal there.

Anymore, I just play the games that seem to be up my alley and look fun. Usually glancing at some steam reviews to see if it's not complete hot trash.

Typically it works out fine.

See I love Fata Morgana, but I'm also someone who values gameplay first and foremost and I generally don't give a shit about story, and so I struggle with trying to figure out how to rate stuff like visual novels and walking sims.

Like yeah sure, they count as video games - they're just shitty video games. So I can't justify giving even the best ones higher than maybe 8/10. The best visual novel is still a visual novel.

It also sucks because Fata Morgana is like 40 hours long, and I can't justify recommending a 40 hour visual novel to anybody lol. (But damn that slow burn was worth the payoff at the end.)

The whole Fata Morgana reviews thing is also a little besides the point because the 96 average is for a Switch port with 10 reviews, Opencritic collates reviews from different platforms (though still only 15) and has it at an 89. So its not really comparable to the likes of TotK and BG3.

Xtlm posted...

I have not cared about critic scores in a good 10-15 years.
Then the whole Cuphead and Doom 2016 things helped seal the deal there.

https://opencritic.com/game/1792/cuphead

https://opencritic.com/game/1572/doom

?????????

TomNook7 posted...

Like yeah sure, they count as video games - they're just shitty video games. So I can't justify giving even the best ones higher than maybe 8/10. The best visual novel is still a visual novel.

This feels like earlier in the topic when LtM and foolmo were blasting metacritic because a lot of people dared to enjoy open world games.

LightningStrikes posted...

The whole Fata Morgana reviews thing is also a little besides the point because the 96 average is for a Switch port with 10 reviews, Opencritic collates reviews from different platforms (though still only 15) and has it at an 89. So its not really comparable to the likes of TotK and BG3.

I agree, Fata Morgana is not comparable to those because its way better than them

I havent played it and have no opinions!

KamikazePotato posted...

This feels like earlier in the topic when LtM and foolmo were blasting metacritic because a lot of people dared to enjoy open world games.

Reviewers just give open world games great scores for being open world

https://opencritic.com/game/13945/forspoken

Reviewers never give non-open world games top scores

https://opencritic.com/game/9136/baldurs-gate-3

Truly silly stuff.

Without bothering to read most of the topic i'm just going to input here that the real tragedy is how reviewers had so little interest in AC6 that blasphemous 2 has more reviews

Truly blasphemous

Only ac6 review that matters right here: From is wasted on soulslikes. This game is beautiful to look at, a joy to control, a thrill to get good at, and is a perfect sublimation of what Armored Core is meant to be in all the ways AC5 wasn't

Also the chapter 1 final boss has hella hands guddamn

KamikazePotato posted...

Just gonna be intentionally weird about this one, huh?

Are you surprised?

https://twitter.com/armoredcoreSIX/status/1694906733557424523

He's just describing Armored Core

I only lost to the tutorial boss once and even with just barely having learned the controls it never felt unfair. Somehow I immediately knew that there would be droves of people getting hard filtered by it - same thing happened recently in Wo Long where the first boss had just the slightest level of expectation of you understanding the mechanics and it resulted in a truckload of negative user reviews.

LightningStrikes posted...

?????????

The videos of the big company staffers playing the games.
Just made me think about the reviewers.

IDK, I grew up reading reviews in magazines all the time. I noticed a vibe change in the late 00's regarding reviewing and just kinda, stopped caring after lol. It hasn't changed how I look at games, I pretty much know what I am going to like and not at this point.

Xtlm posted...

The videos of the big company staffers playing the games.
Just made me think about the reviewers.

IDK, I grew up reading reviews in magazines all the time. I noticed a vibe change in the late 00's regarding reviewing and just kinda, stopped caring after lol. It hasn't changed how I look at games, I pretty much know what I am going to like and not at this point.

Well those werent by reviewers and obviously represent a small minority. Either way isnt that an argument in favour of aggregates as they eliminate outliers like that?

Personally I think review aggregates are a useful tool for seeing where the general feeling is on a game. Then you read a review you find interesting or different to find out why it is that way. It is bad when used for scorekeeping and stupid fandom arguments or by publishers to punish developers. Like most things there is a good way to use it and a bad way to use it.

Which review do you read?