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As just someone from the outside looking in, this game is so confusing. On one hand you have journalist sites praising this game and throwing 10/10 around like crazy and on the other you have a review like this that is critical of the game and points out (for me) very blatant faults. Do the points presented by SkillUp not matter to the average game journalist? Or is that something they actually seek in an immersive RPG experience? I'm just so lost on how it can actually be given a 10/10 after seeing this review.
For what it’s worth, the two people I know who are playing this game were fans of the previous games and absolutely love the new one.
Apparently, EA/Bioware will withhold early access review codes if you are critical of the game. So they are incentivized to write glowing reviews even if the game doesn't deserve it.
Got a source on that?
Um... Literally everyone in the industry? It's not a secret that access journalism runs rampant. if you need an individual just to look through Jim Sterling's videos on the subject, she often talked about her time before going independent.
Fextra life just put a video out about it too https://youtu.be/LDRVdfzHXDI?si=DVHH-sqnGE52n_Rs
my dude it's ea and the nu-bioware devs, use your brain. you set up your own lemmy instance i know you can do it.
Based on some other coverage I've seen, specifically from reviewers who were denied early review copies, it looks like BioWare/EA is doing what most companies do and shopping around for reviewers who will be especially positive. They're just being especially aggressive with it this time around. It's not a good look, but it's expected for basically any major publisher.
It sounds like after the early press only event they did a while back, a bunch of reviewers who were critical of the game then got ghosted by EA's PR people and never received early review copies.
So, like all pre-launch reviews take any reviews you're seeing now with a grain of salt and wait until a week or so after launch to see the reviews that weren't cherry-picked by EA's corporate PR.
It's been at least 20 years since video game "journalists" or "critics" were actually honest. Companies will blacklist anyone that doesn't write a positive review for their games, so everything published before or on release day is advertising.
If you want honest reviews you need to wait 24-48 hours after release for real reviews. If you actually want opinions from those that completed a game you need to wait even longer.
There's definitely some sketchy stuff going on, but in general, reviews are mostly an opinion. A lover of the original versus a hater of the original will probably not give the same score to this game. It really depends on the reviewers history, preferences, ability to investigate, empathize with other demographics / types of players, patience, endurance, willingness to forgive bad gameplay/graphics/story/music as long as the gameplay/graphics/story/music is good, etc.
Imo it's just that SkillUp is a good reviewer and many others are not.
When BF2042 was released many big papers said it was super good when it was utter garbage.
Either go the metacritic way and average things out or stick to a few reviewers you know share your taste.
I've watched a couple of his videos and he's just my style. A lot of his points are just not important to me and that's okay. Find a reviewer that matches your profile.
I think it's interesting how highly people speak of him but strongly disagree with some of his recommendations in Gaming subreddits. Tho that might be because his reviews to these games are just well written.
He gives a lot of detail as to why he likes or doesn't like various things, so you can determine for yourself if they're important to you or not. SKillUp is my favorite reviewer, and I definitely don't agree with him on all his takes.
He's usually on point but I don't always agree with him personally. Still, it's easy to decide because he usually makes a point of telling why he likes/dislikes something. People have differing opinions on the same things and that's okay. Great review, as usual.
I know it sounds bad to say it now, but games journalism has always been terrible. You can find examples decades ago of access journalism and journalists who didn't even play the games they reviewed. Sure, back then they were usually harsher than they should have been, but i feel like that was healthier for the industry.
Two groups will 10/10 this game: access journalists and agenda-driven journalists. Everyone else is going to be a bit more critical, especially considering Baldur's Gate 3 exists and is still fresh.