To support the GameSpot is a pay-for-stars theory.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-gamer_1208gl.ART.State.Edition1.36d582d.html
http://valleywag.com/tech/jeff-gerstmann/gamespot-editor--on-fired-reviewer-328775.php


It would seem that after Kane and Lynch failed they fired a reviewer for giving it.. a bad review.
How many clowns actually support this site?

The apparent buzz out of Gamespot 'suits' is that he was terminated over his apparent "tone" in several reviews, not just the Kane and Lynch one.

The other stuff floating about from 'inside gamespot sources' is that there is pressure to put up reviews with a better score because of the advertising.

However; I've noticed that Gamespot has been known to hold back "bad reviews" especially when their site is advertising the games. Some games are out for upwards of two weeks before a review comes out (See: Lair). Sure they're running a business, and I would say a good portion of their revenue comes through advertising on the site. Its hard to find any big game site that isn't 'influenced' by its advertisers, IGN can be just as bad.

I tend to take everything in a review and look at it objectively, check out as much media I can, and see what is going on in the forums dedicated to those games. Normally you can get a pretty good idea from most review scores as to whether or not a game is worth buying by comparing it to user feedback.

Welcome to weeks ago imsoshort.

yeah srsly

Dear Massassi Forum Admins,

In reference to IRG SithLord's post: If you find it absolutely necessary to have implemented a thingy that automatically resizes posted images to 600 pixels wide, please do the resizes properly (Bicubic or something, so that resized text is readable), and/or make them clickable to show full size. It's not that hard, learn to program. Thanks in advance.

Sincerely, kyle90

...their business is based on selling ad space. I don't understand how this is a surprise to anyone.

But ad sales shouldn't be reflected in site contents. This is illustrated in many podcasts. One week Diggnation is talking about how much they hate a certain brand of computers, and the next week that computer is a sponsor. In the same vein, Netflix has been a major sponsor, and all of the cast seems to really enjoy netflix, so they also include their personal support. Advertising doesn't prescribe the content of a medium, and if it does, the medium has failed.

.... People still care about this?

.... People actually read IGN and GameSpot?

I don't think I've honestly read a full review for any game I've purchased... well... EVER. I don't even look at numbers.

General strategy now is to download a demo to my 360, see if it's worth playing. Sometime after that one of my friends generally gets it, and I can go watch it and ask questions. If not one of them, someone in my classes. If it's big, Kotaku does a combined mishmash of reviews and tosses up the scores in a graph followed by select quotes, and one of their editors random thoughts. I only read that out of curiosity. I don't care what it says, and it's not going to influence my decision to buy or not buy.

Dear kyle90,

Please write such a "thingy" in javascript that works on all major browsers and then maybe we'll use it.

Sincerely, Massassi Forum Admins

Hahahahaha

Like what Deviantart has?

@phoenix_9286

Agreed. I don't need someone to tell me if a game is worth playing or not. I can readily find out for myself.

Plenty of my faovrite titles have been considered "mediocre" by the gamespot and IGN community, but I like them just fine.



People need to learn that a 9.0 game isnt walking around a giant city for three hours with pedistrians that rotate between 4 models, shooting anything that you can, with little or no seeming objective. (hope you caught the subtle implication there)

yeah but the guy who got fired gave tony hawks 3 a 10/10 what a dumbass his dumbass needed firing, video games "journalists" lol, jeff gerstmann sucks.

"hey guys gta sux aka i have bad taste in games:gbk: "

People need to learn that people have different tastes, and your oh-so-subtle jab at the GTA genre is stupid considering the obscenely high production values in the GTA games from 1-3 and all the expansions/side stories, and that your extremely narrow view of the GTA games spawns from sitting down for 3 minutes, playing, then using a pre-registered opinion on them as your basis for the games as a whole.

If you want to preach, do it somewhere else. At the very least you don't have the clout to do it here.

Seriously. GTA, for the most part =

It has it's flaws. So does every game. But overall, it has never really disappointed me.

And Crackdown despite being fairly lame in the story and general plot area, was an amazing game. I've maxed out a character three times now, and still stick it in occasionally when I need a "rampant blow everything up" fix. Or when I want to drive cars up the side of buildings. Or free run across a down town skyline.

I just got crackdown.

It's awesome. They should make a sequel where I can throw buildings and fight giant robots.

I don't like GTA games but I can see why some people would. They do have pretty high production value for what they are.

I think the problem nomadsymboloul was pointing out is that game companies now try to create a GTA clone and assume it will sell automatically. How many GTA-like games can you have? Even Rockstar is stretching to find new excuses and gimmicks to keep the series alive. How can a third party bastardization like Kane and Lynch possibly be good?

(It's not)

Ya srsly guyz let's go play sum wicked pissa halo 3, aigh't.

This is one reason i dont read reviews by proffessional reviewers.

My reasons are that; they are reviewing it from the POV of the wrong demographic, they do not understand the thing they are reviewing or the thing they are reviewing is made by a major sponsor (buying good reviews is not new at all).

I still dont get why people continue to trust magazine reviews by companies that seem to need to get companies to buy good reviews.

Online blog style reviews are much better IMO, because the company can advertise for anything that the demographic is interested in.

Understandable, though I don't think rockstar's stretching at all to keep their GTA series alive. They add one or two new features, and change the background/storyline. That's it. And they reuse the backgrounds and make sequels to the storylines...

The games just feel so good to play. Solid gameplay, excellent graphics all things considered, and if you take the time to play through the story it's usually actually very very interesting and well thought-out.

The game sucks, the writer sucks, the website sucks.

I've come to the conclusion this thread must suck too.

YOUR MOM SUCKS! AMIRITE!?

Actually Opera and Safari both resize images using some kind of resampling, while IE and Firefox both use "nearest neighbor" logic.

So if you want resized images to be resampled so badly, switch browsers...

@DJ Yoshi

Actually I own all three GTA games and find none of them satisfying or entertaining. I have beaten 3 and Vice and stopped in the middle of SA. If anything they mostly sell to the mass populus of idiot teenagers in pit stained eminem shirts that want to fit into a ghetto subculture but cannot.

There is no preaching here, I could care less about the games content. Its just a s--tty game. Period. Plot is weak, design is simple at best, and its on and on and on with the same crap over and over again. And nowhere did I force my opinion on anyone I simply stated that I have distaste for it. If I remember right this board is for general discussion, therefore I have the right to say whatever I want within the rules of the forum and the admin who oversee it.

I do not rate a game by how much it sells or how many versions are produced. Madonna has a ton of CD's. Would you go buy one?

Please learn to debate properly instead of bashing someone for bringing up something that you disagree with.

I would buy a Madonna CD if I liked it. I find it interesting that you played through the two GTA games I didn't think very highly of yet gave up on the one that actually moves beyond its LOLGUNCRIMEANDGANGS roots.

San Andreas was the first GTA game where I felt driven to actually do the missions, rather than just seeing them as an obstacle blocking me getting to the next area of the game.

Also, if you want to appear less idiotic, the phrase you're looking for is "I couldn't care less".

I've wrote a PHP class that does this...

Madonna's one of the most important and influential artists of the second half of the 20th century.

I'm not a fan, but everything you say makes it sound like you're just a bitter antisocialite who hates things that are popular and thinks he's smarter than everyone around him yadadamean:suicide:

Vice City is so far away from "ghetto subculture" it's not even funny.

San Andreas (which, by your own admission, you didn't finish, if you played it at all) has been the only installment to really dip into the "ghetto" subculture. And really, Eminem? If you're going to create ridiculous stereotypes, you may as well have them endorse someone that's still relevant.



Ignoring the fact that this entire section is composed entirely of vague criticisms that don't really mean anything, there is nothing wrong with simple game design. In fact, the 'sim' aspects of San Andreas (eating, working out, etc.) seem to be almost universally despised. Sometimes, driving around and shooting people is enough



Well, first, you don't have any 'rights' here, or anywhere else on the internet. Second, you're being a dick. There may not be an explicit rule against this, but it's not going to get you very far.



...

I think this speaks for itself.

If this is even true, you're still an idiot. The games may not pander to your wants in a game, that I would accept. But the games have obscenely high production value (for the time, GTA3 was easily one of the best games on the market for a good year on consoles). The stories are EXTREMELY well thought out...that is if you don't just skip the cutscenes and do the missions. You did make sure to do that, didn't you? And bashing Eminem doesn't make you cool man. Eminem has nothing to do with GTA, has never had anything to do with GTA, and unless I'm mistaken his entire persona doesn't appear ONCE in the GTA series (all 7 or 8 games now). If you want to be relevant, think Al Pacino/Scarface, or Goodfellas, or Miami Vice, or even Tupac. Not Eminem. I think it's obvious enough that you haven't played the games from the sheer fact that you can't recognize this, no matter what you say.


Really?


and

So, you're not preaching, but anyone who plays, and enjoys, GTA is automatically a fan of ****ty games (from some arbitrary opinion on YOUR part which is probably unfounded), and is a poser ghetto fabulous wannabe, but once again you're not forcing your opinions on anyone. You're just forcing your opinions on the fans...on...the...fans.


You don't have any rights. You don't have anything stopping you too badly, but if you continue on like you are, you won't last long buddy.

If you have an opinion of a game, that's fine, but keep it to yourself unless someone asks "Hay guys what's your opinion". Nobody cares that you've had a rant you've been wanting to spit out for the last 3 years because your friend started listening to rap music AND just so happened to start doing drugs AND just so happened to play GTA at the same time, or god knows what happened to get you all butthurt over the game. Go cry your river somewhere else man, and I'm not telling you what to do per se, I'm just telling you what to do.


Depends. She had a couple good songs...but to be honest, probably not. Does that mean that anyone who does automatically sucks at life? No. Does that mean that you're an idiot if you do and love ****ty games and fit into some general stereotype? No. Madonna pioneered the music industry for women in particular in the late 80s/early 90s. She's an international icon for a reason. Same way I think Bono's a pretentious prick and hate his music, but understand what he did for music in general and what he does for the world.


Pot. Kettle. Black. All that.

Though to be fair, I'm just working with what I'm given

Further more, the satire and parody in GTA3, VC and SA are brilliant.

Well, most of it. Replacing every two digit number with 69 is getting a little old.

It's not a matter of PHP. It has to be client side (javascript) because the images are linked, not uploaded to the server. If I hacked vbulletin to process every IMG tag and then send the results to user, Massassi's CPU load would jump through the roof and it wouldn't help bandwidth usage either.

true.. even in javascript it's easy to do. but actually I find forums that resize the images is rather annoying

I wanna know why he bought the second and third GTA after hating the first, when for all intensive purposes he could've looked on the back of the box and seen that not much was changed at all

My guess is I called his bluff, so he bluffed again, and never bought any of them, and hates them on principle rather than for any real reason.

Just my guess.

also he is unpopular @ school

Well duh thrawn that's a given.