One of the many things that make me happy about Tap is that we have no assholes here (except me). Every now and then some no-name will wander by and leave an obnoxious comment, but they never seem to stay for long. Ours is a grown-up site where people treat each other politely, and when they disagree, they discuss and debate. And one of the things I fear is that continued growth may inevitably lead to the sprouting of assholes in our garden of tranquility.
I have long been an admirer of Tom Chick, veteran journalist and reviewer, owner of Quarter to Three, and witty wordsmith extraordinaire. He and I seem to be on the same wavelength most of the time and I really like his writing style. Others do not. His moderately chilly 1UP review of Civilization V is getting the usual slams in the comments, by the usual assholes who haunt such sites.
Now whether or not you “agree” with Tom’s score of or opinion on Civilization V is irrelevant. He’s a professional hired to do a job. He has a great deal more integrity than some I’ve known.
So the trolls are doing the usual – accusing him of taking bribes, of not having actually played the game; telling him he’s a moron because all the other big sites gave it a great score; suggesting that he gave the game a mediocre score to highlight his review on Metacritic; saying he’s untrustworthy because he didn’t like Deus Ex, the typical stuff. There’s nothing unusual about the the comments thread – practically every 1UP discussion is like that. It’s just that I happened to read some of it after I read his review, something I almost never bother to do.
And Tom is handling it perfectly – ignoring 99% of the comments altogether. When someone asks him something directly and politely, he answers directly and politely. This demonstrates that he is reading the comments. He’s just not getting involved in the flame war. Which is very smart; of course, Tom’s been around long enough to know that you should never get involved in the flame war, ever. At most you respond, directly and politely, but ignore the personal stuff.
Given that Tom’s key complaints about the game – weak AI, peculiar interface decisions, shoddy diplomacy – are entirely valid, one must wonder why he’s taking so much crap. Well, because he gave the game a C, the equivalent of our “middlin'” score. “A C is too harsh,” people are saying. “Everyone else gave it a million points,” people are saying.
The only moment of frustration on Tom’s part in the comments was when he expressed his disappointment that people gravitate to the score without reading – as he put it – the “thousands of words I actually wrote about the game.” After all, everybody knows the alphabet. 1UP could have hired a chimpanzee to dispense letters.
Not everyone can write – something brought into stark reality by the grammatical wasteland that is the Civ V review section’s comments. 1UP could not have hired a chimpanzee to review the game. So which is more valuable?
Email the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
Steerpike, you definitely are the evil presence, if there is one, here at Tap. I mean, what have you done to poor Lewis recently? He’s churning out content faster than the Amish can churn butter.
Now, on topic (I know we don’t like to use that phrase here- sorry!), if Tom Chick isn’t a fine human being then I don’t know who is. I have long respected this man’s reviews; they are always elegant, informative, humorous and most of all thoughtful.
Anyone who flames him for dishing out reasonable and honest criticisms can just go eat a bowl of double wank and shit chips as far as I’m concerned.
I always liked that Tom Chick still had enthusiasm after all this time. When he likes something, game or movie, he really makes it apparent. He always has solid reasoning behind his opinions and whether you agree or not, you can’t slam his integrity.
Game scores are really just a compromise. Seeing Chick’s C score is meaningless unless you read the review. Read the review and the score becomes redundant. I personally don’t put much credence in a grade or a score for a game. I mean…oh this game is an 88. Not an 87. Not an 89. Yeah right…
His comment about AI really brought me down. I’ve only played about three hours of Civ V and so far, it’s like heroin. Tom makes a point about learning the game and then discovering the AI’s limitations, and I believe him. I have noticed some discrepancies with trade goods. I currently don’t agree with his score, but if he’s spot-on about the AI…
And this is only partially related, but I’m sick of hearing “poor AI will be mitigated by multiplayer.” No. No, it won’t. I don’t have the effing time to sit in front of my computer playing an unpausable 8-12 hour game. Those days are long gone and might be back in 2040.
Well, the ‘score’ is totally irrelevant, imo. That said, it should be possible for people to disagree with aspects of a review without impinging on the validity of the reviewer’s opinion. Many’s the review on this very site that I’ve disagreed with hugely; I’ll continue to read and enjoy them here because I value the opinion of the authors.
Those who think score X isn’t high enough have demonstrated that they’re frankly beneath engaging with. The flamers are apparently so blinkered that the mere possibility of someone having a different view from their own is beyond the processing power of their tiny, tiny brains.
I suspect it’s not just the brains that they’re overcompensating for.
The good news is that we’re dealing with a Civ game, and it will be patched and there will be expansions and all will be improved.
As Alec Meer at RPS said in his review, “There are many expansion pack-shaped holes in Civilization V.”
Despite that being true, I feel like I got a complete game for my money. Thus the expansions will be added value, and patches will probably fix many of the issues Chick describes.
I’ve never understood how people can shout any number of obscenities at a reviewer because they’ve given a certain game a mediocre or bad score. Even if you don’t agree with them, at the end of the day, its their job and they clearly have valid reasons for said opinion. Judging by some of the responses I’ve seen over the years regarding negative reviews of big titles, its painfully apparent the people either haven’t read the review or have only partially read it.
At the end of the day, we’re all unique and we all have differing opinions. I have seen plenty of reviews I’ve disagreed with but that doesn’t give me the right to criticise or discredit the journalist who wrote the piece. Gamers all too often let bias or emotions get in the way of objectivity and this is half the reason this industry isn’t taken as seriously as it should be.
Truer words were (probably) never spoken Thelastjunker. The industry needs many more objective Chicks and considerably fewer over-zealous and blinkered spoogemongers.
I really miss the option to turn on an in-game clock.
Chick’s a great writer who’s been reviewing games a long time. I pretty much trust his opinions about games, particularly where, like that review, he’s based it so solidly in gameplay.
Chick is one of the good guys.
How many reviews of Civ V (and IV before it) blew wads over nifty animations when the camera is fully zoomed in? Neat, there’s a fox running in a circle in a view someone playing Civ will spend ten seconds with out of three hundred hours over five years. There’s polish and there’s padding your review word count without finishing a round.
“The good news is that we’re dealing with a Civ game, and it will be patched and there will be expansions and all will be improved.”
The good and the bad. Civ IV needed a second expansion to graduate. Hoping V won’t; hitting demo ride tonight if sleep won’t come.
“There are many expansion pack-shaped holes in Civilization V.”
*cough* DLC-shaped *cough*
You know I was going to write an article on this very subject some time ago. Review scores, or more to the point people who bombard comments sections with moans and groans about review scores, are one of my biggest problems with gaming sites on the internet.
The idea of arguing over a review score is something I find baffling. So, the situation is is that you’ve logged onto a games site to find a review, presumably because you want to know how good the game is, if it’s any good at all. You read the review (or not) and find the score is 10%, 2 tenths or 1 star lower than you expected. You then head straight to the comments section to moan about it.
Why? Why read the review if you already have a pre-conception of how good it will be, and anything lower than that will send you into a wild frenzy on a comments thread? If your mind is already made up that, say, Halo: Reach is a 10/10 game and not the 8 or 9 that “Website A” gave it (I’d personally give it a generous 5/10), then why bother wasting your time reading the review?
If you are genuinely interested in reading a critique of the game, but then still moan about the score anyway, then why argue with somebody who has played the game to completion, for a professional purpose, when your own experience of that same game will more than likely stretch no further than a demo or a beta?
I’m a big believer that a review score is subjective, and the range of opinion about certain games is why I find sites like Metacritic so interesting. I always start from the bottom and work my way up, seeing how far my “trusted” sources are on the list. Disagreeing with a score about a game isn’t a crime, but 90% of the rubbish that finds itself in comments systems from people who refuse to acknowledge that their next favorite game isn’t as good as they hoped it would be is an infuriating waste of time.
[/rant].. for now.
Flames are personal attacks like “you didn’t play the game” and “you’re an idiot,” and I believe these simpletons are attacking in response to what they perceive as an attack.
They like the game, this reviewer didn’t, he’s therefore calling them “stupid.” Or they don’t want to feel foolish for not seeing any of his valid criticisms themselves, so they reject his ideas. They have small, fragile egos, and must react strongly to preserve them.
I just reread the review, and I think his score is pretty harsh even though his criticisms are valid. It sounds like he was ready to give the game a high score until he played it a few dozen more hours and discovered the AI’s limitations.
It makes me wonder how many hours your typical reviewer spends with a game like this–do they just play it enough just to “sell” what everyone expects to be awesome?
I respect Tom for playing through the initial “Chick Parabola” to find and discuss the imperfections beneath. I don’t understand his complaint about how the “game loves numbers” and how the “boardgame elegance” is gone. What? I like the streamlining…I just don’t understand his point.
Tom is actually famous for finishing games before reviewing them, which is probably why the Chick Parabola exists. It’s true, a lot of reviewers don’t play all the way through the games they’re assigned, though sometimes there can be reasons for that. I had to review the Oblivion-sized Two Worlds for Games for Windows magazine, and got review code about five days before my deadline. I took three of those five off from Regular Work and literally played all day and all night, with allotted two-hour breaks for sleep, and barely finished. A game like Civ has to be similar in terms of the playtime requirements.
One of the more controversial decisions we made here at Tap is allowing people to review a game without finishing it. The only rule is you have to say how long you played and explain why you didn’t finish (“it sucked” is an acceptable reason). Unlike a movie it’s not always necessary, in my opinion, to play all the way to the end before forming a valid opinion. Not many games have Sixth Sense twists. You have to play long enough to be confident that you have a complete handle on the experience, but just forcing yourself to reach the end can be pointless and irritating.
I have read his review, thought I haven’t played Civ V quite yet. For some reason the installation process made my might laptop – “LapDaddy” – very unhappy. He froze up and then when I rebooted him he refused to acknowledge my wireless router. I had to re-boot him a second time before things got squared away. He loves Civ IV and doesnt’ like change apparently.
Anyway, back to the topic… Chick’s review. There are a number of ways to look at it. First, maybe he just didn’t really like the game, though a lot of his review seemed positive. At the end of the day, however, it’s just his opinion.
Second, perhaps he felt like he needed to make a statement when he gave the “C”. He had to know there would be blowback. In an era were “3 out of 5s” or anything less than a “8 or 9+ out of 10” is a “horrible score”, giving a game like Civ V a “C” is definitely making a strong statement. It is somewhat similar to how I felt about Edge giving “Dragon Age: Origins” a 5 out of 10. Despite the flaws with the game, it’s much better than a 5 out of a 10, which, grade-wise, is a “D” or and “F”. The reviewer was clearly trying to make a statement with that score. Is Chick doing the same thing here? Perhaps a little. Is it wrong? I don’t think so, but I think it needs to be identified.
As for Civ V, it may not be a perfect game out of the box. But, between patches and expansions, I have no doubt it will be a great game. Just compare Civ IV when it was first released to its final version of Civ IV: BtS. It’s night and day. Throw in user created mods and things should be dandy.
Sadly, between some oddly busy stuff going on at work and my sudden addiction to “Dominions 3”, I am not sure when I will take the “Civ V” plunge.
The Edge guy really didn’t like DA:O, though, so his/her score was consistent with his/her opinion. And he/she/it was reviewing the 360 version, which all agree is inferior.
As for Civ V, if Tom was trying to make a statement with that grade, I’m inclined to think it was more a shame-on-you to Firaxis for the missteps in the game than an effort to grab attention. Arguably Civ has ALWAYS been weak in AI, diplomacy, and early-release bugs. By the fifth installment, these things really should have been dealt with.
So far I’m really enjoying Civ V and would give it a higher grade than C. I’m still on the upswing of the Chick Parabola, though; maybe that will change.
I never really got into Civ IV. I don’t know exactly why. I didn’t like religion. The interface was cluttered. The civics were too complicated and bloated the game.
But I never tried the expansions, and I know you and McShane love the game, so that’s definitely worth something. People definitely need to stop comparing Civ IV and all of its patches and expansions to Civ V off-the-shelf, but seriously…how much more bad AI do we need to endure?
In Civ V’s defense, however, the English at least knew enough to surrender two of their three cities to me after their sorry attempt at defending their homeland. We needed iron, they had it. Didn’t seem like they were using it for much…
Someone better organized than me ought to do a two column comparison of a reviewer (not Chick) covering Civ IV launch and Civ V launch copies. Betcha gold the heavy praise and minor dings match almost exactly.
“Can zoom in and see pretty animations” “Can zoom in and see pretty animations”
“Animated leaders in diplomatic screens” “Animated leaders in diplomatic screens”
“other crap you’ll notice once” “other crap you’ll notice once”
“vague talk about end game (because didn’t finish it)”
“vague talk about end game (because didn’t finish it)”
“multiplayer still sucks”
“multiplayer still sucks”
Not that I’m cynical. I like daisies just fine.
Troy Goodfellow at Gameshark just published a review. The interesting part is he had many (but not all) of the same complaints as Tom but gave the game a higher score.
There’s also some good discussion about the potential “score-language disconnect” in Tom’s review on Troy’s personal website, and it’s free of your typical Internet tomfoolery.
Review here: http://www.gameshark.com/reviews/3627/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-V-Review.htm
Troy’s site here: http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2010/09/22/civilization-5-ai-and-scoring-games/
This whole thing has been one more argument against “scoring” for me. I mean, sometimes I appreciate knowing immediately that a game just isn’t worth my time (a trusted reviewer gives a game 5/10 or less, I’m not even reading the review.)
Far too often though, a single numeric or letter grade will scream louder then a 1000+ word review.
Yeah but that numeric/letter score is often the most subjective part of a review. The devil is in the details, not the billboard. I blame advertising.
To a large extent it IS all about advertising. It’s publishers who reckon that metascores are what sells games so it’s them who go apeshit when a game they have invested 30 or 40 million dollars in scores lover than 80 on metacritic. Nobody reads the words at that stage because the publishers figure the gamer is as lazy as the stereotype would have it, that she or he will just browse metacritic see that the game is below 80 and just shrug and go for another title. Remember Kane & Lynch/ Jeffe Gerstamnn debacle?
But, sure, gamers acting as they do in cases like this Tom Chick’s review kinds prove them right…