This is monumentally stupid, though. What if the low scores are from people who disliked things that you either don't mind or actually do like? The score tells you nothing except "guy who wrote this liked/disliked game." Unless you read the actual text you have gained zero useful information regarding your purchase decision. This is not an argument for why Metacritic is important, it's an argument for why Metacritic is fucking horrible.
Reviews are overrated. I read them for amusement and nothing more. We need more Chicks and less IGNs on this world.
There are lots of polls that aren't as quantitatively pure as "who did you vote for". Haven't you gotten one of those telephone surveys where they ask you how satisfied you are with _______ on a scale from one to five? Or seen news stories that say "78% of people we surveyed had positive or very positive feelings about ____________"? Giving managers access to Metacritic data is like handing children a loaded gun, except that most children learn to be careful after the first time the gun accidentally goes off and kills an entire department and their families.
Without the loaded terminology, I agree. As much as I disagree (all the time!) with Tom, I find it difficult to believe that anyone who reads one of his reviews doesn't know what his taste is, what the reader's taste is, and where the two intersect. I personally subscribe to a more utilitarian model of reviewery -- and there are very popular critics in the biz who annoy the shit out of me with their purple prose and dick-punchingly awful affectations -- but seriously: as long as you communicate effectively (and actually communicate something, instead of "it'll be fun for fans of the genre!" which I have definitely done in the past) you've accomplished something. And yes, I just had two em-dashes, a parenthetical, a colon, another parenthetical, and an inter-parenthetical quote and my sentence was still grammatically sound. Terrible, yes, but technically correct. Thank god I'm not publishing it except for you fuckers. Also it's Gamescom and I can't sleep :(
Not really terrible, you've rather adapted to the German way of building nested sentences. The anglosaxon world needs more of this.
I thought the German way of building nested sentences was andifindthisreallyfascinatingaboutthelanguage to just make one enormous sentenceword.
No, that's not really true. Of course the German language is capable of providing enormous words nonetheless, like this one (longest German word): Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft There is theoretically no limit to the length of a sentence.
Whoa, I only knew Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskajütenschlüssellochstaubkörnchen, but yours is even worse :). To explain, in German you can build a possessive by just mashing words together, like the above Kapitänskajüte (captain's cabin). But if anybody uses more than, say, three words like that he's most likely just fucking with you. And yes, you can build terrible nested sentences too, which is why German needs such a fuckton of commas.
I'm confused by this (maybe just because I've never really thought about it before), but are there languages that do impose limits on sentence length?
I could see the French having roving bands of grammar squads enforcing such a thing. The uniforms would be fabulous.
Not as far as I'm aware. I could imagine an obscure language somewhere with no conjunctions, or one in which there's a set number of times a conjunction can be used before it's considered ungrammatical, but I don't exactly know of any. And that would be less actually imposing a limit and more just having a natural limit by design.
Oh, I don't know. It took me a while to realize that Tom thinks grinding in a singleplayer title is great. Though that could a failing of my reading, sure.
As one of the official preservers of the French language, in a tradition handed down from Cardinal Richelieu, she will sword the fuck out of you. Alternatively, a better picture of a man about to teach some whippersnapper the true meaning of grammar police:
Swordpens are not really useful. Only writing with red ink ? And have you seen the size of the letters ? ... come to think of it, that was pretty much the way teachers' corrections looked like when I was in school.
Well, that's very similar to conscious thought. Not the same thing, of course, but a remarkable simulacrum.
Not much conscious thought, anyway. If I was really interested I would have done more research, but in this case Chick's review score reinforced my existing bias against picking up the game. That bias was derived from a much more significant source - the knowledge that I've spent too much money on too many games, and need to try and control impulse buying before I end up in the poor house. That imperative was served by the poor review, which kept money in my pocket (which I've since spent on other impulse buys, but one step at a time).
The words and the sentiment make sense on their own, it's the specific use of Tom Chick as the sole arbiter of good vs. bad that makes my head hurt.
Can anyone remember the exact thing Bahim did to get that ban? I tried my google-fu but I don't even know if I'm looking in the right thread.
Nah, iirc I was only perma-banned twice along with a handful of temporary bans. Since there was the great un-banning and then the re-ban of many who ended up here I'd say I'm par for the course.
Yeah, I'm still quite pleased with the reasons for my bans. First ban? Calling Warren a cunt. I stand by that one. Sorry, Warren. (Not really) Second ban: BEING ON THE OMG MOST WANTED LIST, TOO DANGEROUS FOR THE FORUMS TO CONTAIN, WOAH. I can live with that.
Mine are less glamourous. First I was temp-banned for drunkenly creating a thread extolling the virtues of the sit-down wee. Then I was banned in the wave that resulted in this place becoming so popular.
