[Gonchi]

GameSpot has many WTF? ratings, particularly for adventure games. One that comes to mind is The Dig at 4.5. Now, I wasn't a huge fan of The Dig, but even I would admit that it deserves a much higher rating. Here's the review if you're curious.

They also have The Neverhood at 4.9 and I Have No Mouth at 4.3. Finally, to add insult to injury, Magna Cum Laude and Mask of Eternity are rated as better adventures than Gabriel Knight 3.

But tMoS at 14% sounds like the cruelest, particularly since I'm playing it right now and have yet to encounter anything that could justify that rating. Does anyone have the review? My only real complaints with it are the poor navigation and path finding that have made me wish for keyboard control in certain locations, but I find the rest of the game to be up to the usual standard of most adventure games I've played.

[Krazy]

I always found it a bit screwy that Curse of Monkey Island only got a 3.5 on Adventure Gamers yet Escape From Monkey Island was a apparently worthy of a 4

[Legolas813]

Some reviews I disagree with:

PC Gamer giving The Moment of Silence only 14%. I would have given it at least 80-85% (it's one of my favorite games of 2005).

Adventure Gamers giving Journey to the Center of the Earth 4 stars. Personally, I hesitate to even give it 1 star.

And that Indigo Prophecy review in the original post is unfair also, IMO. Doesn't look like the reviewer spent much time with the game.

[KriD]

Originally Posted by Hammerite

me does think that this were a bit harsh

If he hates the game so much, then why did he give it 3.9 out of 5?

[Aj_]

Originally Posted by KriD

If he hates the game so much, then why did he give it 3.9 out of 5?

The review says nothing accept he liked one voice actor, didn't like the graphics or camera angle, and thinks that the game isn't worthy of the series. He didn't give the game a bad score, although aparantly it's not worth playing.

For me personally, the graphics of Monkey Island 1-3, not the biggest selling point.

Originally Posted by Isak

While Moment of Silence got 14/100 by a PC magazine, isnt this even more unfair?

Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy recives a D+ (A+ = the best) by Game Revolution... Check it out here:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/ps2/indigo_prophecy

Whats even more funny, is that the members gave it A-

I think the reviewer Mr. Joe_Dodson deserves a .

There was a huge thread on the MoS review, I didn't see anyone post that the score was anything but ridiculas. Although MoS is not a good game for a variety of reasons, it shouldn't get special treatment for being particularly bad.

All his points are valid, the score is about all the game deserves. I really can't see why this game gets praise, the gameplay is awful, the sound and graphics are from back in 2000, the story promises in the beginning but it never starts, it just takes plummets from moderate to a steaming pile of crap. It contains very little gameplay that is remotely like an Adventure game, and is about 6 hours long, with hardly any variety or value in replayability that was promised.

Originally Posted by AFGNCAAP

Okay, this paragraph is stupid:
...for several reasons:
1) What the hell does he mean with the "little sparklies"?
2) Fahreheit has a quest log (admittedly, it could be updated more often, but in fact your average adventure hasn't any, so: huh?)
3) This whole argument is stretched anyway. "If one of your friends starts talking to you"? Come on. Half-Life is a bad game, because if one of your friends starts tickling you while you're playing you'll drop the controller and get killed, right?

1) He's looking at this from a console perspective, Adventure games that get ported usually have things that make interactive objects and items stand out, like a glow or "sparkles".
2) I didn't even know there was one, I wasn't even close to thinking I'd need one, the game was so short, the puzzles so easy, the story so anoying.
3) I think this is valid, the dialogue being timed is completely stupid and you could miss something if distracted, although it's not that hard to realise what you have to do.

[Karmillo]

Originally Posted by Aj

All his points are valid, the score is about all the game deserves. I really can't see why this game gets praise, the gameplay is awful, the sound and graphics are from back in 2000, the story promises in the beginning but it never starts, it just takes plummets from moderate to a steaming pile of crap. It contains very little gameplay that is remotely like an Adventure game, and is about 6 hours long, with hardly any variety or value in replayability that was promised.

What game are you talking about? TMOS or Farenheight?

[Gonchi]

Based on;

It contains very little gameplay that is remotely like an Adventure game, and is about 6 hours long

I'd say he's talking about Fahrenheit.

[Isak]

Originally Posted by Legolas813

Some reviews I disagree with:
Adventure Gamers giving Journey to the Center of the Earth 4 stars. Personally, I hesitate to even give it 1 star.

I agree with you, I must say this is one of the worst adventure games I've played... Didn't see the fun in running from one place to another, just to find out that you are going to run back to the original place, and then discover you have to run to yet anopther location...

I also remember back some years, that Game Revolution reviewed Broken Sword 1 (a.ka. Circle of blood) and 2, giving them both C+ (however they seem to have removed the reviews from their servers)... Giving C+ to one of the best games ever is a little harsh, don't you think?

[AFGNCAAP]

Originally Posted by Aj_

There was a huge thread on the MoS review, I didn't see anyone post that the score was anything but ridiculas. Although MoS is not a good game for a variety of reasons, it shouldn't get special treatment for being particularly bad.

All his points are valid, the score is about all the game deserves. I really can't see why this game gets praise, the gameplay is awful, the sound and graphics are from back in 2000, the story promises in the beginning but it never starts, it just takes plummets from moderate to a steaming pile of crap. It contains very little gameplay that is remotely like an Adventure game, and is about 6 hours long, with hardly any variety or value in replayability that was promised.

While I agree that Fahrenheit got ridiculously overhyped by some, aren't you doing exactly what you criticised in the first quoted paragraph? This game doesn't deserve such harsh words. It has some neat ideas and eg. in terms of believeability of the characters (stupidity of the situations they are often put in notwithstanding), it rocks.

1) He's looking at this from a console perspective, Adventure games that get ported usually have things that make interactive objects and items stand out, like a glow or "sparkles".
2) I didn't even know there was one, I wasn't even close to thinking I'd need one, the game was so short, the puzzles so easy, the story so anoying.
3) I think this is valid, the dialogue being timed is completely stupid and you could miss something if distracted, although it's not that hard to realise what you have to do.

1) I see, thanks. I didn't even catch the fact that he was reviewing the PS2 version.
3) I'm not sure what you mean by "timed". If: "with limited time to respond", than this is not what the article complained about.* If "with no means to get back to certain topics", well, leaving aside the fact that most players I know (you included, as you say in 2) ) hardly ever were in the dark about the current objectives, it was one of the elements that increased the replaybality, something you said there was not enough of.

*Besides, sorry to bring MoS example again, but it's quite peculiar that (moderately) experimental dialogue sytem in Fahrenheit produced fluid-sounding conversations whatever options I chose, and tried-and-true, one would think, dialogue trees in Moment of Silence resulted in continuity errors etc., even when I tried to pick the topics in the "correct" order.

[Aj_]

Originally Posted by AFGNCAAP

While I agree that Fahrenheit got ridiculously overhyped by some, aren't you doing exactly what you criticised in the first quoted paragraph? This game doesn't deserve such harsh words. It has some neat ideas and eg. in terms of believeability of the characters (stupidity of the situations they are often put in notwithstanding), it rocks.

It sure does deserve accurate descriptions. Obviously this is entirely subjective. If you think I'm being harsh to this game, by calling the technology outdated, the story and gamepaly terrible, then sure that isn't describing a good game, but that's slightly different to giving it 14%(like PCgamer gave MoS) in the context of the scoring system(hardly any games get under 40%).

Believeability of the characters is a matter of taste, sure they *could* be real characters, although I'd argue character developement for even the main characters is very limited.

Besides, sorry to bring MoS example again, but it's quite peculiar that (moderately) experimental dialogue sytem in Fahrenheit produced fluid-sounding conversations whatever options I chose, and tried-and-true, one would think, dialogue trees in Moment of Silence resulted in continuity errors etc., even when I tried to pick the topics in the "correct" order.

MoS has problems with its dialogue, I wouldn't call it the best example of an Adventure game. For me, Fahrenheit, wasn't that fluid in conversation, it's like Jade Empire in that there are placeholders for the responses but it really doesn't shape the conversation, and it's quite obvious where the "gaps" for the responses are.

[AFGNCAAP]

Originally Posted by Aj_

It sure does deserve accurate descriptions. Obviously this is entirely subjective. If you think I'm being harsh to this game, by calling the technology outdated, the story and gamepaly terrible, then sure that isn't describing a good game, but that's slightly different to giving it 14%(like PCgamer gave MoS) in the context of the scoring system(hardly any games get under 40%).

I'm not that much arguing against giving descriptions, as long as they are accurate (though some I'd say are exaggerated: for instance, I'm not sure it *really* looks like a 2000 game, but I'm not an expert on graphics, so I shut up). But saying "the [D] score is about all the game deserves" is being harsh, IMO.

[insane_cobra]

Originally Posted by Isak

I also remember back some years, that Game Revolution reviewed Broken Sword 1 (a.ka. Circle of blood) and 2, giving them both C+ (however they seem to have removed the reviews from their servers)... Giving C+ to one of the best games ever is a little harsh, don't you think?

Actually, I think that's spot on.
Maybe a B-, but that's as high as I'd go.

[Fien]

The F for Temujin at JA.
And half a star here at AG for Isabelle

I could feel it in my stomach first time I saw them. No kidding.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by insane_cobra

Actually, I think that's spot on.
Maybe a B-, but that's as high as I'd go.

I agree. Broken Sword is on of the most overrated AGs. imo imo. (gotcha, Fienepien )

[Fien]

Originally Posted by Aj_

1) He's looking at this from a console perspective, Adventure games that get ported usually have things that make interactive objects and items stand out, like a glow or "sparkles".

Didn't BS3 have sparklies too? I also remember sparkles in older adventures, like the KQ series.

[Ninth]

In Eternam, there was a dotted line that linked the hero with any object he was close of.

And of course, there's still Many's head in Grim Fandango, that's kinda like a "sparkle".

[Inwards]

I think that this is a fair rating. Fahrenheit is probably the worst adventure game that I can recall playing (and I've been playing since Advent). In fact, I don't think that it can even really be called an AG. It's a lot more like Dragon's Lair than Gabriel Knight. Since when is left-up-left-right-down-down a substitute for puzzling your way out of a tough situation?

[woxel1]

Personally I've always been offended by the low score that Adventure Gamers gave Obsidian. But I've since learned that the AG staff just hates everything that is good in the world, like babies and chocolate cake. So I forgive them.