Reviews are useless

I used to rely on reviews, and other people's opinions in general, to find out what movies I should watch, what videogames I should play, what books I should read, etc.
That was before I watched Alien, before I played Half-Life 2, before I read Grapes of Wrath, etc.

From my experiences, there seems to be an inverse relationship between how popular something is and how good it is. There are exceptions to this rule however; being positive for a sec, I'll give some examples:
Donkey Kong Country 1-3, Geometry Wars, God of War, Halo, Halo 2, Starcraft, Super Mario World, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Tetris are all good videogames.
Aside from these, I have never done anything purely because it was popular or given a good review and enjoyed it.
Because they are the most saturated with this, I will use videogames as my examples.

About 6 months ago, I bought an Xbox 360. Along with it, I bought 4 games: Dead Rising, Gears of War, Kameo: Elements of Power, and Viva Pi[FONT=&quot]ñ[/FONT]ata, all because they widely received good reviews. To this date, the one I've had the most fun with is Geometry Wars.

Dead Rising had a difficulty curve like crashing into a brick wall.

Gears of War's single player mode had 3 actually decent levels, then an incredibly boring one, and finally an incredibly frustrating one. It's multiplayer consisted of either 2 players who fought over who could get up to the other with a revved-up chainsaw first, or 3-8 players, 2-7 of which would win or lose the match for you while you tried to find anyone to fight. The 3-8 player mode had the extra little touch of leaving out deathmatch, which is afterall only the most basic game type in every competitive game ever.
Boy am I going to get some angry replies for that one...

How many hours doesn't take to play Kameo: Elements of Power? Eight: One to play it, and seven to collect fruit.

What is the point of Viva Pi[FONT=&quot]ñ[/FONT]ata? All you do is attract Pi[FONT=&quot]ñ[/FONT]atas, use Pi[FONT=&quot]ñ[/FONT]atas to gather money, use money to buy plants, use plants to attract Pi[FONT=&quot]ñ[/FONT]atas, and so on. None of it is any fun, it's just another "use what you have to meet everyone's requirements, then get more stuff and more people" sim. That's not something you can make an entire game out of.


Before I make a list of popular things and why they're terrible, I'm going to share my 9 rules of videogame reviews.
There are many things to watch out for in videogame reviews...
1. If the reviewer and all other reviewers praise the game, it probably sucks.
2. If the graphics look good in the review, they probably won't look as good on your TV screen, especially if the reviewer makes a point to mention how good the graphics are.
3. If the reviewer calls the game "revolutionary", it probably isn't.
4. If the reviewer gives a score of 9 or higher on a 10-point scale, 90 or higher on a 100-point scale, or 5 on a 5-point scale, even if the game is good it probably isn't that good.
5. If the reviewer awards the game the title of "Game of the Year' or otherwise states that it is the best in some way, it probably isn't, especially if the Year isn't even over.
6. If the reviewer calls the game "challenging", it's probably smash-the-controller difficult or has some kind of artificial difficulty.
7. If the reviewer has any gripe with the controls whatsoever, they probably get players crashing into walls constantly.
8. If the reviewer mentions a single problem with the game and then goes on to say that it is the only problem and does not ruin the game, it probably does ruin the game and is probably one of many.
9. If the reviewer suggests renting the game without stating that it is short, it's not worth renting.

Now, on to complaining about popular things...

Books

The Bible - It's not true: There are huge historical inaccuracies. It's not good morally: There are horrible atrocities at every turn. It's not even an interesting read: The characters are bland, there are tons of contradictions, and it's all written in archaic and exaggerated styles.
What does anyone see in this piece of shit?

Grapes of Wrath - Enough with the metaphors! The fucking cat slipped under the fucking barn door, it did not transform into a shadow first!

Huckleberry Finn - I really love reading about the adventures of someone who is so dumb he believes that breaking a mirror will give you "bad luck" for a year, and that 6 times 7 is 35. I especially love the part where after three chapters the fourth begins with "a few months went on..." Apparently it didn't matter that I just read those first three chapters, I should've just skipped ahead.

Turn of the Screw - Upon starting, Turn of the Screw, you will, quickly, realize that there are, a lot of, commas that impede, your, reading; not that the rest of the; book, is intelligible; there's also, other, unnecessary, and out of place, punctuation;
Wait a minute... I'm literate, and I also speak English, the language which all of Turn of the Screw's words are in. Yet I cannot read it. Turn of the Screw is unreadable! NOT ONLY IS IT THE WORST BOOK EVER, IT'S NOT A BOOK AT ALL!

Movies

Alien - I'm glad I saved myself some time by leaving after 40 minutes of nothing. Still, if only I had whipped out a Gameboy and waited another 10 minutes I could've seen the amazing(ly predictable) chest-bursting scene.

The Godfather - Yes, The Godfather. Remember what I said about Alien? Well the beginning wedding scene lasts FORTY MINUTES. Perhaps the whole "setting everything up" thing would've worked if The Godfather hadn't had that way of talking throughout the whole movie-oh yes, I think it's called "quiet and unintelligible." I think the text will adequately describe what he sounds like: "Yuh gum duh me on my dawduh's weddin' an' yuh azg me fo' a favuh..." It goes on.

Pan's Labyrinth - Perhaps this movie could've been good if a third of it hadn't been devoted to a schizophrenic girl's hallucinations.

TV shows

Star Trek (any) - You'd think by Voyager the writers would have learned to stop writing themselves into corners where they have nothing to do but remodulate the deflector array to emit a depolarized tachyon field pulse and be done with the whole omnipotence dilemma.
You can atleast make a case for DS9 though; it had characters.

Videogames

There are so many... Where to begin? Alphabetically sounds good.
I don't feel compelled to expand on what I said about my (4) first Xbox 360 games, but...

Half-Life 2 - ITS TEH BEST GAME EVAR!!!!!!1!!!111!!!1! not. Tell me, do you like searching for the next place to go for 20 minutes? I sure don't.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - None of the new items are interesting, except the one that's only fun in the dungeon you get it in and the one that's incredibly boring in the dungeon you use it in. In fact, none of the items are even used much outside the dungeons you get them in.
The puzzles range from so easy you don't even have to think to so difficult you want to throw your Wiimote at the TV.
The combat is incredibly easy; just shake the Wiimote until you win. In fact, the whole game is too easy; by the time I got to the final bosses, I was so loaded up on hearts, fairies, and armor that I got hit with every other attack and still managed to stay at about 75% health.

Metroid Prime (any) - You know the developers did something wrong when you can tell a game sucks just by looking at a screenshot. Do you see all the shit on the screen? You've got...
Ammo
Minimap (which is too small to be useful)
Missile ammo (just ammo wasn't enough??)
Radar
Random symbols (USELESS)
Threat level (doesn't radar make this redundant?)
Transparent lines (USELESS)
Visor (USELESS)
Visor (USELESS)
Visor (USELESS)
It's also very dark, so that's even less of the actual environment that you can see.

Resident Evil 4 - And while we're at it, every other Resident Evil game since 4 is supposed to be the best one. Anyway, it would one thing to make additional enemies in each level, tougher enemies, a smaller health bar, less powerful guns, etc. but instead Capcom decided that the best approach to making Resident Evil 4 more difficult would be making it so that YOU CAN'T MOVE AND SHOOT AT THE SAME TIME.

World of Warcraft - WoW has cinematic combat. 'Nuff said.

 

Agreed.

Especially with the WoW comment.

 

nice spam there institutionalized....i was too lazy to read the bull i'll read it later so far i agree though... go to like the 10th line

 

Sometimes reviews are like this:
[1 day after release]
OMG THIS GAME IS SO FUCKIN FUN!!!!
[3 years after release]
This game is shit.

 

I think metriod prime games are awesome, they are filled with adventure, and you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You just want to stand out on teh internetz.

 

First off, watch who your talking to.

I know these guys in real life, so I've already seen this.

I'm just commenting beause they asked me too.


And Samus...

They didn't like games, but I happened to enjoy the first one.

Then, they released the second game which I bought, and I hated it.
I'm not buying the 3rd cause I didn't like the second one, and I also don't have a Wii.