Citing repetitive gameplay, and lacking in replayability, IGN gives the game alot of suvival horror fans have been looking forward to, an 8.7.

I've been looking forward to this since I first saw the trailer, having viewed every piece of information I could on it; and while not expecting a perfect score, I was at least expecting something a little better than 8.7.

Oh well, that's only the first review, plus I would assume that Yahtzee will tear the game a new one anyway, but it's still not enough for me to just walk away from this one.

Is anyone else looking forward to tomorrow for this game?

Its EA. Don't expect much.

So, it's repetitive and doesn't have replay value, yet gets a high score?

Stupid, typical IGN. The only reviews by them I really trust are their Nintendo and PC ones. The Xbox/PlayStation guys they have are complete morons.

Yeah right, let's follow blindly game reviewing sites
because everyone knows that big-time producers don't pay them for a good rating oh no.

Seriously, wasn't the Kayne and Lynch scandal enough?

The only reviewer i trust is Yahtzee, although he rants on
most about anything just for a laugh, his reviews are pretty accurate.

Seriously, halo 3 got a 9.5 at Gamespot...GEAR OF WAR WAS GAME OF THE YEAR!!

Wake up people!

Unless the game has a character who looks like Sam Neil and tears his eyeballs out halfway through the game, I'll probably pass.

searanox:
So, it's repetitive and doesn't have replay value, yet gets a high score?

Stupid, typical IGN. The only reviews by them I really trust are their Nintendo and PC ones. The Xbox/PlayStation guys they have are complete morons.

I agree. What's the use of a 10-point spectrum when you're just going to use the upper half?

I don't get why an 8.7 is bad, but ok.

In all seriousness IGN has NEVER been good with their reviews. Only honest one I think they gave in recent memory was a 6.7 for a woefully glorified tech demo known only as "TNA iMPACT". Of course you can't please anyone so people complained about that but I figure if you hype the way Midway did and then don't deliver on over half the features, you get what you deserve.

Still, I don't get why an 8.7 is bad.

Well...and 8.7 certainly isn't BAD. I mean it's almost a 9. Besides, I never trust IGN or any single site for a review. I usually just use metacritics or something and judge from an overall perspective. Plus, Yahtzee, he makes his points AND entertains :D

8.7 is pretty good, you know.

87% is like a solid A, maybe A+.

Actually 87% is a B+ when you consider it, but a B+ isn't bad at all, it's above average. And a B+ is like...just below being "excellent" if we consider what people define an A as.

I think you are a bit confused. They actually said it was really good. And of coarse, it caters to horror fans (of which I am one). They actually said there was replay value in that you can keep your gear and continue to upgrade it, they actually suggested playing through more than once. On the repetative gameplay, they said backtracking, not repetition, but commented that the backtracking made sense.

Don't know what review you were looking at, but it was a good one. Of the nitpicks they had, none were serious. For a new IP in a genre that hasn't produced anything good in a long while, I think it will really stand out. I think it's biggest problem will be that it is trying to appeal to horror fans mostly (don't know how many of us there are). It looks like a perfect horror game (especially when IGN compared it to the movies Alien, The Thing, and Event Horrizon). But I reserve that judgement until I play it. IGN's scoring is a little jadded so I don't really use them.

Once I play, I will comment.

I would read this review...
http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/207445/dead-space-360/

wgreer25:
They actually said there was replay value in that you can keep your gear and continue to upgrade it, they actually suggested playing through more than once.

In a comment to this specifically, they also said that items and weapons you upgrade can only be carried over to the same difficulty setting, meaning if, for all intents and purposes, you decide to start on a medium setting, and then after playing it through the first time, seeing the folly of your lower setting playing and decide to play it harder, you get to start all over.

bluerahjah:

wgreer25:
They actually said there was replay value in that you can keep your gear and continue to upgrade it, they actually suggested playing through more than once.

In a comment to this specifically, they also said that items and weapons you upgrade can only be carried over to the same difficulty setting, meaning if, for all intents and purposes, you decide to start on a medium setting, and then after playing it through the first time, seeing the folly of your lower setting playing and decide to play it harder, you get to start all over.

Yeah, I got that, Doesn't bother me, makes the difficult setting, well... difficult, but what games out there let you do that? I think Ninja Gaiden makes you start from scratch, Did Resident Evil 4, I thouht you had to start from scratch on a higher difficulty there too, I could be totally wrong though, can't remember. Devil May Cry 4 let you keep your stuff.

Side note, I have read a few reviews now and they are all saying good things. The game keeps getting compared to the movies Aliens and The Thing, both kick ass movies. So I am really looking forward to this title. Plus, I am an Engineer, so I like the idea of an ass kicking engineer (Gordon Freeman, Issac Clark, me...)

On my gamefly que. Calling something out for being "Repettetive" is what's cool nowadays so I'm gonna take that with salt. It's RE4 in space, and I played RE4 over and fucking over. Beat it so hard that they couldn't identify the body.

Only site I 'trust' to give fairly accurate scoring is Metacritic once they've got 5 or more scores to average it out from. For Dead Space it's got an average of 90 from 6 reviews, considering one of them is an 100 score from GamePro and I don't believe any game ever thus far deserves a 100, I'm tempted to say it's a tad skewed. Nevertheless, it still looks to be a fairly good game from those scores.

I'm not interested though, no moneys ;/

wgreer25:
The game keeps getting compared to the movies Aliens and The Thing, both kick ass movies. So I am really looking forward to this title. Plus, I am an Engineer, so I like the idea of an ass kicking engineer (Gordon Freeman, Issac Clark, me...)

As well as Event Horizon, Night of the Living Dead, and some others. Like I said, I'm really looking forward to this game, I honestly just thought that it would get a little bit better score. It all really boils down to the Gerstmann thing again, how much are companies willing to spend to get a good score. Really I guess the best thing to do in all cases is just rent/buy the game anyway. I rented Kane and Lynch myself after the fiasco, and still thought it was a complete piece of crap.

I think you should judge the game based on the actual review they gave it, instead of just the number they attached to it. From what they said it sounds pretty good, I'm surprised they only gave it an 8.7, based on the review I'd think they would give it a 9.2 or something, but as I said screw the number. The game sounds good, I think I'll get it.

I was excited for this game when I saw the video originally. But the more videos I saw the more I realized there was little to no story. It looks bad to me.

Trust Gamespot for shooters and horror games, trust IGN for strategy games and tactical shooters, and trust GameInformer for everything else. I usually just go with Gametrailers since they seem to have the best reviews (at least i think).

EDIT: Oh, AND NEVER TRUST YAHTZEE FOR ANYTHING!! Just watch Zero Punctuation for laughs.

8.7 from IGN is bad because IGN basically uses an 8-10 scale, with anything lower than a 9 being below average.

I like their video reviews, but it's purely for entertainment purposes, not for a real reviewers opinion.

Still, I thought the game looked good enough, and I'll probably pick it up when the price drops a bit (which seems to be my current motto this gaming generation). From the review there I at least get the impression the game is somewhat entertaining *shrug*. Guess I'll wait for some other reviews, too.

I never get a game because of reviews anyway, I usually just judge it by it's cover.

-Ricky

Shadow-Knight:
I was excited for this game when I saw the video originally. But the more videos I saw the more I realized there was little to no story. It looks bad to me.

IGN commented that the story was good with some good plot twists, plus the developers have made all of the pre-story comics and an anime movie, so I debate your no-story arguement.

Amnestic:
Only site I 'trust' to give fairly accurate scoring is Metacritic once they've got 5 or more scores to average it out from. For Dead Space it's got an average of 90 from 6 reviews, considering one of them is an 100 score from GamePro and I don't believe any game ever thus far deserves a 100, I'm tempted to say it's a tad skewed.

100 on Metacritic doesn't necessarily mean the game was scored on a hundred point scale. The Gamepro review gave it a score of 5/5, which is hardly uncommon.

Back on topic: This is a classic example of the Eight Point Eight and Four Point Scale tropes.

I was looking into Dead Space since I wanted to get to the horror/thriller genere in gaming.

But then i saw the 8.7 IGN gave it.

I was so shocked! An 8.7 of all things! Maybe I shouldn't get it now...

In a more serious tone though, when I saw the score I thought "That's good" because i thought it meant that it was a very good game. Maybe something bad here or there, but I thought overall it was a good experience.

Apparantly, though, an 8.7 isn't a very good score and that means it's complete suckage now (exageration, I know, but work with me here!)

really, are we going to base how good a game is on scores from one site? I can understand a median, that way you know the general opinion on the game or if it was a pretty bad score (5.3 or something like that), but just one silly little number from one gaming site isn't going to make much of a difference.

It's one man's opinion, no need to make a fuss out of the score he gave.

Either way, Dead Space looks very interesting to me, and I thought IGN gave it a good score.

harhol:
100 on Metacritic doesn't necessarily mean the game was scored on a hundred point scale. The Gamepro review gave it a score of 5/5, which is hardly uncommon.

It's also worth noting that Metacritic weighs reviews different depending on a site's traffic and reputation. IGN will influence the average a lot more than, say, GamesRadar, and more still than smaller, independent sites. I use Game Rankings instead because it gives all reviews equal weight.

8.7 is a solid effort, especially for new IP (and especially for an EA game). It's when sequels pull this kind of score that you have to be wary.

After reading the review it seems that all the major components that make a game enjoyable (story, graphics, sound, control, immersion) are well executed in Dead Space. They reviewer only had some minor quibbles. It definately sounds worth checking out.

How do you make a horror-anything that isn't repetitive? shock value generally degrades pretty quickly.

Not all horror relies on shocks though...
...in fact most good horror doesn't rely on shocks at all.

Deary me, the old review marking argument again...8.7 is a fantastic score. Translated into percentages that's 87%, which is only 13% away from perfection. Based on some of the other reviews I've read (i.e. Eurogamer's) Ign have over-marked it. But then, they always tend to do that.

Apparently Dead Space is a well executed action game that follows the conventions of the genre too strongly and steals just about all of it's game mechanics apart from strategic dismemberment from other places. Does this mean it's bad? No. Does this mean it's uninspired? Yes.In addition to this there is apparently little development throughout the whole game: it remains exactly the same from the beginning to the end, with very few set-pieces or changes in pace.

They do say that the action is fantastic and the game is gorgeous, but the lack of any real depth makes for an enjoyable but sadly limited experience. If all you want to do is kill monsters then it's great, but apart from that it does nothing particularly memorable within the experience.

I think this is probably bang on the money, though I'm still going to pick up a copy to investigate for myself.

with rounding 8.7=9 which aperently=good.

I'm tempted to start a thread specifically for LittleBigPlanet's 9/10 score on Eurogamer. It was halarious to read the comments though, with one of them being (and I roughly quote) "That's it PS3 fanboys! You just had your last exclusive ranked down on the only site that matters!".

Sad really.

...Yahtzee said one thing once that made me extremely relieved to realize I wasn't in fact the only person with a brain in the world:

How do you transform a complex opinion on a 5 or 10, or whatever, point scale?

Anyone else realizes that these values are actually arbitrary?

Unless I'm missing out on something, there is no equation known to man capable of converting a highly complex qualitative variable into a simple quantitative one. I mean, this would make statistics so much easier, but there isn't.

You know how these ratings are done? Reviewer X goes to review game Z. Reviewer X players through game Z and decides first whether or not it made him want to stab his own nuts out with a burning fork. If yes, the final score will be bellow average, if not, above average.

Now Reviewer X mentally picks up another game he already reviewed of the same kind, for instances game V, if he never reviewed one like it, he'll use the best game he knows of the genre, or failing that a utopic vision of such, as a reference and compare it to game Z.

"Was it as good, was it better, was it worst". This is how reviewer X is going to decide what rate this game gets... But how exactly does this work? I mean, maybe it was better, but how much better? Game V got a 9.3, but game Z has much better gameplay, but the story is weaker. What do we add and detract from game V's score? Simple. Introduce a random variable. Something along the lines of: "eerm...Z gets 9.6".

Generally when I see a numeric "rate" attached to a review I rarely bother to read the review. It's a safe sign it's a bad review to begin with.

Five stars should really be the maximum numerical scale. Going all the way up to 100% is totally ridiculous.

That said, most mainstream reviews & video reviews are so awful that the score can often be the best thing to go by. Too many reviews just list the features which we already knew about because we read the preview. That, or they spend the first five paragraphs spoiling the opening hours of the story.

And they always point out if there's a twist near the end! Like in the IGN review of the new Silent Hill: "Hey guys, make sure to look out for the totally unexpected twist near the end of the game!" God damn it.

Uhh, last I checked, 8.7 is a pretty damn good score. It's almost a 9.

Anyway, I think Dead Space looks awesome. But I'm going to wait to play it when I get it for my birthday in December or for Christmas. I don't want to start it so soon before I get Fallout 3.

harhol:
Not all horror relies on shocks though...
...in fact most good horror doesn't rely on shocks at all.

Be that as it may, I said that because a frightening and convoluted plot decays even quicker.
Inform me of a single horror movie in which the key ingredient isn't something that's resolved somewhere around the climax or end of the film.

How are you going to deliver the same experience again, without erasing the auditions memory?