Is this really what people think about Giant Bomb?

I was just over on the gamefaqs forums and someone made a topic about Jeffs review of Fallout 4 and some people said the following and I engaged them.

FUUUK I was gonna make this look all fancy but IDK how the fuck the quote button works. So I'm just gonna do it normal...

Mad_Cauliflower: "As i said in the other topic, Giant Bomb are a click bait site. All they mean to do is sound different to the majority of reviews"

ME: "GB are the polar opposite of a click bait site."

Mad_Cauliflower: "Agreed, except they absolutely are"

ME: "How so? Will you elaborate?"

Mad_Cauliflower: "They're the site equivalent of that one person we all know, that has to downplay something the rest are excited about."

McSnarled:"Yeah Giant Bomb used to be liked like three years ago. Now they are snotty arrogant snobs. The seem to only like what they like and that is not how you want a reviewer to base opinion on the blind fans. All it does is turns fringe fans away to what they like. Many sites do this but Giant Bomb does this a lot. Gamespot is better than Giant Bomb is right now... That should say it all."

Now I think that this misinterprets the GB staff and us in pretty much every way. Or that this person thinks that reviews should be based entirely on hype and not actual critical thought. And the stuff about click bait seems completely asinine to me. Also half of it makes no sense, its like they just smash their hands on the keyboard and somehow words come out but aren't stung together in any coherent way.

Also don't ask me why I waste my time with Gamefaqs. I know... its horrible. Its the Youtube comments of videogame forums.

There's some truth to that, but who cares?

"They seem to only like what they like"

As opposed to liking what they don't like? What the fuck is that even supposed to mean!?

There are still people out there who think reviews should be "objective".

They sound between the ages of 10 - 15. You're literally having a discussion with children.

Yeah, I know. I wish I didn't go there. Its the worst.

What I find funny is that he still has not elaborated on why he thinks the site is of the clickbait variety. I get the distinct impression that he doesn't know what the term "clickbait" actually entails.

I mean...there's a reason those people hang out on gamefaqs instead of here. If that's their reasoning, more power to 'em-- at least it means they don't hang out in these forums.

Also, I'm guessing there are probably a fair few people who are angry Jeff gave their waifu 3-Stars, and those comments are probably some of the tamer ones out there right now.

Yeah I was just thinking about that. Its like hes just throwing out a random insulting term for a website without actually applying it correctly. There was another person in the thread who had GB confused with Polygon but the things said in that exchange were too awful for me to repeat.

The problem is you went on a gamefaqs board, come on duder! That was socially unacceptable 15 years ago.

@josephknows: there is an argument made for the usefulness of a purely subjective review to anyone but the reviewer. That said GameFaqs is the last community on the internet that should be speaking out about pretty much anything, much less criticizing anyone else's points of view.

Yeah IDK why I keep going there. It was one of my first forums I ever went to a long time ago. And it still has alot of people so when I'm super hyped about a game I go there cause any news tends to show up there right away. But I also end up there when I'm super bored.

It's the "three years ago" thing that's completely hilarious to me. Such an age giveaway.

Isn't "Jeff Gerstmann is still a threat" originally a quote from GameFAQs? The whole site has hated Jeff (and Giantbomb) forever as far as I know.

Clickbait! Spam! Phising! Scam! Evil! Overlords!

I like random words.

I'm beginning to wonder if Mad_Cauliflower is an AI or an alien trying to look human. That sentence is just mindboggling.

Sounds like people pissed GB gave a low score to some game they liked. Every review site has its share of critics based on what small section of the Internet they've pissed off:

• GameSpot and IGN: Corporate shills
• Polygon: SJWs out to oppress your right to view closeups of Cammy's crotch.
• Quarter to Three: WTF is this no name site and how dare they lower the metacritic on this game I like!

The one feature most site superfans share is their need to complain about how every other site is terrible to make themselves feel better. They are best ignored.

Also, the Gamefaqs community is about the worst gaming community out there.

yup. totally this.

remember the whole 8.8 thing was at its apex on that forum

Giantbomb is one of the only gaming sites that has almost no clickbait content. Looking at Gamespot over the last couple of weeks it's been rife with bullshit Fallout 4 articles and videos. I love the Fallout series but to dedicate that much time and space on the website to a game that isn't out with mostly speculative content ("16 things we want to see in Fallout 4" etc) is pandering and makes it hard to put any faith in an unbiased review since the traffic of the website is being inherently tied to the success of the game.

Let's not even start on the culture nonsense that Polygon puts out. Half of their site is bad reviews on TV shows, half formed opinion pieces by Ben Kuchera or regurgitated AV Club stories (why does Polygon need to tell us about Shia Labouef having a marathon of his own movies?).

This guy seems to feel that Giantbomb are overly cynical about games, where the issue is really that Jeff has actually taken Fallout 4 for what it is outwith the hype surrounding it and given it a good but not great score. Jeff used his own judgement and feelings about the technical issues and the lack of a technological leap forward and considered those points serious enough to colour the overall review - something I've not seen from the general critical consensus. This used to be commonplace among game reviewers when they held themselves to higher standards rather than being glorified enthusiasts who mostly host video content.

If you don't like it you don't have to read it - it's not like the review here is going to affect those people's decision to buy the game or not; they've likely already bought it.

The whole view that reviews have to align directly with the opinion of people who are excited about games is an immature one. I read reviews (and more importantly, watch quick looks) to find out information about a game I wouldn't otherwise have known and to get a better sense of whether or not the game will appeal to me. Giant Bomb has - usually - excelled at being detail oriented with their reviews. The only exception is when it comes to Nintendo games, and that does get really annoying. Thankfully they still have Alex and Dan, but they too tend to overlook details.

I'm actually really glad Jeff split up the two Fallout 4 reviews. Bethesda has done this time and time again, they shouldn't be given a pass for technical issues, no matter how great the game is. This is coming from someone who hasn't played Bethesda games in the past because of those technical issues, yet read Jeff's review of Fallout 4 and still ended up buying the PS4 version - I still wanted it, but I'm glad a review like Jeff's is around to tell me what I should expect. If anything it made me more disappointed that Bethesda still hasn't figured out how to mitigate technical issues with these new pieces of hardware. "At some point, I just want the games to work reliably" resonates with me a lot - especially after having to download a 500mb patch for Fallout 4 and then install it on my PS4. I just want to play the game, I get home from work at 6pm, take care of my dog and get some time to play at 8pm until 11pm when I have to go to bed. I don't like the idea of waiting an hour before I can start playing the fucking game.

Enough of my rambling though - the people that on on GameFAQs are probably the same people who think that games with a ton of hype around them are invincible to constructive criticism. They sound like they're 12, and like how I sounded when I was 15 and he gave Twilight Princess an 8.8 on GameSpot.

Seems like someone who just wants to dislike GB in the same way people want to hate Reddit/tumblr/4chan/shrekchan etc. Completely irrational bigotry.

But the Giant Bomb guys generally get excited for and tend to rate stuff exactly the same as other reviews sites?

They seem like stupid loser children who just HAVE to defend something they like and identify with, can't stand opposing thought, and attack those who don't agree with them. That seems to be the general consensus here, which is more than a little ironic, considering some of you are doing the same thing in this thread.

it's all about people not liking their favourite games getting lower scores than they believe they should, that should go without saying. I also think GBs 5 point scoring system plays in to this as it's a lot easier, if you're one of these weird mega fans, to get upset about a 3 out of 5 because up there on the screen it looks perilously close to a 50%, a dreadful score as reviews go.

Review scores are the only clickbaity thing here, they should be removed so you can read someone's opinion of a game and, absorbing all their thoughts on it, decide how much it sounds like they enjoyed it.

You're actively engaging in a forum argument, on GameFAQs. You've made a terrible mistake.

Also, who cares if a game gets three stars or four? It's about reading the content of the review and making a call based on that. I really like that Eurogamer and Kotaku have both moved to a non-numerical review system.

There was one random Bombcast where Jeff kind of cut to the core of why a good chunk people out there hate Giant Bomb: they're the score-obsessed fanboys who loathe any site for having a review score system that almost guarantees that it will drop their Metacritic. Like take Rise of the Tomb Raider. Brad had a pretty glowing review of that game and came away with more positive things to say than most reviews out there. But a 4 out of 5 score is 7 points below the game's Metacritic. Jeff even mentioned some publishes don't want to send them review copies because the likelihood of it helping their Metacritic is low.

Check out Giant Bomb's Metacritic summary page. 68% of the time they rate games lower than average. This is not a problem at all with anything Giant Bomb is doing. This is a problem with score-obsessed fanboys who simultaneously scream about objective reviews, but also about IGN's average review scores being meaningless because every big AAA game is at least an 8-8.5.

Take a peak sometime at the comments section on some sites like say Quarter to Three, with people frothing at the mouth that this site needs to not be included on gamerankings/metacritic because they rated popular shooter a 2 out of 5. I don't like/read that site that much, but sometimes I just enjoy checking out other sites and having a laugh at the comments sections. Even a lot of the obsession with sites like Polygon (not a site I am a fan of by any means btw) isn't as much their content, but that their review scores are intruding on the sanctuary that is Metacritic. Whereas these people would be better served by finding the 3-4 sites/journalists that tend to represent their opinions rather than relying on the insanity that are the review aggregate sites.

This, i have a friend who is playing the Xbox One version of Fallout 4 while i'm playing on PC. Needless to say, he and I are having very different experiences right now.

Look man, some of us haven't forgotten 8.8-gate. This so-called "Chef Gerstmann" or whatever his name is may think he can sit on his ivory throne of Quick Looks and whatnot and make us all forget 8.8 ever happened, but we remember. We. Remember. And by god, we will throw tantrums about it until our dying day.

Really though, between the "objective review" crowd, the "Patrick is pure evil" crowd that thinks GB committed heresy by ever hiring him, the "people love this thing so it must be terrible" folks, the 8.8-ers, and the various other sayers of nay (and admittedly those who just legitimately don't like how GB rolls), it's not at all surprising that this site is met with hostility in certain circles.

The lesson here is to stay away from all faqs, gafs, chans and tubes.

Theres some truth to it yeh but mostly its people getting butt hurt.

Almost like they are kids or non native english speakers. Comon surely you can do better things than nitpicking on this ;)

@svenzon: sounds like something from a Margaret Atwood novel.

There's no benefit in getting worked up over a few people on gamefaqs.

Don't hang out on internet communities where people get hung up over the minutiae of video game review scores. That is what I suggest to you.

"My sites dad could kick your sites dads ass!"

@devil240z said:

My first blog on this site from a few months ago revolved around this exact topic in regards to Giant Bomb's coverage of the E3 press conferences. I would tend to agree with others in this thread that it's probably not worth getting worked up over these people's opinions, but I definitely see where your concern comes from. It makes me wonder what people want out of their videogame coverage: do they just want critics and journalists to echo their excitement about games? That notion is particularly weird when you consider the concerns about corruption and conflicts of interest that have been so prevalent recently.

who cares

Haha these kind of comments are why GB is the only game site I've made an account on, other forums seem to have a LOT of this kinda behaviour with people being over critical of things they don't like & trying to make it sound objective

GB not being your thing is fine & it's totally fair enough to disagree with a review, but rather than giving any game-related reasons why they disagree they instead point out/invent flaws in GB which just makes them look like idjits -shrug-

GB isn't for everyone, sure. The 'clickbait' comment is kinda funny though - literally the most click-baity things I've ever seen on this site are the 'around the web' ads at the bottom of the page which are almost always from other game sites like gamespot

Who cares indeed.