Tom Chick may be the Armond White of video game reviews with his love of blatant contrarianism, but he's totally entitled to write his opinion and you are totally entitled to decide whether or not you agree.
You have to do that dumb pallet thing like ten times throughout the story, it is incredibly stupid that they would re-use that mechanic so often.
This. I loved the game, but i ended up just trying to intentionally knock Ellie off as hard I could each time it came up then hoping it was the last time I saw it after it happened. Each time it came up it reminded me... "Oh right. Video games."
Aw, man. I thought losing Ryan had sort of taught us a little something about trying to be a bit kinder (even while critical) of people in this hobby. And this is coming from me, king dick of the dickheaded dickfaces.
To be fair, this is a new fellow coming over from NeoGAF; so, he is unlikely to have learned anything from the recent passing of Ryan.
GAF actually had even more postings about Ryan than GB did. They had a "he has passed" thread that went on to something like 12,000+ posts and a "RTD memorial" thread reminiscing about him that went on to like 15,000 or 20,000 posts. You'd have to go out of your way to have not been bombarded with RTD-love over there last week :)
I think you're exaggerating numbers a little bit here
Tom Chick may be the Armond White of video game reviews with his love of blatant contrarianism, but he's totally entitled to write his opinion and you are totally entitled to decide whether or not you agree.
This. Personally, I think Tom Chick is a moron at times. His Last Of Us review didn't really get me mad though, like TC. I just thought he was rambling on about stupid shit. "YOU HAVE TO PUSH LADDERS." Yeah, no shit. In Skyrim, I have to go into how many different caves before I do anything relevant. In Arkham Aslyum, I have to use my gadgets too much. I could go on a list about different games I played that I had fun with, but I could also pointless ramble about things like he does.
On the opposing side, TC needs to get over it. It IS his opinion. Like I said, I'm not too fond of Tom Chick either, but saying you hate him, or calling him crappy is completely subjective and unneeded.
@SideburnGuru: Calling it "hate" may go too far but calling Tom Chick a crappy game critic is just an opinion as well (and not an entirely unfounded one). Why can Tom Chick have opinions but not the OP?
But saying he's a crappy critic because he said something you dislike just seems a bit off to me. Especially if it's only beef because of the Last Of Us review.
But saying he's a crappy critic because he said something you dislike just seems a bit off to me. Especially if it's only beef because of the Last Of Us review.
I'd say that calling someone a crappy critic because he appears to be contrarian for the sake of it, is a perfectly viable opinion.
Tom Chick might be a great guy and everything but his reviews are worthless to me as well because of that reason.
You have to do that dumb pallet thing like ten times throughout the story, it is incredibly stupid that they would re-use that mechanic so often.
This. I loved the game, but i ended up just trying to intentionally knock Ellie off as hard I could each time it came up then hoping it was the last time I saw it after it happened. Each time it came up it reminded me... "Oh right. Video games."
You are that guy. I have no doubt you won't get this reference but I don't care.
It was one thing that I didn't like about it.
They also did the thing where Ellie jokes about it, and as the bombcrew have stated, joking about something shitty in a videogame doesn't make it any better or detract from the terribleness. If anything it just shines a spotlight on said bad mechanic.
I always felt like he was a troll in smart-guy clothing. I can definitely see how his views would click with a big percentage of our community, tho. Meh.
@believer258: You and i actually share similar views on unchartered, and COD4. But i just find Tom Chick too much trying to go against the mainstream by adopting his own self justified set of beliefs of what a review should be.
Also I completely acknowledge mainstream sites like IGN overate games. *cough* COD. But thats been ranted about 100x times everywhere etc. I also know THe Last of Us is not a 10/10 and if you want me to criticize it, i would say partner AI breaks immersion in stealth sections, graphics held back by PS3 hardware, cheap 1 hit kill zombies in early part of game, stupid having to unlock + modes, some of the story's setup felt bit artificial such as Joel becoming some street smart smuggler in post apocalyptic world with his partner in crime tess. But i no idea why this is becoming a Last of Us discussion. Maybe i should've painted out his other reviews such as Halo 4, Call of Duty Black Ops 2 etc. which both seems to go on the contrary mainstream for the sake of it "HMMM, Everyone loves to hate COD now, im gonna give it 4 starz!".
Aw, man. I thought losing Ryan had sort of taught us a little something about trying to be a bit kinder (even while critical) of people in this hobby. And this is coming from me, king dick of the dickheaded dickfaces.
To be fair, this is a new fellow coming over from NeoGAF; so, he is unlikely to have learned anything from the recent passing of Ryan.
GAF actually had even more postings about Ryan than GB did. They had a "he has passed" thread that went on to something like 12,000+ posts and a "RTD memorial" thread reminiscing about him that went on to like 15,000 or 20,000 posts. You'd have to go out of your way to have not been bombarded with RTD-love over there last week :)
I think you're exaggerating numbers a little bit here
And then there've been quite a few threads on GB as well. Not that it matters much. Numbers are dumb. ;)
I apparently counted wrong (I thought there were more posts per page than there actually are). At any rate, the other thread I meant wasn't the memorial one, but the "we love ryan davis" thread, which was 12,000 posts. Between those two threads, there are something like 20,000. About as many as on GB all combined. Which is all just to serve the point that it would be pretty hard to be a GAFfer and not know. :)
But saying he's a crappy critic because he said something you dislike just seems a bit off to me. Especially if it's only beef because of the Last Of Us review.
I'd say that calling someone a crappy critic because he appears to be contrarian for the sake of it, is a perfectly viable opinion.
Tom Chick might be a great guy and everything but his reviews are worthless to me as well because of that reason.
There's nothing wrong with being contrarian. Even habitually so. That doesn't make one a "crappy critic" by any means. In fact, as long as the criticism is heartfelt (or made clear that it's contrarian just for the devil's advocate benefit), it can be a valid counterpoint to current discussion.
That doesn't, of course, mean that one can't be crappy *and* contrarian. :)
The Last of Us is the most emotionally resonant game you will ever play about plank, ladder, and pallet management. To be fair you’ll sometimes scooch dumpsters around. At one point, you scooch a piano.
Based God, Tom Chick
Seriously? OP had a problem with that? It's hilarious and accurate. Out of curiosity OP, did you not recognize the backhanded compliment to the game? It's pretty blatant.
@branthog: 1. That's the normal GB OT on GAF that got renamed. ;)
2. Well, at least for me deliberately contrarian reviews are pretty useless. I don't want "I'm going to crap on the game because it's widely popular and received universal critical praise" to be a factor in the process of forming an opinion. That's hardly better than the typical "[popular game]is the worst game ever!" attitude you'd find on gaming message boards (GTA4, Bioshock Infinite).
However, that doesn't mean I agree with the topic creator's outrage or view on TLoU. I didn't play the game (yet) and it may very well be overrated. And as for Tom Chick, I've have ignored his site/reviews ever since his schtick became apparent to me.
The Last of Us wasn't THAT good. God damn, I feel like I played a different game than everyone else. Everyone keeps talking about how amazing it was - I wish I had gotten that copy of the game. The one I got was pretty good, but had pretty boring game play. I want to trade my version in for the one that everyone claims is the most emotional game they have ever played, and has absolutely flawless game play.
@random45 I understand if people felt bored if they merely played the first hour, the gameplay was slow and set up very simple. But the gameplay's depth is really shown later in the game. The blend of stealth and action is rarely seen in most games involving stealth. Its well done in both stealth and gunplay aspect when you are discovered and have to tackle multiple enemies as you shift around cover trying to get the jump on a hunter before slowly turning the tide to go form hunted to hunter (but sometimes that does fall apart due to stupid AI or glitches) (took out every zombie by exploiting a no go zone for zombie in sewer level). And i guess the best thing TLoU did that mature, cinematic story games like Bioshock and Tomb Raider reboot did is minimize the dissonance between gameplay and story. In Bioshock infinite, you had a mature story of redemption with interesting world interesting themes and characters but then between every story bit you are shafted into killing hordes of enemies in a very old school way. right click plasmid, left click with shotgun rinse repeat. In Tomb Raider, a survivor is born but you felt more like a super commando who could make entire armies dissappear by themselves. One moment Lara is traumatized by her "first kill" and minutes later she is mercilessly mowing down hordes of enemies with deadly efficiency, with a combination of molotovs, arrows and generous amounts of ammo (whcih goes against the survivor theme of the game). At least in TLoU, ammo was generally limited, headshots are pretty difficult, and every kill is personal and has impact. When you slam against a wall to death, it feels like a struggle and that it wasn't merely the result of the player left clicking on an enemy and making him dead. But now im just getting off topic.
The one comment you chose of his to support your argument, Makes me agree with him. I felt like the gameplay was lacking, and so the story was lesser for it.. Not the best Naughty Dog game by far. It was like they had one mechanic, move x to climb up y. And forgot everything they learned from uncharted.
You quoted the man and call him a pretentious knob when everything he said made sense, your counter argument being your own opinion on what a review should be, this thread just seems like a pissy kid whos angry about a last of us review (for your sake i hope your a kid).
I really enjoy Tom Chick's perspective on things most of the time and I'm glad his site exists. Some fresh, unique takes and unusual reactions amongst the sea of complacency amongst game reviews is needed, commendable and quite simply pretty entertaining. I do also think he has a pretty colourful, charming style when writing his opinion pieces or presenting arguments in podcasts. He's basically not all that different from most modern game reviewers that lean towards opinionated reviews except he doesn't give a fuck about the popular consensus and is a little smug about that fact on occasion.
With that in mind, of all the game critics that I consider being worth some of my time he's probably the one with the shittiest taste in games in the sense that he's not that useful to me when deciding what to play. We dislike a fair amount of the same games but I rarely love a game he rates highly. He also either doesn't care about spending some time exploring strong points of games he hates or he isn't as good at that as he is at tearing games to shreds. That's a thing I really appreciate about Jeff's reviews, he really excells in that discpline as far as I'm concerned. But reviews don't have to be good buying advice to be worth reading. Some food for thought and a challenge for one's preconceptions can be very nice indeed.
As far as big titles this year go: He mocks Brave New World which I greatly enjoy after two games, he's unneccessarily harsh on Company of Heroes 2 which I'm having an absolute blast with and he is one of the relatively few reviewers that love Tomb Raider as much as I do. Compatability of opinion 2/5.
He can write whatever he wants, he probably shouldn't be putting scores on these sort of opinion pieces though, that's irresponsible. Also yes, sounds like a huge knob.
Reviews are opinion pieces. Always. Him putting a score below that isn't more or less irresponsible than what all game sites that review games do and it doesn't change the fact that you should read what he wrote before you look at the score. You probably shouldn't even look at the score in the first place.
In your opinion maybe.
In my world (and most responsible journalists, including the ones that run this site) reviews should be informative "finger on the pulse" write ups to let me know if it will be a good purchase based on my tastes. It's called a fucking REVIEW for chrise sak.
Not snooty opinion pieces written by insecure jerk offs who need attention for being deliberately alternative. Unless these people are incredibly funny, they are basically human hemorrhoids and offer nothing valuable to this world.
...except he doesn't give a fuck about the popular consensus and is a little smug about that fact on occasion.
I think he DOES give a fuck about the popular consensus - and he tends to be against whatever that popular consensus is. That schtick makes his reviews worthless to me.
I'm totally fine with critics that freely voice their opinions and come to their own conclusions. Tom Chick is not that. He seems to be driven by a contrarian attitude and is therefore heavily influenced by whatever the popular opinion on a certain game is at the time.
...except he doesn't give a fuck about the popular consensus and is a little smug about that fact on occasion.
I think he DOES give a fuck about the popular consensus - and he tends to be against whatever that popular consensus is. That schtick makes his reviews worthless to me.
I'm totally fine with critics that freely voice their opinions and come to their own conclusions. Tom Chick is not that. He seems to be driven by a contrarian attitude and is therefore heavily influenced by whatever the popular opinion on a certain game is at the time.
I have a hard time deciding on the amount of contrarianism and genuine dissent in his views as well. I'm certain there is some percentage of both present. I'm personally willing to give him a bit of a pass though since he often argues his points with a fair amount of knowledge and eloquency. He's not factually wrong on a regular basis in my opinion but I certainly see your point as well. In my book he's certainly not worse than the many reviewers who seem to accommodate popular optinion a little too much. He's just not better either, which he seems to think here and there.
As I said, I don't "trust" his pieces as buying advice either but I do enjoy reading them and listening to his views on podcasts.
Unless there is something factually or structurally wrong or broken about the text of the review itself, the reviewer can't be wrong. People can have rotten tastes but their opinion is not wrong. Two people can hold two different opinions because neither of them is correct or incorrect. So on and so forth....
Tom Chick is kinda a pretentious turd but he's welcome to his opinions. The only issue I have is him being included on metacritic but that's a bigger issue
He can write whatever he wants, he probably shouldn't be putting scores on these sort of opinion pieces though, that's irresponsible. Also yes, sounds like a huge knob.
Reviews are opinion pieces. Always. Him putting a score below that isn't more or less irresponsible than what all game sites that review games do and it doesn't change the fact that you should read what he wrote before you look at the score. You probably shouldn't even look at the score in the first place.
In your opinion maybe.
In my world (and most responsible journalists, including the ones that run this site) reviews should be informative "finger on the pulse" write ups to let me know if it will be a good purchase based on my tastes. It's called a fucking REVIEW for chrise sak.
Not snooty opinion pieces written by insecure jerk offs who need attention for being deliberately alternative. Unless these people are incredibly funny, they are basically human hemorrhoids and offer nothing valuable to this world.
I know that it's called a review. The thing is that the reader decides what reviews are valuable to them and as long as there are people who think that about his reviews, irresponsible is the wrong word. If you don't think the stuff he writes is good then stop reading it (I don't read that guy's write ups either).
A few of the best reviews I've read over the years were pieces that were pretty different from those you normally read. Was it wrong to attach a score to those reviews because they didn't describe all the important game mechanics or because they weren't "informative" in the traditional sense? I don't think so.
In addition to that a journalist simply can't judge a game based on your tastes (the best thing he can do is try to categorize it somehow in context to other games but that isn't alway the "right" method either). If I just bought my games according to review scores I would have missed a quite a few that I ended up having a ton of fun with.
He can write whatever he wants, he probably shouldn't be putting scores on these sort of opinion pieces though, that's irresponsible. Also yes, sounds like a huge knob.
Reviews are opinion pieces. Always. Him putting a score below that isn't more or less irresponsible than what all game sites that review games do and it doesn't change the fact that you should read what he wrote before you look at the score. You probably shouldn't even look at the score in the first place.
In your opinion maybe.
In my world (and most responsible journalists, including the ones that run this site) reviews should be informative "finger on the pulse" write ups to let me know if it will be a good purchase based on my tastes. It's called a fucking REVIEW for chrise sak.
Not snooty opinion pieces written by insecure jerk offs who need attention for being deliberately alternative. Unless these people are incredibly funny, they are basically human hemorrhoids and offer nothing valuable to this world.
I know that it's called a review. The thing is that the reader decides what reviews are valuable to them and as long as there are people who think that about his reviews, irresponsible is the wrong word. If you don't think the stuff he writes is good then stop reading it (I don't read that guy's write ups either).
A few of the best reviews I've read over the years were pieces that were pretty different from those you normally read. Was it wrong to attach a score to those reviews because they didn't describe all the important game mechanics or because they weren't "informative" in the traditional sense? I don't think so.
In addition to that a journalist simply can't judge a game based on your tastes (the best thing he can do is try to categorize it somehow in context to other games but that isn't alway the "right" method either). If I just bought my games according to review scores I would have missed a quite a few that I ended up having a ton of fun with.
True, we have all enjoyed the odd game that doesn't tend to review well - to be fair I find most reviews tend to try and steer you in it's direction by informing you of elements you might like even if they aren't blockbusters.
But in a world where all video games are getting reviewed as big snobby opinion pieces (like movies are) it would be a a lot harder to judge what is worth picking up, and when you are dropping anywhere from 60 to 110 dollars on a game (leaning more to the latter in my country), it's an important service and carries a weight of RESPONSIBILITY.
If a large chunk of video game movies are reviewed in this manner, i would probably have to try and rely on word of mouth or something - or just suffer wasting money a hell of a lot more money more often. I can understand there's this big movement that people think the medium has to head in the same direction as movies to be seen publicly as "relevant". But really that's a lot of insecure bullshit, movies and video games are entirely different - and while you can review the elements of video games that are similar to movies (plot, story, acting, themes, delivery) - these elements should not be 100 percent of the review.
I wonder if we would see threads like this more often if Yahtzee put scores at the end of his reviews. He's had less than complimentary things to say about well reviewed games, including The Last of Us. Maybe having no score at the end would be Tom Chick's road to success. Also, I feel like Chick wasn't hated as much when he wrote for Computer Gaming World and 1up for some reason.
@rowr: I definetely see where you`re coming from and I agree that these types of opinion pieces shouldn't be the only way games are judged but I still think that they can (the important word here) hold as much value as your traditional review. As many already said, there are a lot of ways to judge a game on your own (with trailers, gameplay and the like) and reviews that spend a lot of time being as "informative" lost importance over time. It's simply a matter of what you're looking for and how you like to use reviews.
I still think that it's okay to attach a score to e.g. this dudes reviews and I really dislike how he writes. It's all about context and if you have something that in some way explains why you gave it that score it's not irresponsible to me.
We're on the same page in the comparing games to movies discussion though.
I wonder if we would see threads like this more often if Yahtzee put scores at the end of his reviews. He's had less than complimentary things to say about well reviewed games, including The Last of Us. Maybe having no score at the end would be Tom Chick's road to success. Also, I feel like Chick wasn't hated as much when he wrote for Computer Gaming World and 1up for some reason.
I wouldn't mind if Yahtzee put scores on the end of his reviews but it's not needed either. He tries to be entertaining in the first place and it's his thing to highlight the things the game does wrong. Hell even the titles he liked, those he puts on his top lists often get reviews that sound pretty bad but that's alright if you know who he is and what he does.
@astupidvdcase: Sure, he is very funny, but I don't think that he just says things to be funny, he does have legitimate criticism about the games, and I don't think people just go to him for the comedy.
@video_game_king: You're right, but if Yahtzee put scores on his reviews, and those scores appeared on an aggregator site like metacritic, someone, even if most people accepted him as a lovable curmudgeon (which he is <3), would get bent out of shape about it post a reallllllllllyyyyyyy quality thread like this for people to argue about whether games have an inherent objective quality which critics have to be able to regard, or if reviews are subjective (which they are, read Experience and Judgement).
Tom Chick is ok just because he didn't like a game you like as much as you did does not mean you have to hate the guy I think 90% of games are just ok at best.
I liked The Last of Us, but I also felt totally comfortable making fun of the weird places wooden palates turned up and the number of times they have you boosting people up to open doors and whatnot. There are legitimate criticisms to be made about the mechanics in that game whether or not you feel the story at the heart of it overshadows that stuff or not is pure opinion, and Tom Chick is more than entitled to have one. I don't mind his reviews as he is pretty transparent about his own subjectivity in all of them. He gave Assassin's Creed 3 a 5/5 but goes on to ridicule the game's story while explaining he really enjoyed the setting and side activities to the point where he felt comfortable giving it his highest recommendation. At least I feel like I'm always getting an honest opinion with his reviews rather than the parroting of public opinion I seem to see at 90% of gaming publications. Voices like his present some measure of counterbalance, and I salute him for it. I don't always agree with him, but he should most certainly continue what he's doing.
He reviewed Brave New World poorly. He thought from the get go 3 years ago that Civ 5 was a steaming pile of shit and that Gods and Kings last year didn't improve anything and actually made things worst. At some point when you don't like the original and think the first expansion made things worst why would you go on and review the second expansion other than to get traffic by conveniently being the lowest score on Metacritic?
Tom Chick is a joke nowadays and has been so for a few years now which is sad because he used to be something that game reviews sorely lacked not that long ago. He's just given up on that now.
My opinion on The Last of Us went from "I should check this out" to "FUCK THIS GAME, FUCK NAUGHTY DOG, FUCK EVERYONE WHO RECOMMENDED IT!" when someone told me the game's story with zero regard for spoilers. If I had played through that game to get that conclusion I would have snapped the disc in two out of sheer rage.
That said, I think you can safely assume I would not have given the game a good review. On the flipside, I was just as angry at game reviewers for their poor scores for Fallout New Vegas. Yes, I had to reboot my 360 multiple times due to hard locks and crashes (And I played the game ten months post release with all the patches) and the reason I did this was because the game's story and world drew me in like nothing else prior; not even Fallout 3 had that kind of grip on me.
So, yeah...unlike the OP I want game reviewers to give me a complete and honest review of a game and Tom Chick clearly did that because his review starts with "I really liked the story, but goddamn you have to put up with a lot of gameplay bullshit" and that summarizes most games that the gaming press and gamers piss themsleves with joy over and it's refreshing to hear one of you finally come out and say it.
Really? People think tlou gameplay sucks like yom chick? Yes its cinematic but its miles ahead of similar third person shooter s like uncharted and tomb raider.
@astupidvdcase: I actually think there are some really strong points to Tom Chick. While his opinion and view may not line up with the general consensus (or at times maybe only his scoring scale) it is usually very clear what he gave a individual score - e.g. Halo 4 was wholly inappropriate to the normal metacritic sense but very precise in why it was 1 star. It just ends up being really odd because he is thrown into metacritic, where he comes out extremely divergent from other scales. And then knowing that a slight meta-critic hit may somewhat unfairly lead to layoffs at a developer due to thecontrary critic (but again - that is not something the reviewer should need to care about).
One of the least attractive parts of a typical game review is going through the features of the game like a checklist, and presenting a opinion that reads as pro vs. con. Tom seems to usually get really on-board with what a title does, or ends up with something that he does not feel is particularly entertaining (to his preferences). So I dunno, seems useful. But I'm not sure just one reviewer going to a systems that is more film-reviewer esque is enough to really shift how those are treated.
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