epic troll journalism

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

@Marcsman said:

Cake filled cunt actually sounds pretty tasty. What kind of cake goes in the cunt?

Red Velvet obviously.

Nah you want some Bundt in the cunt.

But seriously folks, ballpark, how long should he have played it before writing a review? I'm curious to know people's thoughts.

While I personally disagree with the score he actually does a pretty good job of justifying his score with the review. If he felt that the complaints he has hindered his enjoyment of the game enough to give it that score then I have no problem with the score. I do agree though that he probably should have spent somewhere between 5-10 hours in the multiplayer before reviewing the game but I don't know that it is mandatory.

He's right about Battlelog being a royal pain in the ass.

just ignore destructoid. it's easy.

@CL60 said:

You should probably explain what he did.

For anybody unaware, he gave BF3 a review of 7.5, and then it was found that he only played for a total of something like 6 hours, and only an hour and a half of that was multiplayer.

OH NO, A 7.5??? THATS LIKE, NOT THE NUMBER 10, HOW DARE HE!

@BestUsernameEver said:

@CL60 said:

You should probably explain what he did.

For anybody unaware, he gave BF3 a review of 7.5, and then it was found that he only played for a total of something like 6 hours, and only an hour and a half of that was multiplayer.

OH NO, A 7.5??? THATS LIKE, NOT THE NUMBER 10, HOW DARE HE!

You must have missed the part where I said he played the main part of the game for an hour and a half.

@CL60 said:

You should probably explain what he did.

For anybody unaware, he gave BF3 a review of 7.5, and then it was found that he only played for a total of something like 6 hours, and only an hour and a half of that was multiplayer.

Jeff Gerstman was under the same flak for Brink - not everyone uses the same account to try out the MP. He might have had more hours under a different one.

Read more of this thread and saw a lot of rage over the fact that he spent a decidedly small amount of multiplayer.

So when Eric Wolpaw enacts Wolpaw's law, it awesome. When Jim Sterling does it, he should be fired.

@HyBound said:

I happen to agree with the 7.5 score though... The game's totally fucked at launch (at least on 360).

if it was completely screwed over, it should get lower than a 7.5. 7's mean a good game, not a screwed one. Since when did something under 8 become taboo?

@CL60 said:

@BestUsernameEver said:

@CL60 said:

You should probably explain what he did.

For anybody unaware, he gave BF3 a review of 7.5, and then it was found that he only played for a total of something like 6 hours, and only an hour and a half of that was multiplayer.

OH NO, A 7.5??? THATS LIKE, NOT THE NUMBER 10, HOW DARE HE!

You must have missed the part where I said he played the main part of the game for an hour and a half.

nit picking much? Stop complaining about a review, and enjoy, I dont know, games.

@BestUsernameEver said:

@HyBound said:

I happen to agree with the 7.5 score though... The game's totally fucked at launch (at least on 360).

if it was completely screwed over, it should get lower than a 7.5. 7's mean a good game, not a screwed one. Since when did something under 8 become taboo?

Last generation, maybe? The 7.9 score for Mario Kart Double Dash at IGN was a bit of a knee-slapper.

I have since ignored him. He is a magnificent page view whore who does his job quite well. I have to respect that he has been so committed to his douchebag internet persona and generates a lot of page views based on threads like these all over the web.

What bothers me is not the reviews themselves. he often excentuates a game's single flaw to the extreme and at least people then notice that flaw. What bothers me is that letting him put a number on any video game effects how other people get paid. The website he writes for is included on metacritic. Once a writer knows this, a game review just cant be taken as lightly as Sterling seems to take them. I hope publishers have policies where drastically off scores dont get counted in the final average. Although 7.5 probably would not fall into that category. Some of his scores would as he assigned that number only to emphasize his dislike and/or different feeling he had from everyone else.

@BestUsernameEver said:

@CL60 said:

@BestUsernameEver said:

@CL60 said:

You should probably explain what he did.

For anybody unaware, he gave BF3 a review of 7.5, and then it was found that he only played for a total of something like 6 hours, and only an hour and a half of that was multiplayer.

OH NO, A 7.5??? THATS LIKE, NOT THE NUMBER 10, HOW DARE HE!

You must have missed the part where I said he played the main part of the game for an hour and a half.

nit picking much? Stop complaining about a review, and enjoy, I dont know, games.

I'm not even the one who made the topic, I was just explaining what the topic was about because the OP didn't say. Fuck you sound like an ass.

@CL60 said:

@BestUsernameEver said:

@CL60 said:

@BestUsernameEver said:

@CL60 said:

You should probably explain what he did.

For anybody unaware, he gave BF3 a review of 7.5, and then it was found that he only played for a total of something like 6 hours, and only an hour and a half of that was multiplayer.

OH NO, A 7.5??? THATS LIKE, NOT THE NUMBER 10, HOW DARE HE!

You must have missed the part where I said he played the main part of the game for an hour and a half.

nit picking much? Stop complaining about a review, and enjoy, I dont know, games.

I'm not even the one who made the topic, I was just explaining what the topic was about because the OP didn't say. Fuck you sound like an ass.

Im sorry to be so blunt, but yeah, OP should drop it.

Another "Blindly hate a game review because we don't like reviewer!!!!" thread.

Mr. Sterling seems to be a professional paid troll. Bet he knew the Sp/Mp ratio and worth going in.

If you ask the dev. sweating for high reviews, and on top of that high reviews for bonuses or even survival on metacritic, the damage value is real. The written review, so touted(and I guess to some extant rightly so) by ppl. does not mean shit, except for drawing eyeballs to his site. I have never read this guy I believe, and will doubly avoid him now. I'm sure he is an entertaining writer. I bet he was even right about the Sp if he castigated it, and found legitimate fault with the MP despite the little he played it. But Sterling is permanently suspect in my eyes.

@imsh_pl: He has honest reviews, I may not agree with most of them, but you have to give him credit for having the balls to say what he thinks about a game, and not what his audience wants.

@Lautaro said:

Can anybody even confirm whether that 1 hour is on all 3 platforms? I highly doubt that.

Since you link all your BF3 accounts to battlelog they probably can confirm that. I don't know for certain but in general there's a very high chance it would be.

@MrOldboy said:

I have since ignored him. He is a magnificent page view whore who does his job quite well. I have to respect that he has been so committed to his douchebag internet persona and generates a lot of page views based on threads like these all over the web.

What bothers me is not the reviews themselves. he often excentuates a game's single flaw to the extreme and at least people then notice that flaw. What bothers me is that letting him put a number on any video game effects how other people get paid. The website he writes for is included on metacritic. Once a writer knows this, a game review just cant be taken as lightly as Sterling seems to take them. I hope publishers have policies where drastically off scores dont get counted in the final average. Although 7.5 probably would not fall into that category. Some of his scores would as he assigned that number only to emphasize his dislike and/or different feeling he had from everyone else.

Fuck everything about this mentality. Should Giant Bomb rate a game highly if their is a possibility of that development team going under? Hell no. The duty of the reviewer is to inform his audience about their experience with the game. Not one iota should concern the well-being of the game creator(s). Once that line is crossed then the value of an review becomes worthless to its reader. I'm here to buy a game, not help pay a salary.

@Andorski: The problem isn't Jim not scoring games highly so a man can keep his job, the real problem is the system in developers offices that look at the metacrtitic number like jesus trying to tell them something about their workers. Jim is doing his job flawlessly, honestly reviewing games, he should not stop doing that, instead all the dickhead bosses should stop firing people when they see a 7.0.

No link=fail

@BestUsernameEver said:

@Andorski: The problem isn't Jim not scoring games highly so a man can keep his job, the real problem is the system in developers offices that look at the metacrtitic number like jesus trying to tell them something about their workers. Jim is doing his job flawlessly, honestly reviewing games, he should not stop doing that, instead all the dickhead bosses should stop firing people when they see a 7.0.

Completely agree. It's sad that some publishers take this route in gauging the performance of their development team, but that in no way means that the burden of these employee's wages, or even jobs, should be passed onto the reviewer, which basically passes it onto their readers.

@MrOldboy said:

I have since ignored him. He is a magnificent page view whore who does his job quite well. I have to respect that he has been so committed to his douchebag internet persona and generates a lot of page views based on threads like these all over the web.

What bothers me is not the reviews themselves. he often excentuates a game's single flaw to the extreme and at least people then notice that flaw. What bothers me is that letting him put a number on any video game effects how other people get paid. The website he writes for is included on metacritic. Once a writer knows this, a game review just cant be taken as lightly as Sterling seems to take them. I hope publishers have policies where drastically off scores dont get counted in the final average. Although 7.5 probably would not fall into that category. Some of his scores would as he assigned that number only to emphasize his dislike and/or different feeling he had from everyone else.

Fuck everything about this mentality. Should Giant Bomb rate a game highly if their is a possibility of that development team going under? Hell no. The duty of the reviewer is to inform his audience about their experience with the game. Not one iota should concern the well-being of the game creator(s). Once that line is crossed then the value of an review becomes worthless to its reader. I'm here to buy a game, not help pay a salary.

@SeriouslyNow: Where in the review did he not give points to Battlefield 3 over him not getting a review copy early? And why do you think all these things about him being a troll/contrarian/notareviewer. Also, he played about 3 hours of the Battlefield 3 multiplayer. Not the 1 and a half hours that's been mistakenly taken as fact in this thread. He played MP in both the 360 version and PC version.

He purposely scores games lower to cause controversy, just add 1 or 1.5 points to his scores if you want the true score.

Lets hope that Mr Sterling reviews every major release from now on; his consistently low scores should average out over all these releases and maybe a 7 will become respectable again!

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

He purposely scores games lower to cause controversy, just add 1 or 1.5 points to his scores if you want the true score.

So Assassin's Creed 2 is worth a 5.5 and Kane and Lynch 2 a 2.5?

I might still have to disagree with him on a frequent basis if so...

@SeriouslyNow: Where in the review did he not give points to Battlefield 3 over him not getting a review copy early? And why do you think all these things about him being a troll/contrarian/notareviewer. Also, he played about 3 hours of the Battlefield 3 multiplayer. Not the 1 and a half hours that's been mistakenly taken as fact in this thread. He played MP in both the 360 version and PC version.

@SeriouslyNow: Wha? How is this a debacle? He liked the game. He played enough of the game to determine that. What am I missing?

@theveej said:

@CL60 said:

@jmrwacko said:

@Mr_Skeleton said:

Just ignore him.

Although TBH, his 10/10 review for Deadly Premonition did have some merit, as we all saw during the DP Endurance Run :-)

What about his 4/10 for Assassins Creed 2, or his 6/10 for The Witcher 2?

wow I didn't know about the AC2 review, I had to google it just to be sure... I'm speechless ............ like wow......

wuteve 7.5 for bf3 is probably a bit too low but its not outrageous but after reading that AC2 review dude is a troll.

Thanks for posting that, I will never waste a second of my time reading/ listening to what this guy has to say..... yah game reviews are subjective but fucking 4 for AC2 is just trolling

Maybe he just really didn't like AC2? Just because a score doesn't match up with the average doesn't mean anything.

I understand people not liking games that others enjoy. I did not like bioshock 1, but if I was to grade it I wouldn't give it a fail (probably from 7-8 it was a good game had good design and all just not to my liking) if you read the review he literally shits on everything. Flat out he is trying his best to make them look bad and right a hipster review showing how cool he is for not liking the game. Plus he is literaly the only person I'v met who disliked AC2 that much. I dunno I know a lot of different people that play different type of games, and everyone atleast enjoyed AC2 (some people couldn't even play it real sucked too much at video games but atleast they thought it was good)

for example :

"Speaking of absolute crap, I don't know what Ubisoft has done to the game's engine, but Jesus Christ is it bad. This game has some of the most puzzlingly bad graphics I have seen on a console this year. The facial animation in particular is abhorrently nightmarish, with characters looking like circus freaks and moving as if they were bizarre puppets in rubber flesh. One particular female character looked incredibly hideous and old, and I assumed that was the designers' intent. Imagine my surprise when one of the characters -- completely sincerely -- describes her as "young and beautiful." Not a single character looks "beautiful" in that whole game. All the women look like David Bowie after taking a frying pan to the face.

The animation is pretty piss-poor as well. One cutscene involved a character being kicked by another in asupposedly brutal fashion, but it more closely resembled two very bad actors in a poorly staged fight. The hit detection is totally off the mark, with Ezio's fist usually an in-game foot away from someone's face while they're reeling from the implied punch. Professional wrestling matches have more realistic combat than this.

There is also plenty of pop-up and textures that appear out of nowhere. While the draw distance is superb at long distances, it's terrible for short ones, and as far as I'm concerned, being able to see everything that's close to the player character is slightly more important than seeing stuff ten miles away. The game simply looks sub-par and unpolished in so many areas, which totally undoes the otherwise bright scenery and impressive vista visuals."

WTF is this shit? thats is not the AC2 i played, you can't be fucking subjective about graphic ..... its a fucking fafct. If thats not trolling I dunno what is.

if any sane person qualifies AC2 as (4s have some high points, but they soon give way to glaring faults. Not the worst games, but are difficult to recommend) i dont even know what to say......

@SeriouslyNow: Wha? How is this a debacle? He liked the game. He played enough of the game to determine that. What am I missing?

@theveej: I'm currently playing AC2 and I sort of agree with both of those point. The characters and animation look significantly worse than what I remember AC looking like(It's has been around 2-3 years since I played the first so they could be the same). I've also noticed that some animations look very weird. That being said neither of those things really bother me too much and I'm loving what I've played of the game so far.

@Andorski said:

@MrOldboy said:

I have since ignored him. He is a magnificent page view whore who does his job quite well. I have to respect that he has been so committed to his douchebag internet persona and generates a lot of page views based on threads like these all over the web.

What bothers me is not the reviews themselves. he often excentuates a game's single flaw to the extreme and at least people then notice that flaw. What bothers me is that letting him put a number on any video game effects how other people get paid. The website he writes for is included on metacritic. Once a writer knows this, a game review just cant be taken as lightly as Sterling seems to take them. I hope publishers have policies where drastically off scores dont get counted in the final average. Although 7.5 probably would not fall into that category. Some of his scores would as he assigned that number only to emphasize his dislike and/or different feeling he had from everyone else.

Fuck everything about this mentality. Should Giant Bomb rate a game highly if their is a possibility of that development team going under? Hell no. The duty of the reviewer is to inform his audience about their experience with the game. Not one iota should concern the well-being of the game creator(s). Once that line is crossed then the value of an review becomes worthless to its reader. I'm here to buy a game, not help pay a salary.

You completely missed the point.

I am not saying that reviewers should feel bad about the devs who made a less than stellar game. I am saying that reviews need to understand that the number they are assigning to a game means more than generating page views, comments, or general attention to your own opinions because the industry has latched onto the idea of numbers being measure of the quality of the game. Maybe his idea of the 0-10 number scale is different than others, I dont know. But going back and looking just at the numbers he assigns to games, one can see a very weird pattern where he latches on to some games and puts an effort to burn some games at the stake.

BF3 is not one of those games I feel as his points and score are valid, although I dont really like the way he played the game to review it. His review is valid I feel.

Again, I feel the score should match the quality of the game only based on facts derived from elements seen, heard, or experienced in the game by the reviewer. The score should not reflect biased opinions about the game or other more sinister reasons such as generating internet wide discussion, page views, and subsequently ad revenue.

The score means more than just a quick way to describe the value/quality of the game, we just have to accept this even if its not what we want it to mean.

Only played it for 6 hours before reviewing it? Only 6 hours? To review a BATTLEFIELD game....

I could write a review on it after 5 minutes of playtime. Hell I could write a review on it just based on the the back of the box, and my experience with the rest of the Battlefield games alone...

Seriously, get over it. Reviews are pointless anyway. 7.5/10 is probably a perfect score for the game. I love Battlefield, it is great, I always have, more then other FPS multi-player games of the same genre. But B3 is just that, another Battlefield game, nothing revolutionary or magical. Personally I'd probably give it an 8, if I were forced to start "rating games on an imaginary number system".

You either have well written, well articulated, detailed reviews/articles about a game, or you don't. That is what matters and what determines if someones job was successful or not. Not some bogus number attached to it. That is called an 'opinion', and why in the hell 'opinions' ever started being shared with numbers attached to them for the internet to see, and more importantly cared about, is beyond me.

@SeriouslyNow: I don't know how you came to that conclusion, but I believe the more realistic answer is that Destructoid wanted to get the review up as soon as possible while playing a fair amount of the game. Also, the multiplayer was the most praised aspect of the game in that review. He COMPLETED the campaign and thought it was crap, and he played some co-op and thought it was more crap. However, the multiplayer was so good that it redeemed itself to receive a good rating. I really don't see where his ego is bruised anywhere in his review since I didn't assume what his intentions were based on how much I disliked him.

@hinderk: I remember at the time when i played it, the animation and characters did not look bad. I do agree that someone of the woman looked kind of looked wack but not to the extend this dude trying to say. I just can not fathom a game like AC2 getting a 4 score based on the criteria put forward for a 4 score, its just not that bad of a game no matter how much you hate that game

His Jim mother fucking Sterling... these things are expected

@SeriouslyNow: For the majority of the write-up on the multiplayer, he seems to have enjoyed it. His biggest issues were vehicle controls and his ineffectiveness being on foot compared to being in a vehicle (although he ends his complaint by saying "infantry fights make for far more involving warfare and provide a level of immersion that you don't see in many shooters these days, online or otherwise"). So the issue of his length of time on multiplayer is irrelevant, unless people here are arguing that his multiplayer experience would sour the more he played.

He centralizes his complaints on the un-fun single player and Battlelog. I can't speak to the accuracy of his experience with Battlelog (didn't get the PC version), and I think it's widely accepted that the single player is indeed below average at best. So assuming that his opinion on Battlelog cannot be contradicted by facts, Jim Sterling's main complaints are valid problems to have.

Jim Sterling ends his review by saying:

"Many players, of course, will be more than happy to gloss over the issues because there truly is something worth playing when you get in deep. Ignoring the mediocre campaign and wasted co-op, the multiplayer is an authentically engrossing affair, one that fans will love and one that single-handedly remains worth the price of entry."

... and that's what the real kicker is for me. For everyone claiming that "it's all about the multiplayer," he seems to agree. His gripes are everything outside the multiplayer game. Jim Sterling is a troll, but he isn't trolling his reader; his readers would clearly get the message everyone in this thread is raging about. He's trolling everyone who is looking at his review score and trying to invalidate it.

@Moreau_MD: Technically Dave gave it .5 more points is that troll journalism? I'm not a Sterling fan but he did some good points in that review.

This is not an unfair review, no matter how long he played it. And I don't even like the guy. I've found several of his reviews unfair, but this isn't one of them. I wasn't aware a 7.5 is considered calling a game shit.

Do you think if he played for four more hours he would have given it a 9.5, or what? I'm certain if he played it for 16 hours and still gave it a 7.5 a lot of you would still complain. Why feed his already inflated ego by giving him attention? If he is a troll you guys are great at taking the bait.

@SeriouslyNow said:

@Ace829 said:

@SeriouslyNow: Wha? How is this a debacle? He liked the game. He played enough of the game to determine that. What am I missing?

Sure, a 'journalist' reviews a game and plays a short amount of it, marks it lower than everyone and couple of days prior was openly complaining at his lacking review copy. If he was so interested in his missing review copy why didn't he give the game the time that was needed to properly review it? Because he wasn't interested in the game, only the fact that his ego had been bruised.

no, because he needed to get a review out. A game as big as this demands a review from a large publication before or on the day of the games release. It brings hits to the site and that is there job. He was perfectly justifiable on being angry about how the process for getting a review copy was, because EA/Dice really fucked up on that. That's why he rushed the review out. He didn't have enough time to fully flesh out the multiplayer. But why does he need to? He stated that it was the best part of the game, and what he said in his actual review was pretty accurate.

@MrOldboy: Did you read the review? In generalizing all his points, a 7.5 score matches the tone of his review. It at least matches my perception of what a 7.5 score is - and that's the problem. Everyone views the 1-10 scale differently, and there is no right or wrong way to perceive it. Should all reviewers see that scale the way EA uses it to judge their employees' performance?

As I said before, its sad that publishers are using review numbers in this manner. I have problems with even calling them numbers - there is no uniformity whatsoever. They're better described as symbols that are evoking emotions to the people who see them. If we are not willing to blame publishers for this situation, I'd rather point the finger to the reader rather that the reviewer. Jim Sterling's review is up for everyone to read. If people jump straight to the review score and deem that 7.5 is too low for them, then is he really the one to blame?

@theveej said:

@hinderk: I remember at the time when i played it, the animation and characters did not look bad. I do agree that someone of the woman looked kind of looked wack but not to the extend this dude trying to say. I just can not fathom a game like AC2 getting a 4 score based on the criteria put forward for a 4 score, its just not that bad of a game no matter how much you hate that game

He felt the game deserved a 4 so he gave it a 4. I would much rather have a reviewer give their honest opinion of a game than trying to guess what the majority of the people who play the game will feel about it. There are plenty of games that I hate and people love. Does it mean I'm wrong?No.Does it mean that the people who like the game are wrong?No. It just means we different taste in games. I really wish gamers would just enjoy playing games instead of complaining everytime a game gets a lower score than what they think it deserves.

@Moreau_MD said:

if he were in any other line of work he would've been fired for this incident no question but ya know...Destructoid.

Fixed.

I think we're missing the main issue. Which is cake. Personally I like a nice whoopie pie. Or upside-down cake.

@Andorski said:

@MrOldboy: Did you read the review? In generalizing all his points, a 7.5 score matches the tone of his review. It at least matches my perception of what a 7.5 score is - and that's the problem. Everyone views the 1-10 scale differently, and there is no right or wrong way to perceive it. Should all reviewers see that scale the way EA uses it to judge their employees' performance?

As I said before, its sad that publishers are using review numbers in this manner. I have problems with even calling them numbers - there is no uniformity whatsoever. They're better described as symbols that are evoking emotions to the people who see them. If we are not willing to blame publishers for this situation, I'd rather point the finger to the reader rather that the reviewer. Jim Sterling's review is up for everyone to read. If people jump straight to the review score and deem that 7.5 is too low for them, then is he really the one to blame?

Did you read my post?

"BF3 is not one of those games I feel as his points and score are valid, although I dont really like the way he played the game to review it. His review is valid I feel."

To the rest of your post. I have no issue with his score for BF3 or his review. But if you look at his past scores he has put on games, he has no discernible scale or distinct meaning to the numbers from 0 to 10. Destructoid does, at least they say so in their reviews, he doesn't. He'll say, ehh this game kind of sucks, 1/10. Then say, ehh this game kind of sucks 4/10. But he seems to use the score itself to bring attention to himself instead of giving a shorthand value to the game.

People sometimes complain about GB's 5 pt system, but at least I feel that the meaning of the number of stars is consistent.

I am not really concerned about his BF3 review, but the way he reviews some games in the past, maybe more, but I stopped following detructoid mainly due to him so I dont know if any more examples have come up recently.

@SeriouslyNow said:

@Ace829 said:

@SeriouslyNow: Wha? How is this a debacle? He liked the game. He played enough of the game to determine that. What am I missing?

Sure, a 'journalist' reviews a game and plays a short amount of it, marks it lower than everyone and couple of days prior was openly complaining at his lacking review copy. If he was so interested in his missing review copy why didn't he give the game the time that was needed to properly review it? Because he wasn't interested in the game, only the fact that his ego had been bruised.

no, because he needed to get a review out. A game as big as this demands a review from a large publication before or on the day of the games release. It brings hits to the site and that is there job. He was perfectly justifiable on being angry about how the process for getting a review copy was, because EA/Dice really fucked up on that. That's why he rushed the review out. He didn't have enough time to fully flesh out the multiplayer. But why does he need to? He stated that it was the best part of the game, and what he said in his actual review was pretty accurate.