Tom McShea reviews Bioshock Infinite again, gives it a 4

@shagge: The sound that they make gives ducks an infinite pass in my book. Quack.

Too bad McShea is a complete doofus.

That's nice. Everyone's certainly entitled to voice their opinion. How else can we have an open dialogue on games as a medium? While I certainly disagree with the game getting such a low assessment of quality, I still enjoy reading other people's take on games I had a polar opposite opinion of. It further helps me understand why I like or dislike a game while still reflecting on my original thoughts.

Also, the idea of outlets putting out multiple reviews/ write ups on games sounds potentially interesting, but I honestly feel such a feature on a game that came out months ago would've been better served to being a straight up opinion piece article.

I am too lazy to figure out who Tom McShea is in that podcast clip. But, he is right about the steam box and what it came out to be. If that is the guy this thread is referencing (Ginger guy red head whatever). Also, people who think his tablet argument is dumb don't have much perspective on what the games industry is. I think the guys on the bombcast for a while kept mentioning how small it is compared to other entertainment businesses. It is also good to take a step back and look at what most people might be consuming entertainment wise regularly. Anyways, for anyone who thinks his points are invalid you should go do some reading about stuff under that related topic. Really, don't make this an ad hominem and discount what he said in the context of what has actually happened.

I also need to make this clear. This is referencing to what the red head guy said. Ryan tore him down for things he wasn't aware of. The licensing issue was probably the most important topic of discussion there that got glossed over. Also, the direction of windows from a no traditional desktop environment with a sandbox app experience ala smart phone.

Finally, this was just a cursory glance at the video. But, that guy seems well informed on some of that topic and probably could have voiced a articulate response. I also notice that Ryan tends to compensate for what he doesn't know by shouting someone down at least in this case. I don't know if it is readily apparent in other videos. It is actually extremely similar to what Rorie did on that recent episode of unprofessional Friday's when Jeff showed that FMV game.

I like the idea of the feature, gets dissenting opinions out in a place where they're more likely to be heard by "mainstream" sorts of people than on, say, Gamasutra or Quarter to Three.

... Buuuuut then this thread maybe exemplifies why that's a bad idea.

I picked this game up a few weeks ago and I hate to say it but it's not hooking me.

Yeah, I can't agree with that part either.
Youtube-rapartist-guy-person Dan Bull said it best:

"And I'm telling ya, Elizabeth isn't a damsel in distress. She's the damn best wingman to ever don a dress"

I'm not really sold on the idea, personally. Who is the review suppose to appeal to? People that haven't bought the game yet? Seems funny to me that he ends up reviewing a very well reviewed game and gives it a very low score.

But you can say I'm just a McShea hater... you'd probably be right. I often disagree with Tom McShea's reviews and thus his opinion is invalid to me. VanOrd gave the game a 9. I have been a fan of his for awhile. I side with VanOrd on this and many of his other reviews. So I give weight to his thoughts. This is just another example of why I don't listen to McShea.

Someone on this thread said the story was confusing for the sake of being confusing. Really? What was confusing about the story? I got it pretty easily. When GB streamed Vinny completing the game he got the jist of it pretty much instantly as well.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

SEEING A SCORE OF '4' FOR A GAME I LIKE SENDS ME INTO A BLOOD-RAGE! MY BLOOD IS BOILING! AND RAGING! ARRRRGGGGHHH! HOW CAN I COPE WITH SOMEONE NOT LIKING A GAME I LIKE!? HOW WILL I EEEEVVVVVVEEEERRRR COPE!

So he didn't like it. Sad that he couldn't enjoy it when others could. He's missing out.

Publicity.

both have equally appealing gameplay!!! HEY-OOOHH

I'm not gonna lie. Bioshock is a better game, obviously, lol but I had way more fun playing Ducktales.

He would probably tell you to not get either of them. Because choices like this don't actually exist.

Like others have said, I'm all for the idea of looking back on games or getting differing opinions. However, associating a score with it seems like it was only done for click bait. Would anyone have paid it any mind had there not been a score? Probably not. I have no problem with giving the game a lower score, but I think after the "official" review has been posted no more reviews by the staff should have numbers associated. But at the end of the day Gamespot is probably getting more traffic and that is what CBSi is looking for.

I don't even really like Infinite, but McShea is the worst. Seriously, his opinions and thought process makes me roll my eyes every time.

Wait, Tom McShea is being a troll? Didn't see that one coming.

Gamespot's recent string of copiously "against the grain" reviews are simply for page clicks. We all know about the GTA fiasco, (even though a 9 isnt bad), but their Beyond review, as well as a few other big ticket titles, and now this unneeded re-review, all simply to stir press for their website.

It is the reason I no longer go, and will continue to enjoy GB.com

He scored a game that I love poorly. We must be mortal enemies now. That's how this works...right?

Tom McShea is a provocateur and nothing more.

Nailed it.

Just riding the wave of how it's "cool" now to hate on Bioshock Infinite for some reason. I personally love that game and it's my top game of this year so far but if he didn't like it, that's fine. Don't really see the point of putting up another review, especially with such an obvious "shocking" score, other than to get more clicks.

I'm so fucking pissed. I'm SO fucking pissed. I'm SO fucking pissed! How dare he! HOW FUCKING DARE HE!

The next time you wonder why every single AAA, big budget game gets 9s and 10s everywhere regardless of quality, take a good look at this thread and see what people say about someone who DARES to have a dissenting opinion.

Yeah maybe I'm super cynical, and it doesn't make sense for an editor to do this, but stirring some controversy sounds like a pretty good way to get people to check out the new GS redesign.

Except it's Tom McShea

See, it was a great game. It looked great, it played great, and the story was intriguing and well-written (regardless of overall originality). Tom McShea has built his Gamespot editorial reputation on being contrarian and arguing with everyone. He's an ass. His review of Bioshock Infinite is on par with Carolyn Petite's argument that Persona 4 should've played out the way she wanted it to in regards to Kanji and Naoto, therefore her appraisal of the story was that it was homophobic and anti-trans. It was fucking moronic.

And that completely and utterly topples his argument, all without ever needing any qualifications or context or any of that troublesome nonsense.

really feels like someone took advantage of the steam sale

LOL!

I think he makes a lot of condemning statements about this game that have nothing to do with actual flaws, but rather things that go against his personal preferences. Though you can certainly inject them with objective elements (ie the game crashes all of the time), reviews are basically subjective things, so I respect his right to have whatever stupid opinion he wants. However it's pretty difficult to respect a review where the biggest complaint is that it wasn't the game the reviewer wanted it to be.

I want my car to fly and make me breakfast.

Honda Civic review 4/10

Like the feature of having 2 opinions very much.

Don't mind the score

Do very much mind that reasoning for the score is very poorly supported.

Well that was dumb.

I won't argue with the idea that Infinite is a great game (I agree) and I won't even argue with the idea that Tom McShea is an ass (I haven't seen much of his work but of what I have seen, I was not a fan) but the point is that there is nothing "fucking moronic" about this review. If he believes that Infinite is a bad game or worth a 4 or whatever, what's wrong with him expressing that? There are plenty of games that the majority of the users on this site would consider great that I'm not at all a fan of. Doesn't that make me some sort of contrarian asshole?

I don't get how saying the game wasn't what he wanted it to be somehow invalidates his criticisms. Isn't that kind of all criticism is? "I wanted this part of the game to be better." "I wanted this part of the story to be different."

Defending things that I don't even agree with isn't very fun but the response to this review is absurd.

4.0 is a ridiculous score, but I agree with the sentiment. It's a personal 6 or 7 out of 10 for me.

I don't really see what's peoples problem with this. I didn't like the game, I'd probably give it three stars. All the combat which there was a lot of was super boring to me the story was gimmicky and silly. I really liked the look and feel of the world and I think Elizabeth was a wonderfully realized character.

So basicly the game was about 8 hours of complete boredom and 2 hours interesting things. Not a good enough ratio for my time. I put the difficulty on easy, because if I died and had to play more combat I would probably had just quit.

I wanted to see the story to the end since it was supposed to be interesting, but it failed to deliver for me. I dislike most twist endings. They are cheap and always create a feeling that everything before it was kind of meaningless and when you sit down and think about them they never make enough sense unless you are willing to just stretch it super thin. Not satisfying in any way.

I was shocked how much I didn't like Infinite. Then again I loved The Last of Us. It's very similar game in that it's really about the characters and the combat is just the necessary game part of the game. The difference is that I found the combat in it to be a lot of fun after I stopped treating it as a stealth game and just roll with it and tried to survive. Many people didn't feel like this and I think it's completely justified to dislike the game for it. Also it doesn't depend on a twist ending, instead it really keeps true to the characters it creates in a way rarely seen in any media.

There is no universal praise to anything and it's silly to expect that. Furthermore why would you ever want that? That would be fucking boring. People seem really down on this Tom McShea guy. I don't know anything about him and also don't really care. It's just weird that people seem to think that you can't legitimately dislike this game and you just have to be trolling if you express anything of that kind.

TL;DR: I didn't like Infinite, am I a troll?

He is correct on pretty much everything he call it out on, the game was tedious as all hell and they presented you with tons of topics in the beginning but never dealt with any of them. I think Flimsii did a better job explaining the games shortcomings though.

Well this is a ridiculous thread.

Multiple reviews is a fine idea. But I mean really, I wasn't a big Bioshock Infinite fan myself, but a 4/10? The game is at least like, a 6/10 from a technical standpoint alone...

Oh well, it's Tom Mcshea so this is expected.

That review is BS and terrible .... if you dont like it ok , but a 4???

Just to be clear here, he has given BS:I a lower score than Udraw averaged.

We are talking about the same score as such briliant works as, Star Trek the videogame and the show stopping hit Tour de France 2009. I am getting a general feeling of hyperbole.

Welcome to the community, former GameSpot user! I would have left if they'd revised the rules on me too. Free speech all the way! Enjoy the forums, a place of serious discussion and somewhat high-level humor. You'll fit right in here.

Actually, fanboy_killer5 isn't new. He's been here before as fanboy_killer1-4.

I imagine that fanboy_killer6 will not be far off.

Oh, my bad. You just can't trust the internet these days.

I never read or heard anything by this dude, but his review and it was pretty good.

Oh hey, I've actually read the review now. Anyway, his major knocks against the game seem to be that he thinks the combat is boring. I think that's fair, even though I enjoyed swinging around from the rails quite a bit, and with a game as short as Infinite, I didn't feel like it overstayed it's welcome, but still, fair criticism. He said the twists were lazy, the characters were boring and unlikable, and that some of the gameplay mechanics didn't make sense for the world they're in. This is his opinion, of course, so it's fair to judge the game based on what he didn't like, even though I disagree. I get that the fact that Vigors exist wasn't really explained, but it also didn't bother me.

It's is main criticism which kind of bugs me. He basically knocks the game for not getting too political. He's basically saying "Booker is running around this world full of racists, and the game doesn't do enough to convince you that racism is bad." I... guess I didn't feel like the game needed to point that out to me. I don't think the game would have been better if Booker arrives in Columbia, gets morally outraged and goes on a crusade to end slavery. The fact that they chose to focus the story on these two main characters thrown into (or born into) this crazy world and their attempts to escape was just as interesting. The review reads like, as just about everyone's pointed out, that he either went into this game expecting it to be something it wasn't, and decided his vision of what Infinite could be is better, or maybe he went out of his way to write something controversial to promote Gamespot's new second opinion feature (an idea which I actually like quite a bit. I know review scores aren't really meant to be compared, but McShea rated it on the level of stuff like Deadpool and Ducktales: Remastered. Lower, actually, and that just doesn't seem right. I know I'm not invested in Bioshock in any way, but it still kind of bugs me, for reasons I can't really explain.

So I think the here is that Tom McShea stirs up shit to cover for lack of insight or ability. Not liking BioShock Infinite is fine, but why bring it up now? And based on his history I can't trust that he was doing anything more than being contrarian. You're not a troll, people who don't like popular games aren't automatically a troll, but a guy with poorly reasoned arguments writing a bad review deserves to be called out.

He went on a stupid rant once about realism in war game that culminated in this interview. Personally I think it's a reasonable position and can be explored and debated ... I agree with the sentiment that there needs to be a more balanced depiction of war in video games and our collective obsession with violence is becoming bizarre. But fucking hell does Tom butcher his own argument... "REGENERATING HEALTH! REGENERATING HEALTH!!" that's the best he can muster when he's actually challenged. He cowers in front of the one person who could get answers from...

TL;DR - The problem isn't that Tom McShea doesn't like Infinite, it's that he loves to stir up shit like a forum troll

If he doesn't enjoy it, it doesn't matter how 'well crafted' it is. I would rate Bioshock Infinite as 6/10. Enjoyable but not special. I don't care if Ken Lavine spend 20 years writing this game, or if it was coded in truffle coated gold.

I think there is a line people can get away with. Just look at other games who got a 4. IT is not even debatable that a 4 is just bullshit. I also would some games like Skyward sword a 4 because I think its old design, boring combat , no story, and so on but even I know that it would be just ridiculous. Give it a 7 or maybe even a 6 and give your reasons why you think so but a 4?