Gamerankings.com: top scrolling shooting games

[kengou]

I'll say it right now: prepare to laugh. Or gouge out your eyeballs. It's almost definitely worse than ScrewAttack's list though.

http://www.gamerankings.com/itemranking ... atings.asp

edit: select 'shooting -> scrolling' in the catagory thing.

[-Bridget-]

Kengou showed me this over AIM, and I have to agree.....

OMIGOD THE STUPID.


Just..... just..... argh!!!


This, to me, says alot about the many reviewers out there, and proves that they reeeeaaaaallllllly dont know SQUAT about shmups (which is what I thought).

It's not that many of the games on there are BAD, it's just....... well, the whole list is basically wrong......

[Arvandor]

Wow...

I don't know what's funnier. All the borderliners being on the list (though, they're actually really good borderliners), or R-Type Final being on the list.

[sven666]

1. M.U.S.H.A. GEN Seismic 1 7.8 100.0%
2. Robo Aleste SCD Tengen 2 5.7 100.0%
3. Space Megaforce SNES Toho 1 7.0 100.0%
4. Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar GEN Sega 2 8.0 95.0%
5. Contra III: The Alien Wars SNES Konami 5 8.5 91.4%
6. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow MOBILE Gameloft 4 6.1 90.8%
7. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell MOBILE Gameloft 4 5.9 90.5%
8. Ranger X GEN Sega 1 8.4 90.0%
9. Defender 2000 JAG Atari Games (Midway) 1 6.9 90.0%
10. R-Type III

thats the list i get ?? am i missing something??

[Arvandor]

What the? ... *goes to check the list again*

The closest thing I found to "shooting -> scrolling" is "action -> shooter -> scrolling." And the list I got was

1. Astro Boy
2. Ikaruga
3. Gunstar Super Heroes
4. Gradius V
5. Alien Hominid (GC)
6. Alien Hominid (PS2)
7. Iridion 2
8. R-Type Final
9. Metal Slug Advance
10. Gradius Collection

Yeup... That's... a list alright.

[Enhasa]

Ok c'mon guys, you know how these things work. Reviews suck in general (another topic), and when you get mainstream people reviewing a niche genre, it only gets worse. But seriously, it's not a shmup thing, it's a review thing. Put in most genres and you will get a crap list.

Now if you ask me, WAY WAY WAY more horrifying is the "console-style RPG" list. Also if you want a better indication of the problem with mainstream shmup reviews, just check gamerankings for Senko no Ronde.



sven666: If you want a "better" list, put minimum reviews to 25 (to get what Arvandor got) so you don't get say, games that randomly have 1-2 people retroreview with 10/10 for nostalgia.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Ikaruga and Gradius V at the top. Seems fine to me.

[sethsez]

Well, duh, of course it sucks. Averaging scores has never been a good way to rank shit because you're essentially comparing the aggregate scores from dozens of places (none of whom review every game ranked on Gamerankings), each with dozens of their own reviewers (none of whom rate every game for their publication), so you get very little real crossover from anyone, and thus very little in the way of meaningful comparisons. This doesn't say that reviews suck or that shmups suck, it says that this particular method of gathering and comparing data sucks. There's no common ground in any of the reviews (different sites, different reviewers, different scales) so there's no meaningful claim here.

And yeah, bland 7/10 games are going to rise to the top in a situation like this. A safe game that takes no risks has a pretty guarenteed score, but a game that does take risks is going to split reviewers more... the risk might work for some and not for others. But generally, even the people who dislike the game will be able to communicate how the game plays well enough to inform you about whether you'll like it or not. It's the same with any medium... an average review of The Good, the Bad and The Ugly back when it was released would have told you whether you'd like it, and many reviewers adored it, but it still split critics pretty evenly and certainly wasn't as highly ranking overall initially as other movies of the time that we've since forgotten.

As for the inclusion of borderliners... well, again, duh. Gamerankings is only going to break down the genres so far before it becomes impossible to compartmentalize many games. It's the same reason your local Best Buy doesn't have a Symphonic Norwegian Black Metal section, instead sticking said albums under "rock/pop." It's a useful distinction for niche sites and forums, and decent for describing things to people casually, but absolutely nightmarish for strict categorization.

[Enhasa]

Thanks for bringing up most of the points I was too lazy to say.

There's no common ground in any of the reviews (different sites, different reviewers, different scales) so there's no meaningful claim here.

A safe game that takes no risks has a pretty guarenteed score, but a game that does take risks is going to split reviewers more... the risk might work for some and not for others.

I would say these are great reasons why mainstream reviews suck. I think the only useful reviews are those done by one person who you know agrees with you on most every game, and you can use that plus the new review to determine whether or not you should buy the new game. I haven't found anyone like that who writes reviews, but I have a couple friends whose opinions I place in that category.

[mikwuyma]

Hey Enhasa, I write reviews for you

Like, Final Fantasy X is a cutscene shit fest with a wanker main character.

I think I just described the game better than any mainstream reviewer

[Twiddle]

The best game reviewer is yourself.

[Enhasa]

The best judge of a game is yourself.

If the point of reviews is to decide whether you should purchase a game, then "best reviewer = yourself" would be very expensive. If the point of reviews is to just to discuss games like a new games journalism moron, well then I don't give a shit.


Edit: Hey mike I love you you are so adorable like that one time you pimped SDA in the 1cc thread just now

[mikwuyma]

Edit: Hey mike I love you you are so adorable like that one time you pimped SDA in the 1cc thread just now

Yeah I'm adorable...and bored at work.

[sethsez]

There's no common ground in any of the reviews (different sites, different reviewers, different scales) so there's no meaningful claim here.

A safe game that takes no risks has a pretty guarenteed score, but a game that does take risks is going to split reviewers more... the risk might work for some and not for others.

I would say these are great reasons why mainstream reviews suck.

Not really. The first one only matters if you're too lazy to check who reviewed the game, but all publications list the authors of their reviews, so referring to "IGN" rather than "Craig Harris" is reader laziness, not site laziness. People don't say "The Chicago Sun-Times liked [movie]," they say "Ebert liked [movie]" because common sense says that a paper filled with people isn't going to have a single uniform opinion of a movie. This is also why the larger sites have been trying (with weekly shows and such) to make readers more familiar with the reviewers.

As for the second, that only says why mainstream reviews suck for people (again) too lazy to read the text and who just skip directly to the score. If a game gets a 2.5 but sounds like it's right up your alley, then mission accomplished, the review helped your purchasing decision. Meanwhile, the 2.5 will most likely apply for the majority of readers, so it's not a wasted score either (most of the time, as there are occasional fuck-ups).

Finally, my second statement was only referring to scores in aggregate. If you've found a reviewer who you trust on a certain subject, then see how he feels about the game and ignore what Some Other Random Guy thinks. On the other hand, someone else might find he always agrees with Some Other Random Guy and tends to follow his advice rather than your favorite reviewer's.

Yeah, game reviewing ain't perfect. But just looking at the aggregate scores from a ton of different sources improperly averaged is just lazy on the part of the consumer, and isn't how reviews are meant to be utilized. It's like buying a can opener, hitting a can with it and then complaining that it's broken. Sure, it might be broken, but you still used the damn thing wrong.

[Enhasa]

Well nitpicks aside, from your posts, it seems like we agree on mostly everything. The difference is the conclusion. You use reviews properly, so you say they don't suck. I think though that 99% of people skip straight to the score, don't pay attention to the reviewer, don't factor in biases, etc. If you look at how the game mag industry presents itself (take Famitsu as a perfect example), they encourage this. Gamespot doesn't want you to shop around for opinions. They want the average gamefaqs user to head over there instinctively, look at the score, and then hopefully click some ads.

Look at your Ebert example. Gamers actually do say Gamespot gave it a 9, IGN gave it an 8, Famitsu gave it 31/40, etc. To use your analogy, these can openers are being sold and used as can-hitting devices. I can say with some confidence that the system is broken.

For me it's simple. I haven't found any reviewer I can consistently agree with. I say they suck because they are pretty useless to me, and I don't think they are beneficial for the majority of people (even if it's their fault), so I think they suck in general too. If they work for you, that's great. But this is why we can agree on everything but end up with "different" conclusions.

[VorpalEdge]

Why would anyone bother looking at each reviewer individually when he/she doesn't review every single game to begin with?

Movie reviewers can get away with it because, you know, movies are two hours long (three max) and there's not as many of them. But look at all the games released in november alone. That'd take you weeks just to get through the first 10 minutes of each game. They have no chance at all of reviewing every game, so chances are, even if they agree with me they (as reviewers) are quite useless.

It also really doesn't help that there's no obvious way besides google "site:ign.com hilary goldstein" for me to find out what else the halo 3 reviewer reviewed. There's no handy list around, as far as I can tell (and it's certainly possible for me to have missed it, I spent all of half a minute looking for it. but still).

And enhasa, you have found a reviewer you agree with. It's the opposite of that one guy from neogaf, remember?

[Zeether]

I hesitate to even call Astro Boy Omega Factor a shmup. What a bunch of shit.

[Enhasa]

Hey VE: I was going to say exactly what you said but I'm giving sethsez the benefit of the doubt. Let's say someone isn't picky and generally agrees with half of all reviewers (and knows which ones). Well then for any game the chances are good that someone amenable has reviewed it.

There's also the fact that going through these hoops takes time and effort, and time = money, which you want to save in the first place. (Otherwise you could buy or rent every single game you were slightly interested in and come to a much better conclusion than any review.)

I'm more a fan of just asking someone "hey, how is such and such?"

And enhasa, you have found a reviewer you agree with. It's the opposite of that one guy from neogaf, remember?

I know you're joking, but in all seriousness, I avoid neogaf like the plague. So I don't know enough of this guy's opinions to say he is literally opposite in all opinions, which is pretty inconceivable if you ask me.

[TKGB_Mental_Gear]

The link doesn't take me to the list. Did they remove it?

[zimeon]

I choked my coffee when I saw the console-style RPG list… But not by the reason you think.

I never expected to see my "I am the only one liking this game"-favourite in a top place. Guess FFIX has finally gotten some attention, eh?

The rest of the list was pretty shit though (IMO). I mean, where the hell is Chrono Trigger? Duh!

[ROBOTRON]

What the? ... *goes to check the list again*

The closest thing I found to "shooting -> scrolling" is "action -> shooter -> scrolling." And the list I got was

1. Astro Boy
2. Ikaruga
3. Gunstar Super Heroes
4. Gradius V
5. Alien Hominid (GC)
6. Alien Hominid (PS2)
7. Iridion 2
8. R-Type Final
9. Metal Slug Advance
10. Gradius Collection

Yeup... That's... a list alright.

Thats what I got...the list is worthless, its incorrect genre-wise.

[BrianC]

I hesitate to even call Astro Boy Omega Factor a shmup.

Why would you call it a shmup in the first place? It's an action game with shmup stages.

What a bunch of shit.

If you are talking about the list, I agree, but if you are talking about the game itself, I don't. It's much more polished than Gunstar Super Heroes, despite having much more slowdown. I found it to be an excellent game.

It seems many games aren't even listed at all on gamerankings. They usually don't list imports either. That is probably another reason why the lists suck.

[Kaiser]

I hesitate to even call Astro Boy Omega Factor a shmup.

Why would you call it a shmup in the first place? It's an action game with shmup stages.

What a bunch of shit.

If you are talking about the list, I agree, but if you are talking about the game itself, I don't. It's much more polished than Gunstar Super Heroes, despite having much more slowdown. I found it to be an excellent game.

It seems many games aren't even listed at all on gamerankings. They usually don't list imports either. That is probably another reason why the lists suck.

Well the story was excellent and gameplay too... c'mon there's any game that has true ending which requires you to explore all details in the game? No nowadays

[Enhasa]

It seems many games aren't even listed at all on gamerankings. They usually don't list imports either. That is probably another reason why the lists suck.

Yep, this is maybe the main factor for shmups. Gamerankings only takes reviews that are English language and for English language games.

The link doesn't take me to the list. Did they remove it?

You have to do the filters yourself. Their site design is pretty terrible, especially if you compare it to Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes or something like that.

The rest of the list was pretty shit though (IMO). I mean, where the hell is Chrono Trigger? Duh!

Actually if you set the minimum reviews to 0, it will be #1. I don't think it's better to set that though, because it makes it even less accurate. Gamerankings is only useful in the slightest for games in the Internet review era. For games before then, the only reviews will be by fans who want to go back and retroactively review it, full of nostalgia. So there is no meaningful comparison between reviews for old and new games.

I don't want to infuse my opinions into this (because my list would look nothing like this), so I'll just say it's funny how much popular opinion and reviews differ for some of these. CC and FF12 are hated by a lot of people, but they are #2 and #4 by aggregate review. Also I have never met anyone who would put Suikoden 3 at the top of that series.

It just comes down to the hive mentality of reviewers. These aren't professional reviewers in the sense that movie critics are. They are video game geeks who were English majors in college, and they write reviews like they are writing a paper on a deadline. They do a google search and check sites like neogaf or gamefaqs to find import opinions, but most importantly they copy other reviews. You can see the same strange phrases and incorrect facts in many different reviews, that would not happen if they were all developed in a vacuum. (You can see the same effect in FAQs, where often they will all have the same wrong information that originally came from one strategy guide.)

I think this is just an inherent problem because video games take too long to play properly, there's too many of them, and this is an area where the people reading the reviews are often as knowledgable as those writing them. Not all forms of media should model themselves after movies, e.g. GameFly vs Netflix.

[sethsez]

The rest of the list was pretty shit though (IMO). I mean, where the hell is Chrono Trigger? Duh!

See, this is what I was talking about when I said consumers use these resources wrong.

Gamerankings doesn't go that far back. Thus, Chrono Trigger isn't going to be ranked.

And Enhasa, yeah, there are a lot of people who hate CC and FFXII. A lot of people hate Ikaruga and Shikigami no Shiro II as well (I'm certainly not much of an Ika fan these days). The internet is a great place to find non-stop bitching about anything you could name.

Something Awful has a thread dedicated to Bioshock that's almost entirely glowing. In the inevitable "best games of 2007" thread, it will be brought up many, many, many times. However, in the current "most disappointing games" thread, guess what comes up a lot? That's right, Bioshock. So does FFXII, Chrono Cross, Gears of War, all the Halos, all the Katamaris, all the Metal Gear Solids, all the Marios, all the Sonics, etc.

Forum buzz and "a lot of people didn't like" are dangerous things to go by. Blind backlash is just as real as blind fanboyism (consider the tides of opinion on FFVII over the past decade, from best game ever to worst game ever and back again several times), and no matter where you look you'll find a lot of people who love a game and a lot of people who hate it. Hell, go to any given Sonic fansite and you'll find people praising the 360 game in between bouts of drawing Silver fan art, but somehow I'm more likely to trust reviews on that particular product.

I know I'm defending reviews a lot in this thread, and I should clarify that I'm NOT a huge fan of how they're generally handled for games. However, this is when taken in total. I've found a few reviewers whose opinions and approaches to reviewing I generally trust on most subjects, so although I don't base my purchasing choices entirely on them I do tend to use them as an initial guideline before getting a broader perspective on forums. In this sense I do find them useful, and even though most reviewers don't agree with my tastes, it doesn't bother me because most of the public doesn't agree with my tastes either, and as such it wouldn't make sense for reviewers to cater exclusively to me. I've found my favorites and they serve me well, in general.