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How I Use Metacritic to Inform My Gaming Purchases

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Metacritic as a service is viewed as divisive among gaming enthusiasts. On one hand, it’s the major site that gives you an easy-to-find aggregate of numerous major gaming reviews for one game in one place. On the other hand, critics hate how it marginalizes full reviews into a number, its methods for aggregating reviews, and the significance certain entities place on the final Metacritic score.

My stance on Metacritic is a bit from column A, and a bit from column B, but I do oftentimes refer to Metacritic to inform my gaming purchases. I’m sure everyone has a way of interpreting the data, though I thought I’d share how I use it.

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Off-Topic: The Return of Vince Carter in Toronto?

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The breakup between Vince Carter and the Toronto Raptors is one of the messiest in Toronto sports history. A man that was once the king of Canadian sports turned his back on all of us. He whined. He demanded to be traded. He even gave up on the court and cost us wins for his own selfish reasons. Since he was traded in 2004, the city of Toronto has targeted him as public enemy #1. To this day, he’s still booed mercilessly every time he’s in town.

Recently, Vince Carter stated in an interview with a Toronto radio station that he’d be open to coming back to the city where it all started. Is the city of Toronto ready to take him back? Would I be ready to?

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Wreck-It Ralph Micro Review

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Saw Wreck-It Ralph when it came out and thought it was great. Beyond the cameos from real video game characters, it’s a movie that lives up to Disney standards. Whether you’re a kid or adult, there’s a lot to enjoy here; especially if you’re a fan of video games. With that said, I think there were opportunities to be even better that it doesn’t capitalize on. I think that it could have handled some of the main conflicts a bit better and pull the heart strings a bit more, but it doesn’t stop the overall experience from being a pleasure. This is one of the safest recommendations I can make to virtually any moviegoer.

Game Design Talk: Being Exposed in Stealth-Based Games

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Not too long ago, I played Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay for the first time. I was really digging its first-person stealth action in theory, but the experience fell apart for me very quickly. I got to a point early on where Riddick had to fight his enemies in a head-on manner and it just did not work out well for me. Even when I lowered the difficulty to easy, I kept getting smoked by the computer. It seemed like when I was forced to defend myself in a non-stealthy way, Riddick was seemingly useless.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not good at stealth games. But I think there’s something to be said about the way stealth is implemented in games, particularly when a player has to fight outside the context of stealth.

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The Recurring Bosscast 001: Love and Video Games

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After three ‘beta’ episodes, Jason, Mat, and I are finally doing the podcast thing for realsies!

In this debut outing, we trade Hurricane Sandy survival stories and gush over Taylor Swift’s hot new album (well, at least I). As far as games go, we go in-depth reflecting on the relationship between the video game hobby we love and our significant others that put up with it. Also discussed on the show are the games we’ve been playing, including Assassin’s Creed III, Dishonored, Skylanders Giants and more!

Jett – In Third Person
Jason – Downstab
Mat – Biff Bam Pop

Rayman Origins Review

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For much of Rayman’s life, he’s suffered from an identity crisis. After his stunning debut outing, Super Mario 64 seemingly made 2D platformers obsolete. Ubisoft felt obligated to move Rayman into the third dimension, which led to a string of mediocre 3D platformers. Eventually, Rayman would find his name slapped on the Raving Rabbids mini-game collections, where he ultimately got out-shined by his insane rabbit compadres.

With seemingly nowhere else to go with the franchise, Ubisoft takes him back to his 2D platforming roots with Rayman Origins. Within minutes of playing this reboot, it’s clear that he never should have left.

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I’m Going to Fan Expo 2012

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Canada’s ComicCon North begins this week in Toronto! For the third year in a row, Steff and I have tickets to partake in all four days of Fan Expo. Some of the things I’m excited to see/do at the show include:

– Levar Burton. Reading Rainbow for the win! Also, Star Trek.

– ZombiU will be there. Not too hyped about that game, but its presence means the WiiU should be there in some form.

– Buy all sorts of nerdy stuff

– Enjoy the sight of mostly well-done cosplay

– Be one with my fellow nerds

Though I have yet to figure out how I’m going to document our adventures, I’ll think of something. Also, content will continue as scheduled, so don’t worry about a dip in stuff to read.

Not sure if it’s too late to buy tickets, but you can learn more at the Fan Expo Canada website. If you’re coming out, maybe I’ll see you there this weekend!

Bulletstorm and the Economics of the Single Player First-Person Shooter

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A few days ago, I picked up Bulletstorm. It’s clear that the developers behind it really wanted to push the bounds of what a first-person shooter could be. Everything from the weapons, to the level designs, and the enemies themselves, have been tuned for you to pull off fancy juggle combos, and kills that would make Devil May Cry jealous. However, it’s also clear that their single player innovations don’t work within the context of traditional multiplayer deathmatch. Instead, the game offers its own version of horde mode that feels like a throwaway mode meant to to meet check multiplayer off as a feature on the back of the box.

Though the game was a critical hit, the it didn’t live up to sales expectations, and its sequel was shelved. Did Bulletstorm fail as a commercial product because of it’s de-emphasis on multiplayer?

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Kudos to Atlus

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I’m currently in the process of enjoying Trine 2. It’s a neat puzzle platformer that I don’t think will ever gain any sort of mainstream traction, but I’m glad that it exists. After putting in a few hours into it, I realized that the game was published by Atlus.

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Celebrating 3 Years of In Third Person

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Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Without your support, the site wouldn’t have crossed this milestone (and crossed it with style). The site continues to grow in terms of popularity, community and content. Based on my projections, site content is on pace to be viewed over 80,000 times this year. That’s mind-boggling to me as someone who started this as a secret passion project who never expected anyone to find it. I’ll keep making this worth your while with more great posts and discussion going forward!

Cheers!

Jett