I Don't Usually Do this, But...

To arms my brethrens,glory to the 4pp,we wil not let these fools stand on our way.

To be honest, Jim Sterling catches a lot of shit from a lot of people. I wouldn't boycott Destructoid as a whole, they sometimes have some great stuff you don't see on Kotaku, Joystiq, etc.

Although I don't agree that Destructoid itself is hungry for headlines, just Jim Sterling can go a little nuts sometimes.

There was an incident a few weeks back with some Maxim girl thing and with that game a lot of hate for Jim Sterling. People on Reddit were up in arms and saying that Jim Sterling is like cancer to the site.

I can't say I think he's a horrible guy, but I can say from personal experience he will take what he gets and post it.

I do feel his 4.5/10 is a ridiculous score, but the one thing you have to remember about reviews, is for the most part it's that person's opinion.

That right there, does not make sense.
It's just so people would read it.

4.5 what the hell? Now that is some bullshit.

From Jim Sterling's twitter, "Dear idiots: If I gave games low scores for controversy, there are better games to do it with. I'd have picked KZ2, L4D2 or MW2. Not AC2." You may also like to read his article on how to respond to a game reviewer:
http://www.destructoid.com/how-to-respond-to-a-videogame-review-154490.phtml

Now, does this conform or deny whether the review was just for controversy. No, but I believe him. He's one of the few people I actually trust when reporting gaming news. Actually, I trust most of the Dtoid staff and believe them to be the most honest when it comes to games. Now, that doesn't mean there isn't bias somewhere on their site, but from what I've read for the while I've come to their site, I have no reason to believe they ever gave a game a low or high score for hits. Also, judging an entire website just on a few reviews is kind of uncool.

Those scores are just ridiculous. I really hope they're not awarding low scores just to be controversial. That may get people talking, but it hurts their integrity as game reviewers.
4Player Podcast gives a very logical and insightful review of the games they discuss. That's why this is one of the sites I check when I want the real scoop on a game.

OK, ACII may not be the most fantastic game of the year (I found it to get a little repetitive near the end, and it in total felt too short) but it is most certainly up there. The gameplay is super-refined and the storyline completely sucked me in throughout. To get such a low score is a clear sign that this reviewer had an agenda.

While you stated it...reviews are just opinions, you have to really just let it roll of your back and not let it influence or agitate you. Tons of people have unpopular opinions, this guy is just in a position where a ton of people are subjected to his. I mean there are definitely better ways to go about a low review than just insults and panning it blatantly, but its just how some people make their point and get it across.Take me for example, I for one absolutely cannot stand Left 4 Dead (either game), I bought the first based on the praise it was getting and then gamefly'd the 2nd...and to this day I can't understand why people love this simple, generic, glorified counter-strike mod. Even with 3 of my friends it bored the crap out of me.

If i was in the position to post that on a popular review site, I am sure I would take just as much heat. Opinions are opinions...can't change them, no point in trying to.

I knew you would react badly.

Nick. I think you need to understand that he rated the game based on the context that it was being released as a AAA game...and thusly would be scored in relation to other AAA titles.

I can't speak anymore to it than this since I haven't played AC2 at all.

I think it should also be noted that obese British people are always Jolly and should never be subject to a complete boycott.

Sterling is prone to inciting reaction from just about anyone. I don't agree with his method of review due in part to how some games he reviews in context with it's hype, instead of just reviewing the game of it's own merits, hype or not.

That said, I do like Destructoid and they are a leading site in calling out a lot of industry bullshit.

i give you my whole hearted support as i am an AC fan and also the fact that it looks really bias.....wait....doesn't that make me bias? lol ah well you get the point, you got support

I don't know much about Jim Sterling himself, with the exception he exists and writes for Dtroid.

Able to go into reading his review with an unbiased opinion, I get the feeling that he simply doesn't like the game. And therefore is willing to smack it around. Which, like someone mentioned above, is fine. Have your opinions, that's cool. But if you choose to write for a large gaming website or magazine, I think you need to put your feelings at the door and write a genuine review for the kind of audience you want to read your articles. If he's catering to some elitest wanker graphic-whore high-def demographic, then the review is in their ballpark. Personally I would prefer to read a review where the pros and cons are balanced, or at least shown in a just light; which can be done in this game.

Opinion obviously factors into how you write reviews, but you can't let it flavor your entire article like this. Then it's just trashy and attention grabbing. This guy is a 4.5/10 reviewer imo.

Persoonally I would say, skip anything written by Jim and destructoid appears to be a much better site.
He just tries way too much to be clever and witty in some articles and answers to commenter's.

"Destructoid also awarded the following scores: (Jericho- 7/10, Ju On- 6/10, WET- 7.5/10). Using different journalists to write reviews is one thing but there should be a generally accepted trend in their reviews that can allow for comparisons between scores. None of the games I just listed are better than ACII or even ACI for that matter."

I'm not for scores in general but this isn't how it works. Those game you just listed aren't anything like Assassin's Creed and, as you said, are from different reviewers. Games that are in the same genre, generally, can be compared. I just don't like the way you went about this, looking only at scores, if you want to look at the text of the review and pick it out that way, I understand. But overall this seems a bit rash.

Opinions!

Also, I'm not sure what in that article is suppose to make me believe he would be biased against the game.

It doesn't matter that those games are nothing like AC. Every one of those games was flat out broken and in some cases, unplayable. Whether you are a fan of AC or not, the mechanics themselves are solid and playable. To not dock as many points from those games is ridiculous. To imply that you would rather play WET, which controls like dog shit, than AC is absolute bullshit. That's all that I am saying.

P.S.- AC2 is a triple AAA title.

This goes to the guy who quoted Sterlings tweet- This is how I would respond to that article:

"Sterling, if you have to justify your review process by calling your readers "fucking idiots", you are clearly doing something wrong.

This seems to assume that the value of a review article is merely to "get it right." But this assumption doesn't seem right. Critics aren't automatons cranking out "unbiased," perfectly balanced, flavorless articles. The best critics are, above all else, great writers.

Now, maybe this Jim fella isn't an interesting writer, but that doesn't seem to be your complaint against him.

I have no qualms with his writing. As far as I can tell, he is a fantastic writer. I even agree with most of his complaints. My complaint is with the weight he is assigning to his complaints. A 4.5/10 is a bit excessive for one of the biggest games of the year when most critical reception has been positive.

a lot of people praise dtoid because they have "the most honest views on games". just because they have more underwhelming scores than others and curse doesn't make them more honest or real.

that aside, their entire score system lays itself to be controversial, as they claim that a bad game is a 3-4/10 score.

Everybody has opinions. His is a really fucking dumb opinion, but an opinion all the same. Still, it is in every way an improvement over the first game, and doesn't deserve that score....in my opinion, of course.

I believe this guy gave a low score intentionally. but not for drama, I believe he gave it a crap score for the sheer fact the game didnt cater to his tastes. Like Brad didnt like some of the mechanics in the game, but he didnt shit on the game as a whole because of it. This guy sees one flaw and he takes it to the extreme.

This is also a guy who reviewed Halo Wars without even playing half of the campaign (and later republished the review after all the shit he caught for it). A site that did team reviews for both Prototype and inFAMOUS, declaring Prototype to be the superior title. Sterling's hand was in both of those reviews as well.

He's a fucking narcissist and just loves seeing his name in print. Those who've drank the Destructoid Kool-Aid fellate him so that maybe their next community blog will get promoted to the front page, giving Destructoid more free hits for free, user-created content.

Jim Sterling is the Jack Thompson of video game "journalists"

You say review scores don't matter, but judge an entire site based on a game series that is known for being very polarizing getting crap review scores. Then you proceed to say that the scale is skewed due to inconsistency.

You lose.

Good day, sir.

Excuse me, but since when does having an unpopular opinion qualify someone for a shitlist? That seems extremely petty and unwarranted. No game is well-liked by everyone, not even critically acclaimed games like Modern Warfare 2 or Uncharted 2. The Assassin's Creed franchise is not the cream of the crop anyway, and Mr. Sterling happens to not like it.

Do I think he went a little over-the-top? Possibly. But that's his opinion, and he's entitled to it. It's extremely judgmental and shallow to get upset because he's the one critic on Metacritic who hated the game. I hope you'll rethink this and, with all due respect, grow up a little. Being passionate and having unpopular opinions is nothing to slam a person for.

Nick, read my comment on the dtoid review page (comment 504 I believe). I think this has less to do with Jim's agenda and more to do with the wrong guy reviewing the wrong game. Hes just not conditioned to like the conventions in AC2 (which seem to be geared towards people who like slow/methodical/calculated games such as those in the adventure or rpg genres).

One thing to keep in mind, especially with reviews for any kind of media, is taste. Reviewers are not unbiased, nor are they completely objective, and that must be taken into account when you read or watch a review of something. This is made far easier when one person reviews for a site, as you can get a gauge of that person's taste, how it matches up with yours, and from there extrapolate exactly how much value their reviews will be to you.

With Destructoid, while I think the staff should be reviewing games on a larger scale (Sterling has done many of the recent reviews, and I'd like to see more in the way of variety), it is easy to get a feel for how Jim thinks and thus easier to determine whether or not his reviews are worthwhile to you. Nick, you seem to agree with the points he raised, but not with how much emphasis he put on them, and in that respect you should treat his taste as being similar to yours, but slanted to a certain direction.

Example: I find that my taste in movies lines up very well with the Spill crew overall, and so I go to them for my movie reviews. This ensures that I can determine how much I'd like a movie based on their reaction to it, and thus whether or not I should watch it.

In this case, I think you should simply boycott Sterling's reviews. There's no shame in it, or hard feelings. They simply don't line up with your tastes, and as such aren't worth your time.

That's my overly-long two cents.

STFUAJPG!

All this pointless whining about review scores is giving me a headache.

I already have plans to get AC 2 later next year so the 4.5 score didn't really effect me. Even though I agree that 4.5 for AC 2 is pretty low I think there's nothing wrong with giving Jericho & WET, 7 & 7.5 respectively, I really enjoyed those 2 games and only played AC1 for a few hours.

Putting Destructoid on " Sites I don't read " list sounds pretty harsh though. Maybe it should be more like " Sites I don't read for reviews " if you don't agree with their opinions.

Does it take a lot of effort to come off this mentally challenged?

Why the hell do you care what someone gives a game? The review is an opinion. If he thought it deserved a 1, then it deserved a 1 from him. If you think it deserves an 11, then it deserves an 11 to you.

That's it. End of discussion. It's a god-damn opinion. That's it. Argument ends there.

^ Dumbass

@Prowler

Are you calling the commenter above you a dumbass? Why, because he's completely right and you didn't think of that first, even though what he said was painfully obvious?

Bah, I like seeing shit games get shit scores. Few games of today are good, but loads of games get high scores anyway.

In my opinion even MW2 should be down at 4.5/10, all it is is a map pack to COD 4.

Assassins Creed 2 is the same game that AC 1 was. There are some good parts but it's still a buggy game. Last night I was playing and 5th time during the whole game I fell into the "White Abyss"... Thats BAD for a game. I will finish it because I got into it but Ill sell it the same day I finish it.

Oh hai, I heard you like rage so we put a proper review in your metacritic so you can rage while you read.

I'll take an independant gaming blog's review over a paid company's review any day of the week, thanks.
Hell, Dtoid actually buy their own games to review them a lot of the time.

Ok people, calm yourselves. No reason to get flamed about this. I am not saying the man can't have an opinion. My point is simply that, something is wrong with this review for a number of reasons, the structure, not the opinion or the logic. Complaints like these might warrant a lower score but 4.5 is ridiculous. Now go play the Bayonetta demo or something and cheer up.

I guess the accusation of reactionary bias in point 3 could hold some water, but pointing to a single article does not a firm conclusion make. Interesting notion, though.

The first two points about how AC2 is better than other games of its ilk is another matter - that's opinion, not fact. And guess what? Sterling's review is also just opinion, not fact.

The curious thing is, if you were looking for some evidence of Jim's propensity and preoccupation with generating hits, you're probably looking the wrong place. Reviews on major blogs these days are far too volatile a place to be laying bare personal agendas - that's the kind of issue people get fired over, and I think Sterling knows that. You can give a game a low score, and that's an editorial position you can at least defend publicly. If you were on the hunt for controversy for the sake of controversy, try looking at his opinion pieces, and his accompanying Twitter feed - the man is obsessed with getting Diggs, and I think it affects his writing, which I enjoy for the most part.

Jim sterling is a fucking sait, how dare you!

He is a fat princess though.....

And this my friends is a perfect example of how and why review scores simply do not work.

After reading the review, it does seem like Sterling already has his mind made up about the franchise. However, nearly all of his points have justification, even if some of them are more anal and nitpicking than anything. ACII to him is probably one of those personal games that he can't get into. We've all played that one game that everyone loves but we hate for the same reasons. Its like Banjo Kazooie, either you love collecting shit or you hate collecting shit. There's no winning in that argument. Yeah, there are points I don't agree with, and some I'd probably call bullshit on, and I'd probably have chosen someone who had more interest in the game. But, and I know this gets said a lot and it does annoy me as well, it is his opinion. If you have an issue with it then its as simple as not following that reviewer and going with someone else you find more trustworthy. Life goes on...

...and then we get to the score. This is the exact same argument that I covered in my Review Of Reviews thread a while back on the old forums. People stop reading the full review and start shitbricking over ratings or small out of context quotes. You get people focusing on those more than what was actually said in the review in question. Its consistently aggravating to me. If you have some free time you can click and read the thread below to understand more of what I mean, but I'll just say that I've hated review scores with a passion the second I realised they literally didn't add anything to the review or the game. At all.

http://4playerpodcast.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=gaming&thread=3612&page=1

Getting back on topic, considering to boycott though? I'm surprised and kind of embarrased that that's something you'd consider. Surely we all know what a boycott generally is these days, and how tiring and pathetic they've become. I mean, look at all the people who recently cried foul play over L4D2. And yet they still bought the game. Getting people to avoid a good site over something as trivia as one British guys score of a AAA game just seems a tad overreacting. If the score is just to gain attention, then you've fallen right into their trap anyway. As I said earlier, just ignore Jim from now on. Unless you've started disagreeing with the whole site or found it lacking in quality, there's no reason to completely avoid it. Hell, I don't find Gamespot as good as it use to be, but once in a blue moon I'll visit it.

To be frank, there were better ways of handling this. This post should have rather been a well written response that, respectfully, pointed out what you deemed as libel or unfounded. A boycott is just the lazy mans way of saying 'Fuck you for not giving me what I wanted.' Nick, we love ya, but this hasn't exactly been an enlightening post.

Wow, my comment was longer than the blog post. Yay?

Destructoid opinions don't count no more.

There Done.

I remember someone saying "boycotting is dumb".
But yeah, reviewers like these are the ones giving good games bad names.
Someone at IGN gave God Hand a 3.0 or something, and Party Babiez a 4.0
Hose aren't the exact scores, but they were somewhere around that level.

@McNod

"the man is obsessed with getting Diggs, and I think it affects his writing, which I enjoy for the most part."

Uh, a great deal of the Diggs he gets are random news articles that any games blog could pick up and that generally don't have much wiggle room in terms of inventing things. The rest are his own original content and features, like top 10's or pure opinion articles. I don't believe I've ever seen a review of his get a Digg.

Combine that with the fact that those Diggs help support his family, and you've got a non-point. I know the rest of what you said was generally supportive, but I just felt the need to call this out. Usually, "controversial" opinions don't really go over THAT well with the Digg crowd, and most of the time, his articles are Dugg by other people and he simply throws the link out there if his followers (people who are, like, supposedly FANS of his) want to help out.

Let's not act like this is a dirty thing, yeah? Websites like traffic. It's why they exist.

And to comment on this "article" itself - I don't think I've ever become this overwrought and upset over anything that didn't directly affect me. For me to spend THIS much time sobbing and gulping over someone else's opinion, it better have had some huge impact on me - did it spontaneously unmake the game? Are you now completely unable to enjoy ACII because someone else DIS-liked it and thought it worthy of a lower-than-"normal" review? It just vanished into thin air after the 4.5 was revealed?

No? Then WTF. Seriously. How in the HELL does this affect you aside from a somewhat lower Metacritic score and the knowledge that there's someone out there who's - GASP - different from you? Nothing you've said has conjured a reasonable argument as to why ACII couldn't conceivably have been given a 4.5. "But these games got higher scores, and they're worse than ACII!" Your opinion, duder. "NO ONE would rather play WET than ACII!" Your opinion, and an unfounded one, because you don't know that.

The only thing that's "wrong" with the review is the fact that I didn't jibe with your personal appraisal of this game. That's it.

And I'll go the opposite direction about your "boycott" of Destructoid - fine. A few others have tried to convince you not to completely write Destructoid off, I say go right fucking ahead. People like obviously don't understand Destructoid, and it appears you'd rather read the most generic, store-bought (and "bought" is the highly operative term here, Ubisoft) reviews of games you personally like if they're positive than an honest, forthright one if it happens to be much lower than you expected. So find a site that's willing to give you exactly what you want with no protest, because Destructoid isn't it. Where HUNDREDS (and probably a silent thousands) of Destructoid readers were able to disagree respectfully and get right back to their games, you had to theorize that some nefarious evil was afoot in their ACII review and "threaten" to never read Destructoid again. I don't think the place is going to be all the worse without you.

You don't usually do this, (apparently) and you shouldn't have done this. What you're saying is that your opinion is better and more important than someone else's opinion. But then I'm saying, in my opinion, that you shouldn't have voiced your opinion about Jim shouldn't have voiced his opinion, so it's a bit hypocritical all around.

Consider this, what is the best way to deal with something you don't like on the internet? Telling people that you don't go to Destructoid? Pointing out the flaw in the review? The result of your actions is that the majority of readers will then go to Destructoid to look for the review. Some may become fans of Destructoid, even to the point that they'll stop reading your site.

The best way to deal with something on the internet is to ignore it. Any publicity is good publicity.

Nick's just giving his opinion on the review, which is a god damn opinion. IT'S ALL FUCKING OPINIONS, PEOPLE!

Why the hell is everyone going crazy!?

Just wondering. Is the control scheme any better in this game than the original? because I always felt that it felt slow and clunky. I didn't really enjoy the first game because of this.

p.s. I think of all members of 4pp I trust nicks judgment the most

and this is why I like the good old 5 star scale.
5-excellent
4-good
3-ok
2-bad
1-terrible
nice and simple

there's something really backwards about this. "nick, accept opinions! and nick, i don't accept your opinion, it sucks!"

you all drive the point into the ground that it's sterling's opinion, then make opinionated arguments yourself against nick's. internet is internet.

I never read this idiot or anything on that website so there will be no extra traffic there from me.

Who the fuck is Jim Sterling?

@HRH Megatron

I take your points about Digg - I have no problem in principle with him supporting his family, or driving traffic to Destructoid, and as far as having a profile of Digg's audience to hand, I don't, so fair enough.

However, you can't deny that he is extraordinarily keen for his original content to catch on with aggregate sites(see his Twitter for his open dismay when they don't), and that was my main point. I think his original articles are underpinned by such an intention, and are sometimes depressingly inflammatory as a result. He's a good enough writer that he doesn't need to unload flamebait so often, but he knows the audience that frequent such articles, and acts accordingly. He has more intelligent things to say than L4D2 protestors are a bunch of "fucking idiots", of that I'm fairly sure. The phone interview he did with Jack Thompson a while back was a case in point.

I don't even pretend that he would even give a damn about any of my views, but I think he's better when he's not angling for hits, that's all

HOLY HELL PEOPLE. LOL.

What? You can't post such an inflammatory artical and not expect a response.

This is why I love Joystiq's reviews. No scores.

Scores are retarded, and end up causing arguments like this.

I'm honestly shocked that Brad managed to play through Assassin's Creed 2, given that he totally gave up on the first one so quickly. Though, I can see why. A friend of mine also played the first one, but he gave up after an hour trying to play the game.

Again, it is just preference that he rates the game so low. Having not read the review myself, I can't say how biased he may sound but I always like to read a really low review of any game to see what issues came up for those people, and see if these were issues I put aside because I was enjoying other aspects of the game, or flaws that I could actually agree on that may not have been apparent to me initially.

There's a good and a bad to a low review, but depending on the author, you can make that negative review a useful or useless contribution. If you think he's showing too much bias, then just chuck that opinion out the window. Only you would be able to say for yourself whether the review given was a fair review, despite the poor score.

I think that while Mr. Sterling must have his own personal reasons for scoring it so low, that a score that low is a little ridiculous, and that does sound like headline hunting. I'm not a huge fan of the AC series myself, but a review of a game shouldn't be a personal matter as Mr.Sterling seems to have done with his review. Destructoid isn't taking a very professional approach on reviewing by having such inconsistencies in it's reviewing panel. In my opinion, to have a good review section you should try and have just one person reviewing, and they should set it up in separate review scores. I subscribe to GT's (Gametrailer) reviews and I think the way they review their games is smart, because it's broken into sections and then averaged accordingly. If they followed that I'm sure they wouldn't have such cringingly against the grain reviews.
(I mean come on. Ju-on AND Jericho get better than AC2? Wth.)

Anyone who says AC2 is the "same game" as AC1 either hasn't played the game or is lying to themselves. Ubisoft retained all the great bits from the first game (mostly the combat) and completely rebuilt the stuff people didn't like (mission structure, ditched the boring open-world horseback shit, actually developed their characters).

AC2 is so much better than AC1 in fact, that I find it nearly impossible to enjoy the original game like I used to.

Seems to me like he just only pointed out the bad things in the game and weighed only those into his review score. Yes he does make some good points but some of them are outright absurd, like about the graphics being bad, i'm sure almost everyone can disagree with that. Also opinion or not a lot of people check out reviews to see how good a game is, and yes it is his opinion about the game but this is the kind of a review you can't fully trust.

hmmm maybie we should not weigh reviews so heavily on the games we want to see an opinion on... we should just count a review as a persons opinions on what the game is to them

I think what Nick was trying to point out was that, when reviewing a game and giving it a score, you should try to be as unbiased as possible. It shouldn't matter if you like the game or not, you should still point out the good and the bad aspects and give every game you review a fair chance. If Mr. Sterling was simply stating his opinion on the game, then it would be fine, but he was giving the game a review and let his personal opinion on the franchise get in the way of that. I understand it is his opinion, but he should not let his feelings get in the way of a game review.

Another reason not to read Destructoid:

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Brad+Rice/there-is-a-god-roger-avary-arrested-for-dui-64735.phtml

Another journalist praises god after the Silent Hill writer loses a friend in a car accident <_< Nooootttt cool.

Aren't these also the people that couldn't give Demon's Souls any sort of review because it was too hard for them...

" My dilemma now is whether to boycott Destructoid entirely or perhaps just Mr. Sterling himself. "

You know, just because you disagree with one of someone's video game reviews doesn't mean you have to BOYCOTT them.

You seem way to eager to boycott something.

[...] blogs analyzed the situation, some claimed they would boycott Destructoid, and all the while Assassin’s Creed 2 continued to sell loads of copies and get 10/10 review [...]

[...] blogs analyzed the situation, some claimed they would boycott Destructoid, and all the while Assassin’s Creed 2 continued to sell loads of copies and get 10/10 review [...]

[...] blogs analyzed the situation, some claimed they would boycott Destructoid, and all the while Assassin’s Creed 2 continued to sell loads of copies and get 10/10 review [...]

"However, as of today, I am filing Destructoid under my “sites I don’t read” list."

A sites you don't read list? Do you really need a list of sites that you can't read? Like, every time you see a link you're going to click you check and see what site it's going to and then check it against your list to see if it's there?