Re-Reviewing GBA OFFICIAL Reviews from 2017

https://gbatemp.net/review/horizon-zero-dawn.561/
https://gbatemp.net/review/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild.564/

THIS IS JUST A RANT AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IM GOING WITH THIS

this is in regards to two official reviews from three years ago and my opinion. the games in review are Zelda Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn which both released around March 2017. Both games were 'in competition' with one another because of release date and perceived 'console wars'. Horizon recieved a 8.5 and Zelda recieved a 7... WHAT THE EFF WERE THE REVIEWERS PLAYING? were they playing the game or were they reviewing the games and giving score based on perceived head to head comparisons?

Since 2017 there hasnt been a decent major ps4 released beside SpiderMan. Since 2017 there has been many great major Nintendo releases since Zelda. Now its the year 2020 and these gbatemp official reviews suck hard. Zelda is still one of the best games ever made, everyone still loves it. Horizon Zero Dawn is still one of the best ps4 games and everyone has forgotten about it and nobody plays it. Im beginning to think many many many many people only played Horizon because they were longing to play Zelda (sadly) but only owned a ps4 because the switch was frequently sold out immediately for a good year. Which could have led to an inflation of scores for its reviews.

I finally played Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition in 2020. IT SUCKS. The graphics are okay but besides the graphics its hard to say this game had anything else going for it. The controls are a bit janky especially having to aim with the right thumb stick instead of motion controls. The camera and fov(field of view) is pretty bad too. Its also incredibly repetitive. Its a GREAT PS4 experience but shouldnt be compared with Zelda and should be compared with something like The Witcher 3. In that battle the Witcher beats out Horizon too.

Jumping back to Zelda. Even though this game offers less in terms of interaction and graphics i would still say its better. Sure it has its flaws too (in hindsight), empty world, uninspiring Boss fights, weak side quests. But the game never got boring. If I felt done I could climb hyrule castle and end the game. Can't do that in Horizon, i played through it and dont remember too much from it, nothing stood out besides beginning and end and it felt like a chore. Zelda would have to compare to something like Metal Gear Solid 5 and i would say zelda beats mgsv.

These two reviews suck. Theyre sucky reviews. I dont know where Im going with it but... have you played anything better than Horizon or Zelda since 2017? There arent many that can top these two games. One gets a 8.5 the other a 7, laughable.

So i bought Horizon Complete for $20 last holiday (dec 2019), and tried to sell it for $10, NOBODY WANTED IT. When i listed it for $5, people wanted it for $2. Laughable. I ended up just giving away the game for free to some stranger.

When I sold my copy of Zelda at the same time period, i listed it for $40 and it was gone the same day...

Do people even know what Horizon Zero Dawn is anymore or what. Im getting the feeling it only got a lot of hype because it was released in the same time window as Zelda and people had to compensate with Horizon instead.

This was just a random rant. thanks for reading people
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Comments

Uiaad
Reviews, as much as people would like you to believe are not objective. They are opinions, a snapshot into that person's time with the game. Just like everyone's taste in food is different what they want to get out of games is also different. Review scores have always been a big pet peeve of mine. They are pretty much useless because no one really agrees on a standard for how these scores should and in practice is just an arbitrary number that the reviewer felt like on that day. For me at least a game will never achieve a 10/10 - it's a perfect game one that can never be beaten and is am all time classic, but there will always be flaws, little niggles nere and there that creep in.

I remember when BotW was released and you had people throwing hissy fits that some one DARED give it less than a perfect score, instead only giving it a miserly 7 or 8. In my books 7 or 8 is an above average game (but again arbitrary number ) with 5 being a perfectly good game that is rather safe and paint by numbers. But this is why scoring games like this is such a bad idea at its core. If you look at professional reviews you don't see a hell of a lot of scores below 6 or 7. Why ? because if they gave their real opinion on the game scoring it what it deserves that developer/publisher is less likely to send them their next game to review.

opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one and you can't go around complaining because you saw it, because you went looking for it haha

In short, completely ignore scores they are petty useless, instead find a reviewer that has similar tastes to what you do and read them, but not leave it there compare it to over random reviews. Just ignore score you never know if the reviewer has had a bad day, has just had wife leave him, had his dog run over and found out someone has just pissed on his pancakes.
 
AmandaRose
Some people may like having piss on their pancakes Uiaad. But not me I like maple syrup.

Much like the pancakes above when it comes to reviews everyone has different tastes and standards. For instance what may be the greatest game ever to me may be someone's least favourite game. That is why review scores mean absolutely fuck all. Uiaad and myself both lived through the 80s and 90s when most magazine reviews were paid for by the game company that made the game. There was even instances of game companies paying magazine's to give poor scores to competitors games. A tactic frequently employed by US Gold and Ocean.
 
FAST6191
Was it the same person reviewing the games there? No? Almost like different people have different opinions.

Also Zelda is far from a perfect game. I still maintain it was better than what the early trailers led me to expect (I was seriously expecting company new to open world tries to go big and fluffs it) but by no means a gold standard for everybody to follow, and probably up there with the mid tier 360 efforts (which I assume most people upset with that review had skipped, or only had the Wii and Wii U's meagre offerings before then -- Xenoblade Yawnicles to BOTW is a rather large leap in quality). There might be some lessons it has to teach on the gameplay front but no more so than anything else.
Or if you prefer how you would improve BOTW? Not the weapons system? Not the empty world? Not the microdungeons being boring save maybe 3 (indeed maybe have some dungeons)? Not the combat? Maybe the stamina system? The story/having some story?

Never played Horizon Zero Dawn so I will have to skip that one.
 
ChibiMofo
If you already have played the game(s), what possible motivation (other than to eventually troll) would you have to read the reviews? Are you that concerned for the rest of us that we might be mislead?
If so, you needn't worry.
 
H1B1Esquire
@ChibiMofo
Did you ever watch a movie you watched as a kid, as an adult? Did you think to yourself, "WTF? I made my parents pay for this?"
I remember watching Jurassic Park and it looked like this:
1.jpg


Now it looks like this:
1259378-47621-clp-720.jpg


Sometimes, it's good to go back and review things with an adult perspective.
 
Uiaad
@AmandaRose And lets long forget about the war between Team 17 and Amiga Power lol I may just have to do a blog about that at some point
 
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gameboy
to everyone above... i did say i had no idea where the rant was going to go. but i would actually like to see a present day review of both these games. they might do worse and i wouldnt mind. But both reviews seemed to be in competition whether it said it 'wasnt a comparison' or not.

Horizon zero dawn besides its "perceived" graphics is just an average game. And I say " Perceived" only because since 2017 I have since built many gaming computers and my oh my does Horizon Zero Dawn looks average when it comes to graphics too (Cant wait for the pc port, only to see how far it can push its limits in graphics). Felt like I was doing chores the whole time.

Zelda besides its bad framerates and graphics(fixed on PC, its amazing now) was one of peoples main gripes.

maybe assign games for two people to review, one that wants to desperately play it, one for someone thats meh about it.
 
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DANTENDO
Horizon zero dawn still a perfect game for me and would still get least a 9 today- bigger question did you play it on ps4 pro? Probably not so all yr graphic points are void
 
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gameboy
@DANTENDO the pro versions barely matter, slighty better textures and 4k upscaling and thats it. but my gripes with HZD had nothing to do with graphics. It was just an okay game that had its graphics (for ps4) push its score higher. While Zelda had its graphics push its score down. While ive seen Undertale get a 10 from people who factor modern graphics in their scores but ignored them for games like Undertale and Stardew apparently. No consistency
 
Hephaestus
I definitely do not love Breath of the Wild.
Its basically Skyrim without any decent quests or storylines.
There are only a few variation of temples, which are madly cluttered around the map.
There are way to few actually different enemies. You constantly fight the same mobs over and over again.
Weapons breaking after a few hits? You are drunk Nintendo, go home.

Its Zelda for people who really dont like Zelda, but love mind-numbing busywork.
 
gameboy
@Hephaestus grade it for what it is and not what your expectations were. Some think Fallout 76 is great because of its Fallout name. Me, I enjoyed Oblivion more than Skyrim, but that doesnt mean oblivion is better, especially with its horrible game breaking bugs during its first month of launch.
 
Hephaestus
@gameboy I grade it by wether i enjoyed it.
I did not.
I think its a lesser version of other games.

It traded in things that made Zelda great for things that made it tedious.
The only Zelda games that were even worse in my mind are the god awful CDI titles and the DS games.

Horizon Zero Dawn (what a weird game to compare this to) was a lot of fun.
Not perfect, but a really deep and rewarding experience with story nuances and varied gameplay without any glaring flaws.

If i had nothing left to play and would have to chose a game to replay out of those two i would not chose Zelda.
 
gameboy
@Hephaestus HZD is a play it once is enough type game for me. Zelda first playthrough was amazing, second play through i noticed it could improve if not for the limitations of the storage and console. They talk about 'load times' for xbse-x and ps5 but switch already got the ssd, weird right...
 
DANTENDO
You say it sucks and then say its a great ps4 experience and yr complaining about other peoples reviews lol and how far did you get into the game I doubt you pld mor than an hour
 
gameboy
@DANTENDO i dont think you get my point. im not headed a clear direction either. HZD is a great experience because PS4 sucks too, its one of a few decent ps4 games. Example: When i played Bioshock my personal experience was a 4/10 it doesnt stop me from acknowledging its a 10/10. When i played HZD it was a 5/10 personal experience but a 7.5/10 game. When i played Kingdom Hearts 3 my experience was a 8/10 but the game itself is a 4/10. KH3 is terrible...
 
DANTENDO
soz mate but thts the most unclear msg I've ever read and I've read it back 3 times lol
 
DANTENDO
I'll make it clearer hzd is a 10 game and it will still be a 10 game in 10 years time and in 10 years time I hope I'm playing hzd 3 - shit had to use a different number hope noone is confused lol
 

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