A quick glance at Metacritic would indicate that this title is right on pace for it’s release in a few days. It’s sitting at 94, with a total of 34 positive reviews. Now as much as I disagree with giving out perfect scores simply because I don’t believe a game will ever be perfect and all things to all people, we can clearly see 13 perfect scores, which is pretty darned good.
Then there is the coveted 40/40 from Famitsu, which is generally stingier with it’s perfect scores, as this is the first game to get one in 2011. Of course Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess also got 40/40, so we can safely say that the guys over at Famitsu like their Zelda.
So then, why am I writing this? Well, the review over at Gamespot gave it a 7.5, which is solidly in their ‘good’ range. This has caused a huge uproar, because it did not get the perfect or near perfect scores that fans expected, even though they have yet to play it. Now I haven’t played through the entire game yet, so I can’t speak to his individual points, but he seems to have some valid ones. Mainly, he doesn’t like the control scheme that seems to be troublesome and need constant recalibration and he doesn’t seem to be a fan of the Zelda ‘formula’. Now he opens the review in a brief thought on this, realizing that it can be difficult to please fans of 25 years of a formula and people looking for innovation at the same time. He doesn’t think it was as successful as it could be. Fair enough, that’s his opinion.
So, why the uproar? It’s the number. 7.5. In the current state of game reviewing, most big titles tend to follow the 8-10/10 score line, and anything below that is seen as abject failure. Now there can be many reasons why these scores are like this. Maybe scores are inflated or fixed, or maybe AAA titles generally do deserve the scores because of all the time and money put in to them. But if you actually read the review, he makes some interesting points. The public is going to have to wait a few days to see if they agree with him, but I’m glad that he had a different opinion. Not everyone is going to love something, and I want to hear differing opinions.
Gamespot, we haven’t always gotten along, but you earned a few points in my book today.
