Next Show (Ep24): Your Input

[joetbd]

Originally Posted by Tim Spaeth

Joe -- sorry about that. It wasn't a deliberate ambush.

I was totally kidding. It was a joke I saw on The Daily show. Jon Stewart had two guests on different nights, that disagreed with each other. Doris Kearns Goodwin and John Bolton.

Jon tried to talk to John Bolton, with some knowledge he got from Doris Kearns.

John Bolton told him his was totally wrong,
and so stewart called Doris Kearns on the phone, and yells
"Doris you f@cked me!" And jokingly blamed her, for feeding him bad information.

The Daily Show Clip

I instantly decided that was WAY too much of an inside joke. And just backed off of that. But I loved the term "ambush" so much, I left that in.

---

Originally, I was going to say.

Tim, YOU AMBUSHED ME !!!!!!!
You dropped my response in, after you guys had totally gone in a different direction. Making me look like a jackass !!!!!

[but sarcasm doesn't translate well in forums
- So I chickened out and didn't say it]

[Tim Spaeth]

Totally off-topic, but I love Doris Kearns Goodwin. Great sense of humor.

[joetbd]

My RSS feed says Tim posted show #25, six hours ago.

I just finished it.

The one issue that I didnt hear enough about. Is what about the "sameness" (or as Brad referred to it "the me-tooism" of review scores?

Doesn't it leave you a little queasy when Batman doesn't get even one average review score? (out of 58 reviews listed on Gamerankings) Not even one site gave it a flat 8.0

What I hear people say, on the internet, when I bring this up; is that X is a good game, it should get great reviews.

Ok... getting a good average, sure, I can understand that. But that kind of universe 100% agreement just bothers me. And frankly, I dont believe it.

[Richard Naik]

Originally Posted by joetbd

Doesn't it leave you a little queasy when Batman doesn't get even one average review score? (out of 58 reviews listed on Gamerankings) Not even one site gave it a flat 8.0.

There are actually several 8.0 scores for it on Metacritic.

And having played and reviewed Arkham Asylum (gave it an 8.5) I can say that I really don't have a problem with it getting good scores across the board, or with other games getting the same treatment. I can't pass judgment about a game until I've actually played it enough to formulate a cohesive opinion, so for all I know any game in question deserves its accolades. The Witcher got some great scores from other sites, but until I actually played it (gave it a 5) I had no reason to refute them.

We also use a different rating scale than most sites-5 is our "average" score, whereas most readers will interpret scores as they would grades from school, so a 7 is a C and so on.

[joetbd]

Originally Posted by Richard Naik

I can say that I really don't have a problem with it getting good scores across the board

What I hear people say, on the internet, when I bring this up; is that X is a good game, it should get all great reviews.

[Richard Naik]

Originally Posted by joetbd

What I hear people say, on the internet, when I bring this up; is that X is a good game, it should get all great reviews.

For this specific instance, yes, I don't mind it. That said, I can't make a judgment about whether any other games should or should not be getting great scores unless I've played it. An area where I disagree with the overall critical consensus is with The Witcher.

[Chi Kong Lui]

Originally Posted by joetbd

The one issue that I didnt hear enough about. Is what about the "sameness" (or as Brad referred to it "the me-tooism" of review scores?

Hey Joe, I did mention the whole inflated score thing and the forum poster that I attributed the comment to was you, but I didn't recall your handle on the spot. We discussed how it evolved to its current state and I spoke about how it was devaluing game reviews.