I'm sorry if no one cares about this but I just have to vent somewhere. I'm sick of critics giving great scores to certain game series then giving worse scores to new, original ideas. For instance, Modern Warfare 2 got incredible, praise filled reviews from every single site, even though the story was an incredibly short, stupidly convoluted mess and the multiplayer was unbalanced and full of annoying exploitative tactics. Meanwhile, Bad company 2, what I consider to be the pinnacle of console multiplayer, got great reviews, but not nearly as much praise. Some sites didn't even consider it for any awards, but gave them to black ops instead.

Now, I see how LA Noire, probably one of the most inventive, immersive, and mature games in years, is getting a bunch of 8's from sites that give COD and Gears of War games 9's and 10's with every iteration. Honest Gamers just gave LA Noire a freaking 5, apparently because there just wasn't enough of the mindless massacres and chaos that you can create in GTA. Sure the game is more linear than any other rockstar game, but it also has some of the most intense gameplay I've played in its investigations. Conversations and looking around a house have no right to feel that important, but they do, and I commend Team Bondi on its phenominal feat. I'm starting to think that some critics and fans are so obsessed with constant action, flawless graphics, and shooting gallery enemies that a rerelease of a slower classic like Planescape torment wouldn't get a very good reception. It just pisses me off cause I know that all these same critics are all but guaranteed to heap praises and accolades on Gears of War 3 and Modern Warfare 3 when they come out this fall even though they are sure to be exactly the same as their predecessors.

Because L.A. Noire isn't GTA, it's dumb. Well, I've never even heard of Honest Gamers before, and I'm lucky to find I haven't missed anything. Except the comedy of errors.

We all know most mainstream reviews are nearly useless, but yes, it is always painful to see truly great works receive far less appreciation. Thankfully public acclaim in general seems to be about as high as Team Bondi could have hoped for, no thanks to the review you mentioned.

Even if the game is a failure (which I'm sure it isn't, although I have yet to play it), it is also an extreme success. It isn't often at all that we get to see such a high-profile game be so experimental.

And for the record, I've never heard of Honest Gamers either. Screw 'em. Screw their name too.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was selling for 20 bucks a mere month or two post release, despite being one of the best games to come out that year (and not being a buggy mess, like some games that were widely thought to be "game of the year" *cough*New Vegas*cough*). So, wide acclaim by gamers won't always make the game financially successful. Of course Sacrifice had the same, sad fortune years ago, so it's not like it's anything new.

You won't catch me saying that there's any justice to be had in the video game industry, that's for sure.

But Rockstar is riding on the tail of the GTA series and Red Dead Redemption. The other game had what going for it? Except being acted and voiced by the guy who did Gollum, written by an incredibly talented director, an incredibly unique setting....excuse me, I just have to step over here and cry in sympathy for a minute.

critics are worse than the gamers, they gave dragon age 2 94/100 , in short dont go on what the critics say, just either try the demo or watch a few gameplay videos and user experiences

I've always heard great things about Enslaved, and I plan on trying it one day. But this crap happens all the time. Another example is Alan Wake. IT got mostly great reviews, but not nearly the praise it deserved for such a weird, twisted story. But I hate the fact that MW3 is likely to get better reviews than Battlefield 3, even though the recent demo video for B3 is probably the most amazing video game I've seen all year. This happens with tv shows too. A few years back, there was a show called Reaper, which had a wonderfully unique concept, but some pretty serious twists and themes as well. Critics mostly loved it, but no one watched it. You know what people watched instead? Law and Order, CSI, NCIS, pedestrian, recycled junk.

I don't know about this; of course we're nothing more than nerds arguing when discussing the review scores of MW3 vs. BF3, but I would guess that Battlefield 3 would get the higher scores, and that it would be a fairly definitive "win". I guess we'll see, though.

And TV has had this problem for a long time. I mean, the moment most of us read your post we'll be thinking about Firefly.

I played DA2 and it was not the demo version. Didn't find it great at all.

You can get Enslaved for like 20 bucks and finish it, on hard mode, in 8-10 hours. There's really no reason to wait to play it.

i loved reaper!

Actually for the xbox 360 version playing on a standard definition TV, the DA2 demo was BETTER than the real game. All the cutscenes were distorted in DA2 on SDTVs but it wasn't a problem with the demo! The demo shows off the best part of the game for consoles at least which is combat. (Combat improved on consoles versions compared to the first one, the combat was actually more tactical in console DA2 compared to console DA:O due to more control over your party. I don't mean pressing a button to attack, I mean more options of how to move your party around for combat.) The story, variety of maps, and locations were rather below Bioware's usual standards. (Well besides the latter two for the first Mass Effect.... Pretty funny people made complaints about something in a Bioware game. Fix it in the sequel but than another bioware game has the same problem- the same exact repetitive areas/maps over and over again.)

Anyways, more on topic, I found Alpha Protocol to be awesome and that got rather bad review scores but I actually read the reviews and found things I liked about the game so I ended up buying it especially since it was by Obsidian.

Carefully read reviews and even bad ones can be informative. Look not what they disliked and liked about the game but WHY they disliked or liked those things.

One of my favorite PS2 games was crapped on by everyone.

And I still love it. I'm not ashamed to say it.

You sir, are a world treasure. :)