apparently yacht club (the dev) is going broke, hope the game pops off source: https://youtu.be/QA18SdLZN64
I think people give Metacritic too much credit. Better look at OpenCritic in my opinion, where Mina The Hollower and Schrödinger’s Call are the highest rated games of the year with a score of 93. One of the issues of Metacritic is, that it weights certain sources higher than others. And OpenCritic includes sources that Metacritic would not want to have.
https://opencritic.com/game/19213/mina-the-hollower and https://opencritic.com/game/20596/schr-dingers-call
What do you mean by “would not want to have”? Why would we want to have them?
Metacritic is selective at what critic is allowed to be on the site. While OpenCritic is selective too off course, its accepting more voices than Metacritic (and weights them all the same).
But what do they filter on?
There’s certain critics (think right wing nut jobs like Critical Drinker) that I wouldn’t want impacting a score as they’d just rate it low because there’s a minority included in a game.
BTW I just looked up the list of reviewers having an impact on the OpenCritic score, at https://opencritic.com/faq under the section “Where can I find a list of all publications on OpenCritic?”. The list of Top Critics is separate from the others, and include The Jimquisition, The Angry Joe Show and Skill Up in example And their opinion is weighted as much as the one from IGN. And I think this is a good thing.
Edit: Forgot why I was looking this up. I could not find The Critical Drinker in the list of Top Critics there. So you are good to go. ^^
But what do they filter on?
Details how Metacritic is operating is uknown. Another reason to avoid it.
There’s certain critics (think right wing nut jobs like Critical Drinker) that I wouldn’t want impacting a score as they’d just rate it low because there’s a minority included in a game.
That’s your personal taste and this is good. But imagine someone else decides for you who can impact the score and how much. If you like Metacritic, that’s okay. But OpenCritic takes a more general approach and does not discriminate (at least not as much as Metacritic) and provides a “real” average value. In example I don’t want IGN to impact the score too much too, but Metacritic values scores from places like IGN higher than most other platforms. And with excluding Critical Drinker, IGN’s opinion has even higher impact on the score.
If you really like that, by all means keep using and looking up IGN. I don’t think its the worst in the world or anything like that. I just think OpenCritic operates a little better and that’s it. My initial point was to provide and alternative to Metacritic, because I do not like how it operates overall.
Tried it out with Mixtape: This and this both look the same, except Metacritic exposes the brazen astroturf campaigning going on with this mediocre game. I would also expect OpenCritic to have critics that weren’t directly paid by Annapurna Interactive on the list to drag the score down. Instead, the critic score is even higher.
The point is not that OpenCritic matches your taste or expectations of a game better than Metacritic. The point is that OpenCritic is more fair by giving everyone the same voice (average instead weighting) and allow more people to speak / vote. This does not guarantee a better result for you, it just makes it more fair and even. This way OpenCritic has less control of the result than Metacritic, because Metacritic has a hidden algorithm that weights voices differently.
My point is that I took a famously overrated game that showed a clear disconnect between paid-off journalist shills and users who actually played the game. One of the sites exposed the disconnect. The other gave it a “80% player rating”.
But that is a systematic issue of those outlets, not an issue with the aggregator. OpenCritic just collects the ratings and presents an average. It’s not their job to control more. OpenCritic is just a mirror of those ratings. If those sites and outlets gave 10/10 all of them, then it should be reflected in the OpenCritic (and in Metascore for that matter).
What I’m hearing is, if I want actual useful critic scores, stick to MC because OC is easier to game.
Is it possible, even a little bit, that people just have a different opinion than you about a video game? Surely if there was flagrant bribery happening, someone would have receipts and a conscience that compelled them to share it.
someone would have receipts and a conscience that compelled them to share it.
Yes, we absolutely see astroturfers stepping forward all the time to clear their conscience.
Actual astroturfing often has a paper trail. “Citizens Concerned About the Whatever” publicly listed as funded by companies who directly stand to benefit from Whatever’s opposition. If it was so easy to buy good review scores, why did Microsoft not purchase them for Redfall? Why did Sony not purchase them for that 2D God of War game? Why did AnnaPurna buy them for this game but not the dozens of other games they publish? Why is the Steam user rating for Mixtape also very high if it could only achieve such ratings via bribery? Is the only explanation for Mixtape’s reviews that they were paid off? Or, perhaps, could it be a bunch of people who don’t have to prove that they’ve even played the game leaving 0/10 reviews on Metacritic en masse because they were riled up by Asmongold or some other influencer who traffics in getting their audience mad about “woke”?
I don’t know. I’ve never heard of the game before this post. I’m just pointing out the ridiculousness of hoping for the astroturfers and shills to out themselves because they’re feeling guilty.
That said, metacritic and Opencritic Gave Mina the same score. So… Regardless of where you look, the outcome is essentially the same.
With this one game, yes. I’m not talking about one game, but in general. The overall score of this specific game is not even my main point.
It’s sold through the European DRM-free-only store GOG and it’s by Yacht Club Games, the makers of Shovel Knight. I put it on the wishlist for now.
The soundtrack is Pay What You Want starting from $0 through Jake Kaufman’s Bandcamp page. It won’t appear in your GOG library unlike the Soundtrack Edition, but that’s OK if you get the music free or support him.
You put in the same link to Bandcamp twice. Here’s the link to their GOG page
Oh, shit. Sorry about that, I am incompetence itself. Thanks for coming to my aid. I replaced it just now in my comment too.
It’s okay, it could happen to anyone :)
I’ve played around 7 hours since release, it’s really good! It’s literally Castlevania x Zelda, taking so much inspiration from both for its mechanics and themes. The art and music is just chef’s kiss. Everything about the game is full of charm.
Fair warning though, the game is pretty tough. Not “NES Castlevania” levels of hard, but you will die a lot. The game has a ton of modifiers that can make the game easier if you need them though. In fact, it has a ton of modifiers that can even make the game harder for challenge runs or wackier modifiers for future playthroughs. So cool. I’ll definitely be playing through again once I’m done with it.
The beginning is especially tough, when you don’t have a ton of options yet and every mistake is punished quite harshly.
The Castlevania inspiration is definitely there in the fact that Mina is kind of slow, her weapons have very constrained damage areas (while some enemies have very annoying move patterns) and every miscalculated attack or jump locks you into a dangerous move. Dodging in general is not easy.
Once you get used to it, it’s great though. After a first game in which I died and lost exp way too many times, I just tried restarting from the beginning. I almost breezed through the parts that gave me so much trouble, didn’t drop any bone for a while and levelled up a lot before reaching the same point.
Enjoying it greatly so far - the difficulty level seems calibrated to ‘brutal’ but everything about it scream polish and perfection.
I find it hard to believe that some of the platforming sections are intended to be as difficult as they are. If there’s nothing to attack, you can’t heal, and you take a tonne of damage from falling off. Even with the life ring accessory, it’s still wicked in places. Not so bad once you’re able to equip a few more items and have some extra sparks, but at the beginning of the game, oof.
Some of the bosses having very random attacks is a bit unpleasant, too. If they keep busting out screen-fillers that are very hard to avoid, there’s not much you can do, especially as some of them can finish you in a couple of hits.
A lot of the optional areas are very tough, and I agree they can be rough at the start of the game. Once you start having a lot of trinkets though, it gets marginally easier. Some trinkets even let you brute force harder platforming sections of the game - like one that lets you just tank lightning damage.
Many platforming sections do have yellow flowers though which let you heal up though. Be sure to keep those for when you’re low and not just pick them up when you’re full.
This game is like gaslighting me. It’s like I got an entirely different game than everyone else got.
First time hearing about this game, I love shovel Knight and all the spin offs. I’ll get this immediately!
This was the last kickstarter I backed a while ago, before swearing I wouldn’t back anything anymore (way too much other stuff I backed under-delivered in some way).
I was not too worried about that one though, because Shovel Knight was so great and the new parts kept delivering (especially Specter of Torment). It was a long wait, but it was worth it. They really know how to make a fun game.
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Didn’t this game come out like 39 hours ago?
Reviewers get early copies so that there’s a review score available in time for people to buy it.
