Bias, protest, and shame: Zelda’s 8.8 from Gamespot

Perfect, just perfect?The fact that Gamespot‘s Jeff G. gave The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess an 8.8/10 (after 1UP gave the same game a perfect 10) isn’t what inspired this post. Dennis of the VG Resource Center wrote on the wave of outrage (bordering on hatred, it seems) from Zelda fans in reaction to Gamespot’s review, and had this to say: “Something dawned on me today: Opinions don’t matter anymore.”

That was when we remembered another article about reviews – and outrage – that appeared on QJ. The one about 1UP pulling the Neverwinter Nights II review after a torrent of protests from outraged NWN fans.

Dennis says that this was “shameful” behavior of gamers – or fanboys. “Lacking the experience of actually playing the game to form a cohesive argument, fanboys had to resort to making personal attacks against Jeff to give their posts some sort of artificial meaning.” There’s even a double irony in all of this: Jeff gave Ocarina of Time a perfect 10. On the other hand, one of our readers of the perfect 10 article criticized comparing Twilight to Ocarina. More from Dennis before we run out of space:

And that’s all I really feel like linking to. Chances are, if you frequent any major gaming forum, you’ll be seeing (or have already seen) giant rants about the validity of Jeff’s review. The ******* validity. Apparently, one’s opinion is not valid if it is in contrast to a group’s opinion.

Are comparison’s to other reviews valid? Yes. Is saying a review is invalid because it doesn’t agree with everybody else’s opinion a valid reason? People like to play the “He’s an Xbox fanboy” card, blissfully unaware that they are equally biased themselves, if not more so… This isn’t about the review itself, but rather the mindset some of these people operate in.


Read link takes you to Dennis’ complete argument. Rant as you wish – whatever your opinion of the game, the gamers, or the game reviewers are. Don’t be mistaken by the decision to write on this topic, however. The staff’s opinions on Twilight Princess do range across the board. But we’ve never, ever hated each other for it.

Perfect, just perfect?The fact that Gamespot‘s Jeff G. gave The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess an 8.8/10 (after 1UP gave the same game a perfect 10) isn’t what inspired this post. Dennis of the VG Resource Center wrote on the wave of outrage (bordering on hatred, it seems) from Zelda fans in reaction to Gamespot’s review, and had this to say: “Something dawned on me today: Opinions don’t matter anymore.”

That was when we remembered another article about reviews – and outrage – that appeared on QJ. The one about 1UP pulling the Neverwinter Nights II review after a torrent of protests from outraged NWN fans.

Dennis says that this was “shameful” behavior of gamers – or fanboys. “Lacking the experience of actually playing the game to form a cohesive argument, fanboys had to resort to making personal attacks against Jeff to give their posts some sort of artificial meaning.” There’s even a double irony in all of this: Jeff gave Ocarina of Time a perfect 10. On the other hand, one of our readers of the perfect 10 article criticized comparing Twilight to Ocarina. More from Dennis before we run out of space:

And that’s all I really feel like linking to. Chances are, if you frequent any major gaming forum, you’ll be seeing (or have already seen) giant rants about the validity of Jeff’s review. The ******* validity. Apparently, one’s opinion is not valid if it is in contrast to a group’s opinion.

Are comparison’s to other reviews valid? Yes. Is saying a review is invalid because it doesn’t agree with everybody else’s opinion a valid reason? People like to play the “He’s an Xbox fanboy” card, blissfully unaware that they are equally biased themselves, if not more so… This isn’t about the review itself, but rather the mindset some of these people operate in.


Read link takes you to Dennis’ complete argument. Rant as you wish – whatever your opinion of the game, the gamers, or the game reviewers are. Don’t be mistaken by the decision to write on this topic, however. The staff’s opinions on Twilight Princess do range across the board. But we’ve never, ever hated each other for it.

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