Desslock writes for them and also has made it clear he would have rated DA2 significantly lower. Convenient how the EA games get handed to people who rave about them and the indie games get handed to more critical types.

I realize 89 is still a good score, but I still feel they need to have more consistency and just saying 'Well a different person wrote that review' isn't good enough when EA stuff keeps getting better reviews than little guys ever time.

Rich McCormick who reviewed DA2 probably never played a good RPG before.

Richard Cobbet who reviewed TW2 probably did.

But yeah it sucks - magazine should have some standardized metric for score system. TW2 is VASTLY VASTLY superior to DA2, so to receive lower score makes PCG look incredibly silly even if it was reviewed by different people.

PCG is a joke.

Arbitrary numerical ratings systems designed to be applied to disparate games across platform and genre are inherently nonsensical. With professional game "reviews" in the mainstream outlets , try to focus on the context of the written review...they can be as much as 3% less absurd.

Honestly, if I were objectively "rating" TW2, my own rating would be around that mark, to honestly account for some of the game's quirks. But I'd rather play that "89" again and again, over a lot of other "90+" games.

I realize this was a trolling thread, but it's still interesting to see how we get worked up over a couple percentage points in some meaningless number.

Actually, I can easily see how people can get worked up over "lower" scores from mainstream magazines. It's not that we care what PC Gamer thinks, I think ultimately we don't want the franchise to be harmed by people who actually take that crap seriously. I want to see expansion packs, and of course more Witcher games. There are a LOT of people who take mainstream mag scores seriously, and low scores can hurt a budding franchise. Take Alpha Protocol for example. I think the game is brilliant, and would have liked a sequel or DLC or something. But low review scores/low sales made SEGA pull the plug.

That said, "89" is NOT a low score.

Yes that was a very very sad day. I loved alpha protocol.

How is 89 a low score?

It's not, its just the response you have when your a troll.

Because those number still carry some weight and can translate to sales.

In my opinion also the 89 is pretty close to what I would give and in and of itself it's not a low score at all. The problem becomes that artificially inflating the scores of the games from the big name companies like Dragon Age 2 completely throws the scale off. If 94s are handed out like it's nothing then that 89 some little company worked their asses off for years to get don't mean as much.

Most people aren't going to delve deep enough to see that two different writers wrote those reviews. I think what the average person is going to take out of it is 'PC Gamer thinks Dragon Age 2 is a better game than The Witcher 2'.

You or I or most people here probably would not buy a game simply because of a gaming magazine review, but it's conceivable that someone with limited funds to only buy one game and who didn't want to spend too much time researching all over the place could take a quick look at the two scores and opt to purchase the game with the higher score. In fact, I think it's a safe bet that some people somewhere will do just that at some point.

I'm not trying to toll at all. For me it's just a fairness thing, but I suppose posting about it here is preaching to the choir.

The kind of people who were going to do that, are not likely to be the people that TW2 was made for in the first place. I'm not going to get worried over what people with mainstream tastes for games in general and rpgs in particular are going to think about TW2. That ship is already sailed. TW2 wasn't made for them...it was simply the game The devs *wanted* to make. Its frankly far too quirky and challenging for mainstream tastes. You can see the evidence of that on this board.

It was never going to win over the "casual" rpg fan. The people this game was made for, are the people that were already well aware of it's existence, and wouldnt be relying on "PC Gamer" to tip the scales one way or another.

I do however grant you that those coveted "90+" ratings do sell games. But the people who would actually buy that game based on a couple % points, rather than on the glowing nature of the review text which *spells out* that this is one of the greatest RPGs ever made, would just come here and gripe about it anyway, with cries of "OMG OVERATED"

So really, I see the upside here. :)

Amen.