Pistols in AP are seriously overpowered. no need for Assault Riffle.
Shotgun is a bit crap as it requires you to be very close to your target. Against bosses tough... very good.
don't remember how smg fared as i didn't use them at all during my 2 playtrhoughs.

He was a pain in the ass for me too, as a stealth dude. There's a real rash of unbalanced bosses in RPGs lately.

I can think of a few games on GOG that have unrealistically optimistic reviews:

Hitman 1&2

Crusader No Remorse

And probably whichever game I buy next thanks to the idiot smurf's we have here on GOG.

Just because a game's old, and it's on this awesome website, doesn't make it an automatically flawless or near flawless game.

I completely agree. And I love it when I enjoy a game for completely different reasons than the reasons that people hated it. It makes the experience perhaps a little more unique and it often makes the game a lot cheaper. :D

Best example ever: I got Hardwar for 1 penny at EB. They wanted to be rid of it. Everyone hated it and I loved it. Mount and Blade was the same way. The guys at Gamstop literally laughed at me and said "Good luck with that one." And I played it for ages.

Overall i agree with you there. I don't believe in that conspiracy BS that every review is paid for either. Maybe there is an influence from money on SOME reviews site, like the guy who was fired from Gamespot for giving a bad score to Kane and Lynch, but not all of them. It's just that, hype. COD is the game that gets the most hype nowadays, and people are just used to the mechanics and love it, and i think this gets reflected in reviews. Not that COD is a bad game, i like it a lot and i'm totally addicted to the MP mode, but it certainly doesn't deserve all the praise it gets.

I think GTA 4 was one of the most overrated games of all times. I'm not saying that it's a terrible game, of course it isn't. The main problem is that it was a step back from San Andreas in every possible way. Yet it got stellar 10-score reviews everywhere. Must be all the hype.

I agree with you in most games you mentioned, except for one: Darkest of Days. The idea was great, but the execution was terrible. Every mission felt like: "go to point A shoot some soldier, now move to point B and kill a few more soldiers". And there was nothing to keep gameplay varied, even the maps felt exactly the same. It was boring and bland, and the ending was absolutely terrible. Not to mention that we will never see the sequel to that horrible cliffhanger. The story is unfinished, and it will probably never be finished. So, yeah, i think this one deserved all the bashing from reviewers. I had to force myself to finish this. Of course, this is my opinion.

And i never get all the hate around DNF. It was a fun game overall. The only thing i hated was online multiplayer (shitty netcode and no dedicated server support), even though it had potential.

It is still flawed, even when patched & modded, but it becomes enjoyable. Also, playing the game in multiplayer is pretty fun, as the poor AI won't be an issue.

Well BioWare certainly has many things it reuses from game to game, some of those are pretty contrived, if not outright wrong... the "Ruins of Old Tien's Landing," for instance, are only twenty years old. Hardly an "Ancient Civilization" as the cliche states...

Much of what is on that chart are merely attributes of the "Hero's Journey" which is much older than BioWare. Sometimes it's a bit more formulaic than it needs to be, but they do a lot of creative stuff with their games, too... just saying. And just because you can find things in common between several stories does not mean they are interchangable. Truthfully, most stories follow a set formula if you look at them in a certain way, but that doesn't mean they are the same. There is more to differentiate a story than those few shared elements...

you guys are probably going to think this is ludicrus, but i found gothic 4 Arcania to be a quiet enjoyable game. one of my favorites. that and a game called Drakensang, drakensang was the greatest game i've played in a long time. the gamespot review said "it was an engrosing world that sucked you in and left you wondering "did i really put 5 hours into this gaming sesh?" and yet they rated it 7/10. go figure.

Starcraft 2, lots of reviewers (both 'pro' and users are equal to me) whined around launch that you'd get massacred by Korean freaks if you play online. That's really not the case. There are players of all calibres. :)
In all honestly, I don't think there is a reason why it should be mentioned. Afaik, most people have problems with a release being done every single year... Personally, I find the games to be quite great, they may need some tweaks here and there, but nothing too serious.

The problem with that franchise is that they're not changing anything with the yearly installments. In comparison to most other games in the genre, CoD doesn't bring neither new nor quality content to the table.
They're still using the Quake 3 engine from CoD2. It's a complete joke. The amount of praise it receives is unnecessary.

That's like saying that Portal 2 uses the Quake engine. The engine has moved on a bit since then. Although with CoD, I think I'm right in saying that it hasn't moved on at all since MW1. But then it's an entirely console orientated game. Kotick even laughed at BF3 for banging on about what the PC version can do, which says it all.

Yeah, but Portal 2 is a much more unique, memorable and original experience. I mean, it's Valve. They might be using an old engine but they excel in every other area.

CoD is part of one of the most mainstream gaming genres out there, and frankly, when you compare CoD to the rest of these gen's games, it pretty much feels bland and arcade.

I don't think it has much to do with CoD being console-orientated nowadays, because even on consoles games like BF blow it away.

The franchise has been over-hyped to hell, IMO.

After playing every single CoD game out there (with an exception to the console spin-offs and MW3, of course), I'm sorry to say that I'm now that random internet dude who'll always say that Activision is milking it's customers making bad games

I'm trying very hard to figure out what the hell I'm reading, might end up with a headache waking from bizzaro world.

That doesn't change anything. Other than to say perhaps that Valve have done more with the Quake engine than Activision have done with the Quake 3 engine.

But yes, Actiblizz are all out exploitative now. I don't understand why anyone would want to be loyal to that. It's like battered wife syndrome or something.

I liked arcania too, it's a good game (and good looking too) when approached as an action rpg istead of a gothic game.