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Do we hate Halo Wars and Killzone 2 before they are even released?
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Halo Wars has been one of the more "iffy" titles for the Xbox 360. I'd go as far to call it 'controversial' if that word didn't imply one of three things: tits, ass or extreme violence. I call it controversial because it is taking one of the most revered franchises on the Xbox 360 and converting it to one of the least popular console genres: real-time strategy.
The fact that Ensemble studios, the guys behind Age of Empires, were the ones developing Halo Wars might have given some hope to finally getting a good real-time strategy game on a console, but there may very well have been good reason for Microsoft to close the doors on that development studio -- which is one more reason why Halo Wars might be a disgrace to the Halo name.
And it seems as if gamers agree.
This might be a record for lowest user-rated Metacritic score for a game that hasn't even been officially released yet. The early reviews are a bit mixed, but 0.8 out of 10 in 115 user reviews? Are we expecting it to be that bad, do people think the demo stinks or are we seeing the rumblings of pirates who are pissed they wasted good bandwidth on such a bad game?
No matter how you slice it, the Guinness records worthy score doesn't bode well for Halo Wars.
And before PS3 fans start pointing fingers and laughing, there are some similar poor gamer expectations going on at the Killzone 2 page. Now, all signs point towards Killzone 2 being a pretty awesome game, and perhaps one of the best PS3 games of 2009. But while the critics are giving it a big two thumbs up, the users are giving it a very so-so ranking.
It's not rare for critics and gamers to have differing opinions on a game. In fact, on of the reasons I really like Metacritic is that singular reviews really should be read more for a glimpse at the gameplay than any true critique of the game. While I've written game reviews myself, I still keep in mind that a review is simply one person's opinion.
What happens with critics is that they too often put in exterior variables that may or may not really have much to do with how gamers view the game. Innovative game play? Critics will grade it up, but if that innovative play isn't altogether fun, gamers will grade it down.
Games released for the Wii often tend to have higher user reviews than critic reviews because the official reviews side towards comparing the game to the Xbox 360 or PS3 version. But for Wii gamers that don't own one of those other consoles, what do they care how much better the other versions are?
But while I can't say I am completely surprised by the low score for Halo Wars -- though a little surprised by just how low it is -- I can say I am somewhat surprised by the low score on Killzone 2, and I think in a few weeks PS3 users are going to be in for quite a cool game.
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