Sherlock Holmes - The Awakened gets an 8.3 on Gamespot!

[Blairdy]

Hey guys,

I just saw a brilliant review for SH-TA on Gamespot:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/sherlockholmestheawakened/review.html?sid=6168180&om_act=convert&om_clk=multimodule&tag=multimodule;picks;title;1
"Both true to the character of Sherlock Holmes and a rip-roaring pulp adventure in its own right, The Awakened is a must-play game."

I don't get how a general videogames website can do such a good review whereas a specialised website like AG, which is supposed to support adventure games posted just an average review...

[Fop]

Maybe only specialized websites can tell apart quality adventure games from mediocre ones :P

[Jackal]

Welcome to AG, Blairdy. :)

The answer to your question is very simple: Gamespot's reviewer liked the game more than ours did. That's all there is to it. AG reviewers call 'em like we see 'em, and we can't inflate scores just to artificially support the genre. All we need to do is justify our own score, and let everyone else do the same.

[Boneho Chane]

Nicely put.

[ravisdavis]

Interesting to see that AG gives a lower score than Gamespot....not something you see every day from a multi-genre site.

[Jake]

I don't get how a general videogames website can do such a good review whereas a specialised website like AG, which is supposed to support adventure games posted just an average review...

Reviews are always subjective, because (99% of the time) reviews are written by one particular person with one particular set of personal tastes... so it's not really fair to bunch it up as "a general videogames site" and "an adventure games site," because if maybe a different person had reviewed it for either of those two sites, it would have got a higher or lower score! Who knows...

But also*, I think general gamers and adventure game enthusiasts look for different things in a "good adventure game."

For instance, Hotel Dusk got some rave blow-the-house-down reviews on some general sites, while on AG it got, more or less, an "its pretty good but nothing amazing." On the other hand, there are plenty of games that AG.com and other adventure-specific sites give fairly high marks which just don't click with the general sites.

I don't personally think - especially after working at an adventure game development studio for the past year - that either of them are wrong, I just think that different people have different things they value in what makes a game notable/worth playing.


Interesting to see that AG gives a lower score than Gamespot....not something you see every day from a multi-genre site.

This stereotype is tiring to me.



* apologies if this becomes a can of worms. my hope is that it doesn't because that would be ridiculous.

[Gonchi]

http://shadowmage.plinkomedia.com/images/Admiral-Ackbar-trap.jpg

[Terramax]

"Both true to the character of Sherlock Holmes and a rip-roaring pulp adventure in its own right, The Awakened is a must-play game."


How much of that statement is true? Only I've read otherwise.

[Gabe]

GameSpot:
"Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened GameSpot Review :
We say:8.3:D
Tilt 9.:devil: The Awakened is a must-play game.:r
Similar Games:
Lula 3D:crazy:
Sam & Max Episode 1:shifty:
The Shivah":z


That's pathetic.

[Gknight]

Hope it lives up to the Gamespot rating.

[Risingson]

Jackal is right, though we will never get rid of that annoying feeling of fustration... because gamespot gives hype to adventures like "The Awakened" but not to other that, let's say, most adventurers prefer. I mean, "The Awakened" for me is a good example of many of the worst features modern adventures have: action which is delayed by text with no interest or wit, which makes the game BORING. I play Monkey Island because it is FUN, and so I do with Space Quest V or Still Life. "The Awakened" makes me yawn, makes me remember how my back aches, makes me think of visiting the fridge, does not nothing to make me enter its world, its story, take care of the characters, feel intellectually or emotionally engaged to anything it has. If this is the kind of adventure than a mass media promotes, which means that this is the adventure that many would take as the first to play, I do not wonder why so many people loathes the genre for being, well, boring.

[Roman5]

The same guy at gamespot, brett todd, who reviewed the awakened, gave 5.8 mediocre to runaway 2. Yet AG gave a slightly higher score to runaway 2 than the awakened, but only marginally. Also, GS gave 7.3 to the silver earring yet AG gave it slightly higher marks than the awakened. Which just goes to prove, take it all with a large dose of salt. However, I trust AG reviews more because that is the genre we're dealing with all the time.
I haven't played either the awakened or runaway 2 yet.

[Risingson]

And, well, 6.4 to Moment of Silence, which actually has some intelligence in it. "Too wordy", heh. Anyway.

[Roman5]

'Last edited by Melanie68 : Today at 02:18 PM. Reason: got rid of derogatory term for Gamespot '

Lol. I'm sure gamespot don't have any sense of humour. :D

[Kurufinwe]

Also, GS gave 7.3 to the silver earring yet AG gave it slightly higher marks than the awakened.
Note that there were two different reviewers for those two games here, and that I haven't played Silver Earring (nor had Jack played The Awakened when he edited my review). So the scores those games got at AGs shouldn't really be compared together.