 Hey everyone, how's it going? I am here. I'm on camera. That's great I've actually been a little sick this past week even our schedule recording of the podcast I canceled it because I have the flu like symptoms. I've been I just haven't been feeling good. Hopefully I'm looking all right today Today is the best I've felt in a while. So some sniffles took some medicine Whatever we're dealing and we're dealing because astral chain Came out yesterday. Now by all accounts. It's a pretty fantastic game. I think it has 87 currently a metacritic And ultimately it's a game that I plan to pick up in the future For those who don't know I did sell my Nintendo switch not because I wanted to but because after I have my heart attack I Had a lot of financial Problems cropping up and I basically had to sell anything I could to cover my bills Unfortunately that meant my switch was a casualty. Don't worry working. I get a new job gonna get a new switch all that stuff That'll be all taken care before the end of the year And what's nice with the new switch is I'll get that better battery life switch You know, I'm getting that better battery life switch And we'll be rocking later and playing astral chain and all the other great amazing switch games that come out the rest of This year, but here's the thing the astral chain Metacritic rating in particular Has user scores now user ratings and user scores are not new they exist everywhere Amazon GameStop The PlayStation Network store the Xbox store user reviews and user ratings exist everywhere And I have been told and force-fed by many fans over the years that you should trust user scores and user reviews over The more traditional media critics the more IGNs and game spots of the world and the reason we're being told this is often because a lot of gamers have this perception That these companies are shills that they are paid Reviews now paid reviews do exist. In fact right here on YouTube is actually one of the worst Culprits of paid reviews because when paid reviews happen on YouTube, they're not often disclosed Which is actually against the law and there have been many companies and YouTubers caught over time right here on YouTube doing that thing Accepting not just a free copy of the game But an actual payment to review that game which obviously is going to skew that review Especially if it's not disclosed in fact in my personal opinion if a company is paying you You should not call your video a review because if you cannot Objectively, I don't even see objectively because I don't think reviews are objective But I don't think you could fairly review a product if you're receiving a paycheck from the company knowingly receiving a paycheck from the company For that game like you know if the company has an ad running at my video I don't we don't control that but if you know, we know we received a paycheck directly from that company Or a representative of that company then you shouldn't review the game And this has been a major issue on YouTube and I don't go out of my way to call people out for it Unless it's going to be someone within my circle and as far as I'm aware other youtubers related to me that you guys might be aware of With a small wave or player essence supermodel. They've none of us have been paid to do reviews So I don't think that is something and personally for me. It's not I go I go even further than that There's been games in the past that I've had sponsorships for and I won't review those games I don't review a lot of games anyways, but if I am going to review a game It's not going to be one I ever received a paycheck for in any possible way So if I got you know paid to do a live stream with something or I got an ad spot No, you know like a 30 second ad spot on my video or something I'm not going to review it and I bring all this up because the trust between you guys and These youtubers seems to be stronger than the trust between you guys and an IGN or Kotaku Where there's actually less and less real cases of them being paid for their reviews I'm not going to say it's never happened But the amount of times they've actually been caught and busted and all that is actually in the single digits in comparison to the dozens and dozens of youtubers that have been guilty of doing this multiple times over the last 10 years So it's interesting because I'm not even going to say you should trust youtuber reviews more than you should trust IGN You should trust you know me more than you should trust, you know gain spot or something What I am going to say is I think that critical reviews and aggregate sites like open critic and Metacritic that the actual Professionals are probably the better to trust If you're just looking to get a general view of the landscape of a game not on an individual basis But if you just want a general landscape of hey is this game good Then user reviews and we're going to get into why Astral chains obviously at the center of this, but I've been dealing with user reviews of products and games and a whole bunch of things for years and I often you know when I buy something specifically off Amazon I'm always looking at the user reviews because I want it to be four and a half stars You know rated or better, and I want most of the user reviews be positive But if you go down into the actual review section on Amazon I'm not going to show you it right now It could be a bit of a cesspool. There could be people who didn't even buy the product. There could be This happens a lot on Amazon. This is kind of one of those unsaid things on Amazon People are paid to write reviews on Amazon To give a product positive I get emails every single day some from companies that I have bought products from in the past Saying hey look, we'll give you 20 bucks if you go put a positive review of our product on Amazon I've refused every time even though I need money because In fact, oftentimes if it's a company I've bought a product from I just will blacklist them and never buy a product from them again I don't believe you should pay for reviews. I understand encouraging me that you want to send me a reminder You know, hey, do you enjoy our product? Why not go leave a review? I don't think that's shady But if you're offering monetary compensation, I think that is and that's littered all over Amazon Metacritic is interesting because it allows user reviews And Metacritic doesn't really have a way to confirm whether you bought the game or not at least on Amazon You can kind of filter reviews. It doesn't affect the overall rating for you Unfortunately, but you could filter the individual rules between like confirm like hey They bought this through Amazon and then people who who didn't maybe buy through Amazon who claim they bought it But you can't confirm if they did Well, Metacritic has no way to know if someone bought a game because they are not a retailer But what I find interesting about it is review bombing But more than review bombing It's also the polar opposite the amount of positive reviews a product can get which may not be warranted Basically, I don't think user reviews are reliable. I don't think they've ever been reliable It doesn't mean you as a consumer, you know couldn't go purchase after a chain and leave an actual real good feedback on a place like Metacritic That does exist, but I think there's too much going all over the place heck even on Steam where this happens to be not Actually informative to me as a consumer First let's talk about review bombing. So for those who don't know what review bombing is Review bombing is basically where a big group of people get together to lower the user rated score on a product For one reason or another that's often not related to whether or not that product is deserving of said rating that We that reasons often political that reason is also social that reasons often fanboy ish That reason could be a billion things, you know, you find out that say ex developer of some game Sexually harass someone. Oh, we need to go in the thousands and review bomb their games on steam That is something that has happened over and over again And I think it's disingenuous to the game because that person wasn't the only person that worked on that game And I think it's unfair to hold one person even if it was the founder of the company Even if it's the lead creative or lead producer lead director of the game I still still think it is not okay to do that because there are other people who made that game whose mouths deserved to be fed and I don't think that's what user review ratings should be for you can be you can have social movements against someone Without having to go in and use a system that's intended to tell people if the game is good or not To voice your displeasure There's obviously fanboy reasons, you know, we see this a lot of Nintendo gamers Where a game comes exclusively to a platform and you get a ton and ton of hate Now Bayonetta 2 is often cited as an example of this But just remember getting a lot of hate from PlayStation and Xbox fans when it was announced as a switch exclusive Which was understandable all the time because Bayonetta wasn't on Nintendo's platforms But it was on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 So it didn't make a lot of sense for it to not be on those platforms until we obviously found out later That without Nintendo Bayonetta 2 would have never existed Sega didn't pick up the rights to to make it anymore. They didn't want to fund it anymore And nobody else came along to fund it Honestly, it was Nintendo or nothing Bayonetta would have just died as a standalone game And there's probably some gamers out there so salty about it still to this day that even with Bayonetta 3 coming They may be wish that the franchise ended at one because they'd rather see that than see it on Nintendo Those are more haters. I don't really take their opinions that seriously but those are the kind of people that review games and That stuff sucks and I hate it. I hate it for political reasons. I hate it for social reasons I hate it for fanboy reasons Astro chain the latest game from platinum games There's one of the top rated one of the top five rated games to release on Switch this year has fallen victim to review bombing Let's check it out now because there honestly isn't a lot of user reviews out there for this game I checked Amazon and GameStop and a whole bunch of places and there's like zero user reviews so we basically have Metacritic is the only place where user reviews are happening right now and Wow As you can see here, we have 58 critic reviews being counted on here for a total score of 87 I think open critics right around the same rating open critic doesn't do the weighted system that Metacritic does will as we don't know a Metacritic has they wait Specific reviewers as having more say than others So even if you get counted in this 58 critics your review might not be worth as much as IGN For this overall rating, but bottom line is it's all positives. I think there was and shows it right here They had 56 positive reviews to mixed zero negative. So nobody thinks it's a bad game from the critics That's really all you need to see but you go over here and this doesn't even look that bad right here, right? 365 positive ratings seven mixed 21 negative but the thing about the user review area is that it's not about What was said because you don't need to say anything to leave a review You could just click a rating and leave it at that and for that there's been much more. In fact, there is 1149 user ratings and Somewhere it used to tell me how many of them were negative There was like 300 negative or something at the time of poses Which is still only like both 30% of the the scores But it's put it down to a 7.0 when you see a discrepancy from an 87 to a 7.0 that usually signifies Review bombing you know anything that's all that that shows that big of a discrepancy. That's generally review bombing and I mentioned You know bayonetta 2 this is why I don't think bayonetta 2 is really review bomb because you look at this You know, it was only 317 ratings So by the way a lot more ratings on Astro chain than the bayonetta 2 And it's listed as a medical in the fullest play and it's got a user score 8.5 to 92. That's not review bombing I'm sorry, you know, it's got zero negative written reviews to me. That's not that's not review bombing But Astro chain was review bombed and you could tell that by some of the ratings So let's just go into the 390 3 user reviews and just read some of the so there we go Now we got a better idea so 353 negative 798 positive 12 mixed The mixed ones I personally I feel our people that actually play the game Some of the positive ones are gonna be people who didn't play the game We'll get into that in a moment for now. We're gonna focus on the negative. This guy's name is literally ps3 fan 2 You know, you can rely on an objective opinion on a Nintendo game When you just named ps3 fan 2 he says fantastic graphics, but everything else is mediocre outright poor Go buy devil may cry 5 or bayonetta for a true action game experience Gameplay is worse than your automata. You know, so every game he mentions our games that aren't on switch You know, he didn't say bayonetta 2 says bayonetta, which I mean you can get that on Nintendo platforms I'm including switch, but that may cry 5 isn't Near automata isn't notice how all the games he mentioned our games are conveniently on his preferred platform Again, this doesn't really feel a I mean, I'm surprised he gave it a 4 and out of straight up 0 Must just be a fan of platinum. So maybe we got lucky got a fan of platinum here But all right, so I re-ranked all these according to user score just to make it easier to find and went to the last page Dama underscore mama Reset era made me do this bunch of little whiny internet juice warriors So people are mad at people being happy about the game and reset era came over and did this This review contains spoilers in other language hard to really tell Hardcore game fan another miss from platinum games the combat's very shallow and involves just spamming the same move or simple combo Over and over get a little bit harder these games may be shallowing this fun for this game They decided to bloat the game with a focus on narrative. So this one I will say Looks like they may be touched it Maybe they could just be looking at it as well So this one might be a legit one, but then you know a very overrated game But he saves for 10 bucks when he gave it a zero. So Again a very hyperbolic User review again. This is not something you'd see a professional over do you don't give a game that you think is actually worse Some money is zero Zill legend awful awful do not recommend the combat's not cool as the trailers made it seem characters are boring That's why the controls are hit and miss do not lie. This person probably didn't even play the game This person just goes on and on and on about how much they don't like the game They think it's a cash grab for some reason, you know, here's the funny thing in this game was in development longer than near Automata was that a lot of these customers say is better a better game. So like it's definitely not a quick cash grab Here's a complaint about 30 FPS Oh because 30 FPS must be bad right like like they haven't been playing games on the other systems 30 FPS forever. Let's move on to the page for here. We've got some even more, you know of those Amazing ratings. Oh, look at those 10s popping in. Let's get down to the bottom here Where we're gonna see the rest of the negative reviews Let me see here fan this one literally saying fanboys Marketing so like only Nintendo fanboys are gonna like it You can really tell that scale bound me and canceled had an effect on this game Scale bound a completely different game had a defect on this game. The graphics are dog hit trying to say dog You know what? The gameplay is boring QTE is just like Bayonetta 2 which it's not cute I mean, there's some there are some quick time events in Bayonetta 2, but that's not the brux of the combat Platinum is really just a washed up old developer Let's see here 30 FPS in this day and age especially for a fast-paced action title trading this piece of crap in Astro trade is the little engine that couldn't become near automata. It wasn't trying to be near automata I don't know people realize it's the brand new IP. It's not trying to be near Here's a thing platinum made near so I think they have all people know the differences between your automata And it's extremely poor only good thing about the game of the graphics and nothing else 30 FPS action game and honestly Shouldn't be anything else to say but I can go the extra mile tell you what you stay with Very dissuade you from paying full price for it. They decide not to let the game speak for some will flood you with cinematic shots There's actually a lot of action in the game side If you want a good action game by Bayonetta near automata or Metal Gear rising this game has no depth. Oh my gosh This is great worse than the Platinum Turtles game. That's saying something frame rate is atrocious They just have the Ninja Turtle game made by Platinum is worse is better Should have made we're trying to make a smooth 60. Oh used to be good The games of mess it runs at 30 FPS these 30 FPS comments like fantastic graphics I already read that one. I guess. Oh, man. It's just hilarious and here's the thing I don't want to pretend that it doesn't work the other way and this is why I said it's not just the review bombing Okay review bombing is embarrassing, but it's also the positive reviews. Well, let's just go look at page one because a Lot of these 10 or the 10s that are thrown out there are some people are trying to combat the review bombing But all those are just like they haven't even played the game. I see I haven't played the game guys I can tell you this right now. I'm not leaving a review. I haven't played the game but Like simply generation defining. I don't know about that one This game is so good. Okay. It's gonna play. He's got a bit of a long response Um This person I don't think has played it either said this game is flipping awesome combat gameplay story are all wacky and over the top Ridiculous just amazing. I mean, I might say I disagree with the comments it but I mean, I haven't played the game So that this kind of looks like a pretty generic stop review bombing. Here you go Stop review bombing just buy a switch you idiots. Wait, see this game is a 10s game is a 10s game Yeah, these are just people combating over and you'll see, you know dozens and dozens and dozens of comments like that Or people are just trying to combat the review bombing And Again, I don't think that is what we should be doing You should only be given it a 10 if you think the game is worth a 10 Not to combat people who are trying to say the game is trash and here's the thing All it's actually doing is it's helping national chain. Um, you know, for for this viewpoint here I'll actually give a shout out to my boy player essence I haven't talked about him in a long time because he put out a video about like the salt is real or whatever on the same topic with astral chain And he mentioned that all these negative review bombings are doing are leading to more videos being made about astral chain Hello, look what we're talking about And giving even more attention to the game and causing more people that were on the fence to buy the game To buy it now just because they want to buy it to spite the people That are saying that it's bad they're saying that they're basically jealous that it's on switch and not on their preferred platform There's no doubt That astral chain would be a better game on an xbox one x or a playstation 4 pro or on pc Of course, it would be it would probably be at 60 fps It would probably have higher resolutions and all that but that's not what makes the game great And I think that's what's so amazing about astral chain is it's kind of putting that flag in the mud And it's saying look you can have a great Game that doesn't hit all the ideal performance metrics because performance Doesn't in that of itself make a game great It can make a game better But it doesn't make a game great like would this game be 90 plus on a playstation 4? probably in terms of of the even credit ratings because Then it would be able to satisfy almost everyone that loves action games because obviously 30 fps I know is going to be jarring for some but play the game Experience the intended way the game is meant to be played and you might you know come you might I don't know come to find out and 30 fps Isn't as big of a hold back as people think it is because we're not that far removed from every game being 30 fps You playstation 3 fans especially should know about all that 30 fps life out there And heck us nintendo fans We even know not every game we play is in 60 a breath of the wild one of the best games of all time is 30 fps so I honestly think that We are at this point where it's time to start dismissing user reviews if you're not already doing it Whether it's the extreme positive end those 10 out of 10s being tossed around I mean there's a lot of 10 out of 10. I mean the 10 out of 10 is a natural chain Or just off the chart. I mean you saw 10 out of the 10s, you know here we go You're like 10 out of 10 10 out of 10 You saw 10 out of 10s all the way down on the page 4 Before we finally got to anything less than a 10 out of 10 I'm telling you that no no matter how amazing this game is Probably doesn't deserve that many 10 out of 10s from users Again, they're just trying to combat all the review bombing and if they weren't doing that I guess that's 7.0 or 7.1 I guess it's going up a little bit now that's 7.1 that we've seen would maybe be a six or something I don't know, but It doesn't really matter what matters is What we personally think about the game and What what is that? What does that leave for you guys if you're looking for information on astro chain? Unbiased information like maybe you don't want to get it directly from nintendo and the trailers You do want some honest opinions? Maybe don't rely on you know metacritic or User scores or anything anyways what I always suggest people do Is find that one or two? I suggest multiple because I think one isn't enough Reviewer whether they work at ign or game spot whether they work You know easy allies as an example, maybe one of their writers Maybe you guys like jim sterling and the gym pressions or Maybe you're into spawn wave and dreamcast guy or somebody find that one or two people out there Whose opinions in general line up with your own and I know for some of you. That's me my opinions on gaming Line up with some of you guys that watch that's why you're watching this video But I unfortunately don't review games because I don't have the time to review games. Well, I review games Well, I've reviewed some games. Well, I'd review a lot more games moving forward. It's possible But not not anytime soon for reasons I mentioned at the beginning of the video. So What I will say is fine, you know those couple people That are planning to review the games that you're maybe interested in Wait for those reviews to come out whether they're day and date, you know Or whether they're early or whether they're late wait for the reviews And see what they have to say and see if what they're showing and what they're saying and how you personally feel about it Even if you don't feel exactly the same as that person is reviewing it. You can get a pretty good idea There's enough information enough people doing reviews out there To find a couple people that align with your gaming taste And figure out if you want to you know plop down your 60 bucks on a new game Or if you want to wait or if you're going to pass on it entirely I don't think we need to rely on aggregate sites as awesome as it is I don't think we need to rely on Uh, you know sales numbers. Oh, everybody's buying the game. So you better buy it I don't think we need to rely especially on user reviews Uh, even you know even back out you guys remember the uh, we u e shop reviews And maybe this is why user reviews haven't come back on switch Uh, those e shop reviews every nintendo game if you were to believe the e shop reviews Every nintendo game that released on we u every nintendo published game was a perfect 5 out of 5 Like We know that's not true Even the best of the best games are probably not a perfect 5 out of 5 I we u But if you were just going to listen to user reviews, of course it was and where are people most likely to be biased I mean on on the actual platforms user reviews. That's why even the playstation store and and xbox 3 You know xbox 1 I was at 360 store All the user reviews are extremely positive on all those exclusives because I mean that's where your fanboys are at They literally are on that platform. So they're going to be the ones, you know pumping those ratings up. So Again, I think user reviews are horrible both directions both review bombing and uh fake positive reviews from people who haven't played the game I think obviously the best ways is just to play the game and decide for yourself But you know if you're deciding if you want to plop your money down again Find a couple people you trust that are going to review the game And wait for their opinions to come out and we've done to show their gameplay And then see how you're feeling after that if it's worth spending your money Uh, I don't think you know that any of these professional or non-professional reviewers, you know YouTubers, I guess would be considered non-professional IGNs Kotaku's would rather seem professional I don't think any of them are any better than anything else Just find the people that you trust not the outlet the people that you trust That align with your feelings and uh go with that because uh, ultimately I think that's the best way to do In fact, you could even reach out to some of the people directly on social media Like it as an example if you like easy allies reviews But the person you like they're the reviewing the games isn't the one doing the review of the game you're interested in Well message the person that you are like you're you're you're you know Tweet at them or something that you are interested in their thoughts and ask them oftentimes people like us We'll just tell you well, we'll literally respond to me Hey, uh, you know, I haven't I haven't played enough to like give you a full A full opinion on it but here are my thoughts so far and uh, yeah, I think it's worth the purchase or something so I don't know For now everyone that I know personally that's playing astral chain loves it It's an action game So if you like action games and you like platinum games tend to start astral chains going to be just Up your alley I'm hoping personally that Even whether I buy it or not that it sells well enough that we get more of it because I think more of these Kind of games should be on switch It looks like it's a high quality product from everything I'm seeing I was hyped from it from the day it was revealed you guys go back and watch my my reaction to that so Man, uh, stay tuned because there's a lot more games coming the rest of this year We have a busy september at the at nintendo prime coming up Not just in terms of game releases, but in terms of news and everything else I can tell you right now september is going to be packed. That's when I am back to doing this stuff I don't want to say full time But for you guys, it'll feel like I'm back to doing it full time With the daily videos and all that great stuff some unique editorial like videos I maybe maybe some more discussion videos like this one and obviously news videos because we're you know, we're going to keep the news going there might be Should I even tell you yet? A much a much requested video series might be coming back So stay tuned for that podcast returning and lots of great stuff Um, I mentioned before that because I was sick the podcast was was like canceled It's actually just been moved We're actually going to be Recording it the same day that it comes out Are you supposed to come out anyways? I will be recording on monday on labor day Monday night in particular. So it's not it's not going to be available probably till tuesday at the earliest, but It is going to get out and we are going to get back on our regular schedule. It's just Things haven't been lining up with my health one way or another over the past month I hope you guys can all understand that especially our patrons. I owe you patrons more than I could ever Um, then I can ever pay back to you guys because you guys continue to to hold your support those 20 dollar backers continue to stick around Patiently waiting for me to get everything back to normal here both health wise if you're looking for a small health update Things are going well. I'm down 20 pounds. I have you know about 70 you know 60 ish 70 ish more pounds to go to lose to hit my target to potentially get my blood pressure under control My heart is uh my last test of my heart wasn't the greatest Not as great as the the first after post heart attack test was but We're still working towards that the diet changes are are completely underway and uh I hope to be here doing this for as long as I can with all of you be there as long as I can for my kids For my fiance for the rest of my family. I love all of you guys and uh screw user reviews, man I'll catch you in the next video