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Jim Sterling (Destructoid) defends himself over FFXIII review

March 18, 2010 in Blog comments 41

Jim Sterling recently came under fire from fans over his controversial score of Final Fantasy XIII, giving it a low score of 4/10. To add more fuel to the fire, Dual Shocker reports that he didn't finish FFXIII, and other games, when reviewing it. Sterling made a response, talking about his reasoning behind the FFXIII score, his response to the claims of reviewing unfinished games, and describing the hostile life of a reviewer.

The fact of the matter is this: I don't like shitting on games. Again, very few people in this industry do, and only an insane person would get a positive emotion from negative feelings. We review games because we love them. We love to talk about them, and we love to share a great game with our many readers. It gives me no joy to take a game, sometimes knowing the people who made it on a personal level, and provide harsh criticism.
Darknet via destructoid.com »
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  • 2
    ShadowGuard Mar 18, 10
    First off, it was not criticism, it was blatant attention grabbing, which works, but negative attention and everyone thinking you are an idiot is worse than not having attention. You may not like it on a personal level, but giving such a game a 4/10 is much worse than giving GTAIV a 10/10. He is probably not even an RPG fan. I will probably be hearing of your 'resignation' soon.
    • 2
      Zero and X Mar 18, 10
      Actually he specifically said that he loves the FF series, if you actually read the article.

      I fail to see how giving your opinion on a product you don't like suddenly translates to "attention grabbing". He didn't like the game, and he said why. It wasn't attention grabbing he was giving his opinion. I haven't played FF13 so I am not defending the review itself, I am simply saying that it's ridiculous not to respect his opinion simply because he gave a bad review of a game you liked.
      • 0
        conel3 Mar 18, 10
        He made it obvious that he doesn't like Final Fantasy's or JRPG's, everything he says about them is negative. I don't agree with the threats towards him but it was obvious attention seeking so he probably wanted the abuse and threats.

        On to the not completing games thing. Reviewing a game when you havn't even completed it is a load of crap. There's no way you can know about a game without finishing it and FFXIII is a prime example of this as the game is completely different towards the end than it is throughout the first 10 hours or so.
        • 4
          Bale Fire Mar 18, 10
          To be fair though, reviewers have a limited amount of time to play the games, and if you have to wait until the end of the game to get to the good stuff, then clearly you are not playing a well designed game.
        • 1
          Zero and X Mar 18, 10
          Oh yes he hates JRPGs and FF, that's why he says he loves FF9 and 8.

          He played the game right up until the final battle, and he said he saw the ending anyways, that's pretty much the entire game.
        • 4
          Hideo1 Mar 18, 10
          I like mushrooms.

          I just said I like mushrooms. I don't actually like mushrooms.

          But no, he's an internet 'journalist', they never lie do they?
        • 0
          Zero and X Mar 19, 10
          I never said he wasn't a liar, however I don't see any reason not to believe him when he says that he enjoyed FF8 and 9. It just seems to me this guy is unfairly being hated on simply because he doesn't share the same opinion as everyone else, and that shit aint right.
        • 2
          Hideo1 Mar 19, 10
          He's being hated on because his article was full of 'ums', 'buts' and 'wells', basically meaning he had no solid grasp of what even he was saying and most of his reasoning was ill thought out bile. His review could have been presented more eloquently if he just smeared shit on the disc and posted a picture of it, and as he's supposed to be a reviewer who weighs the good against the bad and looks at it mostly objectively (one has to remember a lot of a review is opinion but that shouldn't be all of it) that shit ain't right.

          I guarantee when the inbox starts piling over Yhatzee's going to review it and, lo and behold, he'll say the games shit, and he's gonna get shit for it. Of course. But will there be as much as here? No, because he's going to not be a complete wanker about it.
        • 1
          conel3 Mar 19, 10
          He probably just said that he likes final fantasys to try and defend himself. In the interview all he did was take jabs at JRPG conventions and say how he didn't like them. Also if you look at his trophies he's not at the final battle he's not even at chapter 12 yet so he is obviously just lying again. Websites like this shouldn't let reviews be published without the game even being finished, time is not an issue it's just rediculous.
        • 0
          conel3 Mar 19, 10
          Yhatzee will say that he hates JRPG's probably right at the start of the video. I think he has a terrible perspective on games but atleast he is honest.
        • 1
          Hideo1 Mar 19, 10
          Well at least he knows why he hates them and has actual, valid reasons.
        • 0
          Zero and X Mar 20, 10
          I read the review hideo, and I honestly think you're over exaggerating, you make it sound like he did nothing take a shit on the game when he simply said what he didn't like, and explained why. I admit some of his explanations lacked something to be desired and weren't quite as detailed as I would have liked them to be, but you're just assuming he's being an ass just for the sake of it, but whatever, honestly it's not even a big deal, I think people are getting way too emotional over something that doesn't even *bleep*ing matter.
        • 1
          Hideo1 Mar 20, 10
          It seems like you're the one getting emotional, I'm just explaining because you don't see it xD

          But please believe what you will; when his next review comes out and purposely goes against common opinion with absolutely bullshit reasons maybe you'll see.
        • 0
          Zero and X Mar 20, 10
          Lol, yeah dude I am so emotional, I am just raging behind my keyboard.

          I am really not, I just think that what's happening to this guy is messed up. I admit I know nothing of his past, but even if he is stirring shit up for the sake of it, it doesn't justify the personal attacks.
        • 0
          Hideo1 Mar 21, 10
          This is the internet. He's attacking what fanboys and girls love whilst acting like a massive troll. What the hell else could be expected xD
  • 0
    phowell23 Mar 18, 10
    No one deserves the personal attacks and threats but this guy really has no one to blame but himself. If you're going to give a score on a game you should play the WHOLE thing. Especially in a game like ff13 where the first 20 hrs are handholding and the last 20 are where the game is made. He shouldn't play the victim, the people who valued his opionion before this should.
    • 0
      Zero and X Mar 18, 10
      He played the game right up until the final battle, that's pretty much the whole game.
      • 1
        phowell23 Mar 19, 10
        According to his trophy list he didnt finish chapter 11 and chapter 11 is when everything becomes avalible
        • 0
          Zero and X Mar 20, 10
          I see, I stand corrected then.
  • 1
    Darknet Mar 18, 10
    Some thoughts: first off, don't feel the need to defend yourself. If you are confident about your decision then you don't need to defend it. The fact you needed to make a long article defending what you said makes you spineless in my eyes.

    Second, I could really care less what he says. You know why people hate bad reviews about games they love? Because they too are not confident in what they believe. They need these "reviews" to confirm what they already think. I love FFXIII, it's fun to play it and he isn't going to change that. Him doing this for attention or just because he really believes it is irrelevant. It all matters about what you think because when you are playing that game, that 4/10 isn't going to physically change the game in to a worser game.
  • 0
    Hideo1 Mar 18, 10
    He looks like the fat guy with the stupid voice from Ali G In Da House

    More attention grabbing. Don't do him the favor of giving the site traffic over it, I say.
  • 0
    Storm Mar 18, 10
    FFXIII, like FFXII, is a love-hate game amongst its players. I don't care if the review was that low, though he should have been a bit more thorough and defiant in his review, he brought up some fair points. Maybe...maybe it was about the nostalgia, who knows. Reviews are good for a overall summary and hands-on info on the game, helps people to decide whether or not to buy it, but with the roller coaster reviews that XIII has been getting, I can see why people would be upset.

    Then there's the group that Darknet mentioned, the ones who read/watch/listen to reviews to further "prove" that their opinion of it was the right one. It's silly, really. Whether or not Sterling did this for traffic or not doesn't matter, he gave his views on it, take them how you want to and move on.
  • 1
    conel3 Mar 18, 10
    I hated Jim's FF review. It was obvious that he wanted to hate the game before even playing it. His trophie list shows that he's not completed chapter 11 yet. Which just happens to be around the point where the game opens up a huge ammount.

    Looking at his achievement and trophie list it's not the first time he's done this obviously as it's stated in the article.

    A good example of this is his AVP review. He hasn't even played the alien story line and hasn't finished a ranked match online, he hasn't finished the human story. He might have completed the predator story on a difficulty less than hard but you can't tell as there isn't an achievement for it.

    There are plenty of other games too on his list of reviews that he still hasn't finished.

    I find the thought of reviewers even being allowed to review games before finishing them absured. This kind of stuff and reviewers like Jim Sterling is why people don't care about reviews anymore. I can't even believe that websites like destructoid let people review games without finishing them.
    • 0
      Province Mar 19, 10
      Although despite my rant, I can't defend him if he hasn't even bother playing a ranked match in AVP or the alien campaign.

      I usually posted the game review soon too or after I finished the game. Like Demon's Souls, I posted that after like...32 hours of game time but only beat the first playthrough and only had limited online time (Go figure Japanese connection >.<)
      • 1
        conel3 Mar 19, 10
        I repect that people have their own opinions about the game and want to express them but it's hard to take him seriously as a game critic with evidence like this. It's not as if the campaigns on AVP exactly take that long and he didn't say that he hated it, he gave it a 6.5 which is above average so he couldn't have really hated it. So it's just pure lazyness, you could complete all the AVP campaigns in one day with time to spare for ranked matches.
  • 0
    Province Mar 19, 10
    As a few time journalist myself we don't always play the games either because:

    1) We're given a deadline for the review
    2) The game to such point we stopped playing was indeed very bad (As such, if you have to suffer 9 hours of crap just so the game can get around to bringing out it's shinier toys then it's not doing a good job)
    3) A number of people feel the same way to this game, Jim's not alone on that a number of people recieved the game with total disdain simply because it's shunned the majority of the original games which worked to a formula that (while being repetitive) worked like a charm. My FF mad gf shunned this game after three days and she did get to chapter 13 or so.
  • 2
    Star of Spurs Mar 19, 10
    Haven't read the review and don't really intend to but I don't like it when a game isn't allowed to get lower than, say, 7/10, without having 'OH MY GOD IT'S FINAL FANTASY YOU RETARD IT'S AMAZING' shouted at them.

    It could be attention whoring, and most of the time probably is, but it just pisses me off when a game isn't allowed to be criticized purely because it's part of a franchise.
  • 2
    Red 9 Mar 19, 10
    I hate gaming society, I really do...
  • 1
    Miss Razz Mar 19, 10
    Is it really the score people are complaining about or the tone of the review? Because tbh, the tone of the review was the thing that bothered me the most. I haven't played FFXIII yet so I have no idea what score the game deserves, but a review (even a negative one) should objectively summarize the good and bad parts of a game and explain why the reviewer does/doen't like them. Jim Sterling's review gave a brief rundown of the battle system (which was pretty informative, imo) but the rest came off as mindless ranting. After reading it, I still don't know much about what the plot, characters, or music are all like. Only that is all SUCKS. So yeah, it wasn't very helpful for someone who hasn't played the game. Or very objective either.

    Nontheless, he didn't deserve such insults and death threats. Though I do think Destructoid need to consider hiring a different reviewer. Someone who sounds less troll-y. Leave Sterling's reviews for the "user-review" section.
    • 0
      Hideo1 Mar 19, 10
      But if their reviewer wasn't a troll they wouldn't get traffic Think of their starving childwens
      • 0
        Shuyu Mar 19, 10
        Wouldn't they need to have actually held a woman tenderly, looked into her eyes and made passionate love - or just popped some party animal a roofie, whatever - to have children?
        • 0
          Hideo1 Mar 19, 10
          No, they just find those lonely and desperate fat chicks on dating sites who think they're MILFs even though they're more akin to Martin Lawrence dressed up like Big Momma
  • 0
    Aussie Legend Mar 19, 10
    He gave Deadly Premonition a 10/10, so his opinion already means less than squat to me.
  • 0
    BANDITO ATTACK Mar 19, 10
    act like this isn't what yall were going for in the first place.
  • 1
    Spectre* Mar 19, 10
    I remember the good ol' days when you could have an opinion without having to worry about everyone jumping down your throat.

    If you didn't like the review, then disregard it. Move on. Sheesh...
    • 1
      Hideo1 Mar 19, 10
      I remember the good ol' days when people didn't defend trolls whilst trolling at the same time.

      No, wait, that's always happened... carry on then.
  • 1
    Spike Spiegel Mar 19, 10
    This guy is cowardly. First off, he knew what he was getting into. If this was a game that everyone was in agreement about it being terrible, no one would care if he ripped it apart. But he knew he would catch hate for it. So why now write a big article about how much it hurts? (awwww...)

    The fact that he didn't even complete the main story makes me feel like he couldn't wait to get online and rip it apart. If he was so reluctant and sad to do it as he claimed to be, you'd think he'd at least play it through to the very end for an excuse to delay the daunting task ahead and hope he can find a few redeeming qualities within it's last few hours.
    • 0
      Spectre* Mar 19, 10
      It's been said many times above that he played to the final boss. Thats enough to base an opinion on.

      And how exactly was I trolling?
      • 2
        Hideo1 Mar 19, 10
        And that was a lie since he didn't actually get passed Chapter Eleven. And you're trolling because this is nothing to do with his opinion being attacked, it's to do with his reasoning being bullshit, his review being full of complete ass juice and his article itself being flame bait.

        A reviewer isn't meant to point out everything they find bad about the game, not mention anything good about it and just speak about how they hate the game, especially if they only got up to chapter eleven, but that's what he did. You were either trolling or just had no idea what you were talking about, which is just as bad.
      • 0
        Miss Razz Mar 20, 10
        quote
        It's been said many times above that he played to the final boss. Thats enough to base an opinion on.
        I don't know what FFXIII's final boss is like, but could a person really base a proper opinion on an FF game (or most games, for that matter) without defeating the final boss? Most FF final boss battles are among the best parts of their respective games...and the most memorable. For example, FFVII isn't really FFVII until you've witnessed and defeated the One Winged Angel himself.

        Just sayin'
  • 1
    RabidChinaGirl Mar 19, 10
    I love the smell of SRS BZN in the air. This comment thread proves Destructoid has, once again, succeeded at what they do best -- troll the *bleep* out of the gaming community.

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