I’m pretty sure this qualifies as a hate crime against the English language.
Despite the assault on our poor young minds pictured above, I really like Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. If you’d like to hear more about my reasoning, well, you’re in luck: For grins, I decided to post a review of it on 1UP. This also allowed me to indulge my counterproductive, traffic-destroying, business-ruining wish to not put a score on it. I mean, who cares when it’s on a dead site, right?
Were you required by some all-powerful exec to include scores in the past? Or was it really just something that could have negatively impacted the site by not including a score?
Publishing reviews sans scores has proven time and again (with hard, ugly numbers) to diminish traffic. By and large, that’s the only part of a review most people look at. Over the site’s final year or so, we looked at ditching scores but were limited by 1UP’s tech — reviews wouldn’t index or go into RSS without a score attached.
That’s really interesting. I figured there was some kind of legitimate reason.
I have to admit I felt an addictive urge to scroll around to find the big blue letter grade on the page. However this is exactly the kind of content I’ve been craving as of late. I’m tired of having my perceptions of a game colored by a score or a grade. I think I have a problem forming my own opinions when the internet has so many already prepared to me to adopt!
I would gladly pay money to read more reviews in the vein of this one.
prepared *for* me to adopt!
Never expected a programming joke out of Nintendo.
If I was skilled enough, I’d write a parody review where each descriptor word is replaced with numbers; a show of “futility through over reliance” or something. Alas, I only have it as an idea. And ideas are cheap.
Anyway, great review. One more to the pile of must-play 3DS titles.
Oh, it’s a programming joke? I thought maybe it was an odd pun on “bullyin’.”
But but but… How will I know what to buy without a letter grade ;)
Just kidding, good review. I always liked Luigi’s Mansion on GC (*ducks*)… Never understood the hate it got. As long as you know you’re not getting a Mario game (and Sunshine got its fair share of hate as well…), it holds up quite nice.
Love the review, Jeremy. There is something intelligent about not having a review score. Let’s the reader draw their own conclusions.
As an aside, Luigi’s Mansion was the first GameCube game I ever played (at E3). I remember huge lines for that game.
Well, this just got elevated to must-have status. Hopefully I can snag this and Etrian Odyssey IV sometime in the near future.
Just read the review, good stuff. Funny, you never seem to really see much addressing LM as a flop… disappointment in the face of no Mario, sure, but– and maybe I’ve just looked in the wrong places– its claim as a Player’s Choice title seems to have absolved it of being seen as a flop.
I remember driving all over town because Future Shop had a deal to get LM free when Super Mario Sunshine came out. Being on a tight game budget at the time, this was too good to miss. Between Nadia and myself, LM– the freebie– wound up being our favorite of the two.
I haven’t used grades/scores on any of my Mario’s Hat reviews since I began, for various reasons… I hope no one starts thinking I’m ripping Parish off now (silly internet). ;P
(I jest, but you just know there’s someone out there who would legitimately think such a thing.)
Critical flop is not the same thing as commercial failure.
Crap, you’re right. That’s what I get for reading the article earlier and commenting here later. x_X