In the case of ActionButton I think they don't practice what they preach. So God of War 2 is a well designed, and near impeccably well put together piece of a videogame yet they award it a 0/4.

Then if you scroll down their page of reviews you'll spot their 4/4 award to Gears of War. A game that also is a well designed and well engineered game but with possibly less impressive set pieces.

If you are supposed to be write critique please be consistent and please write properly.

I did find GOW2 disappointing. I agree with the ActionButton review that the story is fan fiction like. I get tired of seeing random people from myths stabbed.

The combat isn't that good compared to DMC3, NG, or God Hand.

Its not a bad game it just ends being less then it first appears to be.

Its damn pretty though.

"Grumps? Or successful spotters of prime overhyping?"

Grumps.

"In the case of ActionButton I think they don't practice what they preach. So God of War 2 is a well designed, and near impeccably well put together piece of a videogame yet they award it a 0/4.

Then if you scroll down their page of reviews you'll spot their 4/4 award to Gears of War. A game that also is a well designed and well engineered game but with possibly less impressive set pieces."

Well, yes, see. These reviews were written by different people with different perspectives.

It's one thing to expect a publication to have a consistent "voice" between reviewers -- it's another to expect each reviewer to hold each game to the exact same standards.

Though, I suppose it's worth explicitly pointing out that, yes, part of the actionbutton.net manifesto is that we do not put up that pretense. Each review is very much the perspective of that individual reviewer and not some imagined actionbutton.net hivemind.

Though, honestly, if you'd just read the text of each review, you'd find that it's much less of a contradiction than it seems. In actuality, the things Gears of War gets right are the exact things that God of War 2 forgets.

To put it another way, Gears of War is the better game because it doesn't need to have superior setpieces. Or rather, the setpieces make themselves because the game mechanics are so well-thought out.

To put it another way, both games feature beautiful backdrops. I spent most of my time in God of War 2 admiring the scenery, whereas I barely even had the opportunity to notice it in Gears of War.

Take that as you will.

Also:

"Grumps? Or successful spotters of prime overhyping?"

Can't we be both?

Oh, and btw, could Actionbutton be any more painful to read? Sheesh.

Yeah we're working on a php script that taps your shoulder at 3 second intervals while continually asking "does this bug you? does this bug you? how about this? does THIS bug you?"

More like a sad attempts for floundering journalists to get name recognition. Any press is good press.

BS BOTH GREAT GAMES TWO PEOPLE TRYING TO GET HEADLINES AND I WORKED.

I mentioned the TNG and ActionButton articles when one of them popped up on Kotaku.

Gears of War is a good game, it's not Game of the Decade.

Maybe I was put off by the grey, the boring as fuck musclebound idiots, and the fact that every single fucking alien took a crapload of hits to kill. It just got fatiguing, killing each grunt from behind a pillar just wasn't fun and it took too long.

And then, Rainbow Six is criticised as unimaginative? Absolutely, but it's not like Gears of War is peddling those originality points is it? I preferred Rainbow Six, I like the mortality rate; they die easy, I die easy. It added a constant tension that was sadly missing from the GoW slug fests.

Gears of War - 8/10
The imagined Edge hivemind got it right again, and without the stream of consciousness bullshit which Rogers' can't help but include.

Cliff Bleszinski is not "a gamer's game designer".

He is just yet another unimaginative adolescent working in the industry - a perfect example of the sort of people who will guarantee that videogames remain nothing more than a parasite living off bad American movies.

The TNG review makes a convincing argument, while the actionbutton.net review has trouble clearly communicating what it is that is bad about the game.

I totally agree with both these reviews. GOW's production values are fantastic, but its gameplay is as generic and boring as its enemy design. This series is immensely overrated.

Action Button also gave Twilight Princess one star (perhaps for good reason).

But their review of Star Fox Command basically disses the animals-in-space theme the series, and does so in a way that seems very poseur, and that pushes me strongly towards the "grump" camp, regarding opinion of them.

Its incredibly trendy to dis anything SONY at the moment, be it a system, a game that plays on it or a preview of things to come (some of it rightfully so). Whoever didnt think this would spill over into game reviews was mistaken. How long will it take for people to understand that 90% of the public are sheep? Thinking on your own (I.E. playing the game) is so hard to do when every rental store has a copy. Better to let somebody you dont know make the decision for you. Heck there is a small chance you both have the same likes and dislikes. I myslf personally dont care for the "simon" color match games that the boss take, so GOW or GOW2 dont float my boat. but i made that decision by playing it (even when every game mage said it was better then anything out there).