The reviews Elysium syndrome

[Paddy™]

I've read some bits of AAMFP reviews on the internet and it seems to me that the Elysium syndrome is on the loose (from the reviews of the recent Sci-Fi film). What is the Elysium syndrome? Well, basically it's the reviewer coming up with some out of thin air expectations, some of which are unrealistic, and scoring a negative point in the review for each of his expectation that the game has not met. Then, to top this, he scores down for some completely subjective evaluation of an in-game implementation, e.g. the particular reviewer fell in love with the sanity effect from the Amnesia TDD, BAM!, 2 out of 10 points down for AAMFP for not having the said effect.

How long have you had the ability to see into the souls of people you've never met?

From my rep:

me - "but boiling down all of the criticisms to "it's not like Amnesia therefore I hate it" is ridiculous" - you - but it covers 95% of the criticism that is going on.

Debates are generally better conducted on the forum or through PMs rather than the rep system, but do you have any data to support your claim that 95% of the criticism is as baseless as you, Dan and Jess are claiming? A 72 on MetaCritic kinda puts a dent in that theory, does it not? That score isn't even representative of the general feeling towards the game; it's much higher when you take into account all of the reviews which don't appear on MetaCritic. Check the last post of the Info Portal for a full list of reviews and look at the scores listed there.

While you're there you might want to read all of the AAMFP-related articles too (as I have, seeing as how I compiled them all) from 2012 up until around September 2013. When you read those articles, which include interviews with the developers, do you come away from them with a clear understanding that AAMFP is obviously going to be significantly different from TDD? Despite loving the game and disagreeing with the critics I have to be honest and say that the coverage has been vague at best and entirely off the mark at worst, at least with regards to the "how can anyone have possibly expected AAMFP to be like TDD?" point. The expectations of the reviewers are not the result of any syndrome, nor are they evidence of their stone-aged ideas about what games can be or how immersion is best achieved; their opinions are completely valid. I disagree with them, but they're valid.