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I agree with Tom more than I disagree. The GameRanking system is a silly way to equalize scores, and Tom was quite clear in his review & on the boards that parts of Age 3 were great, and parts were problematic, so the whole beast was tough to score. I don't understand Petersen's bitching, since CGW gave the same score to the original Age of Empires (the one everyone was biased against because of M$) as they did Myth and Total Annihilation (4.5 for all three games).
However, I believe Tom overstates the strength of a 3-star rating. If we convert the stars to a population percentage (e.g., a score of 70% means that 70% of all games reviewed by the magazine got that score or lower), a 3-star CGW rating is equivalent to 48%. Maybe Tom gives Age 3 a qualitative "thumbs up," but he assigned a score in the bottom half of the rankings. By comparison, PC Gamer's 91 ranking becomes 95% on a population basis. Most other reviews fell somewhere between these two extremes. For what it's worth, my database of reviews has Age 3 at 91% on a population basis, and includes both CGW & PC Gamer.
What have we learned?
1) Ensemble made a well-crafted game; it probably won't be an enduring classic with most gamers, but all RTS fans will check it out. Overall reviews reflect that, but there's variation. You actually have to read the text to see why there's variation.
2) Ensemble's designers, like all humans, seem to minimize their contribution to their perceived failure and would rather externalize the problem. I've been a subscriber to all three PC magazines for years, and I don't see a press bias against the Age of series. It's clear to me C&C has been third place since Age of Empires 2 came out, and Red Alert faded.
3) Tom gives average scores but believes they are good. Tom may still be confused why he and his partner had a fight once when he replied, "You look fine, honey. I give the outfit 3 out of 5 stars!" to an innocent question before a dinner date.
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