Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
A necessary change to video game reviews and criticism?
Posts
I am subscribed to a Belgian monthly magazine called Gameplay, all articles are written by specific people who keep to the same style of writing, pay attention to the same aspects of games and who all have their favourite genres. They're from Belgium, so it's wise to take their reviews of Belgian games with a grain of salt (Divine Divinity series score ~80/100s, they keep referring to Outcast as a fantastic game). They haven't had many other failures during the time I have been subscribed to them. They paid too much attention to Black & White for example, with monthly dev journals about all these amazing features. They seem to have learned from that, though. They also keep their reviews and other articles apart, if they feel like something is worth a more elaborate column they won't try to ram it in a review and instead write a proper column.
So you know, because they are a small magazine on a monthly basis they have a reputation to uphold, they have a reliable name and people would unsubscribe if that would be tarnished. I have the feeling that internet sites don't think enough about their reputation but rely too much on their ability to write about news as it occurs. Their reviews are only part of why people visit their website, after all.
/$.02
Much as I wish this was the norm because really, giving out a score means many people will just ignore what you say in your review and just skip to the score, I've heard that places like Metacritic won't list your reviews if you don't use some sort of grading scale and unfortunately plenty of sites need those page hits so they go with it whether they want to or not.
Ben Kuchera from Ars Technica will be doing game reviews for PA.
STEAM: Gasman1220 | My Backloggery
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
If it's Ben Kuchera we're talking about, I was always a fan of him on Ars. Especially the lack of any discernible number scale (which even kept them off metacritic, which is the devil).
He broke it down to buy, rent, or pass and expected you to read the review if you wanted more. And his verbiage was usually pretty useful to me. I still think my best resource is the g&t forum, but his reviews seemed more worthwhile than most to me.
The thing I like about Yahtzee at least is he's quite up front about his prejudices. And it's not like a lot of the things complains about in MMOs aren't perfectly true, either.
Generally I watch all of Yahtzee's videos (mostly for the humor), but if the flaws he's attacking don't actually sound that bad to me, I can guess it's probably actually a good game. Or if he's complaining about something that makes me go, "Oh god, I HATE that kind of thing" then it's a good tip that it's not for me. He's actually a pretty good reviewer, it just takes a bit of adjustment to interpret the reviews to be useful.
Yahtzee hates the MMO grind. The whole "go here, kill 200 bears, collect 10 bears asses" thing. Especially when it's not even jazzed up. Which, you know, is not exactly an uncommon complaint even from MMO players. Or all that silly either. He seemed to rather enjoy Cataclysm's revamped questing stuff. He'll probably like SWTOR for the same and then rag on it for still just being a grindy MMO in the end, underneath the prattle.
Oh, and he also somewhat dislikes the soul-destroying addictive qualities of them.
Neither of these are exactly unfair or fringe opinions.
Yahtzee's really useful because he's absolutely honest about what he thinks, why he thinks it and what the things he likes are. You may not agree with him, but you get a good sense of the type of game it is.
and while i'm on this soapbox, stop talking about the game's graphics. seriously, why is that still part of the review? most games these days look great and that really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. start being critical of something that actually will enhance/ruin the game and gameplay itself like story or camera, respectively. i've played a lot of great games where the camera was just frustrating at some of the most critical times. and we've all played games that were great but the story was lacking, non-existent or just laughable (i'm looking at you Gears of War).
just one man's opinion
I think there is value in having a score, and most games are relatively bug-free, and if a game is playable and at least competent, then it warrants that it should have a review score that expresses that. A game that ranks a 6.0 implies that it's boring and has some annoying things, but that it works and you can play it. When you get into the 5's and below, that implies that the game is actually broken, which is why we see few games that rank a 1-5. But, more importantly, a score gives people some way to relate games to one another -- similar to other forms of media. If you don't play every sandbox game, but you find yourself interested in one, how do you pick one that's good? If Uncharted 3 comes out and I think "I wonder how it compares to the previous game," it's very quick to check the average score. And look:
Uncharted 1: 88
Uncharted 2: 96
Uncharted 3: 92
If you read the reviews, you'll see that most people believed Uncharted 2 was a big improvement on Uncharted 1, but that Uncharted 1 was still a fun, enjoyable game. Uncharted 3, on the other hand, is a step down from Uncharted 2. Still very fun, still a good game, but not as good as Uncharted 2. And, again, that comes through in the actual written parts of the review. So, the scores, especially when aggregated, do tell a story and are useful. If a game in a genre I don't like gets great reviews, I won't really care, but if it's in a genre I love, I may buy it even with mediocre reviews because I love the genre. That's no different from movies, and like movies, you do need to read the review to see what it is that the reviewer actually likes or dislikes.
I think the biggest difference in games is that we actually play and interact with them, and as such, a person's skill level comes into play. Most of us appreciate a good story, but we're primarily there to play, not watch, and many people play games very differently. That's a difficult element of a game to gauge, and even games deal with it differently. And, unlike movies and other forms of media, games often have a strong element of frustration in them, and how someone reacts to that frustration is unique.
That's also why there seem to be so many channels for game reviews, too, and why people trust different sources. There's tons of game review sites, and many have been around for quite a while which implies that there's still something worthwhile to being in the game review business. Even for those of us who primarily use forums, knowing that "formal" reviews and scores are available are a backup system for checking what you're told -- if a forum seems positive about a game but you don't know much about it, checking the reviews and score can be a good gut check for whether you'd like it yourself. Just because a forum likes a game doesn't mean everyone's going to like it (Disgaea), and similarly there's plenty of games that people enjoy quite a bit (sports games) that many forums dislike.
Still, even aggregate sites like Metacritic understand that the scoring system is tilted, as visible in how they describe the rating between movies and games. An "88" in movies is "universal acclaim," while an "88" in games is "generally favorable." And these reviews are used by more than just people who are gamers and visit forums all day, as well.
I'm not sure that have that completely fleshed out yet. But I'm assuming it'll be a bit of both.
STEAM: Gasman1220 | My Backloggery
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
This is honestly the only problem that I think is really a problem. Games have gotten so much better so fast and the industry is so different that the scoring system just looks out of wack compared to any other thing you might rate.
I REALLY hate that. I remember Disgaea getting tons of shitty review scores because it had 'bad graphics', which was just so painfully obviously missing the point of the game that I pretty much gave up on official reviews after that.
I love Gears of War's story because it is so ridiculous.
Anyway, if it weren't for people giving a shit about graphics we wouldn't have the amazing graphics we have today. Graphics are an important part of games.
But there are two ways of talking about graphics, the wrong one is the silly obsession with pixels and rendering 500 hairs as if it is important, the right one is talking about the actual art of it. Current graphics have made it possible to make games with such style and art that it would be dumb to not talk about it.
There's just a ton of ways you can slice a game up these days. A lot of it's just clogging up the machinery.
Just tell me if I wanna play it, then tell me why.
????
He seems to enjoy many of them. Theirs nothing wrong with hating the conventions of a genre when those conventions suck.
Alot of games have elements in them solely because other games of that type did and not because those elements are actually any good.
It's true, although I think hype is overrated (ahem). Uncharted 3 was hyped because Uncharted 2 was a very good game, but I don't think most reviewers compare a game to other games that are coming out at the same time. I wasn't paying attention to any of the marketing buzz -- I just saw "Oh cool, new Uncharted game" -- but put it on the backburner when I read a couple reviews saying it was good, but not as good, as 2. I'll buy it eventually.
Still, if you aggregate a game's scores, that should counteract the "paid reviews" slant. Perhaps if a game's marketing budget is enough to pay off everyone, but I don't think *everyone* is corrupt in the review industry. Not to mention that aggregate sites are happy to highlight positive, mediocre, and negative reviews, to give an idea of what's good and bad.
I regularly find more information that's relevant in the "bad" reviews, since they highlight problems with the game. If the
Disgaea was a very unique game, though. Yes, it had shitty graphics, but it was also a weird mix of SRPG and pseudo-grinding with extreme min-maxing. That's not for everyone, and it's fair to knock it for having shitty graphics. I enjoyed Disgaea, but it's a hard game to recommend because it's dense. The forums here loved it, but just because PA liked it doesn't mean it's something you should buy -- it's still a unique taste.
He still needs to be beaten with the ol' board of education for his article pushing for E3 to move to Vegas (A. K. A. Ben fails to grasp the point of E3).
Yahtzee definitely gives them a fair chance. He just hates some problems that are present in a lot of games in the genre, like tedious amounts of grinding in JRPGS and what not.
It's okay to be biased anyways, because a review is an opinion. I'd rather someone like Yahtzee state how he feels about a game instead of saying something that's disingenuous.
Some people think his criticisms are unfair because "he is missing the point". Which makes it sound like tedious grinding is the point instead of something that we don't need to put in games.
You'd be amazed what people think are "the point" of many genres. Especially RPGs in my experience.
I'd play Mass Effect over Painkiller any day of the week
He doesn't hate dialogue, he hates rambly endless dialogue.
Many people in RPGs talk too fucking much.
If a game's story is more complex than "president has been kidnapped by ninjas" as far as what the player is required to understand, it's not really Yahtzee's bag
??? He's liked a bunch of RPGs. He even liked Mass Effect 2 as I remember. He just thought people talked too fucking much.
Funnily, Extra Credits makes this point too fairly often, where they point out that a video game should tell it's story through gameplay not endless yabbering. Keep the dialogue short and punchy and don't let it distract from the gameplay.
He does hate JRPGs though. Which is the best opinion to have.
Reviews exist for other sources of entertainment as well. I don't understand why video games should be some sort of exception.
Yeah it's the "show don't tell" thing. The basic thing is that some RPGs are a book and a game. Your actions are not linked to the story except in specific locations, it's "go there and fight that to get to read the next chapter" and it could be "go there and then your actions will be the story".
And there are a lot of games that actually do it right. Shit, even Gears of War has a story that is silly but at least you're doing the things that are the story all the time instead of just sometimes.
Yahtzee can miss the point, as I think is exemplified with his Eve Online review. In it he directly states that he has no interest in interacting with others or doing anything really beyond mission running. With that in mind, his review is spot on for the most part.
However, refusing to play an MMORPG with other people is completely missing the point of an MMO. Basically, he chose to play the game in a way it was not really designed to be enjoyed, and then said the game was crap because of it.
Uh I was going to write more about how annoyed I got at EVE, but that's not really the point of the thread.
Anyway, at least if Yahtzee doesn't like something, you know it, and he tells you why. And he admits he's not playing the game the "right way" in his review, so you're free to take what you want from it. I like a lot of Roger Ebert or Mark Kermode reviews, and there's also times when I feel like they just don't get it. That's just going to be part of any review, if all we want is a review that always agrees with our taste it's not a review, it's affirmation.
Not really. I think critique of videogames should be developed.
Problem is that critique is subjective. Also we would need people that would do critique know how to make videogames, how they work in and out.
Critique and game reviewing should help us, not to embrace superb game masterpieces and shun works with less than 4 stars, but to develop our own criteria and, let's say, our own sense of critique and share it with others.
I don't watch many movies. The last 3 movies I went to a movie theater to watch were the Lord of the Rings trilogy, after that I've only rented a number of movies I can count with the fingers in my hands. But I like reading Armond White's film reviews. I agree and disagree with his opinions and I know he is not always gonna get every little thing a film maker puts in a movie.
He cannot understand Gomorra like a Napolitan.
I enjoyed a recent appearance of him on the /film podcast. http://www.slashfilm.com/filmcast-dark-ep-164-state-film-criticism-toy-story-3-guest-armond-white-cityarts/
Also, I think what Sony Movies tried to do with the embargo to the New Yorker critics after the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo screening reflects some of the issues of game journalism. That PR and marketing departments want to exert control on the media, and therefore, the market.
Check this if you got the chance: http://cityarts.info/2011/12/14/embargo-blues-reflections-on-the-film-critic-business/
Except most MMOs these days you can basically play solo. Shit, it's emphasized in most these days.
I have a tumblr.
Check it out.
Whenever I've seen the question "do you consider yourself a real reviewer" come up, he always answers "yes".
Just because he aims to amuse doesn't invalidate his opinions and views.
I feel like this is a very subjective feeling right here, as I have heard no real consensus about whether or not video games are stagnating. Hell, shooters today are on average a lot deeper than the shooters of 10-15 years ago, with more involved, engaging stories. On top of that, a lot of the largest video game series were not even series a couple of years ago (Assassins Creed, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, the Arkham series, Dead Space, Uncharted, Left 4 Dead, Bioshock, F.E.A.R.) and instead became popular on their own merits. Then there are games like L.A. Noire or Heavy Rain that just burst onto the scene. The video game business, like other entertainment businesses, focuses on sequels because they print money and have established fan bases. In the era of the PS2 and before how many fucking Dynasty Warrior games were there? How many Ratchet and Clank? Jak and Daxter? Syphon Filter? Halo? Mario games? Zelda games? Final Fantasy? Dragon Quest? Pokemon?
On the topic of reviewers, I feel that it is more of finding reviewers you agree with. For quite awhile I felt that Gamespot nailed perfectly my feelings about video games, and X-Play did a decent job as well.
There was some journalist survey in a G&T industry thread a while back, and if I recall right a lot of them were raising the same complaints: problems with review scores, too-cozy relationships with publishers, lousy pay, having to write the five-millionth preview of MW3, and so on. That's part of what makes me think the root of the problem goes further, that the state of journalism reflects the industry itself. I suspect any significant improvement in one requires the same of the other.
Mild tangent: Oddly enough, it's not often that I seriously disagree with the scoring averages. I'm fairly lenient myself as long as I found the game entertaining, but I can usually see where the consensus is coming from; e.g. "I realize such-and-such did X and Y badly, but I thought it did Z pretty well. Not great, but I've played a lot worse." For related reasons I've been trying to cut back on hyperbole*, because if I think Big Budget Game X is everything that is wrong with modern gaming, then I need something a lot stronger to describe a game where the installer doesn't work.
But I digress. Where one would even begin 'fixing' journalism or the industry, I could only guess.
*this is a work in progress
I write for these people. Just reviewed: Drox Operative