Koki on 8/4/2012 at 19:02
Inline Image:
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/4059/pcgameruktribesascendre.jpgYes I am buttmad.
Okay, I get Skyrim. Huge game. Huge vistas. It's from a huge company, part of a huge series, and you're an english major so we can safely say you're generally a loser who goes along the path of least resistance in life. You were so amazed at fish jumping up the waterfalls that you gave that rushed pile of incompetence a top score.
But fucking Tribes: Ascend? The game is literally a pile of bad design decisions. Call-ins. Small maps. Class system. Physics so simplistic you'd think the game was designed with ZX Spectrum in mind. Full spawns. Health regen. No Credits sink(In fact you get credits for DYING). There's still plenty of bugs, the balance is a joke. The engine is an unoptimized POS.
So what the fuck's that 88/100 for? You had 88 barrels of fun out of a hundred playing it?
Nobody gives a rat's ass how much fun you had playing it. It's still garbage from design perspective. Isn't this what you're supposed to be reviewing? When movie critics review movies, they don't go WOW FUN MOVIE 5/5. They rate acting, directing, camera work, costumes, sets, they rate EVERYTHING BUT how "fun" the movie was.
THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING YOU TALENTLESS HACKFUCKS. YOUR OPINION ON HOW "FUN" A GAME IS IS GODDAMN MEANINGLESS, I COULD ASK ANY DICKLESS WONDER ON THE INTERNET ABOUT THAT.
Christ, aren't there schools about making videogames out there? Shouldn't people who review be graduates of these schools? Like how serious movie critics are cinematography graduates? So they know what to look for in a movie and how it works? No, just because you watch a lot of movies and can put two words together doesn't make you a fucking movie critic, so why should playing a lot of videogames and being able to put two words together make you a videogame critic?
Everone's shitting themselves about how videogames should be taken SERIOUSLY as an ART FORM but look at this whorehouse, the so called gaming industry is still composed mostly of old farts with the I PLAYED MARIO AND I AM OVER 30 SO I HAVE SUPER INSIGHT INTO VIDEO GAMES mindset. The videogame ART FORM is still about as serious as a Star Trek convention, and should be treated like an emo kid going through his rebellious phase. HEY, I AM FIFTEEN, I'M NOT A KID ANYMORE OKAY?
justmea on 8/4/2012 at 19:21
is it the same reviewer who gave dragon age 2 94%?
demagogue on 8/4/2012 at 19:33
People still read game reviews?!
Meh the majority of gamers deserve the shit that gets shoveled in. If there were a market for respectable criticism maybe there'd be a place for it... About the only things worth reading are the academic articles. And like you say there are a lot of academic game programs out there now, so at least there should always be a steady stream of those. Just think in a few years there's probably going to be an over-saturation of graduates from them. Maybe a lot of them will get the idea to move into criticism, so there's hope for that I guess.
catbarf on 8/4/2012 at 20:08
Quote Posted by demagogue
And like you say there are a lot of academic game programs out there now, so at least there should always be a steady stream of those. Just think in a few years there's probably going to be an over-saturation of graduates from them.
As a current student in a dedicated game design program, I really, really hope my fellow students won't be the ones writing reviews, since we're all elitist fanboys in one way or another and the degree to which many of these guys wholeheartedly embrace gamer 'culture' is depressing. Imagine a world where a game's rating is directly tied to how much shitty meme potential the game contains.
But yeah, games journalism is pretty terrible, this isn't a new thing. Not sure what the optimal solution is- I think right now it pretty much comes down to the genre being so new, there aren't many well-known reviewers or academic publications about the medium.
Another concern is that games don't lend themselves to review nearly as well as film or books. With a film or book, you go through it once and have exactly the same experience as everyone else who has watched/read. What's different with games is how closely they tie to player decisions. Even a linear game like Call of Duty is heavily tied to player behavior- someone who hangs back and gets frustrated by endlessly respawning enemies will have a very different experience from someone who rushes forward constantly. In a more open game like Bethesda's RPGs, the difference between two players can be huge, which definitely biases any reviews they may write. It's a concern that doesn't help the overall lack of professionalism in most game reviews.
Shadow on 8/4/2012 at 20:27
Koki's right that video game journalism is bullshit, but Tribes: Ascend a bad game? Really? Come on man.
Yakoob on 8/4/2012 at 21:03
demagogue, that's an interesting point, I cant remember the last time I read a game review. mostly I just rely on what people on TTLG and some other forums say as well as look up gameplay / LPs on YouTube.
Pyrian on 9/4/2012 at 17:09
Quote Posted by Koki
Nobody gives a rat's ass how much fun you had playing it.
Au contraire - they care very little for anything else. People want to know whether they'll have fun playing the game, not whether some irrelevant ivory tower loser thinks the design decisions they're having fun with are "wrong" on some abstract level based on incorrect theories and personal preferences.
This isn't what's wrong with games journalism. This is what's
right about it.
You see, Game Reviews have something very interesting on other forms of reviews like Movie Reviews. Game Review scores
positively correlate with sales. Movie Reviews do not significantly correlate with sales at all. Turns out, people care a lot about whether a game is fun to play and don't give a shit about reviewers' opinions of the technical merits of a given film.
Koki on 9/4/2012 at 17:22
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Au contraire - they care very little for anything else. People want to know whether they'll have fun playing the game
So they go asking strangers whether they liked it. And if a complete stranger did, well then I must too, obviously!
catbarf on 9/4/2012 at 18:26
Quote Posted by Pyrian
You see, Game Reviews have something very interesting on other forms of reviews like Movie Reviews. Game Review scores
positively correlate with sales. Movie Reviews do not significantly correlate with sales at all. Turns out, people care a lot about whether a game is fun to play and don't give a shit about reviewers' opinions of the technical merits of a given film.
Honestly, I have to agree with Koki here, because what's fun for one person may not be fun for another. Fun is such a subjective thing that it can't really be commented on in an ostensibly objective review, but the design choices that lead to fun can be. An objective review should point out what elements are likely to contribute or detract from fun, since clearly the amount of fun someone has is expressly tied to their preferences.
More importantly, implying that a good review is one that correlates to sales is like saying that, for film, a Michael Bay explosion fest is a better piece of art than something like Metropolis solely because the former is more popular to the mainstream. What's good as a work of art and what's popular don't always overlap, and regarding games as fun over all else is essentially relegating their artistic status to cheap, meaningless entertainment.
Renault on 9/4/2012 at 18:49
I think one part of the issue with crappy reviews coming from some of the major sites is that they're so anxious to be the first one to get their review posted, they don't take the time to properly review the game. How are you going to review Skyrim accurately after playing it for only a week? How many sites actually got to the end of ME3 before giving their opinion?
That said - I'd be interested to know of all the crap out on the net, what sites do TTLGers believe the the best reviews are coming from? I pretty much gave up on IGN/Gamespot a long time ago, but sites like 1up and WorthPlaying seem decent. I've also seem some OK stuff on Eurogamer.
