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[Vaporak]

Surely if the games were so awful, people wouldn't still be playing them in force 6-12 months after release.

Surely if McDonalds was so awful people wouldn't still be eating there so often?

 

[Brashnir]

People reviewing games they don't understand has produced some of the worst reviews we can find.

And reviewing a game it´s not the same that reviewing a movie (and to be honest, I think it´s much more difficult getting "right" a review of a game than one of a movie).

I disagree completely. A review by someone who doesn't "get it," is just as valid as a review by someone who does, since there's always going to be a part of the audience out there who won't get it.

A big reason certain game genres back themselves further and further into niche culture is due to this notion that only superfans and the hardcore should have any opinion or sway on them.

 

[Acosta]

I disagree completely. A review by someone who doesn't "get it," is just as valid as a review by someone who does, since there's always going to be a part of the audience out there who won't get it.

A big reason certain game genres back themselves further and further into niche culture is due to this notion that only superfans and the hardcore should have any opinion or sway on them.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/936/936295p1.html

You can have an opinion about anything, that's fine. But for crude opinions I have forums already. I expect more of a proper review.

"Not getting it" is not something I'm interested to read when I want to read about a game. And yes, it´s a perfectly valid opinion, but is also completely useless to me.

 

[Mandoric]

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/936/936295p1.html

You can have an opinion about anything, that's fine. But for crude opinions I have forums already. I expect more of a proper review.

"Not getting it" is not something I'm interested to read when I want to read about a game. And yes, it´s a perfectly valid opinion, but is also completely useless to me.

There's "not getting it" and then there's "not being an expert". Very few genres nowadays need you to be an expert to really get it (core action, fighting, shmup?), and most of them have a nice long window of either loketest or localization delay to practice or to watch for someone else calling them broken.

Whole wide range of ability between "I named them FIGHT and HEAL" and "I beat my review copy at level 9, thanks to strategic use of Blue Mage".

 

[semiconscious]

And there's no impetus for the situation to improve because these bad critics serve the vested interests within the industry (uncritical, easy-to-please, amenable to shilling for the current in- thing even when the emperor's new clothes effect is in full swing), while the audience laps it up because they want their opinions and prejudices validated, not challenged.

which is why this topic's title should've been: do reviewers attempt to shape public perception? & the answer would be: yes, they certainly do...

 

[Derrick01]

Am I dreaming?

Nope!

Dear lord. I just burst out laughing.

But wait there's more! This one's from the Escapist, who gave it a 10 (or 5, dunno how they do their scoring)

The advancements in RPG mechanics would be enough to set it apart, but the real achievement of Dragon Age II is in the story-telling. I could point out the improved combat and graphics till there's blood covering my face, but BioWare is one of the few companies that uses the advanced computing power available to modern game designers to let you actually play a role.

And people wonder why it's hard to take game reviews seriously.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

As in every field, it varies a lot I think. I know a lot of journalism students who are writing for gamesites. A lot of websites also just don't make that much money, so they can't really hire people and work with volunteers.


Yeah, some of the gaming press as their website grows get this idea they are somehow better then their audience. For some reason they then try to distance themselves from that audience or something, which is really strange, since they are the people who listen to/read/watch your output.


Review guides are really strange to me. I mean, the consumer doesn't get a guide with the game the explains everything. Why would the reviewer. He needs to have the same experience as that consumer, so he can give his opinion about it. The worst is when PR of a publisher calls and complains you didn't follow the guide or aren't mentioning all the bullet points in the guide.

Because that takes no steps at prevention when it comes to that most cardinal of Gen 7 sins: frustrating the player. In this case, a player with a soapbox and a deadline.

Not necessarily. I don't think Jonathan Rosenbaum would ever claim to be a journalist. Rather, I think the lack of enthusiast or specialist outlets for proper video games criticism can be attributed to the connectedness of criticism and Journalism (and PR, if you want to go there).

Which... is what the medium, and its participants, deserve at this point in time. So much unconstructive anger, however it is a community insular, immature and culturally unaware, allergic to academic insight with no interest in by-lines. Not sure how the constant banging of one's head against an invisible ceiling is going to "fix" anything.

Remember the hell N'gai Croal and Jeremy Parish and others with a literative flair or journalistic drive got a few years back when they tried to make that a thing? I almost feel it was a raising of hackles of alpha intellectuals spying new rivals more than anything else.

Said this in another thread but another big problem with reviewers is that they exist in a feedback loop where, on top of any shenanigans tilting their reviews, they are primed to be impressed by the current product the industry most wants to push.

And never forget the machinations that editors get up to in all this. They're a big player who manipulate things from behind the scenes.

Editors will frequently, INTENTIONALLY, put a guy on a game that he KNOWS the guy will disdain in principle, telling themselves that this is "hard journalism". "We'll show them we're not soft. We're critics. We're pro. We're not just fanboys."

Likewise, when faced with the review of that big AAAA game that their primary sponsor has stamped with "CANNOT FAIL", the editor will put give both impressions, interviews, and final critique to people who "compliment" the subject matter. Here, the self-told lie is covering up that they're putting a drooling fanboy or a person who doesn't know anything (but is easily impressed) right into the clutches of the publisher.

Something I've become aware of is that the people who organize like this frequently don't really give a crap about games, though they may cultivate an image of being hardcore. (They publish about games after all.) They don't care that they're ruthlessly sending random games out to be shot behind the shed by idiotic, vindictive trollviewers who despise the genre and hold people who play those games in contempt. They don't care that their inflation of the AAAA game of the yearly quarter will cause a hundred thousand people who run out and buy it only to get burned, when many of those people may have really liked a "non critical" title that was downplayed or even skipped. This isn't even about "games journalism is immature". It's about "games journalism is fraudulent."

But this truth is hidden behind a screen of plausible deniablity; you'll see games journalism "get it right" just enough to not lose all credibility and completely shatter the illusion. "Maybe the gaming press DOES get it... they celebrated Demon's Souls!" It's more that such a game is occasionally allowed to make it through. I suspect Demon's Souls, as our example here, could have easily been descended upon as "more of that last gen janky Japanese fail" by the press had circumstances been a little different. Had a few more editors randomly decided to single that game out and give to their "I HATE EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T UNCHARTED" writer.

All according to keikaku.

I'll keep saying this too: put out an 8 on U3, hundreds of thousands will scream bloody murder. Put an 6 on a 30 Second Hero and hundreds will scream bloody murder. It's a matter of numbers.

Good God. I'd never see the day when editors and journalists deem a game. "Too big to fail"....

Sit down, I have something to tell you.

 

[Cartman86]

Reviews were generally favourable for FF XIII, but hardly anything is mentioned favourably about it on sites now. It’s ok to like or not like it but reviewers generally don’t like to admit when they’ve changed their opinion, even after a backlash.

Also I don’t understand why XIII scored better than XIII-2, which brought back the towns, exploration, non-linear structure, the mini-games, has much less hand-holding, a bit more interaction in the battles and much more variety. It's still not a great game but I didn’t get why XIII scored better.

Not that I take their opinions seriously but this is just one example of where they baffle me.

Are the people who reviewed FFXIII actually the ones who shit on it now though? I've always felt like it was everyone around the reviews who shit on it. People who hadn't played it, other reviewers who weren't assigned to play it etc.

 

[The Technomancer]

The irony about FFXIII is that I think the fans now accept it more then when it was originally released.

 

[DaBuddaDa]

The irony about FFXIII is that I think the fans now accept it more then when it was originally released.

I think it's more the case of those who liked it are the only people still talking about it.

 

[Cartman86]

Surely if McDonalds was so awful people wouldn't still be eating there so often?

Poor analogy for a variety of reasons. Easy to get, cheap food. Food that surprise! Some people might actually like the taste of. Now if you're making an argument about health I don't think it applies to video games in the slightest.

 

[Balb]

I think it's more the case of those who liked it are the only people still talking about it.

Yeah. On the contrary I think FFXIII pushed the series towards irrelevancy among the masses, which is crazy to think about considering just a few years ago when nobody could stop talking about FFX, KH, etc.

 

[RedSwirl]

From reading the OP, some of it seems like time to me. I think a lot of reviewers (and gamers) get caught up in the hype, only to look back and start to be more critical months or years after a game's release when the hype has worn off. There have been several cases where I've finally gotten to play a big game months after it came out only to fail to understand where all the hype and praise came from.

 

[Margalis]

Editors will frequently, INTENTIONALLY, put a guy on a game that he KNOWS the guy will disdain in principle, telling themselves that this is "hard journalism". "We'll show them we're not soft. We're critics. We're pro. We're not just fanboys."

Basically every time you see Tom Chick writing for a major outlet it's this kind of premeditated hit job.

I see a lot more of this sort of thing than I used to. Often times it's a game that the site would never review in the first place except to mock, like a DS or Wii kids/family game.

For example look at Just Dance reviews in Metacritic, in particular the IGN review. The review is extremely dismissive and frankly assholish. This is the finale:

Do not rent this game, do not look at this game on the shelf, don’t even think about this game lest someone at Ubisoft find out and they prep a Just Dance 2. Such would be the end of all things, mark my words.

This person went out of their way to try to save gaming from waggle/baby games. The funny thing is, most of the criticism here applies to Journey as well. (It's not a game!!)

Here's an excerpt of a similar hatchet-job review. What game is this?

Here's the big test of patience: If one of your characters falls in battle and isn't revived before the end of the fight, he or she is gone forever. Make a mistake or get caught unaware when the game tosses surprise reinforcements at you and that guy you just spent 20 hours leveling up is gone to be replaced by a generic character at level one. There's only one guy that can revive other characters on the battlefield...and he can die and be wiped out forever. There are no items that revive fallen comrades either, only an auto-restoration skill that will use health items (of which only a limited number can be carried) automatically when your health runs low. It's a system that ensures you'll be restarting missions whenever people start dying and cursing your heart out until you master the game. Or until you just give up. Some may call it hardcore. I call it bad design.

Is it Fire Emblem? No. Fire Emblem is actually LESS FORGIVING than this. Here is an excerpt from a review of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.

When one of your units is defeated, it's really defeated -- you can't revive them and they won't be back after the battle is over. This might seem cruel, but it makes every decision that much more important. Often, you will restart a battle you've spent a lot of time fighting to avoid losing a valuable team member. But there will be instances when you have to let someone go. Trying to keep all of your units alive adds another layer of strategy not found in most games of this type. It's a welcome change and a reminder that Nintendo can make a hardcore game when it wants to.

So what was a crippling design flaw and flat "bad design" in one game is actually a plus in another.

This sort of thing happens all the time. Because Shadow Dragon is a "good" somewhat major game from a major publisher it's problems are spun as positives, whereas a more forgiving system in Operation Darkness is savaged mercilessly. And the text of these two reviews (both from IGN) directly contradict each other. Is this "hardcore" design or not?

 

[Ventilaator]

This sort of thing happens all the time. Because Shadow Dragon is a "good" somewhat major game from a major publisher it's problems are spun as positives, whereas a more forgiving system in Operation Darkness is savaged mercilessly. And the text of these two reviews (both from IGN) directly contradict each other. Is this "hardcore" design or not?

Written by different reviewers though. That's a shitty excuse still, because a Fire Emblem fan could theoretically enjoy that other game while the review tells them it's the worst thing ever.

 

[Jintor]

I don't believe in moneyhats. The sad thing is that most of the critics out there, I think, are probably not capable of being critical. They just want to be loved.

You don't even have to buy them off.

I have a suspicion that this may be accurate.

Bizarre though. Most of the games journalists I know are more academic in nature.

 

[MC Safety]

I actually think it's the opposite. Last year we have seen a lot of layoffs from gaming sites and they're hiring freelancers instead. You also have stories now and then that details the shitty job that is freelancing. Everyone thinks they can review games and since the standard is so low they are probably right which amounts to the gaming sites having all the cards. And frankly, the gaming community doesn't care about well written reviews so gaming sites can just pay freelancers peanuts and there is no reason for them to pay more for better writers.

I think we're speaking of two different issues.

Hiring for magazine/Web site staff is very competitive within the games media. These staff editing jobs are few and far between, and every open position receives hundreds of applications. In this, there is a trend toward hiring literate folk with at least some nominal education or experience.

The trend for freelancers is just the opposite. The craft of writing as a whole is being devalued by ham-and-eggers who have no concept they should be paid for each and every thing they write. They work for free and legitimize the idea that writing isn't very important at all. It makes it easy for magazines and Web sites covering games to pay their writers a pittance or not at all. So you get a general downward trend here.

 

[R_thanatos]

Some examples:

1. "Refined climbing and shooting are better than ever, but it’s the way your actions merge with the story that impress." This is just factually false, the shooting in Uncharted 3 was broken and required a patch.

2. Nearly every bit of post-release content (podcasts, etc) discussing U3 mentioned things like how the chase sequence was trial-and-error and annoying, something I barely saw mentioned in reviews. (I think it's worth mentioning that two of the lowest U3 reviews come from Onion and Wired, non-gaming sites)

1- this is only true for some people i myself completed the game twice BEFORE the patch and ONCE with the patch and while annoying wasn't an issue for everyone ( like a bug )and thus affected everyone differently .. you just can't put it in a review like that .

2- The chase was trial and error , but it's just 1 level and the difficulty wasn't even high ..wasn't the problem ? that in one level you can't explore or something ? i had no problems with that chase as you have ample time to correct some mistake or to see the blocked paths in front of you

 

[MrCookiepants]

This is actually pretty accurate. Nice job game journalism!