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video game journalism died for me when I read the first wave of Shadow of the Colossus reviews.
I never watched another episode of X-Play or read another issue of EGM again. At the time, I was baffled by what I read, now I at least understand the context under which that happened.
this was after a near death blow to my ability to stomach it after reviews for Enter the Matrix in major publications were held until after the game had been released causing me to blow 60 dollars on one of the worst pieces of crap in modern memory for a major title.
BTW this sort of thing is unfortunately pervasive. After exposing that they were modifying vehicles to fit specific test tracks rather than provide stock cars that people can actually buy, Ferrari will no longer provide Chris Harris with cars to test. Similarly, in the game industry publishing an overly honest review will hurt your ability to operate in the marketplace as other people are going to beat you to the punch.
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I've always felt that video game journalists are fake, that they are acting like journalists but really they are just PR people. Part of the problem is the fans ofcourse, fans that will not accept a bad grade for their favorit game. It needs to change, but it will probably take a while before we have real journalism in the games industry.
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On November 13 2012 21:35 unkkz wrote:
Dragon age 2, 90+ in every review by every "critic" and journalist everywhere. User metacritic score of like 30. Go figure why that is. The game was garbage.
User metascore is even worse than "critic" score. Look at diablo 3, its not a good game by any means. But its got 500 1/10 "becyz i cudnt log in 4 30 min after releaz" " NO NECROMANCER FUCK THIS SHIT GAME" and so on
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tekken tag 2 review by ign was one of those biased reviews, it got so much shit for it on youtube, you can see the dislike ratio.
their argument towards giving a bad rating was because "the game is too difficult (which they mention many, many times) and lacked single player". point 1, its the best tekken so far gameplay/mechanics wise. point 2, tag series are never about single player
dont take reviews seriously
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There's really no alternative to biased gaming site reviews though. Gamers themselves give terrible reviews usually based on one issue, e.g. any DRM that isn't Steam automatically assures a game masses of terrible ratings, likely from people who've never played the games. Popular games like Halo, Call of Duty, and the Battlefield series automatically get tons of 0 ratings too. Plus the gaming community tends to go on witchhunts against anyone who disagrees with the popular opinion (Borderlands 2).
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The TTT2 review was hard to watch as someone who likes fighting games. I think whenever I see a huge story where a site/mag gets early access and tons of beautiful spreads I get immediately suspicious, ESPECIALLY with Rockstar. They're incredibly controlling and manipulative of what they let get reported. You pretty much have to market their games for them. Another issue is gaming journalists have no unified code or ethics, they just have this group think that it's ok to keep rationalizing their unprofessional behavior. They also view themselves as simply "enthusiasts", which is concerning as well.
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This is really a less big deal than people are making it, or it should be unless you really take reviews at face value. Everyone's biased, hell most of our "real" journalists can't even report simple facts straight.
Of course in some cases the money trail is a little too blatantly the path people've gone down to reach their conclusions and if that is the case then yeah, I'd prefer if they were honest about it (aren't there actual laws about that in the States btw?), but this is why you were given a brain.
Especially something as subjective as scored reviews can't be taken as truth, it's always been a stupid system. You just find sites which agree more with your personal bias, the things you find important, and experience will help you further thin those out. You know, like social networking or, when it comes down to it, the internet.
For that to be possible there have to be such sites however, because as others stated gamers as a whole reviewing things themselves just don't cut it and with demos becoming less and less common so you can't just make up your own mind (which would still be on a purposefully crafted and thus skewed set of materials), what's the alternative? I doubt anything will change, outside perhaps a temporary push for more truthiness with everyone assuring their audiences that THEY certainly NEVER did such things (which seems unlikely) and then we'll carry on as we've always have. Which is fine really.
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There are a lot of comparisons in this thread to the film or music industry, and indeed these are the most similar industries, but a decent AAA game takes at least 20 hours of game play to complete if it's single player and significantly longer to get to grips with if it's multiplayer. There's no way a journalist can put in that kind of time on a game they get pre-released the same week they have to write the review.
Even if the journalist was the most honorable human being on the planet, there's no way they could do anything more than scrape the surface of a deep game before going to print. This leads to cheap, superficial reviews by people who haven't been given the chance to know what they are talking about. It inflates the cost of quality games journalism and makes it harder for publications to be independent. This is totally unlike film or music where the critic can analyse several releases in a day.
To labour the point some more, would you trust a film reviewer who walked out of a film after the first hour? Of course not. Would you trust a game reviewer who put in 10 hours on a game? Maybe: but there have been plenty of games which are fun at first but soon get repetitive or are too short or are fine until a certain point then go drastically off the rails. I don't want to name names as it will just upset people and I don't want this thread to turn into a "flame CoD" thread again.
I don't think the integrity of games journalism is particularly worse than the film or music industry (which possibly isn't saying much), but we rely on it more as a new game cost so much more than an album or a trip to the cinema, in time as well as money, so it should be better.
EDIT: sorry i know i've just gone off on one but it is a lot easier to review a film than a game so i think the comparisons drawn here are somewhat false. That said I'm a fan of film critic Mark Kermode who refuses to give a film a score, if you want to know what he thinks of a film you have to listen to what he says.
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Ok guys i admit it...
I was working for Doritos when i made the OP, you may as well just ignore everything else i said and go buy doritos.
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The original article is completely correct though, if you get your games based on most popular review sites you'll be buying all big budget titles, regardless of their quality.
This is the reason the only reviewer I take somewhat seriously is Zero Punctuation, if I'm actually interested in playing a game these days I just look up a Let's play and decide for myself if it's worth the trouble.
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On November 14 2012 01:17 Caihead wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2012 01:10 Microsloth wrote:On November 14 2012 01:02 goiflin wrote:On November 14 2012 00:57 Microsloth wrote:On November 14 2012 00:39 goiflin wrote:On November 14 2012 00:23 Microsloth wrote:On November 14 2012 00:19 goiflin wrote:On November 14 2012 00:19 Microsloth wrote:On November 14 2012 00:16 goiflin wrote:On November 14 2012 00:13 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
[quote]
They didn't accomplish anything? See at this point I could call you crazy and talk about how good at least a third of those games are, but then I would be falling into your flawed understanding that somehow there is an underlying truth behind whether they are good or not. Alright, what did any of those games accomplish? Saying the CoD franchise hasn't accomplished anything is a bit much. Besides sales? So... going from CoD to CoD2, 3, then MWF 1 2 3, they didn't innovate at all in the multiplayer FPS scene? They didn't have engaging storylines and increasingly high quality graphics? What the fuck do you want? It's a FPS. Maybe you don't like the genre, but that's no reason to shit all over it, and I'm not even a CoD fanboy. Name a game that's accomplished something in your eyes then. I wanna see what mr. "high standards" over here thinks is worthy of the term "accomplishment" No, an engaging story isn't forgettable. Every CoD games story is pretty forgettable. I've beaten 1, 2, 4, and MW2 as well, so I'm not just talking out of my ass. I love FPS. I've dumped probably tens of thousands of hours into playing FPS. And CoD is fun. With friends, very fun. But it doesn't accomplish anything. That is to say, the graphics have never been amazing (but not bad), the gameplay has always been pretty good (but not amazing OR bad), and the stories have always been on par with hollywood action films (read: pretty crappy). Most entries to the series are 5 or 6 out of ten at best. A game that has accomplished something in my eyes would be something like Half Life. A fully voice acted campaign back then wasn't run of the mill. The graphics were damn good for the time, the gameplay extremely solid, the storytelling was extremely well done considering storytelling was less than an afterthought in the genre beforehand, and the game would go on to produce one of the most engaging mods of all time, and a sequel that Another game I'd list is Final Fantasy 4. It took the series to another level with ATB, and an actual storyline with characters. While it's not exactly a big deal in retrospect, considering the storylines we get nowadays, it was a pretty big deal back when we were making parties of four nameless heroes to go and save the world. Those are games that accomplished something. That advanced their genres. As I admitted, CoD4 DID introduce unlock systems and whatnot. That is something that changed the genre of FPS drastically, considering you can't throw a rock and NOT hit an FPS that uses those systems nowadays. Thusly, CoD4 deserves a good rating. But the rest? Nothing new Half Life was the shit when it came out, no doubts there. Can't comment on FF4 as I played 1, 3, and 7 onwards. (Loved the shit out of FF1 on NES) I just question whether or not we should be so highly critical of these games that have come out in the past 5 years or so. What game would you give a high score to? I guess when it comes right down to it...it's like... what more do you want? What could they do to make these games better? Nearly all games these days have voice acting, beautiful cinematics and game play. I kind of see gaming like I do the movie business these days. The percentage of NEW movies coming out, compared to sequels and remakes is astonishing compared to years gone by. With social media connecting us the way it has, it's becoming increasingly difficult to foster raw creativity. This generation has sort of "seen it all before". This leaves us with newer versions of older content in the entertainment industry, both video games and movies. It's depressing to think about really. So yeah, I agree the CoD's and Halo's of today are just copies of games gone by with bad guys names changing and graphics being 5% better, but it's hard for companies to alter the formula when a) this is what's making money and b) it's not cost effective to wait around for, and foster original ideas that could just end up failing. I know it's a difficult prospect business wise, to keep innovation up, but I don't think it's a requirement to ENJOY a game. Just to get a high score. But I also don't think people should mind going out to see Transformers 3 or play CoD:BO2 because it's not the cream of he crop in their respective mediums. They can still be very enjoyable, regardless of any reviews. I agree, sometimes you need to suck it up and go watch expendables 2 or play CoD:BO2 just to see some shit blow up. suck it up my ass, this is like saying if in any other field the person doing honest work getting fired is okay while applauding the circle jerk. It isn't just the reviews that piss people off, you can watch movies / play games with out them, it's that there are people who are genuinely interested in the medium as an art form or to develop their own stories and experiences and they will never see the light of day because they don't have fifty million dollars to afford the super special advertising campaign with a free happy ending.
This was a hilariously bad place to respond with "my ass"
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There is more to games journalism than reviews and previews. Sure, any preview is going to be positive, and reviews of big names games are never going to be negative. Small games can still get honest reviews, so if a game without a big name or a big marketing budget gets good reviews, you can be pretty sure it is good.
But still there is more to games journalism than reviews. You can have retrospectives, a look back at games past where the writer can look at the impact the game had on those that followed, and be honest about its flaws. You can have editorials about a particular issue in gaming, like women in games, or the trend in motion sensing controllers etc. Articles on the game design process. Technical graphical discussion. Reviews of Esports events.
Just because big games aren't reviewed properly, doesn't mean that games journalism is completely corrupt and pointless. Seeing games journalism as a score at the end of a review is a highly limited way of understanding it. IMO reviewers shouldn't give scores.
Another note, people saying that sequels need to bring something new to be rated highly, I disagree. If a game does what it does really well, it is still a good game. I mean look at Portal 2. Same as portal but longer. Same sense of humour, a few extra puzzle types, but still a good game because it executes it really well.
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On November 14 2012 17:31 ControlMonkey wrote:
Sure, any preview is going to be positive, and reviews of big names games are never going to be negative.
The fact that you assume this makes me sad :[.
You talk like this is business as usual. It's not. It's sad and screwed up and acting like it's always been like this (it hasn't) does not make it any better.
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On November 13 2012 23:57 Hypemeup wrote:
Giant bomb talked about this in one of their latest podcasts, worth a listen for sure, was a bit more insightful compared to TBs little spiel.
Basically you have to find writers that line up with your feelings on games and follow their stuff around.
Yep, quite a thorough discussion on the Bombcast. By the by, OP, Jeff Gerstmann (now of Giant Bomb) was the one fired from Gamespot for the Kane and Lynch debacle. I found this funny because that whole thing was referred to as Gerstmanngate, and referred to this as Doritosgate without recalling the last incident's name.
Anyhoo, gonna go load-up today's -- this week's -- bombcast right now, hoping they have a follow-up conversation on this!
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So... a guy gets fired for writing a review that the editors don't like and no one cares, but THAT'S what creates a scandal? Better late than never I guess.
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On November 14 2012 21:46 MilesTeg wrote:
So... a guy gets fired for writing a review that the editors don't like and no one cares, but THAT'S what creates a scandal? Better late than never I guess.
If you're referring to Gerstmann, he panned the game as mediocre at best, while there were Kane and Lynch promotions and ads all over the site around his review(s). He got canned because he told the truth while corporate was cashing cheques for more-than-advertising.
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On November 14 2012 21:03 HeatEXTEND wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2012 17:31 ControlMonkey wrote:
Sure, any preview is going to be positive, and reviews of big names games are never going to be negative. The fact that you assume this makes me sad :[. You talk like this is business as usual. It's not. It's sad and screwed up and acting like it's always been like this (it hasn't) does not make it any better.
My point is that reviews are not all there is to games journalism. IMO the reviews section should be the smallest part of a gaming mag.
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I'm not going to try to come up with another way to say "yeah most game journalists have agendas and its lame", (whoops I just did) but I would like to be the first (I mean second) person ITT to recommend a critic who doesn't seem beholden to any developers, and also happens to be fucking hilarious and awesome.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
shit I didn't see someone already mentioned Yahtzee. hang on I'll try to think of something smart to say.
How about, instead of complaining about how terrible other critics are, thoughtful and well-informed gamers should make an effort to get their unbiased opinions to the community.
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On November 15 2012 07:55 Wolfswood wrote:I'm not going to try to come up with another way to say "yeah most game journalists have agendas and its lame", (whoops I just did) but I would like to be the first person ITT to recommend a critic who doesn't seem beholden to any developers, and also happens to be fucking hilarious and awesome. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuationshit I didn't see someone already mentioned Yahtzee. hang on I'll try to think of something smart to say. How about, instead of complaining about how terrible other critics are, thoughtful and well-informed gamers should make an effort to get their unbiased opinions to the community.
OMG he is my new favourite person.
That FIFA 13 review lol
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On November 14 2012 03:56 red_b wrote:
video game journalism died for me when I read the first wave of Shadow of the Colossus reviews.
I never watched another episode of X-Play or read another issue of EGM again. At the time, I was baffled by what I read, now I at least understand the context under which that happened.
this was after a near death blow to my ability to stomach it after reviews for Enter the Matrix in major publications were held until after the game had been released causing me to blow 60 dollars on one of the worst pieces of crap in modern memory for a major title.
BTW this sort of thing is unfortunately pervasive. After exposing that they were modifying vehicles to fit specific test tracks rather than provide stock cars that people can actually buy, Ferrari will no longer provide Chris Harris with cars to test. Similarly, in the game industry publishing an overly honest review will hurt your ability to operate in the marketplace as other people are going to beat you to the punch.
Huh? Shadow of the Colossus was well liked by everyone including Xplay. What happened?
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EPT
