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What Makes a Game Review a Game Review?
An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku asks Do Game Reviews Have to Be Puerile? in a short editorial about the state of game reviews. The article points to a recent story in The New Gamer about Silent Hill 4 as an "experiential piece of writing about the emotions and thoughts that swirl through a gamer's head as they play a game over time" The Kotaku article ends on this note: 'The problem with many reviews is that both their writers and readers expect a formula. They don't want to be challenged, instead, they want to have the ideas swirling in the writer's head synthesized and explained. But critical thought, in its truest form, should be something that inspires others to think critically, not just accept what has been handed to them.' What are your thoughts on game reviews? Do they need to have scores and a summary of what's good or bad about the game to be counted? Is experiential commentary more or less useful than a breakdown of the game's design?"
The major factor that seems to be lacking in a lot game reviews is honesty. Far too many of the commercial game reviews seem to be either written by the devlopers or their marketing cohorts. I know of one game who had to get an employee to put up their first fan site!
If there are problems in the game, I'd like to see them reported. I've yet to see anything like that in anyone's reviews, unless they are another end user who's not associated with the game or a web site who sells the game. None of the magazines or on line review sites give you this kind of information. Just to illustrate, I'll name some examples.
I've purchased several games only to be severely disappointed. I purchased Morrowind III Bethesda Softworks and it took me 3 months just to get to a point where I could create a character without the game causing me to get the BSOD thanks to an illegal call to my video driver. I was not alone in this problem. How hard it is to tell people that your game isn't compatible with the NVIDIA chipset? At the time the NVIDIA chipset was the hottest card around and in order to meet their sales projections, they kept mum.
I purchased Sacred by Ascaron Entertainment and it's so full of bugs as more annoying than fun to play. The on line forums are full of people who state that they have moved on to other games because of the bugs. Their patches only seem to make matters worse and many of the bugs only affect high level characters (over lvl 100).
Guild Wars is still in beta because of issues. Worlds of War Craft recent extended its "grace" period for paying customers because of it's problems. The whole Prince of Persia series has been problematic for me and I've never been able to get even their demos to work properly for me, so I've been spared shelling out $50 for something that didn't work.
Lest everyone think I only flame, I will list some of the positives. I've purchased I of the Dragon and it's been nearly flawless even though it's written by a small team who's relatively new to game development in Russia. It's also one of the more inventive games I've played in a while. Nothing like being able to eat your enemies! I also purchased Rise of Nations and it too has been nearly flawless even though its just a nicer version of AOE. I'm also a big fan of Neverwinter Nights and the Gothic series.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
The problem with many Slashdot posts is that both their writers and readers expect a formula. They don't want to be challenged, instead, they want to have the ideas swirling in the writer's head synthesized and explained. But critical thought, in its truest form, should be something that inspires others to think critically, not just accept what has been handed to them.