Deconstructing Game Review Structure

Recently there has been a lot of division on the topic of game review structure. Kotaku has an interesting summary of recent commentary, including a piece by GameSetWatch's Simon Parkin and the Taipei Gamer blog. "Except, of course, video games don't work in the same way as toasters or digital cameras. Sure, they have mathematical elements and measurable mechanics and it's possible to compare the number of polygons between this one and that and spin out ten thousand graphs detailing how two specimens compare. But, unlike with the Canon EOS400D, I would have no idea at the end of those 25 pages which game was better or where they would sit on the 'true' scale of quality."

Comments

Re:Differences

[JoshJ]

Well sure, that's why I said Mario Kart is quite fun in the short-term. Eventually, you're going to get tired of random cruising around and being a mediocre player- there are only 32 tracks after all- and you're either going to make the effort to get really good at the game or you're going to drop it and play something else and only pick the game up ever again when your friends come over and you're partying.
If you try to get *really good* at Mario Kart and put in that sort of effort, you're going to get disappointed because even a second or so of improvement is negligible against the power of a blue shell.

That's what I'm referring to when I say long term play. Games that harshly punish the leader lack it by design.

Re:Differences

[JoshJ]

But that very concept of being "accessible" by giving the weaker players a higher chance than they "deserve" to win via random events is exactly what I'm talking about! It's a conscious design choice that increases short-term enjoyment of the game but utterly nukes the long-term playability.