I can dig it.
Reviews are opinions. Replace the terms and see how ur suggestion looks.
If you played a game your friend will ask you a simple question: Did you like it or not? Yes/No.
That is a review with a 2 point scale. And it seems pretty mandatory. If you liked a game but liked some other game more, then there should be a 3 point scale. etc. etc.
The grade is simply a quick summary of your opinion.
The question is how big of a scale you need that’s not too big to become stupid (8.5929382983298 GOTY -IGN) and not too small, where each rating has a clear meaning but also just enough nuance.
So far I’ve yet to see a reason to not like 5 star (without half stars) the most. 5 options seem to cover 99.5% of the cases.
The FemFreq Team is closely related to Silverstring media as you can see here.
http://silverstringmedia.com/team/
Silverstring media got paid to consult for and essentially be a part of the development of Crypt of The NecroDancer.
FemFreq’s curator channel on Steam is recommending Crypt of The NecroDancer without disclosing this connection.
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6954951-Feminist-Frequency/?appid=247080
See how this works? It’s like protection money.
A video game review (as it exists in current game media) is much more than an opinion. It’s a narrative where you sell your viewpoint to people who’ve never played the game, generally written from only one perspective (your own), based on a very small amount of time with the game, and then there’s a number score at the end. the number can’t possibly have much value because all it means is how much you, as one person, who played the review copy for a few hours, liked the game. that’s assuming political reasons don’t influence your score (advertiser is pressuring your boss, giving a bad score might get you backlash from a segment of the playerbase, etc).
as a result I think reviews often aren’t really about how good a game is, but rather how well made it is. if your game looks nice and has great presentation, comes from a respected series or creator, then you get a good score. for instance:
Civ: BE is a great example of a polished turd. it’s not good or fun, but the presentation is good and it comes from a respected series so it got great reviews. it’s the kind of game that it would be hard to give a bad review to. because hey, maybe you just don’t get it and other people do. maybe you didn’t spend enough time with it. how will people react if you’re the only 4 in a sea of 9s? I mean obviously it’s well made. can justify a high score on that. it’s risk-free to give a high score, and carries a fair amount of risk to call it what it actually is.
I’d rather hear a podcast two weeks later between fans of the genre and hear what they’re saying. by that time they’ve spent more time with the game, it’s a group discussion so you get multiple viewpoints, and there’s no pressure to give a number score and justify it.
A good couple of days is needed before you can really judge a game properly, and thats the bare minimum. To appreciate a game a fully review it you’ll have to play it for a couple of weeks if not months.
I’d like to see more intelligent, thorough reviews after the fact, wherein the reviewer takes the game apart piece-by-piece, in an academic fashion.
Actually dig into these things and understand what makes them tick beyond the nuts and bolts and the processes and thinking that goes into them.
Egoraptor kind of barely scratched the surface with his Sequelitis videos, particularly his Mega Man X piece, where he explains how that game teaches not with tutorials, but through the actual gameplay and level design.
I watched almost 10 minutes of that Egoraptor vid last year, and that shit was annoying as all hell. I’m not sure how anyone can do it. The info was cool, but dear lord almighty the editing and voice were just too gross. Lesson learned.
I’m watching an LP of Yoshesque NSIC play through of Bayonetta w/Jeanne. Platinum put soooooo much into the lore of the game it’s pretty ridiculous. She ended up posting the extra stuff where the names for the weapons come from here. Old news, but new to me.
You’re not gonna apologise for all that shit you were giving me even though I wasn’t lying about the private convo huh? OK, I see how you roll…
I was calling other people out, not you.
These are your words in which you mention me by name bro.
[quote=“BB_Hoody, post:443, topic:160658”]
Sure thing. Wait, dude you’re already apart of it./quote]
This is after multiple post in a relatively short manner, in which I didn’t know a private convo was taking place, therefore I deduced that you were making a joke at the expense of Hecatom and Amp, saying that the private convo was really the series of post leading up to
[quote=“BB_Hoody, post:443, topic:160658”]
Sure thing. Wait, dude you’re already apart of it./quote]
Which then had ME thinking that other people weren’t reading the above post and asking about the GG private convo, that at that point I still didn’t know was an actual thing.
Its not taking my edits…
Wow at putting my posts in the quotes…
OK well now you realise you were mistaken and in the wrong for calling me out like that. So don’t you think an apology is in order? Or am I crazy for thinking this?
The definition of reviewing a game is that you give your personal opinion on it. That’s it. All the rest are things YOU just added to the definition, but they are not really a part of it.
I really don’t care about the “game journo industry standard” because nothing prevents you from writing a review that’s well made. And you have no obligation to give a good or bad score to anything- It’s your review i.e. your personal opinion. And the people who the review is for are people who share similar tastes and standards as you, and/or want to enrich themselves by listening to your opinion.
All I did in my earlier post was to explain why scores are useful on principle. Can you pull them off badly? Yes. Does my post justify the shitty industry standard in any way? Nope.
All I’m saying is that IMO a well made review will be accompanied by a well made scoring method that reflects the text accurately.
“as a result I think reviews often aren’t really about how good a game is, but rather how well made it is.”
You should probably change your terminology so it’s not so vague. If it’s a ‘well made’ game then it’s a good game, it would seem. If a game is a “polished turd” then what is polished about it and what it shitty about it? They can’t be the same exact aspect…
I’m guessing in most cases it means good aesthetics and bad mechanics, and you can also delve into more details. For example the combat mechanics are great but trying to navigate the menus is annoying.
The more knowledge you have, the more familiar you are with the game, the clearer and better your review will be. This is why casual fighting game reviews don’t tell you much more than “it has long combos and double jumps” or “if you like previous Tekken games then you’ll like this one.”
Which is why reviews should be a person who’s opinion is respected. I don’t mind the social justice stuff as long as its coming from a decent perspective. Currently reviews are done by people who have a passing interest in the games t best. Enough to play for a couple of hours to do the review and never touch the game again.
I certainly mind Social Justice in game reviews. Pointing out or equating story bits to Social Commentary? Completely relevant. Two totally different things. What boggles my mind is why these people in the game blogging business are blogging about games, because it’s pretty clear they all hate it to a degree or even an extremity.
The best example of this I can see is nostalgia critic. The way Doug talks about movies in his editorials show that he really does have a passion for it. He talks about the movie as a whole and how each element can affect your enjoyment of it and proves it using other examples from other movies. No one critics games like that.
Reviews often ONLY talk about how well a game is made. They don’t really go in depth with why they enjoy it. If the review isn’t about how well a game is made then it is often about one small element affecting their entire play experience, often ignorantly criticizing something without using context.
Saying “this game encourages rape” would be fine, under the correct context. If you were to, lets say, be playing a game where you are coerced into raping someone, rewarded for it, and then told why it was the correct thing to do afterwards, then yes, the game encourages rape. However, if It was simply a scene where rape ALMOST happened and you were encouraged to stop it, then the accusation is wrong, misinformed, and childish. You need to be able to factually see things for what they are before you give your opinion on it, it you can’t do that, then you end up with sites like Kotaku and Polygon which give games bad reviews for “too many triggers”
That’s not to say things outside of gameplay can’t affect your enjoyment of a game as well. I don’t care if Ethnic Cleansing is the best shooter of all time with the best, well thought out mechanics ever, FUCK that game still.
If you are going to be critiquing games, then your going to have to be a fan of the genre, played its good and bad games, know why the good games were good, know why the bad games were bad, and keep an open mind for new things to change up the genre a bit. You should be able to critique everything from an objective AND subjective point of view and show why the elements of the game affected your enjoyment of the WHOLE package. This would mean that you would have to have a real invested interest in not just video games, but the genre itself. You would also have to understand demographics so you don’t shoehorn your own opinion of the game in everyone’s face and know that certain people will like certain things.
This can’t be done in a 3 minute, played the game for a couple of hours review. The “10/10” score has been completely devalued for advertising purposes only. IGN HEAVILY encouraged it so the score is now meaningless. I’ve yet to see a real review of a new game yet. Its only those youtube channels that go back and take a look at games with a critical eye do we get a real honest review.
I can give an example.
The controls in Shenmue 1 suck when adventuring and the lack of a second analog on the dreamcast controller makes the game very difficult to even look around as its developers did numerous work arounds which only work just good enough. However, there is no immediate threat while adventuring other than to go around and look at stuff, so this aspect of the game can be over looked. The interaction with the world in Shenmue is an amazing idea at first until you realize that a good majority of the things you are interacting with do nothing for you. The game is ambitious and the story is great. The series has a lot of potential to move forward if sega is able to pump out the 7 sequels they promised. Perhaps your character gets hungry? Maybe your eating and drinking habits as well as your weightlifting and training habits have more of an affect on fighting? Perhaps you can have more dialogue with strangers on the street, which lead you to having friends that can affect how you achieve your goals? Perhaps you can even court a relationship through this method? The game has endless possibilities and I am excited to see where it could possibly go. The game itself is ok, buut the love and attention that went into the game can have you loving the game more than you should. This title isn’t for everybody, but if you like the idea of an immersive world then you should pick this up. The title is ambitious and as a package game it delivers.
Something along the lines of that. Just more details added to the critiquing. You should be REALLY into a game before you ever critique it, and that’s where my problem with kotaku and polygon lies. They simply aren’t into it. They are only interested in pushing agendas, childish ones that encourage victim mentality at that.
Hell, i’m sure Anita would be better received if she had went more in depth with her videos, The concept itself is interesting, but the way she goes about it is all wrong.
What was the last game you played where you actually engaged in ethnic cleansing though?
Anita’s biggest problem is that she approaches her arguments the same way all ideologues do. She starts with a conclusion and verifies it through confirmation bias and selective examples that she contextualizes under feminist principles. That’s how you get nonsense about super mario/Zelda being sexist and unsubstantiated claims that so called video game sexism correlates to real world violence against women.