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What I love about Battlefield is that if I had a dollar for every time I said "holy shit" in a match, I could probably buy Guam,
Highlights, just from today:
* Running from tank fire and going prone behind cover
* Going prone to hide from a helicopter and watching it hover above me
* Jumping out of a jet and watching it explode above me
* Darting from cover to cover, dodging sniper fire
* Laying down suppressive fire in a corridor as tracers and rockets stream in from the other side
* Running up to an unaware tank, placing C4, running away, and igniting it
>get hankering to play the Metroid Prime games
>set up Wii for the first time in god knows how long
>Video is black and white
welp
Never mind.
So, IJBMer Updates just moved into the topic of game criticism and perhaps it's best here.
Time for a theory query!
Say you have been hired as a professional game critic. On what basis would you review games, and by what means might you try and make the review into a meaningful discussion rather than a rote description of the content within the game?
"Throw things at the paper, see what sticks, see what doesn't, hope it gets published, idly await for the cash"
hey it's what i do for film and that works.
I would:
1. Play through the game's basic whole story/sequence/etc. at least once, making sure to consult knowledgeable sources about what choices are recommended to get as complete a gameplay experience as possible, OR being aware that I'm going into it blindly.
2. After playing the game, chat with other people about the game, and think about it for a bit.
3. Then write about whether and how much I enjoyed or didn't enjoy playing the game, commenting on what the game did right and wrong design-wise, and keeping in mind my expectations going in.
The issue with this one is that if you are a professional critic, you are most definetly working on a deadline and chances are you have to hand your review before it is officially released.
Granted, you can still talk to colleagues about it, if they are able to play it, but I think working with such a tiny sample doesn't work with what you mean here. Or what I think you mean.
Agreed with GMH on the whole reviewer thing, plus I can only trust myself on the final opinion.
LouieW: They fit my playstyle as a archer or gunner.
I think the best game criticism includes a discussion of what a game really is at its core rather than focusing on the literal content of the game. While that's certainly important and worth review as it influences the experience, a game is ultimately a system of objective-based logic. A lot of high-profile review sources will attach numbers to certain things like gameplay, story, graphics and sound and then produce a final score -- which they will often then tell you isn't an average based off the other scores, which calls into question their relevance to begin with.
Monster Hunter Tri, for instance, is rightly considered an excellent game despite its general lack of story or depth of characterisation, so it doesn't really communicate much in terms of conventional narrative as we might expect it via film or literature. Most of the tension in the game is produced through how it reconciles its mechanics with its visuals and sound. When a boss monster spots you, a particular music cue starts up to let you know you're on the menu and if you're unready or unwilling to fight, the game dips into a sort of survival horror panic as you desperately try to escape the chase. The combat system is pretty restrictive and the slow speed of most weapons works against the player, but it's a part of the theme of the human player avatar working against creatures much larger and more powerful than they are. It's also a reflection of the game's tactical setup, with its emphasis on familiarising the player with hunting grounds and how well it establishes the need for preparation and planning. All these elements work in synchronisation and the result is a game where the hunter/hunted dichotomy flips and changes depending on a combination of player skill, thought, the general environment and sometimes dumb luck.
Essentially, Monster Hunter Tri is a game that enforces its central theme of monster hunting with all of its mechanics, producing a sense of tension and even sometimes horror despite is revelry in the ridiculous. Supported by its fantastic art design and great music, the overall lack of a traditional story structure or even much story at all loses relevance and a player can simply get lost in the purity of its experience.
This is a game which should get a very low score for something like "story", yet that ultimately has no impact on the game's enjoyability unless you're a player that specifically seeks out that kind of element in a game. Monster Hunter is almost game about games in the way it can enforce its own quality without many conventionally cinematic elements. Apart from the opening cinematics, occasional perspective changes for emphasis and boss monster introductions, the entire game takes place within the gameplay itself. It's not a game that's absolutely for everyone and it's difficulty could be a barrier to some, but this is the kind of game that can appeal to "casual" and "hardcore" audiences alike for its combination of depth and the general accessibility of its style.
Games often aren't reviewed in a manner that takes those kind of factors into consideration, though. Most of them are a combination of description and subjective reaction that fails to relate what brings a game together as a whole and how this all relates to its central elements, and perhaps more importantly, any thoughts on the particular objective of a game. Many a skewed review has probably been published and given a game an unfair score based on an opinion that didn't take into account what the game was trying to do. Reviewers in the game industry aren't held to the standards of other media reviewers and so can get away with their personal tastes impacting a review much more than they reasonably should. Monster Hunter Tri might receive a low score for its lack of story despite that element being beside the point and a reviewer being unable to analyse it based on the strengths that do exist.
I would not attempt to focus on one aspect, but rather how each aspect supports the game experience as a whole, and how I think the game experience might relate to the people I'm reviewing it for. Like, I wouldn't write a review for Mario the same way I would write a review for Fire Emblem, because they are going for different experiences with different goals in mind.
Alex - The only person here where, if he talks about reviews, his posts are long enough where I'm not sure if he's still discussing reviews or if he's reviewing something instead
The problem with this approach is that "what the game really is" can vary from person to person.
You have an entire thread for these posts
Yes but context.
To some degree, but Fire Emblem will always be a whimsical clash of fairy tale fantasy and deep, tile-based SRPG combat. You can't discuss that the same way you'd discuss a military shooter at all.
I wouldn't call what he did a review so much as notes for a proper review.
While this is true, a critic is never objective. That's kinda important to this. Sure, most critics can point to the objective qualities of the work and how they contribute to its quality, but at the end, a critic can't tell someone else anything but their opinion and interpretation of the work in question. Of course, what he should also do is present such a work with a proper elaboration.
IF I were a professional video game reviewer, my reviews would have a small technical section and the rest being a discussion on how the game fits in with it's genre/it's sub-genre/it's series/gamer culture/culture at large/whatever. Any score attached to the review would be loosely based on the written review.
Also, this article is turning out to be very interesting.
There is a point in the Ninja Gaiden 3 demo where you slowly walk towards a man begging for his life then gut him.
You don't get the option to refuse.
Fuck that game. Fuck it so hard.
^That's actually something I'd like to see more. Giving you control over your character's moral choices, then taking that choice away when your character does something you'd disapprove of as a sort of meta-commentary between the character and the player in the form of a giant "fuck you" to the latter.
Basically, what MGS 2 (and possibly ME3) tried to do. Except less stupid.
That's a good jumping point for a thing I think emulationist-style combat games should really start looking at, actually -- combatant psychology. For instance, a significant amount of weapons combat doesn't actually end in a straight-up kill but a capture or an adversary fleeing. It would be interesting in, say, a sandbox game that takes place within a Renaissance city that goes for that kind of thing. Mercy could be an opportunity to make a friend or -- in some cases -- start a feud.
This kind of psychological factor is become a more prominent part of strategy games but is noticeably absent from action titles. In fact, it's pretty disappointing that there hasn't been a modern shooter that actually criticises its genre and I think a big part of that could be inserting more realism, especially psychological. What if there was an invisible stress variable that, as it rose, altered your perception of the events around you and caused your character to react to things in different ways? What if you could watch your NPC allies go through the same thing? Modern Warfare had a few moments where it seemed to be trying to get at something like that, or at least there were actions that your allies undertook that can't be condoned, but it had no discussion of them -- they merely happened without reflection.
But a war game that actually plays up the psychological aspect of heated combat could be a really engaging, thought-provoking experience. You could have gaming's equivalent of Jarhead in there. Why not take it a step further? What if there's no way to win? No matter what happens, you end up in a psychiatric ward, in military court, with a dishonourable discharge or whatever. What could be great about this game is that, with good game design and a decent plot, it could be marketed directly to the mainstream FPS consumer base, the ones most enamoured with the idealised hypermasculine soldier.
>That's actually something I'd like to see more. Giving you control over your character's moral choices, then taking that choice away when your character does something you'd disapprove of as a sort of meta-commentary between the character and the player.
You do realize we're talking about Ninja Gaiden right? There is no point to this. None. There is no significance to what happens. It's just a random murder.
I understand the idea of making your avatar not being completely under your control being appealing (Silent Hill does it to great effect) but the presence of it in a game where I'm a ninja that cuts up shit and acts awesome is just tasteless.
Honestly I think a scene like that where you had to be kind would be more impactful since most major developers can only express player autonomy through violence and brag about how evil you can be. Forcing you into an act of mercy or kindness would be more effective.
^Yeah I do. Still, I think a game giving you this sort of reaction (intentional or not), is an interesting concept that should be done more.
The reaction Birth of a Nation gave me was interesting. Doesn't mean it should be emulated.
On the note of evil, it would be nice if evil options in games could be systematically evil rather than just crude and violent. In fact, you could make the evil options entirely unappealing, like an unrepentantly pedophilic politician offering to pay you off to deliver a child into his care or something. Things that aren't as simple as "I make the poor peoples fall down!" but actually causing long-term damage to people in a way that goes beyond immediate selfishness. Real, systemised evil. After all, games express via systems, so what better way to make a point?
Yeah, I think the problem with 'evil' in games is that it's often a very dumb shortsighted evil. It's because players don't actually want to be evil. No one does. They just want to be assholes without consequences.
^^^Reactions are the same. Intent is different. Birth of a Nation actually believes what it's saying and wants you to agree with it. What I'm talking about is when the game knows the action is evil, wants you to know that, and forces that reaction out of you by taking away control just when it's led you to believe that you have control.
^^Fallout 1 and 2 do that to an extent, granted they usually do it by unforeseen consequences of supposedly good solutions.
^^ Some games contain options that are very definitely evil to the core, like setting off the Megaton bomb in Fallout 3, but it's still a cheesy, mustache-twirling evil. Making it real is a chancy prospect, but at the same time it's guaranteed to draw attention to the game and really look at what evil is -- especially if it's all second-hand evil, letting things happen for one's own benefit when they could have been stopped.
>Reactions are the same. Intent is different.
This is terribly wrong because it assumes the audience doesn't understand intent. Audition is much more violent than Kick Ass, but the former garnered superior reactions because the audience understood the intent behind the violence and that it was more than shock value. If something doesn't have a point to it, if the violence is gratuitous then sometimes reactions are just because that choice was bad and hurts the piece rather than hurts the action.
This kind of shit is why video games are in a developmental stasis, because so many only see the potential to shock. There's no art to the scene, nothing interesting or worthwhile to forcing you to murder someone. It wasn't even that shocking from a shock value perspective. It was just senseless murder.
^But again that isn't actual evil so much as it is just dickishness.
Depends what it is. Condoning illegal prostitution via silence and mutual profit, for instance? Sounds pretty evil to me.
Well, shit, I think my wankdream going is actually going to come out:
It's a 15th century combat game that's aiming to be true to history. Note that when you, say, select a sword, you can choose between the actual three major schools of swordsmanship that we know of (the differences between which are abstracted, though), the type of steel used for the blade and even the cross-section type. I haven't finished the video yet, so further comments forthcoming.
http://mwomercs.com/
Mechwarrior Online might be the only game I'm looking forward to, if I can run it. Being a recent Battletech fan ever since I own a copy of Mechwarrior 2, this is going to be interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76abFui4lx4
On the subject of evil: I really like it when evil choices are actually meaningful and when they are written well.
EDIT: Is anyone waiting for Ys Origin's release on Steam? THIS GAME WILL BE AWESOME!