It’s interesting that, even though the topic of reviewers being out of touch with gamers was specifically discussed, they still missed the aspect that’s most pissed me off over the years.

The thing about the celebrity reviewer who never pays for a game and works from some position of privelege is well understood. That’s fine. I can compensate for that. I know that your review of the latest Halflife installment might be coloured by the fact you’ve met and interviewed Gabe Newall. It’s the same old thing we’re familiar with from film reviews, music reviews, and everything else.

The trouble is that, as game reviewers, you’re spending a hell of a lot more time playing games than most of your readers do. You might be able to master the controls for a game in three seconds flat (because they’re the same as fifteen other games you’ve played), but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can. You might be able to knock off the latest 1st person shooter in a few hours by making 27 consecutive headshots, but I sure as hell can’t. To me, the biggest problem with gaming-saturated reviewers is they really suck at identifying problems with difficulty and learning curves.

GTA San Andreas is the one that comes to mind there. From what I remember, all the reviews went on and on about how massive the world was, and the controversy, and all the rest. I don’t recall anyone mentioning how stupidly difficult some of the missions were. Even at the very start, that game put you up against a carload of gang-bangers, with no weapons, on a freakin’ pushbike. I know ordinary people who gave up on GTA San Andreas before they even started because they couldn’t beat that mission.

You have to assume all those reviewers who failed to mention it didn’t even notice, because they’d all played Vice City and GTAIII before it, and just breezed through that opening mission.

Likewise, I get kind of suspicious about reviews that rubbish a game because it “lacks challenge”. Lacks challenge for who, exactly? Ordinary people, or just people who spend 30+ hours a week gaming?

[and with the proviso that this is a personal opinion]

If the game comparisaon is like GamesTM’s “better than/as good as/worse than” box that they include in their reviews, then that seems at least slightly useful to me.

I’m not so sure about the perceived value/actual value thing. If I’m reading correctly, then you’re suggesting using the readers knowledge of other games as a benchmark for reviewing a new title. But, unless you know your audience *really well*, that doesn’t work.

My gaming background might be very different to yours. Perhaps I’ve been playing games for years and years, but not so much recently. So making comparisons to older titles might work for me. Perhaps I’m a recent but enthusiastic convert (or just, y’know, younger) and so have relatively in-depth knowledge of titles from the past three years but not the faintest idea what Deus Ex is *really* like, or why everyone bangs on about it.

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Generally, I like the notion of games reviewing splintering a little, and review sites/magazines stating their target audiences explicitly. Unless you’re a national newspaper or other general interest publication, why not state your target audience more explicitly? Then I, as a reader, can more easily understand how a game can simultaneously be (say) needlessly complex for one reviewer and simultaneously over-simplified for another.

I’d rather some one that has made an effort to play most FPS since at least HL and can tell me if a new game tries anything new, and if it doesn’t, whether I should try it out because it is really stable and is fun to play?

Sometimes it is better to just ignore a new game and go play an old one or wait for a better one, rather than subjecting yourself to a shit, buggy and boring rehash of 5 year old material…

Reviews should reflect that.

Plus, if reviews are reviewed by people familiar with the genre, at least then you can understand a FPS game review score in relation to other FPS, and RTS game review score in relation to other RTS. That way when Red Alert 3 gets an 7 we know it is in relation to other RTS, and not to some shooter that got an 8.

And I don’t like the argument that someone shouldn’t have to play old games to become experienced at a genre. If we accept that people would just start with when ever they personally started games and designers would get away with running the same shit past us every ten years, pretty mush like they have been in some genres atm.

The couldn’t be bothered tone, I suspect, says much about how FEAR 2 felt to me. It’s not as if I didn’t actually complete the bally thing.

Down Rodeo: The “What is complete” debate’s another big one, and more ammunition to my “Completion isn’t key” point. For the games=films,books,whatever people, playing through the main game once strikes me as what people count as complete.

KG

I think it would be best to play the game to the point where you are no longer wanting to play it any more, even in the interest of completing it for a review. To use the Madden example again it probably wouldn’t take too long to say that it was a competent title and a good purchase. You enjoy it – you play some more, you don’t, you can stop. (I guess the issue with the sport examples is that there is very little to distinguish between older and newer games in the series, to me anyway, but then I am a big fan of FPS games and not sports. Presumably the difference between PES versions is like the difference between Call of Duty and Crysis.)

A horribly broken game that was a pain to play through could be dropped even earlier – as someone mentioned in the post a game that bad would be returned that evening or go unplayed regardless of how good it might get later on. Conversely a good game, an enjoyable experience, could be played for longer. That approach is rather pessimistic though – it’s like the expectation that things will go wrong, somewhere. Which is not the way forward.

Apparently I’ve said rather the same thing as JKjoker, oh dear. And he’s posted rather earlier than I have.

In reference to the 50% statistic, that surprises me. I have played most of my games to completion, I think. In fact, I haven’t. I’ve bought a lot of games recently and I am trying to work through them but part of the problem lies in that I have not got a powerful enough PC to play them at all (I’m in Shawn’s 50% unplayed; I bought Bioshock in the sale over Christmas). Same goes for Crysis. I have the Dawn of Wars installed and I am starting to get into them – the problem really lies in that I am a student living away from home so game time can be limited (and TF2 on the flatmate’s PC steals time like little else).

A question of my own – what would you even define as completed? Would you call it the main story, story with all sidequests, extra levels/challenges? I’d be tempted to say main story myself, the other bits are special extras (that do not always come with games).

Good piece though, I look forward to the rest of these.

moderation in all things!

reviews that over analyse and debate certain aspects that no one except the reviewer cares about are equally as useless as those that simply list the game’s features straight from the marketing sheet.