By Kieron Gillen on June 29th, 2010 at 11:00 am.
When Deus Ex debuted back in 2000 it was showered with universal critical kudos. Well… almost universal critical kudos. The exception was Tom Chick, now one of the most respected American games journalists currently writing about the medium, who gave it a sub-50% mark. And no-one’s ever forgot it, though it’s long since been lost even to archive.org… though the lovely Crumbsucker has unearthed it. I felt I couldn’t finish our looking-backwards at Deus Ex without talking to Tom about his infamous running-joke provoking review…
RPS: Care to tell about the back story, as far as you remember? As in, how did you come to be reviewing this game?
Tom Chick: I was a freelancer for cnet’s Gamecenter. It was just another assignment. They would say, “Hey, can you review this game?” and as long as it wasn’t something about sports, I’d say “Sure”.
RPS: What were your expectations before going in? What was that initial impression?
Tom Chick: Ah, that was when the internet was young and inchoate and jealous of print publications and full of wide open space that would eventually get clogged up with previews, message boards, and comments sections. I don’t recall having much by way of expectations for Deus Ex. I knew it was associated with Ion Storm’s shenanigans in Texas. I knew Warren Spector had a history at Origin and Looking Glass. Beyond that, I recall going in naked.
RPS: So, you wrote the review. Were you aware at the time it was going to be controversial? I can’t remember when it came it the review cycle, so did you know you were going against the flow?
Tom Chick: I had no idea. I never do. I’m a bit oblivious that way. I simply write about my experience. Sometimes some cosmic dice roll and my experience is out of sorts with everyone else’s experiences. I had played through a review build before Deus Ex was released, so my first inkling that my experience was a snake eyes or box cars was when my editor emailed me after I’d submitted the review. He said everyone at Gamecenter liked Deus Ex so they weren’t going to run the review. He reassigned it to someone else. They never offered me another assignment after that.
By the way, before submitting the review, I doublechecked with my editor about review scores. Gamecenter was using the 1-10 scale. Not the 7-9 scale, they insisted! Even back then, I resisted the idea of the 1-10 scale being a 7-9 scale (that particular battle has long since been lost, of course). So while writing the Deus Ex review, I verified with my editor that a 5 would be an average game and not necessarily a negative score. He confirmed. So I sent in the Deus Ex review with a 3. I figured it was a couple notches below average. Man, can you imagine a 3 these days? No one’s going to use a 3 on any game that doesn’t cost $19.99 or less.
So Gamecenter killed the review and I sold it to Games Domain. One of the cool things about the internet back then was that there were about a zillion places where a freelancer could sell an article. Games Domain stuck a bunch of Beatle’s lyrics into the review as subheads, which was a bit mystifying to me. But otherwise, they graciously published almost exactly what I’d submitted.
I guess it wasn’t until after it was published that I realized how the cosmic dice had rolled on a larger scale. I remember several long and often acrimonious conversations on Usenet about the review. And, of course, the emails. For a while, I had a whole folder for Deus Ex email. Some emails were supportive, but most were just people who wanted to vent. One angry fellow – he was a kid really – sent me a picture of himself, pointing a gun at the camera. He wrote something like “go ahead, make my day” in the email. I suppose that could be considered a death threat, but I would have preferred something more dramatic like “I will totally kill you because you didn’t like Deus Ex!” I tried for a while to respond to everyone as graciously as I could, but I eventually petered out. So if you wrote me an angry email ten years ago, I apologize for not getting back to you.
RPS: Have you re-read it recently? What do you think with it? Oddly, it’s a review which has tended to stick in my head. The “This is how the world ends” bit nailing the quotations was a fine flourish. And I also specifically remember that your reservations weren’t actually easy to dismiss – a world where every corner contains 10mm ammo and all that. For all the bile, no-one’s really found a problem in the review.
Tom Chick: I don’t know about you, but I hate going back and reading my old stuff. However, I wrote an updated look at Deus Ex for Gametap recently. So I actually re-read the review and then replayed parts of Deus Ex. I still didn’t care for it, but it was nice to see the engine running smoothly. That was one of my major criticisms. When Deus Ex was released, the Unreal engine struggled mightily with the level design. That was before console systems came along and saved us all from poorly optimized engines.
Deus Ex does deserve credit for trying open-world-ish games before they were really ready. A year before Grand Theft Auto III came along, Ion Storm was trying to drop you into Paris and Hong Kong. That was pretty ballsy, even if there was a curfew or plague or whatever to limit the number of characters onscreen at once. But Ion Storm was biting off way more than they could chew with that graphics engine and particularly with that AI [sic]. Those things just killed the experience for me. Contrast this to Alpha Protocol, which focuses first and foremost on gameplay, confined to smaller more manageable boxes representing warehouses or enemy bases. For all its faults, Alpha Protocol knows how far it can and can’t reach.
RPS: How do you feel about its graduation into a running joke?
Tom Chick: It’s sort of cute. We all have strong opinions about different things, and I’m lucky enough that some of those make an impression on people, for better or worse. But I do wish the reaction was to wonder *why* I didn’t like Deus Ex. Instead, it’s often just shorthand to dismiss something else I’ve written. “Oh, he didn’t like Mass Effect 2? Well, he didn’t like Deus Ex either!” That’s just lazy and it ultimately hurts the level of discourse when we talk about videogames.
For instance, if I hear that someone doesn’t like Casablanca or Jaws or Moon, I want to know *why* he didn’t like it. Those are interesting conversations and at their best, we each learn something, even if it’s just about each other. But unfortunately, those are conversations missing in the internet videogame culture. People tend to judge opinions based not on their insight, but on whether they agree with that opinion. A good review isn’t a good review. It’s a review you agree with.
RPS: Part of me wonders what it’d be like to drop a review like that nowadays. As in, that was an earlier time of the Internet. It was quieter. Seeing the death threats that a peer of mine got for 8/10ing MGS4, I’d be fearing for my life. Thoughts?
Some games have built-in fans who like to vent. And that’s cool. I’ve run into that a fair bit when I’ve been critical of Playstation exclusives like Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2. Nintendo has its defenders, but they don’t have that siege mentality. I wrote a negative review of Metal Gear Solid 4, but began with the premise that the game was mostly fan service, which might have deflected the death threats to your buddy who gave it an 8.
However, I think it’s important to look at that sort of anger as a sort of immaturity, a fundamental insecurity about your own opinion, about being unable to express it without simply being emphatic. It’s a defensive measure more than anything else. If reviewers want to address this – and I feel we should since it permeates the way people talk about videogames – the best we can do is explain ourselves in such a way as to work around that defensiveness. It’s important that we’re articulate, that we give context, that we talk specifics as much as we can, that we avoid lazy comments and clichés and hyperbole, that we’re willing to have conversations.
By the way, ratings systems are an obstacle to all of that, but that’s a whole other conversation.
RPS: Actually, it strikes me that Deus Ex was actually quite an important review for you, in terms of cementing your name and approach. You’re one of the few American reviewer who I’ve felt most likely to go against the critical grain if he feels like it, whether positively or negatively. As in, if you’re willing to come out against Deus Ex, you’ll be willing to damn or praise pretty much anything, in a direct way. Or is that just me?
Tom Chick: You just slammed America, didn’t you? I can’t believe you guys are still smarting about that War of Independence thing. However, my approach hasn’t changed one whit since my very first review. It was of a submarine sim way back in, gosh, 1990 or something. Critical grain should have no bearing on a review, mainly because there are so many more meaningful things to take into account.
By the way, I met Harvey Smith at a Midway press event several years ago. I have a lot of respect for him. He’s a smart, thoughtful, articulate guy. I got to talk to him a bit and he said the guys at Ion Storm were mystified that I could be so critical about Deus Ex, but then I’d write something enthusiastic about some monster truck racing game. Which is a fair point, but I countered that different games have different objectives. Ion Storm was ambitious with Deus Ex in a way that a monster truck game isn’t. We should consider Deus Ex with very different criteria than a monster truck game.
Also, I have no idea what monster truck racing game he’s talking about. Did I really write a positive review of a monster truck game? Oh dear.
RPS: Thanks for your time.
Tom runs Syfy’s games blog, Fidgit. He regularly links to his other work on his Quarter To Three forum.
29/06/2010 at 11:11 Omroth says:
Oh dear. I was kind of sympathetic until he compared Alpha Protocol favorably with DX…
29/06/2010 at 11:42 Heliocentric says:
I’m not sure that was favourable, i read it as “alpha protocol is running through a very good mouse warren but deus ex fails at showing whole cities”.
29/06/2010 at 11:49 lhzr says:
@omroth: funny, i wasn’t very sympathetic until he compared Alpha Protocol favorably with DX…
29/06/2010 at 12:47 The Sombrero Kid says:
i didn’t realise until now that a professional games journalist could know so little about game design, alpha protocol fails to understand it’s limits in exactly the same way as deus ex did, except deus ex had harder targets and better execution.
29/06/2010 at 13:02 subedii says:
Whilst Alpha Protocol had its fair share of problems, and I’d probably rate it lower than Deus Ex, I feel it was critically underrated by the games press. Most of the complaints I saw about it could’ve been more legitimately been applied to games like Fallout 3, which ended up scoring in the 90′s everywhere.
I just feel like most reviewers say it was 3rd person and was expecting it to play out like Mass Effect, when it actually does take a lot of its gameplay mechanics ideas from Deus Ex. In a bizarre twist that I still can’t wholly believe, even Yahtzee picked up on this. And whilst he still slammed the game, I felt he was one of the few people to actually do it for the things that the game was legitimately doing wrong, as opposed to the things it wasn’t actually attempting to do or be.
29/06/2010 at 13:03 subedii says:
I miss the edit button.
29/06/2010 at 13:16 The Sombrero Kid says:
I Agree most reviews of alpha protocol were ‘this is not what i wanted!’ rather than, what in my opinion a review should be, which is to educate about the mechanics and advise about a purchase for as wide a set of demographics as possible.
29/06/2010 at 13:41 bill says:
SO you’re writing off his opinion on everything because you don’t agree with his review of Alpha Protocol?
29/06/2010 at 15:07 Chris says:
A fairer criticism of his review technique is that if game A reaches but fails and game B doesn’t reach, meaning they should be reviewed under different circumstances, should they not be on different scoring systems? You would have to have a league table system. One for your run-of-the-mill-same-old game ideas and another for your adventurous-barrier-pushing games. Maybe Alpha Protocol is a 8/10 Normal game and Deus Ex with its tech limitations fell as a 4/10 Experimental game. That could be fair to say but the difference between the two has to be stated.
After all don’t most of us here play games for next new experience rather than pining for the next fifa or CoD game?
(On that note I am excited for Diablo 3 :$)
29/06/2010 at 16:08 Jeremy says:
Well, the ridiculous thing is that anyone making this comment is essentially saying that their taste defines the standard by how games should be rated or enjoyed.
You liked a game I didn’t? Then your opinion is no longer valid… not just to me, but to everyone. It’s an absurd outlook really.
29/06/2010 at 16:13 Wulf says:
I actually feel sorry for him. At least he has an opinion, good for him.
I can relate though. It’s like my dislike of a few things that’s made the RPS community go hilariously angry man, leading to geeks and nerds throwing their toys out of the pram in rage.
A few of my favourite examples that I can think of are:
- Blizzard’s art is shit. I’ve got nothing against cartoony art, but there’s a difference between proper, decent animation from someone like Disney, and fucking NickToons which aren’t Avatar: The Last Airbender. They look horribly amateur to me, across the board. I think the problem might be the generation gap here, though. I didn’t grow up with NickToons, so I’m not immune to really terrible looking cartoons that are like sandpaper to my eyeballs.
- Dragon Age is boring. It has really wooden characters that barely evolve, and I felt like the character I played was a cardboard cut-out, and no matter what choice I made I was always forced into a certain role, I didn’t really feel like it was me in the game, but more a one-dimensional automaton I was forced to play as. The characters in Dragon Age were a far cry from those in Mass Effect 2, Alpha Protocol, or even bloody Fallout 3. All I wanted from Dragon Age was strong characters and an interesting narrative, and for me it had neither.
Of course, these are just personal opinions, but hey, people are going to blow a gasket and get in my face about it, with knee-jerkingly defensive responses, because people can’t stand it when someone else has a different opinion.
That’s why I really feel for the bloke.
29/06/2010 at 16:24 Ahnteis says:
>> Oh dear. I was kind of sympathetic until he compared Alpha Protocol favorably with DX…
Yes he did. But remember, he gave Deus Ex a 5/10.
29/06/2010 at 16:27 Omroth says:
No no not at all – everyone’s opinions are valid, of course. It’s just that at the point that he said the thing about AP it became clear that his opinion diverged so strongly from mine that I stopped thinking I would be able to empathise with his point of view.
29/06/2010 at 19:13 ExplosiveCoot says:
I didn’t read that as a particularly favorable comparison to Deus Ex, but I do think he meant it that way. It seems Mr. Chick’s opinion is that it is preferable for games to not “shoot for the stars”, but rather to be as complete and polished as possible – even if that means they aren’t particularly innovative.
I personally would much rather play games that attempt to push the medium forward by trying new/different things with varying degrees of success than play generic_game_001, even if it is highly polished. Even if Alpha Protocol’s shooting and cover mechanics weren’t as polished as, say, Mass Effect 2, it did a better job than any mainstream game I’ve played of building a story that really reacts to everything the player does. If Alpha Protocol’s levels were larger and provided more than one way to approach an objective (per Deus Ex) it would be a fine spiritual successor.
29/06/2010 at 23:44 whalleywhat says:
I’d say Deus Ex’s levels are similarly confined to boxes or arenas as Alpha Protocol’s, they’re just much, much less linear. It’s misguiding to think that you’re actually in Paris or wherever, it’s just a strange little unworldly area with clearly defined boundaries that shares no similarities to Paris other than a name. I can see how judging it by that criteria would lead to seeing it as woefully deficient.
Otherwise, Deus Ex is the perfect example of a game where there are many glaring flaws, but the overall experience is more than the sum of its parts. I respect Mr. Chick’s opinion, and enjoy his writing, but this strikes me as more of a case of the “consumer reports” review listing pros and cons and missing the forest for the trees. Of course, I probably just have to accept that the game didn’t resonate with him the same way it did with me.
01/07/2010 at 17:00 Jason Moyer says:
I think Alpha Protocol’s missions tend to be more linear in a “go from point A to point B to point C” sense, but in terms of execution they’re anything but. Most missions have multiple ways of completing them, and while it wasn’t as big of a factor as I expected, your interactions with different characters as well as the order you complete the missions change the nature of several of the missions. I played through Alpha Protocol 5 times before browsing its wikia page, and I was stunned by some of the fairly major plot and mission aspects I hadn’t experienced, despite trying to take a different approach each time.
29/06/2010 at 11:12 AndrewC says:
Oooooo. The answer to the 8/10 MGS4 review and the death threats: this stuff needs to get said lots’n'lots’n'lots.
Shame I can’t read that Deus Ex review though now.
29/06/2010 at 11:21 Griddle Octopus says:
Yes; there’s a weird mix out there of the dictatorial nature of MY opinion as something unchallengeable balanced against YOUR opinion being utterly wrong and not even worthy of consideration.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t that big a fan of Deus Ex either – loved the first level, but was hugely disappointed at the way it faked so many mechanics (stunning was the same as killing, stealth was rubbish, choices didn’t really lead to different paths but just a forced action further down the line, etc.) Much preferred Ultima Underworld II and System Shock, even as much older games.
29/06/2010 at 11:31 jeremypeel says:
Hear hear!
Fanboy rage has never, in my experience, included articulate or interesting discussion. RPS Xcom and Deus Ex comments excluded, of course…
29/06/2010 at 12:09 Huggster says:
Underworld oozed atmosphere – I feel less memorable atmo from Deux Ex looking back.
29/06/2010 at 21:16 Tarqon says:
Link to the review, in case you missed it: http://web.archive.org/web/20010805234600/gamesdomain.co.uk/gdreview/zones/reviews/pc/jun00/deusex.html
29/06/2010 at 11:12 Brumisator says:
Did he just praise consoles? *gasp* He must be an evil person whose opinions are wrong.
I must say I never even heard about this review debacle. But in the end, yes it is a terrible thing that the 1-10 scale has been forgotten.
29/06/2010 at 12:31 Clovis says:
I took that line as, “We don’t have to worry about developer’s really taxing our computers anymore since they’ve got to get the games to work on consoles.”
29/06/2010 at 12:57 The Sombrero Kid says:
yeah, he doesn’t know much about optimisation either as the poorly optimised engine was born in the era of cross compatibility, what he’s actually saying is it doesn’t matter that games are so much more poorly optimised these days as they’re ambition has been thoroughly raped by the onset of console ubiquity.
Also Deus Ex ran fine on my PC and i didn’t even have a 3D Accelerator that worked properly (Diamond Monster Voodoo 1)
29/06/2010 at 15:43 DrGonzo says:
Yeah I really didn’t understand that point. I played it when it was released on a piece of crap computer and it worked smoothly. He makes several points I don’t understand. I didn’t realise the 1-10 system HAD been abandoned.
29/06/2010 at 11:13 Kast says:
29/06/2010 at 11:13 Kast says:
Dammit, blockquote fail. Never mind.
29/06/2010 at 11:17 Sobric says:
Does Chick’s review really not exist anywhere? I’d quite like to read it.
Someone must have it pinned to a wall in their Temple of Hate right?
29/06/2010 at 11:19 Omroth says:
Also, I’m *sure* that one of the big US games magazines (possibly even PCG US, but maybe GI or something) had a luke-warm DX review. Anyone else remember that?
29/06/2010 at 15:31 John says:
From memory Gamespot gave Deus Ex 8/10, marking it down for poor graphics and because the reviewer felt the world was too contrived. Similar to one of Tom Chick’s criticisms there. I always felt that was an odd criticism because Deus Ex’s world is obviously more detailed than most. But I suppose when you try to do something difficult and people feel like you haven’t quite succeeded, they judge you harder than the games with floating health packs, which don’t try to be ‘realistic’.
I almost didn’t buy the game based on that Gamespot review (8/10 being quite low for them). Fortunately I read a magazine review shortly after that gave it 98%.
29/06/2010 at 11:21 WTF says:
Quote: “That was before console systems came along and saved us all from poorly optimized engines.”
Say what now? Posting comments like that does not do him any favours when people accuse him of being a bit clueless…
29/06/2010 at 11:37 Phoshi says:
I think that was at least half joking. Performance issues can be pretty bad, though they’re certainly much better than they used to be.
29/06/2010 at 11:38 D says:
Certainly sounded like sarcasm to me.
29/06/2010 at 11:52 Crush says:
Half joking I think, PC exclusives had a tendency to run very badly even some recent titles kept up the trend (Stalker, Crysis) as the attitude was let the consumer throw more processing power at the problem rather than optimize it on our end.
Game consoles force optimization and even Valve admitted it to improving some of their work when they did a GDC presentation on the Orange Box.
Of course there is a flip side where a game is too optimized for a game console with little work done for the PC version and it runs like a dog e.g GTA4.
29/06/2010 at 13:13 Baboonanza says:
Quote: “That was before console systems came along and saved us all from poorly optimized engines.”
He’d better be half-joking: Deus Ex was released for PS2, so it’s not even a correct statement.
But given he almost certainly reads RPS I’m pretty certain he’s joking. He knows what the reaction will be here :)
29/06/2010 at 13:15 Alexander Norris says:
Crysis, a PC-exclusive, runs like shit even on high-end hardware that was manufactured a year after the game’s release. By contrast, something like Dead Space looks as good if not better than Crysis on anything lower than ultra and runs way, way better than Crysis.
So yes, we have the console generation to thank for pretty engines that run well on dated hardware. Don’t confuse engine optimisation with port quality. It’s entirely possible to have an optimised engine that goes through a shitty port and ends up running really badly on PC.
29/06/2010 at 13:22 Jim Rossignol says:
Crysis runs fine on my PC, and it’d ooold.
29/06/2010 at 13:40 Bhazor says:
Alexander Norris believes what he reads on the Internet.
Alexander Norris believes a lot of things.
29/06/2010 at 14:17 WTF says:
Quote:”Crysis runs fine on my PC, and it’d ooold.”
More importantly Crysis ran fine on my computer on launch day and it was no behemoth.
The “PC engines are un-optimised – just look at Crysis!!” crowd are just bloody ignorant and that is why I flagged up Tom’s statement about consoles in the first place. PC engines are far better than their console counterparts in almost every respect – the issue is that the average PC owner is just clueless and prone to blaming the game’s manufacturer rather then realising that their PC is badly configured / isn’t updated / is full of cruft and spyware / is a crumbling and aged piece of crap.
29/06/2010 at 15:31 Muzman says:
Yes, don’t believe the hype (or is that believe the hype?). Crysis is a lovely scalable engine that runs great on a middle of the road machine. Needing a god box to turn it all the way up to 11 doesn’t matter at all.
29/06/2010 at 15:34 Navagon says:
@ Alexander Norris
Dead Space featured very small cramped environments and very, very little in the way of detailed textures. It also wasn’t so smooth running, which was pretty evident whenever you tried to aim at something.
Crysis I’ve never had a problem running. Apart from the fact that the intro movies in the pre-release demo ran at 1 frame a second on my oooold rig. But the game itself ran smooth as silk on lower settings even then. The bitching about Crysis purely concerns people who expected to be able to max it out on release and people expecting to be able to run it on their graphics card-less laptop/budget prebuilt system. Simply just running the game on a moderate system has never been a problem.
29/06/2010 at 15:49 DrGonzo says:
I see lots of people complain that Crysis doesn’t work on their pc. Well I bought my system before it came out and it ran it fine. What I think they are saying is, I want to be able to turn the settings to maximum and I can’t.
Honestly, my flatmate played Crysis through on a single-core processor with an old Radeon x800. It didn’t look too pretty but it ran at 60 frames per second.
29/06/2010 at 16:08 NateN says:
@Navagon – There WERE a few odd bugs if you overstepped your graphics capabilities however, which could have resulted in some of the venting. The game ran fine on my computer with an occasional hiccup at fairly high settings, but I had to crank the settings way down to get around the “can’t lock on” bug in the finale. (There were other bugs I’m sure, but THAT bug in particular was very memorable to me!)
29/06/2010 at 19:45 Nick says:
“they’re certainly much better than they used to be”
The incorrect words of someone who wasn’t there?
29/06/2010 at 19:47 Nick says:
“Crysis, a PC-exclusive, runs like shit even on high-end hardware that was manufactured a year after the game’s release”
And this is just flat out wrong, it was/is and always has been very scaleable, it ran on medium settings on my PC on release and my PC was a good few years old.
29/06/2010 at 19:55 Tei says:
“Crysis, a PC-exclusive”
A exclusive is wen the owner of a platform pay the creator of a game to limit the game to his platform. Who is the owner of the PC platform? the creator… IBM? Has IBM paid the devs of Crysis so Crysis will only run on PC and will never be a XBox version?
This is new to me.
29/06/2010 at 20:29 Jim Rossignol says:
@tei: No, it has come to mean that in the parlance of gamers, but that is not its basic original meaning. Exclusive used in a literal sense just means it exists only on one platform, which is as true of Crysis as it is of Gratuitous Space Battles.
30/06/2010 at 13:19 Alexander Norris says:
Crysis does not run well on my significantly-more-modern-than-Crysis computer.
Obviously, just as you assume that because it runs well on yours it must run well on everyone’s, it has to run like shit on everyone’s computer because it doesn’t run well on mine, right? Except that if a game engine fails to run well on hardware that is significantly more modern than it (a bit more than a year is aeons in computer hardware age), it’s unoptimised. Doesn’t matter how few or how many hardware combinations it doesn’t run properly on; if it’s unoptimised on a hardware configuration, it is unoptimised – and I’m far from the only person with a gaming-quality desktop built with hardware that came out either around the same time as Crysis or quite a few months later and which can’t run Crysis at a playable level on anything above Medium at DX9 when games that came out after Crysis and look about as good run fine.
I can run Resident Evil 5 (which runs on MT Framework, an engine built with console hardware in mind, and a game released some time after Crysis) with everything turned up to the maximum and it’s silky smooth. Ditto with UE3 games (again, they run on an engine that was designed with console hardware in mind), or something like GRID/DIRT 2, or Burnout Paradise – all of them were released either concurrently with or after Crysis, all of them were made with console hardware in mind, and all of them run much better and look much nicer than Crysis at any playable setting you could run on any given hardware.
So yes, the rise of consoles and console-to-PC ports has resulted in new engines being optimised to make the best use of console hardware and consequently running well and looking pretty on PCs with hardware that is outdated by the time the games are released.
29/06/2010 at 11:22 Sagan says:
I totally understand him. Sometimes I really don’t like a very popular game. Or sometimes I just think that a game is merely OK. Like World of Warcraft. Or Half Life 2. If I were a reviewer and if I were to review one of those games on a 1-10 scale, I would have gotten death threats, too.
After all, you can’t like all games. I mean look at the HL2: Episode 2 stats. A fifth of the people who bought it played it for less than an hour. So a lot of people really don’t like HL2: Episode 2, except it was considered one of Valve’s finest title. If one of those 20% of players had been a reviewer and had reviewed it on a 1-10 scale, that would have been a disaster.
29/06/2010 at 11:36 Mman says:
Without further information that’s a major leap to make with that data. I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of those people weren’t interested in playing through anyway (not the same as disliking it). Not to mention stuff like people with extremely limited time.
29/06/2010 at 13:26 WTF says:
Yeah, while I do not agree with him, I adored Deus Ex, I do sympathise as I constantly cause controversy with my peers for hating supposedly amazing games (Half LIfe 2, Bioshock, WoW, EVE, Modern Warfare and on and on) and loving things that others hate. Problem is I don’t recall anyone else (who played it at or near release) who though that Deus Ex was anything less than great. I found it hard to understand what he could have seen that we didn’t that led him to dislike it – I find it more likely that he missed the point with Deus and that it was his fault he did not like it.
29/06/2010 at 15:51 DrGonzo says:
My girlfriend is one of those people who bought Episode 2 and hasn’t finished it. It’s not because she doesn’t like it, quite the opposite in fact. She just isn’t a gamer and it takes her a VERY long while to get round to playing things, let alone finishing them.
29/06/2010 at 17:28 warsarge says:
The average session time is not the total play time. Just the time played each time a user sat down. The average total playtime was over 6 hours. As per the stats page:
Average session time (0h 41m)
The average length of time that a player played before quitting. This is calculated by dividing the total number of sessions played by the total recorded play time.
01/07/2010 at 09:34 jsdn says:
No, look at the total play time graph. 100% of people played at least 0 hours. 81% of people played at least a half hour. Therefore roughly 20% of people didn’t play longer than a half hour, and therefore “A fifth of the people who bought it played it for less than an hour,” is true.
03/07/2010 at 14:32 James T says:
Isn’t it largely considered their least impressive title? (I’d put Left 4 Dead below it, but that’s just me.) It didn’t help that it was packaged with two runaway super-hits, but I recall it getting the least enthusiastic reviews and feedback for a Valve game I’ve seen (I certainly thought it was much too padded-out, and I didn’t enjoy the fight arenas much).
29/06/2010 at 11:25 Alexander Norris says:
Man? Man?!
Tom Chick is no man. He can’t be. He doesn’t like Deus Ex.
29/06/2010 at 11:38 Alexander Norris says:
I should probably qualify that this is humorous, and I don’t think negatively reviewing Deus Ex impacts negatively on Tom Chick’s quality as a human being (or for that matter, strips him of the right to be a games journo). Since it seems the next 15,000 replies are going to be “omg tom chick suxx0rz”…
29/06/2010 at 13:03 Zaphid says:
He’s no man, he’s a Chick (really bad pun)
29/06/2010 at 15:14 Davian says:
Nah, that pun was at least 7.5/10.
29/06/2010 at 11:25 Wildeheart says:
If you can’t spot what an amazing game Deus Ex is then your opinion as a games reviewer should be called into question. If someone’s an art critic and tells you they don’t think Da Vinci was much of a painter would you really value their opinion on other works of art?
Personally I think Tom seems a little bit too happy to ride the controversy of his review in the mistaken belief that he’s “keeping it real”. In actual fact it just damages his career by making it seem like he can’t tell a good game from a bad one – kind of an essential skill if you want to be a games journalist.
29/06/2010 at 11:39 Phoshi says:
So if somebody’s opinion doesn’t conform it should be ignored? For all the parts of Deus Ex that are bloody fantastic, it’s not flawless, and different people have different tastes, whether it’s about art, movies, books, or video games. Some people like Romance novels, but I don’t discount their opinions about books in decent genres because of it.
29/06/2010 at 11:46 Skurmedel says:
Yes you would. Reviews are opinions. Opinions are subjective. As long as he has played the game in a fair manner (e.g not reviewed Crysis on a 486 and with a open mind) and presented his opinions in a sensible manner, you can’t really complain.
Also, I’m sure you can find people which agree with his review, much like you can find people who are not very fond of Da Vinci.
29/06/2010 at 11:52 ReV_VAdAUL says:
So basically what you’re saying is:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-who-enjoys-thing-informed-he-is-wrong,7057/
29/06/2010 at 14:25 Pinky Floyd says:
I’ve been playing games for ooohhhh 30 years. I tried DX first time around, didn’t click with me at all.
Tried it again a few years ago, clicked even less.
Not all games are for everyone, and that includes reviewers. An individual opinion is just that, individual. Assimilation into the majority view is bad because then we never see the other side of the story, no matter how few people share that point of view. All views are important to helping create an informed opinion.
Amazingly, it’s actually ok to not like DX.
29/06/2010 at 15:52 Mike Russo says:
Funnily enough, my friends who know from art inform me that Da Vinci actually wasn’t that good of a painter, and the whole Mona Lisa exaltation provokes mixed amusement and annoyance.
29/06/2010 at 15:55 skyydragonn says:
Truthfully At the time I didn’t think about it much, but looking back on things I recall the game having issues with random framerate drops, and lots of minor things that annoyed me throughout the game. The only reason I played the game through to completion was that the avialable options (nano tech etc) kept my interest.
Mind you he PC i played it on was owned by a buddy of mine who was taking his 4yr Comp Sci degree at the time and knew his stuff when it came to PCs. So poor optimization on the users end wasn’t an issue. and anyone that played other games that ran on that version of the unreal engine can not similar issues on other titles as well.
I really do have to agree with his opinion on the 1-10 scale should be 1-10 not 7-9, which a lot of sites seem counter to. (rare to see a big name publishers title rated below a 7)
29/06/2010 at 19:02 bob_d says:
Everyone keeps talking about the reviewer’s “opinions” as if that was the basis for a *professional* review. A professional review *should* be based on a lot more than just personal taste, because if that’s all it is, then the only way a review can be useful is if your taste and the reviewer’s taste are exactly the same (and you’d only find that out through trial and error, looking at large quantities of reviews). This means that, in theory, a reviewer should be able to recognize the worth of a game and grant it a high score *even though they didn’t personally care for it.* They should be able to describe and analyze a game such that if your taste and theirs differ, you could determine whether or not *you’d* like the game.
I’ve not read any of Tom Chick’s reviews, so I can’t say if he does this, but one can’t justify a reviewer’s score simply by saying that it’s “his opinion.” I do, however, take issue with the idea that a game should be penalized for failing to live up to its own, lofty, ambitions. That’s essentially the same as saying that you should reward a game if it “succeeds” in being terrible, assuming that’s where the game’s ambition’s lay. All that attitude does is reward mediocrity and punish games that are groundbreaking, as they’re more likely to fail to live up to their ambitions. Granted, there are highly ambitious games that fail to even be mediocre, but most ambitious failures are still more interesting than games that only tried to be middling.
30/06/2010 at 00:44 malkav11 says:
I agree that a critic should be able to describe and analyze their subject in a way that allows you to draw some conclusions based on your own taste. I think Tom Chick is more than capable of doing so. But that’s where their responsibility to the reader ends. There is certainly no call to assign some rating to the subject that does not reflect their personal experience of it. One might as well call for a reviewer to review a work based on how they think the general public, or perhaps their captive audience, would enjoy it. (As, indeed, some have.)
29/06/2010 at 11:26 7 Seas says:
Man, I may disagree with him about Deus Ex. I mean sure it was a buggy mess, but I value amibition and novelty in the pursuit of the badass above refinement in games.
However, his articles on AP and ME2 are nails on the head.
11 Ways Alpha Protocol is Better than Mass Effect 2
http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/06/11_ways_alpha_protocol_is_bett.php
Ten things gone terribly wrong in Mass Effect 2
http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/01/ten_things_gone_terribly_wrong.php
I’d never really followed him before this, but now I will definitely. Thanks RPS!
Your 75 part retrospective on a buggy as shit ambitious game, while simultaneously dismissing a modern much less problematic ambitious game has at least lead to that.
29/06/2010 at 12:25 The Dark One says:
Regarding the ME2 bit- he came off as condescending, uninterested and somehow ignorant, despite all the nitpicky details brought, of what was going on in the game.
29/06/2010 at 17:42 Shagittarius says:
I’m going to agree with Tom on ME and ME2 and disagree with him on DX. I never saw what people like so much about ME. It put me off gaming for 2 weeks, I couldn’t bring myself to play something else while I was playing it, so instead I never played any games. Eventually I managed to shelve ME and forget all about it and continue gaming.
ME is one of those games like DX that has a rabbid fan base and you will get crucified for disagreeing on a public forum.
DX surely had issues but for what it provided at that point in time I remember it being quite immersive. I think I also remember that it played best on Voodoo hardware, most of the complaints about framerates were from ATI board owners.
Certainly he’s entitled to his opinions as we all are, lets try not to get upset that he has a bigger soap box than the rest of us.
03/07/2010 at 14:41 James T says:
What game are you talking about? I don’t know where they’re finding the space to write a squillion-part retrospective on some “buggy-as-shit ambitious game” when they’re already dedicating so much space to the laudably non-buggy Deus Ex.
29/06/2010 at 11:26 Chad Warden says:
Oh boy, here we go
29/06/2010 at 11:31 Colthor says:
“If only you could shoot at the monsters!”
29/06/2010 at 11:32 Lewis says:
Stop the thread! It’s been won.
29/06/2010 at 11:39 Alexander Norris says:
This is miles above my quip. I am now jealous. :(
29/06/2010 at 13:02 The Sombrero Kid says:
That should read “if only you HAD TO shoot at the monsters” as you’re perfectly free to shoot at the monsters.
29/06/2010 at 11:39 Jim Rossignol says:
Fucking greasels.
29/06/2010 at 11:40 jeremypeel says:
I’m not sure it’s fair to claim Chick can’t tell a good game from a bad one. This interview is really interesting, as he’s clearly not some old hack who dismissed a great game out of ignorance, but a man of serious intellect who cares deeply about the progression of games.
Very wrong he may have been, but as he’s pretty much articulated in the interview, he was wrong in a measured, thoughtful way and deserves to be treated in kind rather than subjected to AIM assaults.
29/06/2010 at 15:20 Fraser says:
My opinion of Tom’s opinion has risen steadily up since I started listening to Three Moves Ahead, the strategy gaming podcast he does with a couple of other guys. He does seem to enjoy taking up unpopular positions, but he’s rarely short on reasonable evidence for his arguments, and he never pushes his opinion as the One True Fact. And he doesn’t take it too seriously. That attitude comes across a lot more clearly in conversation than in text.
29/06/2010 at 19:26 ExplosiveCoot says:
If you like Tom Chick’s writing, check out these very entertaining (if a bit dated, now) “Shoot Club” stories:
http://www.quartertothree.com/columns/shoot_club/shoot_club_archives.shtml
06/07/2010 at 23:48 Boldoran says:
I may not agree with his review style but his writting is good and those “shoot club” stories were the funniest thing I read all week.
29/06/2010 at 11:46 godwin says:
Wow are you guys all missing the point.
29/06/2010 at 11:47 godwin says:
“For instance, if I hear that someone doesn’t like Casablanca or Jaws or Moon, I want to know *why* he didn’t like it. Those are interesting conversations and at their best, we each learn something, even if it’s just about each other. But unfortunately, those are conversations missing in the internet videogame culture. People tend to judge opinions based not on their insight, but on whether they agree with that opinion. A good review isn’t a good review. It’s a review you agree with.”
There.
29/06/2010 at 11:57 Dominic White says:
That needs to be repeated again and again and again. It’s something horrifically wrong with the nature of discussion on the internet – you’re either right or wrong (depending on whether the mob are in your favour or not). There is no personal opinion involved.
People don’t say ‘I don’t like this game’. They say ‘This game is objectively terrible and if you think you enjoyed it you’re deluding yourself’. There’s no chance for dialogue, because people automatically assume the most adversarial possible stance before any dialogue can happen.
See this piece from The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-who-enjoys-thing-informed-he-is-wrong,7057/
29/06/2010 at 12:39 Clovis says:
This reminds me of the standard “Vanilla Oblivion is UNPLAYABLE” that always gets stated when Elder Scrolls comes up. I played Oblivion with no mods and really enjoyed it. I don’t know why someone has to approach it from a, “This is not my opinion, it is fact,” angle.
29/06/2010 at 13:06 The Sombrero Kid says:
The point is he fails to convey his opinion the only thing he mentions is that He feels Alpha Protocol was a better game because it’s ambition was more limited (which betrays his lack of knowledge).
29/06/2010 at 16:27 Jeremy says:
Clovis, you fool. Why would you say “Elder Scrolls” on these hallowed grounds, we can only hope the trolls don’t see those words…
30/06/2010 at 02:12 Stephen says:
@Clovis
Oh, I think I know that one. No one really cares about other people’s opinions except their friends and family and the problem with discussing things on the internet is that practically no one is your friend or your family. Strangers just don’t care what you think so it’s important, for your own self esteem, to present your opinion as something more objective and solid than just your gut feeling. It’s the same reason that people call what they personally think “common sense” even though what your common sense says might differ diametrically from mine.
The best (only?) response to a stranger who is frothing mouthed angrily disagreeing with your opinion about something is “OK”, You know – Them: “I don’t like nationalised health care,” You: “OK”. Neither of you is right because that’s not how opinions work but there’s nothing you can say in return either (apart from “well, I do like it”).
Even then, ironically, even this is just my opinion.
29/06/2010 at 11:47 Tei says:
I can imagine a fictional reviewer that would score Peggle as 10/10, and all other games (*all*) as 1/10.
I can imagine the reviews of the next version of Halo on “XBox360 Official Magazine” to be 10/10, even if the game has flaws and is not much fun.
What I am not going, is to agree with these people and his motives.
So I HERD U LIEK MONSTER TURK GAEMZ?
I rest my case here :-)
note: Interesting interview, this dude seems to have a interesting mind, like a knife.
29/06/2010 at 11:47 Sardaukar says:
What a shame.
29/06/2010 at 11:50 Cerebrium says:
Because that reaction is clearly not exactly what he was decrying in the entire interview. People have different tastes. There’s no such thing as objective brilliance, it’s a personal thing.
29/06/2010 at 11:53 Anthony says:
Having read Tom’s words on Mass Effect 2, I can’t say I disagree with the man.
Though I think I get where his critical style comes from, and it doesn’t really work for me. When I’m playing a game, “Am I enjoying myself?” is the question I ask. If the answer is yes, then being genre-defying, ambitious-but-rubbish, hyper-streamlined or whatever doesn’t matter quite as much.
Taking ME2, I get that it’s not really a classical RPG but more a Role Playing Cover Shooter with Conversations. I get that it’s stripped to the bone and rebuilt as something almost entirely different from the first one. But did I fucking ever enjoy the ride, which means for me it rates high.
Same sort of thing with GTAIV. It was GTA but not as we know it, and a lot of people hated it simply because the mental had almost completely vanished. But I loved it because Niko was such an awesome protagonist and the characters were generally excellent.
Deus Ex did so many outright crazy things for the time and got most of them workably right. Did I enjoy it despite the relentless parade of conspiracy tropes, bad shooting mechanics and fairly underwhelming AI? Absolutely. I’m not going to sit there and say “but it should be so much more!” when what I’ve got is something entirely unique that I’m enjoying as it is.
29/06/2010 at 13:32 Geoff says:
I agree Anthony, a gaming experience is not always about polish. Deus Ex captured my imagination whilst playing it and I really felt involved in a global conspiracy, and if that is the objective, they hit the nail on the head even if certain things could be better technically.
29/06/2010 at 11:58 Carra says:
Ah yes, review scores. Where 90% of all games get a 60-95% rating. And where getting a 15% is pretty much the same as getting a 55%.
29/06/2010 at 11:59 Heliocentric says:
I need to state that i don’t agree with chick’s opinion on things fairly often but this doesn’t mean he doesn’t make valid observations nearly all the time.
What can i say, i’ve graduated beyond the platform wars mentality to a world with more than 2 opinions (mine and wrong). Still, deus ex is still exciting to me for what it signposts for the future, just like vampire the masqurade bloodlines did. And then i spend most of time i’m playing bioshock or halflife 2 (not 1) practically in autopilot because all “hard” mode does is make the enemies bullet sponges.
So yes, i’ll take deus ex’s janky combat and terrible stealth because it actually has a world where not everyone is your friend or enemy to the death and you can explore a world while shaping it, but stalker wins this one for me less shaping but more exploring mind.
29/06/2010 at 12:01 Dominic White says:
He’s not talking about factual errors, though. If someone does say something that is clearly, objectively incorrect, they can be called out fairly on it. It’s misinformation and a breach of trust if it’s a printed review.
But a lot of anyones thoughts on a game are going to be entirely subjective. I personally thought Deus Ex was a lot of fun, but by no means the best game ever made. It has huge, gaping flaws that are visible for all to see. It looked pretty ropey even when it first came out. The voicework is terrible. Some aspects of the narrative are clumsy (having the big ‘here is out evil plan laid out in full’ intro there was a mistake, I think), and the gunplay was really weak until you levelled up a bunch.
It was far more than the sum of its parts, which is good, as some of those parts were crap.
29/06/2010 at 12:06 Sobric says:
“It’s also important to always consider the possibility that your opinion is plain wrong”
*Head explodes*
29/06/2010 at 12:06 Ginger Yellow says:
Having missed the boat on Deus Ex when it came out – I tried the demo and it didn’t do all that much for me – I’m kind of surprised this is the apostasy Tom Chick’s famous for. I mean, intelligent, informed contrarianism is a large part of his appeal and it’s hard to think of a major game in the last couple of years where he hasn’t gone against the grain.
Also, monster truck racing games rule. Come on, surely you guys remember Ivan “Iron Man” Stewart’s Super Off Road? Monster Trucks Nitro is pretty cool too.
29/06/2010 at 12:08 Sobric says:
Added to this, Yahtzee is hugely popular precisely because he does funny, intelligent, informed contrarianism.
29/06/2010 at 12:22 Kazang says:
Also hilarious and deliberately ignorant statements ;)
Yahtzee is great but I don’t consider his reviews to be serious in the way that you would base a purchase off it.
29/06/2010 at 12:30 Sobric says:
Very true! It’s also a lot less funny than it was, but that’s a whole new kettle of pirhanas.
29/06/2010 at 17:46 Shagittarius says:
I would base a purchase on Yahtzee’s reviews. Most of the time he has the same feelings about a game that I do. If I had written off a game and Yahtzee gave a glowing review about it I would certainly reconsider.
29/06/2010 at 20:25 LionsPhil says:
Hell, I do, and have—Zack & Wiki was entirely worth it and I’d never have touched something so Wii and Japanese otherwise.
This is the thing with Yahtzee—his style might be of the brash variety, but he doesn’t fall into the trap of “I am a grr critical reviewer so I must BEND REALITY SO THAT I MUST HATE EVERYTHING!”. If a game has a good aspect, he’ll pick up on it. Or even an aspect that he thinks will align with what he thinks a certain genre of players like even if he’s not in that set himself.
Yahtzee is a very good reviewer hiding behind a comedy programme.
30/06/2010 at 01:07 malkav11 says:
I dunno. I haven’t kept up with Zero Punctuation in a while, but my impression from early days has been that while Yahtzee will certainly grudgingly acknowledge games he himself actually enjoyed or the occasional good point about others, the set of games that he actually enjoys is very small.
30/06/2010 at 07:43 Psychopomp says:
The blatant missing the point, (When you do nothing but missions that are there solely *to grind in the off chance you need resources,* of course the game is going to be all grinding) misinformation, and flat out being wrong in the Monster Hunter Tri review left a bad taste in my mouth; but, Yahtzee isn’t contrarian, he’s honest. He just accentuates the negative.
29/06/2010 at 12:13 Winged Nazgul says:
I must be in the minority that’s more angered by publishers pulling pieces of opinion when they go against the grain of the majority. I’m always interested in an opinion, right, wrong, or indifferent. But I always reserve the right to a final evaluation based on personal play. Because nobody knows more about what I enjoy or don’t enjoy more than myself.
29/06/2010 at 12:19 Kazang says:
The games review industry does need more people who will speak their mind about a games negative points and focus on why they are negatives.
He also supports scoreless reviews which is cool. Hype and going with the flow is becoming even more a problem which is odd, seeing as the nature of the internet should encourage a wealth of a opinions not just one. Print media has got more homogenized as well, PCZONE once the stalwart honest bloke of UK gaming media where a score of 50 did mean average, has gone downhill a lot over the past few years. PCGamer is not much better either.
*shrug*
29/06/2010 at 20:33 Wulf says:
Couldn’t agree more.
In all the UK PC rags I read, be it Gamer, Zone, or a lesser known that I happen to pick up, there’s far too much of that mentality. “Hey, this game has a huge amount of money sunk into its advertising, so it will therefore be popular because advertising companies are experts at tapdancing on the edge of the collective will of the moronic. So, since I know the Populism Wave will rip me apart if I don’t, I’m going to score this game based upon its advertising, rather than any particular merits.”
I mean, I’ve read reviews where the reviewer has made it quite clear that the game is not fantastic, and by the end of the review, due to how unimpressed the reviewer is, I expect to see something in the range of 50-60%, but instead my eyes lay upon a score of 85-100%, and I’m genuinely shocked. I think reviewers are terrified these days of scoring things low because of the possible backlash. And look at what happened to Quinns review of that Age of Conan expansion pack as just one example.
Interestingly, games which have much smaller fan-bases and no real advertising budget are scored down compared to mainstream titles, this happens with indie titles as well. They frequently try to buffer this with ‘I was expecting the usual indie pap’ or similar, but then they go on to give a more glowing review than any other game in the magazine, and the score will end up somewhere between 65-80%, whilst it’s clear that the number does not mesh with the review.
And that’s the thing, the number never does.
That’s one of the reasons why reviews are going downhill these days, they should remove the score all together and stop playing into the hands of what’s popular and what has a large advertising budget. It’s getting to the point where I completely ignore reviews and I just trawl over message boards to find a sample of opinions to see what a game is like instead.
Sadly, it’s not just print ‘zines that do this, either, since Eurogamer is just as bad, and they’ll pull reviews which are too harsh.
So the best way to find out what a game is like, these days, is just to ignore the reviews and listen to whatever words of wisdom people who aren’t journalists have to share.
29/06/2010 at 12:21 ChaosSmurf says:
That was incredibly interesting and excellent.
But if he gives StarCraft II a bad review I’ll fucking kill him.
29/06/2010 at 12:25 Wildeheart says:
Seems like no matter how well you mark it people just love to grab the wrong end of the stick. The point that I was making is that Deus Ex being worth far more than 3 out of 10 isn’t an opinion, it’s fact.
Saying he didn’t personally like it is one thing. Saying that a game that even he had to recognise introduced so many features and techniques, it nigh on created its own genre for Christ’s sake!
To go back to the Da Vinci metaphor, if you tell me you don’t like the Mona Lisa then fine, that’s your opinion. If you tell me Da Vinci can’t paint then you’re quite clearly talking absolute guff. Tom Chick seems to be firmly in the latter category and if I can’t trust him to even speak the truth about facts then how can I trust his opinions either?
29/06/2010 at 12:34 The Hammer says:
Um, no. Any measure of worth of any kind is based firmly in opinion – NOT fact.
29/06/2010 at 12:39 Wildeheart says:
@Hammer Actually that isn’t true at all. If I review a car and say it costs £25,000 when in actual fact it costs £50,000 then it’s not opinion purely because it’s in a review, it’s an incorrect fact. If I also say I didn’t like the car then that’s an opinion. Simply wrapping any old rubbish in the guise of a review doesn’t mean you can just go forth and say whatever you like whether it’s true or not and then fall back later on “but it’s just an opinion!”.
Example:
The Planet Earth – A Review
Earth is a small planet, less than a metre across, its atmosphere is mostly argon and it is an upopulated planet devoid of any lifeforms.
Now is all the above okay for me to say simply because it’s a “review” or does that actually not change one bit the fact it was complete bull?
29/06/2010 at 12:42 AndrewC says:
I’m confused. In this review, did Tom Chick suggest Deus Ex was a racing game? Or a pomegranate?
29/06/2010 at 12:44 Sobric says:
@ Wildeheart
Hammer’s point is that a review score is subjective, unlike the size of the earth or the price of a car.
29/06/2010 at 12:48 Helm says:
“The point that I was making is that Deus Ex being worth far more than 3 out of 10 isn’t an opinion, it’s fact.”
The only fact of life pertinent here is that opinion is never fact even if its based on agreed-upon presuppositions. Human perception is an unreliable organon through which to observe a thing and then call those observations definitive. So much internet miscommunication and anger could have been avoided if a lot of the ‘objective hard-facts’ proponents had studied a primer in epistemology.
29/06/2010 at 12:49 Wildeheart says:
I give up. Enjoy Tom Chick’s reviews and your subsequent ill-informed game purchases. I’ll go listen to some critics who at least try to give me the impression they know what they’re talking about.
If you want to listen to Tom Chick’s views and miss out the next Deus Ex while your busy with your pre-release copy of Monster Truck Extreme Nitro Idiot Edition then go for it, I’m sure you’ll be very happy with your “opinions” and your choice of game.
29/06/2010 at 12:53 Lilliput King says:
Dunno how people are struggling with this. ‘Opinion’ covers the value judgements used in a review, like “the voice acting is pants.” Chick is saying “Deus Ex is pants,” not “Deus Ex is a small country in eastern Asia.” This is because while being a small country in eastern Asia is verifiable with sense experience, being pants (except in the literal sense, natch) is not. You’ve no objective standard of ‘goodness’ to hold it up to that isn’t tainted by the same problem.
I think English schools teach the distinction between opinion and fact at age 10.
29/06/2010 at 12:53 Clovis says:
You keep acting like we all love Tom Chick. I don’t see that in these comments at all. Many of us just disagree with you.
29/06/2010 at 12:54 Daniel Rivas says:
I’d say Deus Ex isn’t really very good, technically speaking. It looked dated at the time, ran very poorly, the shooting was bad until levelled correctly, the dialogue and VO were worse… To use your analogy, some very poor brushwork in spots.
You really do have to look past a lot to love Deus Ex – which isn’t to say it’s not worth loving.
29/06/2010 at 12:54 AndrewC says:
Thanks!
29/06/2010 at 12:56 Helm says:
“with me or against me” is going to be a vantage in life that’ll cause you problems. I know life advice from strangers on the internet is near-worthless but if you’re willing to suspend disbelief for a second and entertain the notion that I do not say this to ‘burn’ you online but just out of good will, it might be a positive thing.
I don’t often agree with Tom Chick and I rarely agree with any reviewer either. I make my purchases after reading all sorts of reviews by all sorts of people, play a demo or watch a gameplay video online. But all that is besides the point. The point is, your opinion is not the right opinion because this or that fact supports it. Your opinion is a value judgment and as such always subjective and open to discussion. Discussion is good because people get to know one another as individuals through it. They realize they’re not as different as they thought even if they have different opinions.
At least, that’s what happens until someone flips out and draws a line in the sand and says whomever disagrees, go over there. That’s pretty dehumanizing.
29/06/2010 at 13:09 The Hammer says:
@Wildeheart: You are a silly person and while I won’t go all self-indulgent about what I like and don’t like, I will tell you that your assumptions are entirely untrue.
29/06/2010 at 16:38 karthik says:
“In actual fact it just damages his career by making it seem like he can’t tell a good game from a bad one”
Games are not objectively good or bad. That’s kind of the point.
30/06/2010 at 00:04 Hidden_7 says:
I think I’ve spotted the problem here! (Gosh, I’m presumptuous)
Quality, especially in entertainment / art is incredibly subjective. That is, without any other qualifiers saying “X game is objectively good/bad” is rather silly. That’s what most people disagreeing with Wildeheart seem to be saying, and that’s true.
However, another true thing is that just because game quality in its most abstract form is entirely subjective doesn’t mean that you can’t hold games up to an objective criteria. I believe Old Man Murrey had an objective scale by which they rated their games which was something like “how long does it take to see a crate,” the longer it took, the higher the game was rated.
Obviously, this is a fairly unhelpful metric (though amusing) but it’s not impossible to create a more useful one. You could make part of the score be derived from how many bugs were in the game, their severity, etc. Now, the more “useful” you try to make your objective criteria, the more subjectivity is going to sneak in there. But the more base you make the judgement, the less controversial the judgements are. Doesn’t mean they aren’t still subjective, but by creating a very large consensus they at least look more objective. E.g. It would be harder to find a disagreement on the statement “Deus Ex had poor voice acting” than one that commented on the overall quality of the game.
To get to my point then, Wildeheart seems to be saying, as far I can tell, that reviews should try to adhere to a more objective and transparent rubric than the one Tom Chick appeared to be using which was “did I like this game or not.” A lot of the rest of you seem to be saying that that’s the only criteria that can or should be used in a game review. Clearly that’s not true though. John Walker I believe wrote a review of The Void, which was a game he was very clear in saying he did not enjoy playing, where he was able to praise parts of it, and it ultimately got a 7/10, which isn’t great, but it’s not terrible, and if the criteria was solely “did I enjoy playing this game” would have been a lot lower.
So, just a disagreement on how reviews should work, not on whether art / games are objectively good or not.
At least I hope so.
30/06/2010 at 03:04 Stephen says:
From where I’m sitting he’s literally saying that it is actually a fact that Deus Ex is better than three out of ten. (Three out of ten what’s? Exactly). It’s not a fact, it’s your opinion.
It’s nothing about it being a review making it an opinion (which I think is a silly thing to say), it’s that whenever you make a value judgement about the quality of something it’s your opinion. You can’t measure “good”.
If you say an factually inaccurate thing in a review it’s factually inaccurate but if you come to the bottom and you ask yourself “how many stars do I think this game is worth” you’re just picking a number (and more and more recently they’ve been picking it out of somewhere dark).
29/06/2010 at 12:27 diebroken says:
Good thing he was only acting when he reviewed Deus Ex. Waiiiiiiit a minute…
29/06/2010 at 12:28 Wrong says:
“now one of the most respected American games journalists currently writing about the medium”
Based on who’s metrics?
Have you read Fidgit recently? It there’s a game that’s getting widespread positive press, Chick will hate it. If there’s a game everyone hates, Chick will love it.
Why?
Controversy = page views. Chick sold out to the God of Analytics years ago, and he’s really not worth reading any more.
29/06/2010 at 12:44 Wildeheart says:
Could not agree with this more. I’ve been trying to make this point in more than one comment on this page but apparently everyone wants to believe that Tom Chick is some hero of the common gamer, sticking it to the man and telling it like it is. His reviews aren’t worth the time it takes to read them and anyone who thinks he’s really got something valid to say and isn’t just using controversy to increase his page views (and his salary) probably thinks the Spice Girls were musical genii and the moon’s really made of cheese.
29/06/2010 at 12:54 Sobric says:
@ Wildeheart
Here’s the thing. I disagree with Tom Chick. I think his nitpicking style is overly critical, and that he goes into games with too many preconceptions. Also, I thought the one-up-manship of the “11 Things…” article on AP vs ME2 was pretty low-brow journalism and point scoring.
However.
These are just his opinions. I do not think he’s sticking it to “the man”. I do not think he’s a hero of the common gamer. In my mind I disagree with him, reject his opinion and move on. I still own ME2 and Deus Ex, and they are still enjoyable games. I am more aware of the game’s fault’s than before, but that has not (in my opinion) reduced my capacity to enjoy the game anymore.
29/06/2010 at 12:34 Sobric says:
Fine, that’s your opinion. You’re opinion is flawed because it’s based on fallacy (or is it? dun dun duur), but it’s still your opinion and opinions cannot be wrong or right, they’re just opinions.
29/06/2010 at 12:36 Jose says:
so… he was saved by the consoles… OK
(…)
Why am I reading this?
29/06/2010 at 12:37 AndrewC says:
@Kobzon: The objective/subjective distinction is lots of fun, and open to all sorts of abuse. For example (and the example made by Tom Chick), many use ‘objective truth’ to mean ‘that which I agree with’. If you find yourself saying ‘anyone who disagrees with this is an idiot’ and can’t detect any irony in your words, you are probably being the idiot. You will certainly be the reason why the thread you are in is turning into a shouting match.
Better to start from a position of assuming all judgements are subjective and, as a result, make sure you concentrate on justifying and explaining your own, not because of the ultimate metaphysically subjective nature of the world, but for the purely pragmatic reasons that threads will stay friendly and everyone will learn a lot more.
29/06/2010 at 12:40 Sobric says:
I’m only shouting to be heard over the giant lizards outside my window.
29/06/2010 at 12:51 The Sombrero Kid says:
a monster truck sim should be considered differently from an immersive sim, but to consider yourself a professional critic of both is like trying to build a career on criticising classic literature and children’s’ serials and when you prefer teenage mutant ninja turtles to war and peace because the turtles met their ridiculously low bar more elegantly, you appear boorish.
29/06/2010 at 13:02 Helm says:
I agree what irritates a lot of people about Tom Chick’s handling of Deus Ex stems from that the game was visionary and he didn’t credit the vision because the implementation was broken, and then goes on to say that a game with little vision and good implementation is a better game on a scale (while hating scales at the same time). That’s a pretty common problem, really .Some people can take the rough edges (and oh by, did Deus Ex have rough edges) to get to the vision. However the game hasn’t aged very well because its vision is commonplace enough nowadays. The whole situation could have been made much simpler if there wasn’t a review score attached to Deus Ex and whatever monster truck game in the same metric, really. I, as someone that values vision highly would score Deus Ex as a 4 our of 10 (4 being implementation and 10 being the bar set by its vision) whereas I’d score a generic monster truck game as a 3/4 or 4/4, whatever. That sort of metric entertains me, although I would probably get death threats for it all the same.
29/06/2010 at 13:17 Mman says:
“However the game hasn’t aged very well because its vision is commonplace enough nowadays.”
I’m wondering where all these games with anything like DX’s vision are.
01/07/2010 at 10:54 jsdn says:
Dystopian future. Cybernetics. Corrupt global police force run by corporations. A rebellion trying to expose a conspiracy.
That “vision” is still fresh for you? Really? You’re so lucky.
03/07/2010 at 15:05 James T says:
Classifying games by their subject matter is valid! I love Call of Duty-style games like Commandos 2!
03/07/2010 at 15:26 Mman says:
That’s its backstory, not its vision.
29/06/2010 at 12:56 Daniel Rivas says:
Can someone explain to me what’s wrong with games about really big trucks?
29/06/2010 at 13:01 AndrewC says:
They can’t fit into the air vents.
29/06/2010 at 15:31 merc says:
Hey, those air vents were pretty fucking big.
29/06/2010 at 17:06 Jake says:
Nothing wrong with tucks per se, but really he should be a tape deck.
29/06/2010 at 12:58 beatoangelico says:
Tom Chick rules. Fidgit is great. Quarter to Three is good. I wouldn’t hate the “gaming journalists” category if there were more people like Chick around, seriously.
29/06/2010 at 15:13 edosan says:
I agree. Tom is a great writer. I don’t always agree with him, but I like to hear what he has to say much more than the current crop of “this is a triple-A title so we’ll give it a what, 93%?” reviewers.
P.S. To everyone: an opinion cannot, by definition, be “wrong.” It’s an OPINION!
29/06/2010 at 12:58 Iain says:
“A good review isn’t a good review. It’s a review you agree with.”
This is why I don’t review games anymore. I just disagree with too many people.
Well, that and the fact I disappeared from the internets for nine months and everyone’s forgotten they can give me work…
29/06/2010 at 13:09 Gary W says:
Deus Ex: not as good as Alpha Protocol (!)
Chick & QT3: not as good as Campbell & Caltrops.
29/06/2010 at 13:09 Firndeloth says:
We’ve entered this disconcerting cycle of reviewing where developers and readers alike expect a certain minimum score for their games in the former case because they’ve sunk money into the game and in the later often because they are fans of the company, game, or franchise. Reviewers, I suppose, either cater to this out of collective habit or in order to maintain their relationship with the developers and continue to gain exclusives and such. I’m not sure there’s really a way out of that feedback loop at this point, even if the gaming community weren’t so young and thus immature. That’s the comforting side of any issue I come across related to gaming culture or industry habits: we are such a young community and industry compared to film, radio, and other major entertainment and art mediums and industries, that we have a lot of time left before we miss any of our coming-of-age benchmarks. I forget where I read it, but someone (possibly an RPS writer, I’m not sure ….) was referring to gaming as passing through a customarily awkward adolescence on it’s way to maturity. We’ve got room to grow, but also time to in which to do so.
29/06/2010 at 13:20 AndrewC says:
(possibly an RPS writer, I’m not sure ….)
Ha ha ha! I’m sure he called the article ‘Teenage Kicks Against The (editorial) Picks’ or something.
29/06/2010 at 13:12 Ergates says:
If reviewers want to address this – and I feel we should since it permeates the way people talk about videogames – the best we can do is explain ourselves in such a way as to work around that defensiveness. It’s important that we’re articulate, that we give context, that we talk specifics as much as we can, that we avoid lazy comments and clichés and hyperbole, that we’re willing to have conversations.
Sounds good on paper, but is crippled by a fundamental flaw: it assumes that rabid internet fanboys are susceptible to reason. If you give some games (e.g. MGS4) anything less than 10/10, it doesn’t matter how well you explain your reasoning some people are going to fly into an appoplectic rage and threaten to kill you.
29/06/2010 at 13:25 ReV_VAdAUL says:
As Firndeloth above you points out rabid fans and publishers want a certain review for personal reasons, to cater to rabid fanboys or publishers isn’t just a failing on reviewer’s part, its pointless. A review at its’ heart is a guide for people who want to know whether to purchase it. Yes all views are subjective and one certainly shouldn’t limit the scope of reviews to YES BUY or NO BUY but they at their core must retain this advisory nature.
If people aren’t seeking to be advised or read what someone whose job it is to think about games thinks then they are not the audience and however loud they scream and shout so they’re not the reviewer’s concern.
29/06/2010 at 22:43 Ergates says:
Yes – that’s largely my point. Chick says “If reviewers want to address this”, but the problem is, you can’t address it. The only solution is to accept it, expect it and move on.
29/06/2010 at 13:13 Theon Alvinson says:
I haven’t read his Deus Ex review but if it is anything like his review of Master of Orion III, I can well believe and understand everyone’s sheer disbelief of how he could come to his verdict. If Mr. Chick were a food critic reviewing a steak dinner, he would spend 3/4ths of the review complaining about the color of the salt shaker. He probably refuses to this day to use any TV remote control that does not have separate ON and OFF buttons. “Fidget” is well named because that’s what readers do whenever they come across yet another one of his “out of the mainstream” reviews. I certainly do not believe he should get any death threats, but he is like this pariah rogue state that everyone wants for it to go away and yet we are angrily fascinated and attentive to what his next brinksmanship review would read like. Tom Chick is the North Korea of game reviewers.
29/06/2010 at 20:45 LintMan says:
“I haven’t read his Deus Ex review but if it is anything like his review of Master of Orion III, I can well believe and understand everyone’s sheer disbelief of how he could come to his verdict.”
Huh? Have you actually *played* MOO3? Chick’s review is accurrate and very much in line with what other reviewers said at the time. His review is far kinder that what I would have written about it myself. MOO3 was a travesty and a descecration of the MOO franchise. Soon after release, it was discovered that you could win the game simply by pressing “End Turn” until you won; the game was that broken!
Even Bruce Geryk’s “rebuttal” of Chick’s review admits the game was a failure:
“Now that the fiasco that is Master of Orion 3 is out, a lot of people seem to be asking how it could possibly have ended up as such a mess.”
…
“It’s entirely possible that, as designed, the IFP mechanism simply didn’t work. It’s not hard to think of reasons for this happening: an inability to design competent and believably recalcitrant AI is just one of them. But it seems insane that a game designed around a single concept can take that concept out, but leave everything else that was based on that concept untouched. The bad AI, broken diplomacy, and ludicrously clumsy interface are all problems, and to some extent inexplicable. But in the context of Imperial Focus Points much of the rest of the design makes sense. It may have been incredibly ambitious and perhaps not feasible. It would certainly have been different. It could have been spectacular if it had worked. We’ll never know.”
Geryk’s point being that MOO3 had a lofty and ambitious idea with the IFP mechanism that might have been great if it had worked as intended.
29/06/2010 at 13:19 The Sombrero Kid says:
I’d want to scrap the optimus thumb system (because it’s close to a score!?!!?!?) if it wasn’t so awesome.
29/06/2010 at 13:24 Frank says:
Yeah, forget about ambition; I’m sure I’d prefer to play a game with “smaller more manageable boxes representing warehouses or enemy bases”.
It sounds like this guy reviews games by judging whether or not the developers “succeeded” in the areas he thinks most important (“hey, that’s not Paris!”), and can’t even get to the question of whether the game is fun. @#$%@$%@#$%
29/06/2010 at 13:26 drewski says:
kobzon – have you considered the ruling the world problem from the PoV of a giant, evil, lizard?
29/06/2010 at 13:28 Geoff says:
Evil lizards are good.
29/06/2010 at 13:30 Barnz says:
OMM’s Deus Ex review was the best.
29/06/2010 at 13:35 Hélder Pinto says:
BURN THE WITCH!
29/06/2010 at 13:39 bill says:
You know, I think I read that review. I remember reading a long, detailed, well written review about all the flaws in Deus Ex. It must have been convincing because it convinced me not to buy it. Convinced me that the rest of the gaming press were hyping it up too much.
Then I ended up getting it very cheap a few years later, and loving it to bits. So it just goes to show that a well written review doesn’t always mean it’s right, any more than a terribly written review means it’s bad.
I agree about the agreeing/disagreeing thing. And I respect Tom Chick for a lot of his reviews that i’ve read after he became more well known. But he was clearly wrong on this one. (whether or not his individual points were right).
29/06/2010 at 14:42 Fraser says:
The whole interview could be boiled down to: “Review scores can’t be right or wrong, because they’re subjective.” This seems to be a really difficult concept for a lot of people.
29/06/2010 at 16:10 bill says:
@Frazer:
The score isn’t really an issue. I don’t remember even what the score was. I vaguely remember the review going into a lot of detail about all the flaws.. and he was probably right about all those. But sometimes a game rises far above it’s flaws, and a detailed, well written review can be totally accurate in the details, and still miss the big picture.
29/06/2010 at 13:49 Duoae says:
Huh…. i’ve always wondered why i’ve never been a fan of Chick’s work and now i guess this is why i felt that way. Retroactive reactions for the win! I guess the shock was so much that the feeling travelled back through time and inserted itself into my psyche.
29/06/2010 at 13:52 JC Denton says:
A bomb!
29/06/2010 at 13:54 Theon Alvinson says:
Mark my words. Civilization V, a game that just about everyone is excited for, is preparing to be outright panned by Tom Chick as we speak (the impetus, of course, being the proletarian excitement of thereof).
I expect the intoduction of hexes to lead to a three paragraph sonata on the final loss of his youth, interspersed with lamentations comparing how he can never look at or sit in his beloved 4th generation rocking chair ever again as it “just isn’t the same anymore.” “The exclusion of Burkina Faso as a playable civ mystifies me…” and so forth.
Then a terse sentence on how the awful soundtrack would have been easier and cheaper to compose if they had just recorded a bunch of illegal immigrants blowing vuvuzelas.
Sid Meier is already rolling in his grave, the guy isn’t even dead yet.
29/06/2010 at 16:29 beatoangelico says:
and because of what? for his “feature creep” comment? Even if I wouldn’t call it this way, that’s a legit concern. Civ 4 was great also because of his balance and thightness. I hope too that they wouldn’t introduce something like the espionage system of Beyond the Sword.
29/06/2010 at 14:08 bwion says:
When reading reviews (not just of games, of anything), the bit where the reviewer delivers the final “I liked it” vs “I didn’t like it” verdict is usually the part I pay the least attention to. I’ve been convinced to buy things by negative reviews (and often actually find negative or at least critical reviews to be more useful than glowing positivity), specifically because the reviewer went into detail about the things they didn’t care for and, as it turned out, none of those were deal-breakers for me. (Fine story but crappy combat system? Excellent! I like stories and can cope with crappy combat. Great gameplay but buggy as hell? Awesome! Bugs can and usually will be fixed, either by the company later on or by fan-patches much much later on. Nice atmosphere but really slow-paced? I’ve got time. Worthwhile game that is way too hard? I like a challenge.)
Likewise, sometimes positive reviews will steer me away from a game, just because of the specific things raved about. (For example, a game that ends up being everyone else’s Game Of The Century because of its fantastic multiplayer, with nary a mention of its single-player experience, isn’t going to get a lot of attention to me, as I am not primarily a multiplayer gamer.)
And if Mr. Chick really holds true to his stated principles of going into detail about why he likes or dislikes something (and from what little I’ve read of his, he seems to), then good for him. I don’t really care if he takes contrary positions, so long as he shows his work.
29/06/2010 at 14:09 Web Cole says:
What a shame?
29/06/2010 at 14:17 Kid A says:
I’m with Chick. I finished Deus Ex for the first time recently, and I just didn’t like it. I felt the shooting was ropey, the stealth was barely better, and the bloody acting…
It’s a game that tries to do something PCs weren’t fully equipped to do at the time, and while in some places it worked (DOORS!) in others, it flat-out didn’t.
I didn’t like it. That doesn’t mean I hate your kittens, or that I want to kill you and your first-born son. It means I don’t like it. You can love it for all I care. But I don’t. AND NEITHER OF US IS RIGHT OR WRONG.
29/06/2010 at 14:30 WTF says:
@KID A
But in this instance your opinion is wrong (or at least invalid) by virtue of the fact that you only just played the game recently so you are reviewing it utterly out of context. A 10 year old game is simply incapable of holding its own against modern design, even one that was as innovative as Deus Ex. Had it been a different genre of game or one with more stylised graphics it could maybe be reviewed objectively long after release but at its heart Deus Ex was an FPS and they simply do not age well. Playing it now you will, unconsciously or otherwise, hold it up to everything you have already played and it will obviously be found to be wanting. An analogy would be a reviewer playing Doom for the first time when Quake 3 launched – there is no way that person could comprehend the impact of Doom at launch as to them it just seems a shoddy, badly put together shooter with poor graphics, awful sound and a silly plot.
29/06/2010 at 14:49 Mman says:
“But in this instance your opinion is wrong (or at least invalid) by virtue of the fact that you only just played the game recently so you are reviewing it utterly out of context.”
Except that I’ve seen many people who have played DX recently and like it as well as ones who dislike it. Context of time is important to older things but past a point focusing on it is just another permutation of the awful “nostalgia” strawman.
Also, regardless of time, I would highly doubt the critical analysis skills of any reviewer who called Doom a “shoddy, badly put together shooter” unless they’re trying to judge it as a realism shooter or something (which is the kind of thing where context does become important).
29/06/2010 at 15:01 Kid A says:
But… hang on, isn’t Deus Ex supposed to be one of those “timeless classic” doohickeys? And wouldn’t your argument really hold more water if my only gripes were “it looks OOOOLLLD” or that it didn’t run properly on my modern PC? The parts that make the game the game (the *shudder* gameplay, if you will) should be able to stand up 10 years later irrespective of what newer games I’ve played.
Oh, and I liked the old Doom games more than Quake 3. Mostly because I’m not a huge MP FPS person, apart from the odd bit of L4D or TF2.
29/06/2010 at 15:57 DrGonzo says:
I highly recommend you try The Darkness, Kid A. It’s like a less ambitious and far more polished Deus Ex and is an under-appreciated classic in my opinion.
I liked Deus Ex but I can appreciate you not liking it. Even though your name is Kid A and Radiohead are one of the most pretentious and awful band I’ve heard.
29/06/2010 at 14:23 Wildeheart says:
Since my longer posts seem to get nit-picked to death and people entirely miss the point of what I’m getting at I thought I’d make it simple:
Tom Chick – A Review
“Tom Chick purposefully writes controversial reviews in order to get more page hits and money. I don’t regard that as impartial reviewing or valuable advice in whether to purchase a game or not which is why I read reviews in the first place. As such I don’t value Tom Chick’s reviews of computer games and don’t recommend you do either.”
Does this make sense to all you guys who seem to think it’s more about a semantic argument as to the nature of fact and opinion?
29/06/2010 at 14:32 Pinky Floyd says:
Hey, that’s just your opinion :P
29/06/2010 at 14:41 Clovis says:
Sorry, I don’t know how I got off track.
“The point that I was making is that Deus Ex being worth far more than 3 out of 10 isn’t an opinion, it’s fact.”
Oh.
Seriously, you keep changing your main point. I think I get it though. You don’t like his reviews. Is it ok if someone else does like them though?
29/06/2010 at 14:51 Wisq says:
He claims he was oblivious going in that his negative Deus Ex review would be so controversial. So unless he’s baldly lying, which I personally doubt, then this was all a big accident.
After getting the reputation as a controversial reviewer, then maybe I can see someone wanting to maintain that reputation. But I can also see review sites deliberately farming potentially controversial topics out to him, both to get the attention you mention and to distance themselves from the controversy (“that’s not our opinion, that’s just Tom Chick”).
All in all, have you just considered that maybe he’s a reviewer who honestly gives his opinion, rather than tempering it based on (say) how much advertising money a game gives to his employer? If we had more people like that, then maybe we wouldn’t be quite so shocked about the occasional 3/10 for our beloved classics. Sometimes people just don’t enjoy things.
29/06/2010 at 14:55 Fraser says:
Fair enough, Wildeheart. You have a strong opinion based on clear points that are important to you. Other people don’t seem to value those points as much or agree with your assessment of them, but you’re unconcerned by the majority opinion. You keep putting forth your honest views despite the dominance of the opposite opinion. Honestly, your opinion seems kind of half-baked, but it’s honest, truthful and contributes something valuable to the discussion.
Come to think of it, that reminds me of a games journalist… what was his name? Tom something?
29/06/2010 at 15:07 Wildeheart says:
“Seriously, you keep changing your main point. I think I get it though. You don’t like his reviews. Is it ok if someone else does like them though?”
I haven’t changed my “main” point which is that I think Tom Chick’s reviews aren’t worth the time taken to read them. The only thing I’ve “changed my mind” I’m guessing was my definition of facts and opinions, which I haven’t I just don’t agree with your definitions so as long as you keep holding your definition of a fact up against my usage of it you’re always going to mis-interpret me.
As an illustration let’s take the planet earth again. If I said it was round you’d call that a fact, if I said it was flat then you’d say that was an opinion. Or is it that they’re both facts, one of which is incorrect?
If you’re thinking it’s the latter then the same can be attributed to Tom Chick’s factinions (my new word, like it?). If you think it’s the former then how do you handle it when your “facts” are later on proven to be wrong (as it was when the commonly held fact was that the earth was flat until someone proved it otherwise). Either everything’s a fact, some of which are wrong or everything is an opinion and they’re all right. Either way it doesn’t sound a very helpful definition to me.
29/06/2010 at 15:16 AndrewC says:
Those are category errors. Opinions are judgement values about facts. They are not the same things, like football and triangles.
I wouldn’t get too caught up on the semantics of it, just remember that regarding judgement values as inarguable will only lead to arguments, which are no fun.
29/06/2010 at 18:36 Clovis says:
Are you comparing whether or not the Earth is round to whether or not a game should get a higher rating that 3/10? I wouldn’t think that you had the opinion that the Earth is flat, I’d just think you were wrong. If you said, “Movie X is the greatest movie ever!”, I would think that was an opinion, regardless of whether I agreed with you or not.
This was a really weird discussion.
I wasn’t even trying to get back on this. I was just pointing out that you brought up the whole fact/opinion thing.
What about my question that you quoted? It is ok for me to enjoy his reviews, right? He might have some good points or not, and I usually read a few reviews. Who cares what dumb number is picked in the end. He didn’t think 3/10 was supposed to mean that something was really bad either. There’s nothing weird or shocking about someone not liking Deus Ex. I’m sure plenty of people wouldn’t like it, and maybe they’d enjoy his reviews.
30/06/2010 at 01:43 malkav11 says:
Chick has been known to play devil’s advocate, certainly, and he enjoys baiting people by doing things like talking about sports in ways that even a complete sports neophyte like myself can tell are wrong, or claiming that Transformers: War for Cybertron is based on the Michael Bay movies. But as far as his reviews go, I’ve never gotten the impression that they are anything other than honest reflections on his experiences with a game or movie – if you spend any time on Fidgit or, more to the point, the Quartertothree.com forums (higher signal to noise ratio there), you can regularly find him talking about the games he really loves, or pointing out why he wasn’t so sold on the games he didn’t. Same goes for movies. And there’s the podcasts, too. He’s just got tastes that are a bit askew from those of a lot of other people in the gaming community. Or moviegoing community, for that matter. He has a weakness for often obscure horror flicks, for example, that I am generally willing to at least investigate but rarely feel as positively about as he does.
I still can’t get over him liking Constantine, personally. That’s his Deus Ex review for me.
29/06/2010 at 14:26 -F. says:
Not liking Deus Ex is almost unforgivable, but he redeems himself by mentioning Moon in the same breath with Casablanca and Jaws..
29/06/2010 at 16:37 jeremypeel says:
Indeed. Sam Rockwell FTW.
29/06/2010 at 19:27 Thants says:
I was just about to say the same thing.
29/06/2010 at 14:29 Walsh says:
Needs more hot keys
29/06/2010 at 14:33 Pinky Floyd says:
Needs more hot women
29/06/2010 at 14:48 DraQ says:
“Deus Ex does deserve credit for trying open-world-ish games before they were really ready.”
I assume he must mean games like Elite (1984), Frontier (1993) and Daggerfall (1996).
Wait, what.
30/06/2010 at 01:08 Matt says:
Haha, Daggerfall. I doubt I saw even 1/1,000 of that gameworld. Of course, I spent most of my time loitering in shops until closing and then robbing them blind….
30/06/2010 at 01:34 Hidden_7 says:
The thing about Daggerfall though, (much as I love it) is that if you’ve seen about 1/1000th of the gameworld, you’ve seen it all. The areas between the cities were largely flat and featureless, the cities themselves where randomly generated out of cookie cutter bits of scenery (I liked the cities that had the main shopping district that was a circle around a fountain) with occasional bits of handcrafted elements. Amazing game, especially for the time, but there was never really a huge impetus to explore, since you’d pretty much seen it all after a couple hours in the game.
So yeah, it really did become a game about loitering in shops until they closed and robbing them blind. Also getting a huge acrobatics skill and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. That was fun too.
29/06/2010 at 15:10 Shimarenda says:
I’ve read Tom’s review. While his criticisms were accurate, I thought they were irrelevant to why Deus Ex is a great game.
29/06/2010 at 15:16 Wisq says:
Personally, I actually appreciate reviews that cut against the grain.
Individual reviews don’t always count for a whole lot in my books. When I’m researching a game, I’ll pull it up on Metacritic, but not for the average score. I’m looking for the top reviews, the bottom reviews, and for a couple of reviews from sources I generally trust to have reviews that are meaningful to me.
I want to know what things the outspoken positive reviewers really liked, what things the outspoken negative reviewers really hated, and what the overall balance of positive/negative is. Sometimes a low-average game has some positive aspect that makes it all worthwhile for me, and sometimes a highly-praised game has things that really turn me off.
If the reviewers all temper themselves by saying “I really liked/hated this but everyone else seems to hate/like it so I’ll adjust my score a bit to stay in line”, you lose the value of having multiple opinions at your fingertips, which is IMO what sites like Metacritic are most useful for.
So, bring on the controversial reviews. Just don’t expect everyone to agree. And everyone, don’t expect reviewers to always reflect your own personal opinions. Sheesh.
29/06/2010 at 15:30 Harlander says:
There was a site which would paste together a review by taking only the negative bits from reviews elsewhere. It was quite an interesting exercise… Anyone remember what it was called?
29/06/2010 at 15:36 DraQ says:
The problem isn’t with reviews being against the grain, this would help restore a bit of credibility to game journalism in general – the kind of journalism I just can’t take seriously anymore, not after Oblivion “best gaem ever” 10/10 reviews and the like.
The problem is when the reviewer obviously doesn’t have clue what he is writing about.
I haven’t read the original review in question, but someone capable of stating that “Deus Ex does deserve credit for trying open-world-ish games before they were really ready.”, while the game in question is neither some forerunner of the “open-world-ish” games trend, or even an “open-world-ish” game in general doesn’t seem terribly competent.
29/06/2010 at 15:17 Robin says:
Why is Chick seen as having any credibility? I just see an old man phoning in feeble reactionary trolling for highly authoritative games sites like, erm, “Fidget”. Did he used to be good?
29/06/2010 at 15:37 Heliocentric says:
I can’t judge him effectively on any kind of historical basis so i judge him on my opinion of his daily works. I don’t find his work to offer a complete world view but as complimentary reading on top of a mainstream review i find him essential reading and i learn more about how i will experience the game from his brief statements than either reviews or meuling comment threads. Still rps offers a respite from that too, but i like having more than one source.
29/06/2010 at 15:27 T? says:
Speaking of professional criticism in general, I take the viewpoint that such people have been placed in a position of higher responsibility than those of your average forum pundit. It is a position they must have come to via at least partially subjective means (e.g. an editor likes their style, their opinions typically mesh with those of the publication) but their potential as influencers on a great many of our purchasing decisions makes them separate from your average commentator (I realise that in the age of t’internet, however, that this is a rather subjective and debatable argument…). This is partly born of a readers trust in the publication itself. For example, I would hope not to see an article on the Guardian front page espousing the merits of Glen Becks latest blockbuster. If the Guardian’s peers were to credit the book then I’d think twice, but in the field of liberal journalism the book has been roundly mauled. It would therefore be a breach, I believe, of the trust implicit in the relationship between reader and publication. I realise this sounds rather like ‘tell me what I want to hear’ but I don’t mean it that way. I’m basically saying you expect a publication you trust to hold opinions you can at least relate to, even if you don’t completely agree with them. It’s part of the reason you trust them, right?
I would therefore hope that such people typically hold views that do not sway against that of the majority of their peers, the majority of the time. A critic who usually shares the general opinion of his peers but has one or two moments of dissent isn’t a concern to me as a reader of a particular publication- in fact, that makes things more interesting. If, however, their voice is constantly the one of contrary opinion- to the masses, to the general population, to their peers- then I would not be able to trust their opinion, and their function as a critic- to inform and educate me about products that I am considering spending money on- would be nullified (of course, as a person who typically shares the opinion of the masses I would say that- but if you yourself often disagree with gen pop then I would well imagine you feeling differently…).
One could argue rightly that that is certainly not the sole function of a critic…but when it comes down to reviews in paid for content, that should be their main function, in my opinion. Please note I am separating here the function, power and therefore responsibility of a journalist writing a review, and one writing other editorial content.
29/06/2010 at 15:34 I saw dasein says:
I didn’t like Deus Ex either, even at the time. Terrible and sophomoric story and acting, incredibly clunky graphics and animation, and the actual game-play was awful. I don’t think vision that is not realized should be rewarded. Working within the limitations of a medium is part of making good art, and Deus Ex totally fails in this capacity. It was also in some respects surprisingly archaic, with some of the worst cut scenes in memory.
Perhaps this isn’t fair, but I sometimes wonder whether the reason people like games like Deus Ex is because they expect video-games to scratch all of their intellectual itches; so, they want to play a game with great story, great acting, and great gameplay. But many of these elements work against each other. Instead of playing a game like Deux Ex, with sub-par gameplay, sub-par story, and sub-par production values, why not play Doom or something with pure, well-developed gameplay, then read a decent book (read Neuromancer if you want the cyber-punk think). There is no reason to want or expect all things from a video-game. A video-game does some things well: lets focus on getting that right and leave the peripheral stuff to mediums that are better suited to it.
29/06/2010 at 16:09 DrGonzo says:
Just because you didn’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not a classic. Deus Ex is definitely more than the sum of its parts. He mentioned Casablanca and Jaws, both of which have pretty bad acting and sets and special effects, I don’t like them personally but I don’t think that’s why people love them.
29/06/2010 at 21:10 GT3000 says:
Nostalgia and sentimentality is the reason why people like Deus Ex as much as they do. A valid point but ultimately frought with problems as the core experience is lost to memories and happy feelings. I think DX falls between Chick’s review and the critical praise it recieves. A good solid…Six.
29/06/2010 at 23:10 Nobody Important says:
@GT300: I played Deus Ex for the first time a year ago and loved it, so no, it’s not nostalgia.
30/06/2010 at 12:53 Lukasz says:
I played it 2 years ago… it had its flaws but i had tremendous amounts of fun and the game kept me on the edge of the seat whole time.
I also realized how much the game is more advanced than practically anything else on the market nowadays.
29/06/2010 at 15:37 Tei says:
We have all to accept that part of the people that play videogames is not old. Teenagers and the like. So getting unmature opinions is unavoidable. Is like behing a 4th grade theacher, you can’t avoid it.
Anyway one thing is expect the unmature to dump unfinished opinions to the stream of voices, and a different thing that we have to be neutral about these unfinished opinions. I think is ok to be against “bad opinions”. A opinion could be good or bad, based on his quality: how informed his, if provide insigtifull details, how easy to read is, etc.. Not all opinions are equal, some are better written and are more fun to read than others. Thats one reason for you to read reviews.
29/06/2010 at 15:41 Martin Coxall says:
The impression I’m getting: Tom Chick is a man who despises ambition in game design, and will mark you down for it.
29/06/2010 at 15:51 Kid A says:
THe message I got – Tom Chick thinks ambition is fine, but only if you carry it out to a decent approximation of that ambition. I have an ambition to fly to the moon – if I get to astronaut school and flunk out halfway through the course, should I be praised for having ambition, or should I be castigated for falling so far short?
29/06/2010 at 16:08 Tei says:
Kid, you sould be praised for that. In this time, is rare to see some people with a dream. And at the same time, be “castigated” for failing that badly. All in all, I will look to you in better way, that some people that is not even tryiing. Not tryiing = fail, a fail that is invisible, but is still a fail.
29/06/2010 at 16:23 Chris D says:
@Tei “In this time it is rare to see some people with a dream”
I’m guessing you’ve never watched X factor
29/06/2010 at 18:51 Clovis says:
You shouldn’t get points for ambition if there is no follow through. Reminds of a boxer with bad hands. Sure, he’s a really, really great boxer. Great skill, great power. However, his hands are fragile and often break after a few rounds. He’s a pretty amazing guy, and he’ll keep fighting with a broken hand. Amazing stuff. However, he often ends up losing after the hand problems start up. Now, is he a good boxer? No. He’s not a great boxer because he has bad hands and therefore loses. Sorry, you don’t get points for trying really hard.
I guess it’s cool for reviewer to explain that the game had great ambitions, and how it’s really great when you get past the flaws, but I don’t have time for that. I don’t want to play a buggy game. You should definitely lose points for that. Or, better yet, just warn me and don’t give scores.
30/06/2010 at 03:23 Stephen says:
Tough but true. If I had the dream/ambition to be US president I simply couldn’t do it, I’m not American. Don’t praise me for being ambitious, praise me when I do something.
The great thing about effort is that if you put it in you can sometimes achieve amazing things but it’s the amazing things that you should praise and not the effort. Praising the effort/ambition and not success has it all backwards.
30/06/2010 at 20:19 Jason Moyer says:
Modern society (at least here in the States, I don’t mean to generalize) wants to reward everyone for trying, no matter how successful those attempts are. I hope there are always a fair number of people who resist that for as long as possible.
03/07/2010 at 15:26 James T says:
DX rose admirably to a wider array of chosen tasks than just about any other game; the “failed ambition shouldn’t be recognised” talk is irrelevant, because the game didn’t fail. If Chick lacks or lacked the perspective to acknowledge DX’s successes, then he may as well “despise ambition”.
29/06/2010 at 15:49 Rex says:
I hate deus ex now because I’m sick of seeing shit about it in the RPS feed.
29/06/2010 at 16:01 Sinnerman says:
Chick’s review of Deus Ex was right in pointing out how it was ropey in many ways and failed to live up to expectations. He failed to recognise the more important reasons why few would care. I see Deus Ex as a sort of game for people who want to break and subvert the sort of game that Tom Chick wanted to play when wrote his review. A game to break and subvert or just watch as it goes off the rails by itself.
He was correct in my opinion to just write what he thought of it and get his article published. People are far to fragile when it comes to that sort of thing. It’s not such a serious thing if someone gets a warts and all impression of some video game that you think is ideologically the greatest thing ever.
It was still a mess technically the hardware I had at release and it wouldn’t get in my personal list of favourite games.
29/06/2010 at 16:04 Muzman says:
Geez Games Domain was good back in the day. Just about the best reviews on the net, I’d say actually. And then they got bought out. Damn dot com bubble.
Thie thing about this review was that it was correct in just about every aspect. It is a really clunky game with aspects that are just poorly made. I’m no huge Deus Ex booster, I was late to the party and was already bored with cyberpunk and conspiracy theories so cramming every single cliche into the one game was just likely to annoy. But I can appreciate its options and flexibility. It does seem harsh to take points away for ambition rather than giving them. Uncharitable is a good word for it.
Still, it is often a case of the good things about the game enabling you to overlook or dismiss the bad though. And that’s not going to happen for everyone. It can’t. And no, reviewers aren’t obliged to give some “objective” assessment detached from their experience (indeed, arguably Chick’s review was one of those more than most). He wasn’t enjoying himself; the flaws were all that was left to report; the end. Why this makes people quite so angry will always be slightly mysterious.
29/06/2010 at 16:06 Ed says:
I too don’t like Deus Ex, I’ve tried it three or four times now, thinking “everyone loves it, surely I’m not giving it enough credit – it can’t be that bad”
Every time i play it, I rediscover, that, yes, yes, it is.
I don’t get how people can love it, but hey, if it’s important to them, they’re welcome to it.
I’ve read Tom’s review (the link to which has been added to the post by Kieron) and every point he makes is a valid criticism rather than just being contrary for the sake of contrarianism.
29/06/2010 at 16:13 jonfitt says:
Read the review. It was hard to disagree with a lot of his points, and some of the odd things Deus Ex did persist to this day. They just didn’t bother me like the did him.
I can attest to the poor engine. I couldn’t play Deus Ex through 2 different computers due to it hating two different ATI cards.
However, I eventually enjoyed the game despite that.
29/06/2010 at 16:59 Aufero says:
Tom Chick is a bit of a conundrum to me. Most game journalists I’ve read call him influential, but I’ve never met a gamer (outside of comments on articles about Tom Chick) who knew his name. I keep looking him up when I see him mentioned, but none of his stuff seems terribly thoughtful, interesting or well-written.
Are you all just gaslighting us?
29/06/2010 at 21:29 LintMan says:
If you read the American print gaming magazines, you’d probably know who he was. He was a staple reviewer and columnist for, I think CGW, for a long time. He also did the pretty popular “Tom vs Bruce” articles. If you’re in Europe, you’d probably have heard/seen a lot less about/from him.
I think he’s a very good reviewer; he’s smart, thoughtful, explains well what he likes and dislikes, and doesn’t fall for hype and graphics. At the same time, I disagree with a lot of his reviews – his preferences are pretty different than mine, which leads to different conclusions, but the reviews are still useful.
Nowadays, in addition to reviews, Chick sometimes writes articles for Figit . These often attempt to be a bit contrarian or “thought-provoking”. Having heard him talk in some “3 moves ahead” podcasts, these articles come across to me as him just trying (perhaps too hard) to be clever, but I suspect these fuel some of the accusations that he’s just stirring controversy for the traffic. And to some extent, that might be true – but I think he plays it straight in his reviews and says what he really thinks.
29/06/2010 at 17:05 Photovatar says:
I was honestly excited that Syfy was going to have a gaming blog, until I read a few of the articles posted there. Now I see this article and I realize that I just totally disagree with Tom Chick in every possible way.
Plus, in my opinion, his writing style is not exactly top quality.
29/06/2010 at 18:10 RandomStranger#46 says:
I’m all with Tom Chick ^ ^. Please stop writing less about Deus Ex old game and more about evil lizards!!!
29/06/2010 at 18:49 scharmers says:
Be careful, posters, or you’ll get a bunch of Qt3 yahoos slamming you. And we might inadvertently bring along some NMA and Octopus Overlord yots with us.
Anyway, on Chick:
1. IMO, he can get a little overanalytical on some games, missing the trees for the forest. He hammered Falcon 4 on release and got the same kind of vitriol from the sim community. Sure, he was right in his review that F4 was terribly broken, but he kind of overlooked the fact that nothing in F4′s scope had ever been attempted. In other words, his reviews are really easy to Monday Morning Quarterback.
2. He is awesome at finding overlooked gems. Thanks to Tom, I’ve played Dark Cloud 2, Test Drive: EOD, and a bunch of other stuff that I had no idea existed until he blurbed about them somewhere.
29/06/2010 at 18:56 ascagnel says:
I have a somewhat odd question on this interview (and RPS interviews in general): for a site that focuses so much on its handful of writers, why do you still identify yourselves only as “RPS” in interviews? Unless there’s collaboration on the questions, I feel an interview is a conversation between two people, and any habitual reader of RPS knows where each writer generally comes from.
29/06/2010 at 19:21 John Grady says:
Tom Chick, the half-assed, uninteresting writer whose reviews I actually tend to agree with. Aka “Kieron Gillen gives Tom Chick a handjob.”
Into the kleenex instead of all over RPS next time, Gillen.
29/06/2010 at 19:36 Freud says:
Playing computer games is all about being able to connect the dots. Most of what he dislikes about Deus Ex is problems with most games. Stupid AI, story not being all the realistic and stuff laying all around waiting to be looted.
I replayed Half-Life 2 recently. If I had his attitude I would think the linear levels and all the physics puzzles to get further would be completely unrealistic and immersion breaking. But what would be the point. I realize they are there to a) challenge me and b) provide me with entertainment. They are, when I play, only there for me. I get that.
29/06/2010 at 19:54 LionsPhil says:
Raised eyebrow. There’s a lot factually wrong with that review, notably with the AI being oblivious to things like shoplifting in the bartended which will get you attacked in the final game. This is why reviewing a pre-release version (c.f. PREviewing it) is a bad idea if you want to have some kind of journalistic integrity. (This potentially explains some performance complaints, too.)
Also, what the hell is his issue with UnrealEngine 1, exactly? “Poorly optimised”? “Saved by consoles”? He based this on being a source licensee with a compsci degree, I take it? Because on the latter alone, I strongly disagree; UnrealEngine’s pretty damn well designed for a real-world product that has to meet deadlines and drive sales. And remember that Unreal Tournament predates Deus Ex, so it’s not a case of the only reference point being the infamously demanding Unreal 1.
29/06/2010 at 20:41 Kieron Gillen says:
If you think DX ran smoothly when you came out, you’re misremembering. I believe it was its Direct3D performance was screwed.
Regarding the AI thing, it’s been a while, but I’m not sure it’s as simple as that – the shoplifting tag seemed to be put fairly unevenly. And, of course, even if you’re right, if Eidos says it’s finished code, how are you to know otherwise?
KG
30/06/2010 at 15:21 LionsPhil says:
Kieron: Er, no thanks, my memory has its problems, but Deus Ex ran fine for me at the time. I believe that would have been on a Riva TNT2-based card.
And they didn’t say final code; Chick knew it. See your own interview:
29/06/2010 at 22:02 bhlaab says:
It seems to be as though Chick is shoehorning the game into something it clearly isn’t or even should be, and then criticising it for not living up to it. Like saying that the hubs are poor examples of open world and don’t adequately represent Paris, Hong Kong, et al. Well no shit–they’re hubs and not open world recreations of actual locations.
As for ammo being found in random alleyways, I just personally see that as an empty, invalid critique akin to “but why don’t these characters ever have to go to the bathroom!”
03/07/2010 at 15:42 James T says:
Come to think of it, in DX they did a perfectly acceptable job at giving ammo locations context; any ‘ammo in alleyways’ was typically made up of the various factions’ caches. Not that I wish to legitimise such inane criticisms by engaging with them (although I will shortly do so again downthread…)
29/06/2010 at 22:24 GetOutOfHereStalker says:
okay spoil me what’s a tom chick
29/06/2010 at 22:26 Jimbo says:
From the (admittedly small) amount of this guy’s stuff that I have read, he seems to have a shallow appreciation of games.
When the most insightful thing you have to say about Deus Ex is “it deserves credit for being open-world-ish”, (what?) and one of your (apparently noteworthy) criticisms is that ammunition is placed unrealistically (what?), then you can be sure that I will never take anything else you have to say seriously. That level of critique is about on par with your average GameTrailers comment thread.
The first site did their audience a great service by shitcanning that review. I’d love to see some of the ‘average’ games from ’00 if DX was a couple notches below average – you know, those games with the realistically placed ammunition.
Does a review being ‘factually accurate’ really count for much if ~100% of your audience still ends up strongly disagreeing with your conclusion?
29/06/2010 at 23:06 Nobody Important says:
@widlebeast: People are attacking you because you have redefined the word “opinion,” to mean”fact as long as I agree with it,” not because they like Tom Chick or not. That has nothing to do with the comments made toward you, and frankly, you’re looking sillier with every post you make. I’d claim opposite day and run.
29/06/2010 at 23:15 Nobody Important says:
Reply fail, and I was beating a dead horse, err, wildebeast anyway. Oh well, it’s directed upward all the same.
29/06/2010 at 23:14 Angie says:
I have never played Deus Ex, and the name “Tom Chick” is only vaguely familiar to me, but having read that review from way back when, I have to say – if he was older than 13 when he wrote that original review, he really ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself.
If all reviews on the internet had continued to be of that quality, the games magazine industry might still be flourishing.
30/06/2010 at 00:09 James says:
DrGonzo:
Referring to the 1-10 system, he’s pointing out that any game that makes a halfhearted effort will usually score in the 7-9 range (so 7 is ‘average’ just like a 70 is for school grades). A sub-7 ranking is usually reserved for poor film-based games where everyone knows they didn’t try and it’s socially acceptable to ridicule them, or for non-blockbuster budget titles. Ever notice how all the huge, hyped games by major companies that have lots of money poured into them almost always get a 9.0 at the least? The trend’s especially obvious at Gamespot.
Witness BioShock. The most overhyped derivative shooter ever to be crapped off the assembly line. It has a 96/100 on Metacritic at the moment. I knew to expect that level of praise because for a while we heard talk of little else but how revolutionary the game was going to be. I’m not trying to start a flame war, and BioShock would be fine for what it was if everyone had simply let it be what it was, but anyone who’s honest with themselves would have to admit it’s absurd how well BioShock fared with critics. BioShock didn’t deliver on almost anything that it promised in the lead-up to release. The Little Sister/Big Daddy mechanic is unbelievably weak and unpolished. Look at all the other ratings of acknowledged classics. Does BioShock really belong in that pantheon?
Doesn’t matter. It was guaranteed to be a critical success; anyone who tried to buck the system would be unceremoniously dumped like Tom Chick was by cnet.
30/06/2010 at 01:53 malkav11 says:
We should definitely judge games based on their failure to live up to breathless prerelease publicity and not their actual merits as a finished product. I can see nothing wrong with that approach whatsoever.
30/06/2010 at 19:53 James says:
You didn’t read my post, then. I was actually insisting that we should judge BioShock for what it is. And what it isn’t is a revolutionary, top-of-the-line shooter. However, a metascore of 96 indicates that it is the very best the gaming industry has had to offer (at least for its time), and has the same score as Half-Life 1. I’m no Half-Life fanboy, but it is by far the superior game for what it offered at the time. Hell, even today, if someone updated Half-Life to have the same graphics as BioShock, it would still blow it right out of the water. BioShock’s a bland, unimaginative game with almost no depth and definitely no ground broken. It coasts by on the graphics/”atmosphere” instead of innovative (or even “solid”) gameplay.
30/06/2010 at 01:47 Dmo says:
bhlaab: “Like saying that the hubs are poor examples of open world and don’t adequately represent Paris, Hong Kong, et al. Well no shit–they’re hubs and not open world recreations of actual locations.’
But why call them Paris or Hong Kong then? Couldn’t they have just as easily made some nondescript back alley or even limited themselves to locations like the first level? Instead of regarding their technical limitations by thinking up creative levels that allow for a more consistent vision they decided to shoot for the moon and came up obviously short.
If you think of the Uncanny Valley in terms of world-building rather than robots or graphics DX is resting lazily in the lowest point. Their aimed level of fidelity was physically unattainable, so why not realize that and reign it in with creativity instead of throw-away “thars a plague!” hand waving?
Not saying the game isn’t classic, just saying their world-building is woefully disjointed, which is obviously something Chick cares a lot about.
03/07/2010 at 16:12 James T says:
He’s being wilfully ignorant and you give him far too much benefit of the doubt (you also exhibit spectacular gall in calling DX’s developers’ “lazy”, considering the rarely-equalled amount of detail they lavished upon their game) Why in the universe would anyone think that the Paris and Hong Kong stages were meant to represent the entirety of those cities? Basic common sense dictates that the maps are not meant to represent either city in anything close to their entirety, but if common sense is unavailable, I refer you to Tracer Tong, who essentially defines the Paris map as the Champs-Elysees, ie, one street. Of course, the Champs-Elysees is a huge street, but who’s to say MJ12 haven’t enclave-ised the particular zone you’re in, the same way UNATCO have barricaded Hell’s Kitchen? I’m not a believer in doing too much of game-writers’ narration for them, but my conjectured explanation is actually less of a flight of fancy than the wilfully wrong idea that the Champs-Elysees map or Hong Kong map are meant to represent entire cities.
30/06/2010 at 02:38 Horatius says:
I heart Tom Chick.
30/06/2010 at 02:39 GetOutOfHereStalker says:
seriously what’s tom chick is he like jack chick
30/06/2010 at 05:13 Ridye says:
After reading the review in question, I came agreeing with lot of the specific points he made: Lots of cliche’s, bad AI, glitches, limited behavioral patterns, bland main character/serious technical issues, etc.
All stuff that we have come to overlook when playing PC RPGs. Enfasis on PC-centric.
So overall, I gladly accept the writing as being in the same vein of the famous “Whot I think” here in RPS. Insightful and a good alternative perspective. However, as a professional review aimed to inform both newcomers and sea wolfs on the merits of the game, in an specific genre.. it simply fail in almost all levels.
It has factual errors/hyperbolic claims and overall misses the point. It doesn’t help that he contradicts himself several times. He refers to other titles that are just plain better games… and each of them are culprit of committing the same errors/cliches/bland main characters/AI behavior than Deus Ex. But somehow, the fact that they don’t aim too high gives them so much leverage when compared to it.
Finally, it kind of reminds me to that other “scandal”, where a writer chose to create a review criticizing an RPG for following all and each of the typical formulas, without improving anything else (don’t recall the name of the game). Basically, pretty much venting his frustrations with the genre, instead of faithfully focusing on the merits on the game itself (which veterans may have liked).
So, it was no surprise that the editor chose to remove/not publish it. It’s simply not professional.
Same with this.
Still, thanks for the lecture.
30/06/2010 at 05:38 laff says:
I’d feel like one dumb bastard if I gave deus ex a sub 50 review, considering a fuckload of people regard it as either The or one of the greatest games of all time. What a dumb asshole.
30/06/2010 at 06:10 Vinraith says:
Interesting, are all of your opinions a product of popular consensus?
30/06/2010 at 07:34 zyzzyx says:
“It was the best of times, THIS IS ONLY A BOOK, it was the worst of times, THIS IS ONLY A BOOK…” Deus Ex consistently screams THIS IS ONLY A GAME. And not a very good one at that.”
is the false premise that most undermines our shared desire to see that unified field game, or citizen kane of games, or whatever one should choose to call it. It supposes that in order to succeed as art, or to be invested with emotion, or even to be treated with more seriousness than a cheap piece of commercialism, a piece of craft must somehow trascend its medium. This strikes me as odd since, while many of the media we invest ourselves in have evolved and been deconstructed over time until the medium and message have been blurred, games have always taken that unification for granted. Poetry and painting began as means of basic communication and became more complex, developed critical languages around them, became play.
Chick’s review has a sense of how video game tropes work, but doesn’t seem to apply that perspective very evenly. For instance, I think it’s a mistake to criticize a game, any game, but especially one about shootouts with cyborgs in the future, for failed realism. I don’t understand why crates aren’t as much part of Deus Ex’s lexicon as they are of System Shock 2. It seems as though he finally had enough of video game language and decided to take it out on Deus Ex, which is admittedly very verbose in that regard. I think that’s why it’s so beloved. It provided an enormous sense of play, both in its gameplay and in its mashup of the modern mythologies of our digital culture.
03/07/2010 at 16:38 James T says:
Well said, and I agree about the “mashup of the modern mythologies”. As a thorough non-conspiracy-theorist, I loved the chutzpah of the DX writers in throwing together all the Illuminati/MJ12/Roswell/ECHELON/Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars/REX84 stuff into an over-the-top conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. And some of the stuff with AIs was just plain good, too. I think some of the gripes about DX’s outlandish story, voice-acting etc aren’t considering how much fun the game has with it; it’s absolutely no worse a game for being a bit silly (of course, if you don’t like that, then fair play to you, but I think DX achieved pretty much exactly the tonal gamut the devs were going for, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Except the South African/Kiwi bartender guy, I dunno what was going on there.)
30/06/2010 at 09:04 DeepSleeper says:
I don’t want Tom Chick to represent the Average Gamer. I don’t want people to read his writing and say “Goodness. This man has a finger on the pulse of What Gamers Really Think.”
I agree with him sometimes, I disagree with him sometimes, but he is wildly divergent from the norm. And that’s cool. He can be the Joe Bob Briggs to someone else’s Roger Ebert.
30/06/2010 at 10:13 empty_other says:
I just read his article. Was the game really this buggy close after release?
I’ve played it once, and im on my second playtrough today, and i can’t say i see this horrible AI. If i compare with AI in games from that time, DX is using “advanced ai”. The enemies run for alarms, or they run for backup if they are alone, or badly wounded. I think ive seen them use items sometimes (or just waving randomly in the air, in the same way J.C Denton did when using items).
And Chick complains that he can steal anything while everyone is looking. Would it be better if everyone suddenly went all-out attacking you? In the patched game i played, they do actually sometimes say “Stop that” or other words when i steal something of theirs.
And at no time did i meet bugged dialog. The only bug he mentions that i’ve met, was the floating corpse, and that was in every game from that time anyway. Noone used ragdolls, except Carmageddon 3, and that was a year later…
30/06/2010 at 15:49 mathw says:
@bob_d: But that’s the only way reviews are useful! You have to find reviewers you can trust to not find the things you find utterly infuriating completely acceptable. You have to find reviewers who will mention the aggravations you’re going to be screaming at if you buy the game.
I have to find reviewers who didn’t like GTA4. That’s hard, because I thought it was awful but the general opinion seems to be that it was one of the greatest games ever.
30/06/2010 at 19:53 Geoff says:
I think its Cockney rhyming slang…
(sorry yes, i took the bait and made a bad joke)
30/06/2010 at 19:54 Geoff says:
reply fail, above message @ GetOutOfHereStalker says:
June 29, 2010 at 10:24 pm
okay spoil me what’s a tom chick
01/07/2010 at 22:44 JC Denton says:
No doubt Tom Chick was on zyme working for the NSF at the time, either that or he’s a UNATCO spy…
When Deus Ex landed in the year 2000 all my augmentations switched on at once. Everyone had just ‘made it’ past the Y2k bug and we were all juggling with crazy new 3rd millenium ideas, with a focus on sci-fi and the future in general. For me it was on a par with Half Life, and felt like the first time a PC game had attempted to take a stab/slash at a ‘realistic’ interpretation of the near future. Consequently playing through was as much like watching a good movie as it was playing a game, you even got choices to make, in dialogue and character assasination, literally. It was real, lights out, headphones on stuff.
I suspect the people who don’t like it either missed out on it first time around, can’t cope with the old graphics, are too young to be interested in it’s storyline or just don’t like that style of game. However I think it’s one of the all time great PC games and everyone should play it.
02/07/2010 at 15:35 alh_p says:
Interesting, it sounds like he reviewed and scored DX according to how it satisfies its own ambition, rather than an absolute “this is a good/reasonable/bad game”. I can see why he might be congratulatory about utter dross if that is his “approach” to reviewing games.
Having read his review, as well as the “DX made me” comments, also feel like Tom lives in a box where he evaluates a game based on how good he thinks it could be. Not in any way absolute, or even pretending to be. Reading the review, its as if the parts of DX which inspired others -choice, scope and ambition, awoke his brain to how good and “real” DX really could have been. It is as if he could not have been satisfied with it as a game.
02/07/2010 at 18:30 Jakkar says:
What an idiot o.O I’m repulsed by part of every sentence he uttered.
05/07/2010 at 03:31 nonW00t says:
This guy sounds like a real dick. lol
05/07/2010 at 04:31 Commander_Wombat says:
So this is basically what I got from reading the interview:
Tom Chick is a douchebag who didn’t play the game past New York and nitpicks about basic “suspend-your-disbelief” stuff like incentivizing level exploration through strategic placement of ammo/uprgrades/health. Nice. Um, does the magazine he works for have a complaint department or a department of Internal Affairs? It would really suck if this douche were allowed to continue reviewing games panned a future “Fallout” or “XCOM” or “Carnage Heart” for the same ridiculous reasons.
08/07/2010 at 18:57 Steve says:
What he means is that game reviews typically use a 6 for a bad game, and a 9 for a good game. I rarely see a game with a review less than 5, even on a 10 point scale. 5 is normally a terrible game, where on a true 10 point scale it would simply be average.
14/07/2010 at 17:03 Tanysha says:
A bit late for the party but nonetheless:
I consider myself a fan of Cyberpunk and dystopian Fiction but I really got bored to tears by Deus Ex.
It was almost unplayable with an ATI GPU and the stealthing mechanism was unbearable after having played Thief. The whole Nano/Bio/techamadudel was more or less uninspired because the batteries where so scarce.
So yeah: If I had read his review it might have been helpful at this time.
I have a fairly high tolerance for flawed games. I love Vampire: Bloodlines and still play it regularly despite it’s horrible bugs and flaws. But if someone would give it a 4/10 because of those flaws that would be fine by me.
If you have really high ambitions and try to reinvent the wheel you better should have the expertise to follow through. If I try to make a piece of art out of scrapmetal and fail because I’m neither good at welding nor have the money to take my time I don’t expect praise because my concept drawings are really really neat.
So yeah: You don’t have to agree with Tom Chick but his viewpoint from that time is understandable if you try to blend out nostalgia and fandom. His second review a few years later was far more generous.
26/07/2010 at 02:05 Dead says:
Ah, Tom Chick.
It amazes me that someone can be part of the gaming press, reviewing games for so long, and still know nothing about them. He’s the Armond White of video game critics.
29/07/2010 at 09:06 John says:
1) I’ve never heard of Tom Chick or this review, so I think this article itself gives him a little too much glory.
2) Chick’s review failed because it wasn’t objective, it was just his opinion. Which is fine… but REAL reviewers (like… the guys who I’ve heard of who actually make decent money writing reviews and you’ll see on TV…etc) generally give things similar ratings, not because they’re in a cabal together (as Chick suggests… thought he was the guy who hated conspiracy stories!) but because they look at the games objectively by breaking them up into parts.
Chick just picked on the AI and load time, with no reference to the graphics, sound, originality…etc. A really amateur mistake, and a big reason why he’ll never be a proper game reviewer.
03/08/2010 at 21:07 googoo says:
Ahhh…..Chick. The biased douche who bashes any game that’s even remotely popular by writing nonsensical reviews in a vain attempt to spark controversy. Very impressive!
06/09/2010 at 15:45 Joel says:
Personally I love Deus Ex, but as I read his review I understand just about every point except the comment about the music, which he considered “generic”, while I think it’s one of the greatest video game soundtracks of that era, really only surpassed by Jeremy Soules fantastic orchestrations for Morrowind, Oblivion and Total Annihilation, and the Mass Effect soundtrack.
He is right about the AI, it is ridiculously bad, he is right about the setting, the plot, the stupid conspiracy theory upon conspiracy theory stuff, and the loot lying about everywhere.
When I played it I could suspend my disbelief for that, and I actually didn’t know you could steal a lot of the stuff he mentions without consequence, I assumed something would happen and just never tried stealing from the bartenders when they were looking straight at me – but I can certainly understand why all these issues could be too much for you to overlook.
To me, the reason Deus Ex is one of the best cyberpunk first person RPG’s is because there has barely been any others made. When it came out I hoped it’s success would mean we would get a wave of similar games, but that didn’t happen, and the only games beyond the Deus Ex series I can think of with the style and setting I’m looking for are the System Shock games, and to some extent Shadowrun and Blacklight: Tango Down, both too light on the RPG stuff and too heavy on the multiplayer FPS stuff to make them really interesting to me.
09/09/2010 at 02:29 Rich says:
Recorded hours in 1 year playing Deus Ex: 9934. Playing “Empire Total War” in one year 256. Nuff said.
12/12/2010 at 17:08 Mandamus says:
Are you kidding? He made a name for himself by using the oldest trick in the book. Going against the grain. Everyone likes it except this guy! Lets single him out! It’s the same thing happening with movie reviewers these days.. the ones that trash popular films get more page hits on their reviews and ads than the ones that don’t.
27/06/2011 at 12:35 karry says:
“Tom Chick, now one of the most respected American games journalists currently writing about the medium,”
Well…considering that by his own admission he went around the world banging random females in trains – how respectable can he be ?