Numbered Game Scores are Meaningless

 

Despite what people might say about the people who write for games review sites, review scores are still things that a lot of people pay attention to and for your average consumer of video games I can understand why.  A numbered review score is a nice quick way to see if someone thinks a game is worth your time or not.  If you don't want to risk potential spoilers or you want to go in as blind as possible but still want a recommendation before dropping some cash, a numbered score can be useful.  For example if you wanted to get the general opinion on a game like LISA, a game best experienced with as little prior knowledge as possible and wanted to limit the risk of any spoiler talk or having any of its more fun plot beats ruined for you, a quick look at Metacritic or IGN (IGN doens't actually have a review of LISA because they suck shit) will let you know if it's worth picking up.

But, for as long as I can remember reviews being a thing the numbers in these reviews barely mean anything.  For example, a 10/10 is a perfect score so therefore one might assume that a 10/10 review means that the games is perfect, a flawless masterpiece meant to be played by absolutely everyone, a work of art so good in every way that even non-gamers would be able to pick it up as their first entry into the medium and have their mind blown.  Well no, not the case.  IGN gave Breath of the Wild a 10/10 review despite the game being sparse, far too easy, chocked full of filler bullshit in the form of shrines and seeds and having some of the worst combat the series has ever had thanks to shitty damage calculations and breakable weapons.  Despite its laundry list of flaws and annoyances, because it belongs to a long running IP run by a big corporation, these sorry excuses for writers will slap a 10 on it.  So if 10 doesn't mean perfect and instead just means really good, then anything under a 10 becomes equally skewed.  We now live in an era where a game that gets released and is given a 6/10 by a reviewer will be deemed by a lot of people to be "unplayable".  Just look at IGNs review of Starfield, a game that is disliked by many for being sparse, buggy and full of copy-paste jobs still manages to get a 7.  

The numbers have been skewed so hard they don't mean anything anymore.  Do you like the game? give it a 9, did you like it A LOT? then bump it up to a 10.  Did you dislike the game? 7/10, was it really not for you? slap a 6 on that bitch.  I feel like anything below a 6 is reserved for stuff that's flat out broken (or maybe not since Starfield got a 7 hyuk hyuk) or for games that offend the reviewer in some way such as the infamous God Hand review where the guy playing it sucked at the combat and didn't like the humor so he gave it a 3.  Fuck that guy by the way, deserves to be kicked out of the industry if you ask me, twat.

If you ask me, a real 10/10 game doesn't exist.  Nothing is perfect, everything has its problems.  There are certainly some games that skirt the line of perfection like DOOM, Hotline Miami or SMT 3 but even those titles have certain little things in them that pull them from that number.

But despite all that, outside of a quick reference so some punter can know if a game is worth the buy in or not, numbered reviews are generally really fucking stupid.  It is completely daft to expect a person to boil down a complex opinion on a thing, not just games for that matter, into a number.  Like I personally, if you put a gun to my head and asked me to do it, would rate famously shit survival horror game Countdown Vampires and medicore but the still impressive Parasite Eve 2 a 7 out of 10.  Without hearing my thoughts in detail those two identical numbers don't mean anything.  A lot of reviews do come with articles attatched to them but there are also a great many cases where people don't read those and instead either look at just the number or worse, the metacritic which is why the skew is so annoying

Reviews have a lot more problems than just the number at the bottom, the people writing them not knowing what they are doing, chiefly, I'm just bitching about something I find stupid while I'm sick with the flu.  Ideally, you should just ignore reviews entirely.  Look at a little bit of promo material, decide if its your kind of game or not and just fucking try it.  You don't need internet approval to enjoy a game, ignore the general audiences and just play stuff

The Skill of Games Journalists

 

Games writing the last handful of years has got a bad wrap over the last few years.  Whether it be the shoe-horning in of identity politics in reviews, giving perfect reviews to good or average games, giving bad scores to niche titles they don't understand or weird "gamer bad" opinion pieces, a lot of people on the internet have a certain disdain for gaming news sites and their writers.  One thing that often comes in to question is "Do games journalists actually need to be good at games in order to review them?"

Well to put it simply, yes they do you flipping twit, how on Earth is that even a question?!  But let's go into it a bit more shall we?

The first question that you have to ask yourself is, what even is the purpose of a game review?  What game reviews are SUPPOSED to do is help you make an informed decision as a consumer on whether or not you think a game will be worth buying.  Obviously these can't be written without a little bit of the writers own opinion on the title being peppered in but, as a customer, you would hope that the person writing the review would know what they are talking about.

Well that's where the problem lies with game reviews on these major sites such as IGN and Kotaku.  The writers for these sites aren't just clueless about most of the games they play, they seem to be clueless about the entire medium in general.  The biggest example of that that sits at the forefront of peoples memories was the review of Cuphead.  The person who put that review together struggled SIGNIFICANTLY with the tutorial stage of the game.  Specifically on one of the first jump where the player is expected to perform a jump followed by a dash to reach a high up platform.  Cuphead is considered to be a fairly challenging game but this is something that a 4 year old perform in seconds and yet it ellued this guy for quite a while.  Another example would be The Independant slamming Astral Chain on Switch for "not giving grades after combat encounters".  The only problem is that the game DOES do that, but foregoes the feature if you're playing the game on the casual setting.  Not that there's anything inherently wrong with playing the game on casual but avid fans of that kind of game will want to know how the higher difficulty levels stack up and they will not be able to get that information from a review.

These writers are not fit for purpose.  I'm not saying that every games writer needs to be a top 5 speedrunner of a game in order to write a review on it but to be able to get a good idea of how the game is really like you need to AT LEAST be able to clear it on Normal.  Playing a game on easy may give the writer an idea of basic stuff like the control scheme or maybe they can put down some thoughts on the story, but because they often miss the real meat and potatoes of a games content it is IM-POSSIBLE for them to write a review that will successfully help a person make an informed purchase.

Let's imagine if we weren't talking about game reviews and instead we were talking about cars.  Let's imagine you aren't much of a gear-head and you have zero idea what kind of car you want to fit your needs.  To maybe educate yourself on the topic a little bit before heading to the dealership maybe you'll go online and check out some reviews of car models that you might think fits your needs.  You find a car review and it says stuff like "the car handles terribly and all the extra features make it confusing to operate".  Only here's the kicker, the guy writing the review can't drive, like at all, and doesn't know a steering wheel from a gear stick.  In fact, the guy writing the review for this car sucks SO BAD at driving, that when he took it for a test spin in order to write his piece, he crashed into a food bank for starving children and everyone in the village went hungry that day.  The confusing features he talked about? He was referring to thinks like the indicator and gear box.  If you found that out about the guy who wrote the piece, you'd be pissed off.  You NEED a good quality of information to make an informed decision on a purchase that big but instead you got a guy who can't drive and a 800 word article about how the back seats are sexist and the colour of the tyres are racist.  

Well that's the kind of enthusiast press we have have with gaming.  Not passionate users who care about making sure you spend your hard earned money on the best games for you but shitters who don't know a face button from a d-pad telling you the bare minimum in the shortest possible time frame in order to farm you for traffic clicks to their shitty websites.

So here's my proposition for how a review SHOULD be conducted

1) Make sure the person doing the review is at least somewhat versed in the genre of the game they are reviewing.  If you have a guy that loves JRPGs but hates fighting games, then for the love of God don't have him review Guilty Gear Strive, his opinion on that particular topic isn't worth shit

2) At least TWO playthroughs of the game in question, preferably the second being on an elevated difficulty or a New Game +.  If you really want to inform people about the easy mode have another writer whos less well versed in whatever genre give it a go for a little bit and just include it as some quick extra thoughts at the end

3) No rushing.  Stop trying to get reviews out either for or just before release day.  Some people "wait for the reviews" before buying, so how about making sure their wait is actually worth it?  If they really care about the game they'll buy it anyway and if they are on the fence an extra few days to make sure they get the information they need wont bloody kill them.

4) Keep your opinion as far away as possible.  Not 100% possible I know but if you think giant anime titties in whatever RPG you're reviewing are "sexist" then save that for a different article.  In the main review you can just include it as something like "a stylised look that might not sit right with everyone", for example. That's really what I mean by this

and I think that's all I'm really asking for.  Modertely skilled players giving me a basic rundown of what a game is like so that I can get a vague idea of if I want to drop 6-8000 yen on it.  It REALLY isn't  that hard, if YouTube boi with 500 subs and a mic from 10 years ago can do it then a salaried "professional" games writer can do it too

The Journalist Skill Debate Again

Cuphead is an upcoming run and gun game coming out soon that I'm fucking excited for.  It looks like a cartoon from yesteryear and mixes that with challenging game play similar to things like Contra.  It looks awesome and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

However controversy has once again reared its ugly head however this time it has nothing to do with the game itself and more to do with the people playing it.  If you remember when DOOM was coming out and a dude called Arthur Gies played it and sucked massive cocks at it?  Well it's that AGAIN.  People are pissed off (rightly so) that so called industry professionals can't handle a fucking tutorial level and of course gaming press is shooting back by claiming people are over reacting.

I would recommend at this point to go look up the video, it's easy to find but I'm not linking it here because I don't want to give any of the idiots at Venture Beat views on their shit, embarrassing video.

Let me start by saying that I have ZERO respect for games journalism.  It seems to be entirely populated by fucking morons who don't know anything about games and are more interested in writing clickbait or sucking corporate cock rather than ACTUALLY helping consumers in any meaningful way.  I'm not the only one who holds this view either, go find any thread about the state of video game journalism on social media and you'll see a lot of people repeating that sentiment.

So big question of the day, do video game journalists have to be good at video games?

The quick answer is yes, of course they fucking do.  The job of a reviewer or someone reporting on industry goings on is to assist the consumer.  Therefore, you MUST know what the fuck your on about or your failing at the most basic facet of your job.  No one is asking journalists to be pro gamers winning The International every year or speedrunners with 5 or 6 world records under their belt but we ask that you at least know how to finish the tutorial of any game that you might come across. 

Imagine if you were trying to buy a car so you look up reviews of various vehicles.  Imagine then you find out that the person reviewing the cars CAN'T FUCKING DRIVE.  This is what the Cuphead/DOOM debate is basically all about. 

If you are an individual and you make a YouTube video or write a thing for a personal site, it's OK to suck at games or suck at just that one game.  For example I don't know shit about sports games  so if I gave a scathing awful review or did a terrible gameplay video of the new Fifa and then called it shit, it's clear that it's just one tossers opinion on the sea of piss that is the internet.  HOWEVER, if I was writing for a PROFESSIONAL news website in a PROFESSIONAL capacity and then couldn't even finish the most basic stage of a game with like, 2 button controls, of course people are going to question my ability to do the job.  In the case of Cuphead it brings into question everything that Dean Takahashi has EVER said because clearly the man lacks the basic motor function to hold a controller properly.

Which leads me to my other point about this.  Arthur Gies and Dean Takahashi didn't just show "bad" performances.  People can have an off day or just be not particularly geared towards a certain genre, that's fine.  These performances were INCOMPETENT.  The kind of game play I'd expect from a child who has never touched a game before.  No word of a lie, I could give my mother a copy of Cuphead and within 26 minutes she would finish the tutorial level.  Even my wife, who doesn't game and who has put in some FANTASTICALLY embarrassing attempts at certain titles would probably finish the fucking TUTORIAL of Cuphead in 26 minutes. 

You couple this with all the problems that games journalism has had over the years and now we're at a point where people have a problem trusting these websites.  One stupid prick writing for some stupid website Game Revolution said "If one plumber fucks up your taps, do you never hire another plumber?"  Which is a fair point in a way but he's missing the bigger picture and generally being an apologetic little bitch.  If a plumber fucked up my taps, I'd hire a different plumber FROM A DIFFERENT COMPANY.  So we now know that Venture Beat can't be trusted to pick up a control pad without probably choking on it, where am I going to go?  Gamespot? IGN? Kotaku?  Well these websites are also full of complete bullshit.  People are mad because, if we're using the plumber analogy, that ALL the plumbing companies in the towns are staffed ENTIRELY by inept wankers.

You want game news?  You want game reviews?  There are plenty of enthusiastic individuals on sites like YouTube/Twitch or various blogs and personal websites that you can get your info from?  This is ESPECIALLY important if you are into a niche series or niche genre.  If you're into dungeon crawling who are you going to trust?  Some cunt on IGN who played Grimrock once for 20 minutes and gave it an 8/10 or someone who has been playing games in that genre for fucking YEARS. 

Sort your shit games journalism.  Maybe if you hired some actual passionate people who aren't borderline brain dead, people wouldn't hate you.  Stick to writing about "social issues" for easy clicks and leave the games, to the gamers.

Games Media Is and Always Has Been Trash

Every medium needs its critics.  If it wasn't for people criticizing the works of others then things would never get better.  Content creators wouldn't have much of an idea of what people like and what people don't and we'd be a lot worse off for it.  That said, mainstream games media is complete trash and has been complete trash for a fairly significant amount of time.

I've ranted about how shitty certain sites are in the past such as PC Gamer and Kotaku but just generally speaking, mainstream games media is fucking dreadful and it always has been.  Even before I was using the internet as my main source of information, back in the day when I had a subscription to Edge Magazine, I thought games media was a fucking waste of goddamn time.

It's not ENTIRELY useless as we need someone to come along and report the facts so there is some merit.  When a company announces a game or when something happens in the industry it's good to have a publication on hand to report that shit so we know what's going on with this hobby that we all hold so dear.  However, reviews of individual games and opinion pieces are a complete waste of fucking space and I don't know why anyone bothers reading them.

There is some evidence to point out that a fair number of reviews, especially for big name titles with a lot of money pumped into their development are paid for by publishers but putting that aside reviews are still a waste of time.  A review is essentially the opinion of the person writing it and quite frankly the people who currently write for games media just aren't worth listening to.  All too often I've read stuff written by some prick who claims to have expertise in the field of games but in reality knows very little.  Too many fucking morons claiming to be "life long gamers" who are actually just part time bloggers writing about a game they played for half an hour one time.

Not only that but games review sites INSIST on using fucking numbers at the end of their reviews which pisses me off to no end.  How can you boil down a complex opinion on something like a game to something as simple as a fucking number out of 10.  The numbers have lost all meaning nowadays anyway with 10/10 meaning "really fucking good" rather than what it's SUPPOSED to mean; "perfect".  It annoys me with films as well how everything is X/5.  Fuck off with that, just write about the movie/game and leave the fucking numbers out of it.  If you base your decision to purchase a game based on it's score out of 10 on IGN then you are a fucking idiot that needs a slap in the face.

Also in recent months (maybe years) there's too many fucking opinion pieces written by people who know nothing of games and have skins thinner than a wet paper bag.  All too often I hear about "this game is sexist" or "this game causes violence" written by fucking idiots who know nothing about games in general OR THE GAME THEY ARE FUCKING CRITIQUING

What I want from the games media is cold, hard facts.  X developer is working on Y game.  A event has happened to company Z.  I don't give a fuck that you think the latest AAA game is "8.8/10" or whatever, or you think that a certain title is sexist or overly violent because your opinion is absolutely trash and you should keep it to yourself.  They all parrot the same shit anyway.

You could argue that I should keep my opinion about the gaming press to myself but I'm a nobody blogger who isn't be paid to do this shit.  The fact that you are receiving a salary to write shit opinions about video games is disgusting and in an age where YouTube/Twitch and enthusiast blogs exist, you money grubbing idiots aren't needed.  Fuck off.

The Problem With Hype

I know I made a post about a week ago about how totally hyped I am for the new Gauntlet, but getting hyped for something is not a thing I enjoy doing to myself.

You see, if you get hyped for a game and follow its development and look up all the information you can on it then you are setting yourself up for disappointment.  If the game that you've finally been waiting for comes out and it ends up sucking great deals of ass, then you are going to feel pretty crushed.  This has happened to me on numerous occasions and maybe that's why I'm a little jaded when it comes to new releases.

On the flip side, if a game comes out and you weren't really expecting much from it but upon playing you realise it's actually really good, then that's a really nice feeling.  That's not to say that you should go around hating on any release that gets any kind of press in the name of avoiding disappointment, but not getting too caught up in the whirlwinds of hype will help soften the blow a little if a game you were hoping to enjoy sucks.

But building excitement for a title is what's done for any entertainment medium, it's how sales are generated.  But for me, when certain games start getting a lot of hype or a lot of praise on release, I instantly start raising eyebrows and it causes me to judge a game a lot more harshly that I would have done previously.

Halo is the best example of this that I ever experienced.  Halo (the first one) was a good game, I enjoyed playing Halo on my friends Xbox when it first came out, it's a well polished FPS experience.  However, Halo got a lot of praise and I mean A LOT of goddamn praise.  It was being given perfect scores and hailed as one of the best games fucking ever made in the history of games.

However during the time of Halo's peak popularity, I couldn't help but find all the praise to be very silly.  I really enjoyed playing it but I had a lot of problems and quite frankly it felt like a massive step back from a lot of the FPS games that I played during my youth.  When faced with a Halo fan I would start to nitpick every little thing because of all the hype it received and in doing that I ended up kind of convincing myself that I didn't like it.  It was only when I got over myself and popped it in again that I realised that is IS a good game, it's just not the 10/10 supergame that everyone made it out to be.

It sounds really petty I know, but if you throw down a 10 I'm going to pull out the magnifying glass.

Please Stop Moaning About Difficulty

There needs to be a rule when it comes to video game reviews, where reviewers should not be allowed to talk about a games difficulty at all.  This seems like and incredibly stupid and unreasonable thing to say, but what choice do we have when almost every reviewer is wrong about difficulty in games.

Let's talk about Castlevania for a second here.

A good majority of people think Castlevania is a hard game, and they would be right.  The level design and enemy placement is fiendish, the bosses are tough as nails and with no save or password system it can turn into a bit of an endurance test if you die a lot.  On top of that, you sort of have to know whats coming so that you can make educated choices about your sub-weapon.  This isn't bullshit because the games fairly kind with checkpoints, but overall, castlevania is a hard game.

Now what about Demons Souls, or even Dark Souls, are these hard games?  No, no they are not.  Everything in Demons and Dark Souls is designed to kill you and make your life a living hell if you are not willing to play by the games rules.  It's a game where you have to learn the mechanics well, take in your surroundings and above all be careful and observant.  If you do all these things then chances for survival in Demons and Dark souls is actually rather high, and while it's still a rather challenging game, the levels between these games and basically everything in the 8/16 bit generations is massive.

Let's take another example, Etrian Odyssey 4

Etrian Odyssey is a series of dungeon crawlers designed as a throwback to games like Wizardry and it falls in a genre known for it's difficulty.  A few weeks ago I was made aware of a review on IGN basically panning Etrian Odyssey 3 for being too difficult and unfair.  This is of course bullshit and really it was a case of the reviewer not being arsed enough to learn how the game works and getting frustrated when things didn't go his way.  Etrian Odyssey 4 on the other hand got a great review, because the person in question played it on easy mode and didn't have to learn the ins and outs to get by, and this is sort of sad in a way.

He's right, its a great game but not because there is an easy mode that makes it accessible to newcomers.  That is a great feature but that isn't the reason the game deserves the score it got.   Dark Souls is a challenging game but all the hyperbole being thrown around regarding its difficulty caused people to turn away.

Panning a game for difficulty, especially when you are wrong about it, is not good.  It gives the developers this false idea that people don't like challenging or even hard games.  If you as a reviewer find a game kicked your ass into next year, then say so, but don't pan the whole game because you assume that everyone else is like you and isn't willing to put in time to improve at it.  Until reviewers can talk about difficulty in a mature way, and not just throw a low score at a title because it beat them, discussion of difficulty should be disallowed from reviews.

I swear to god if Dark Souls 2 is ruined because of shit like this I'm going to be rather upset.