Escaping The Game Review Nightmare

I'm not entirely fond of defending Penny Arcade, particularly when they have produced their own questionable (influential) reviews in the form of kneejerk opinions and first impressions posted as news and game descriptions.

But the Penny Arcade post isn't about personal validation. It is about a person questioning both the difference in opinion between himself and reviewers, as well questioning the quality of the review itself.

In addition to simply saying the reviewer wanted a different kind of game than himself, Gabe points out sections of the review that seem a bit contradictory, unfair, or wrong. As well, he points out a section which he believes implies the reviewer simply didn't spend much time with the game.

He also raises the question of the influence of bad (in the sense of poorly constructed, unfair, erroneous, briefly played, and other such negatives) reviews on those that *are* looking for "buy/don't buy" advice.

Baines | July 27, 2007 6:04 PM

The thing is, Dan entirely sidesteps the point. Mike's main criticism is that, having played the game, he was pretty sure that the review hadn't even bothered playing past the tutorial phase before writing his review. I also played and mostly enjoyed Enchanted Arms, and he certainly seems correct.

Imagine playing through the first two hours of Twilight Princess, getting bored, and writing your review. I'm not saying EA is even almost as good as a Zelda game, but it does change pretty radically after the beginning section.

Suggesting that Krahulik doesn't "understand" reviews is a clever misdirection, but it just comes off like he's defending his buddy who got lazy with a review. I guess that's honorable in a way, but as an editor, I'd never work with him again if that was really the case.

Actually, did anybody ever go back and check the achievement dates on Lewis's Gamertag? That would clear up the problem pretty quickly.

jeffk | July 27, 2007 6:48 PM

I pretty much agree with the first two comments as far as they go, but I wanted to mention something they didn't. The defense that consumers should "build a relationship with reviewers" is ludicrous. I shouldn't have to subscribe to your magazine, and be fully cognizant with all of the people who write reviews for you, over the course of your however-many-year existence, to pick up your current issue off the newsstand and appreciate your reviews. The reason reviewers are getting paid for their ability to form and disclose opinions about a game is presumably their ability to do both.

The definition of a "professional" tends to include non-personal - i.e. professional relationships are different from personal relationships, and so on. If I have to form a personal relationship with you, over time, with great effort (and depending on the publication, expense) in order to get any information out of your reviews, you're not very professional.

devlocke | July 27, 2007 10:22 PM

I think Dan had a lot of good points. Especially that The Escapist should have contacted GamesRadar and the author of the review before publishing the article, to get their take on the matter.

fluffy bunny | July 28, 2007 2:06 AM

*Imagine playing through the first two hours of Twilight Princess, getting bored, and writing your review*

I would think that's perfectly valid. If you are bored for the first TWO hours of the game, what incentive is there to keep playing?

The common refrain "it gets good after X hours", when X is often some ridiculous two digit amount, is asinine. If nothing in the game hooks you early on, then what's wrong about reviewing the game based on that (so long as you divulge that)? The expectation that every reviewer should play through the entirety of 30,40,50+ hour games is silly.

nowak | July 28, 2007 6:11 AM

Nowak, if you've played Twilight Princess, you know that the first two hours are the tutorial phase of the game. If you really think that's a valid point to stop in a 40-plus-hour game, I'm afraid game reviewing might not be the career for you. Put it another way: Do you think it would be okay for a reviewer to stop watching Kubrick's 2001 after ten minutes? Would that leave him with an accurate representation of the film? Of course not - it's the prologue to a much more ambitious story. I'm sorry if twitch gamers and Halo kiddies don't have the patience for that sort of thing, but a professional reviewer should know better. If not, then he has no business reviewing the game.

jeffk | July 28, 2007 12:51 PM

Nowak, while completing certain games isn't necessarily practical for reviewers, readers do expect reviewers to play for more than a few hours.

If a review doesn't come from at least an expected minimal play time, then a "professional" (paid) reviewer should put that information in the review. (And don't just write "I wanted to quit by the second hour" if you *did* quit soon after, as that wording implies that you had kept playing for the sake of the review.)

Heck, if you find a game so boring that you cannot bring yourself to continue it, then you should be doubly obligated to tell readers. Not just as a disclaimer that you haven't played the bulk of the game, but as a warning that you simply found it that boring.

Of course, I never expect to read such a review from a paid worker outside of a known abysmal game or joke review. Not because reviewers don't do it, but because they want to keep getting jobs. Which itself says something about how people see reviews written by people that haven't actually spent a decent amount of time playing a game. (Similar goes for reviewers that obvious miss basic details about a game, showing that even if they've played for days, they didn't actually pay attention or bother to learn things about the game in that time.)

And playing only the tutorial or start of a game, while it can be indicative of the general game quality, shouldn't count as playing enough for a professional review. Not unless you are explicitly *only* reviewing the tutorial.

Baines | July 28, 2007 4:27 PM

I didn't mean to sidestep the issue of whether or not Cam finished the game. He did, twice -- once for review, once after his review was called into question. I'm sorry I didn't clarify it earlier.

I've got more detail than you probably want on my blog, in a follow-up post.

http://bunnyears.net/dan/?p=219

Dan Amrich | July 30, 2007 1:51 PM