Halo Reach Perfect 10! WTF?

[Evil_Weevil]

EDIT: owing to some people getting confused I would like to point out that this review is to be found on the IGN UK website. The USA and AUS versions awarded it 9.5 and 9.0 respectively.

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/111/1119630p1.html


Halo Reach: 10/10 according to IGN, but one line caught my eye. I've included the surrounding paragraphs to give some ccontext:

The new features are well woven into a campaign that stands as one of Halo's best. Taking place near exclusively on the surface of Reach, it plays its action straighter than its predecessors. There's a fatalistic air handing over the story of Noble team, something that's told through to the muted palette of the planet itself. It's a more human place than Halo has been before, with artefacts of its civilisation strewn throughout the game, and it's host to a more human story as well.

Not that it's a particularly great one. While it's certainly more direct than the incoherent tangle of lore that was Halo 3 it's no more engaging. Noble 6, the campaign's lead, is a blank slate ? no doubt to accommodate the customisable armour that can be kitted out in exchange for credits earned across the game ? but the rest of Noble team are little better than a grab-bag of clichés, and while the inevitable tragedy that awaits Reach threatens to be affecting, it's ultimately sci-fi pulp that takes itself too seriously. The real concern is that some of the colourful vistas of Halos past have been sacrificed to serve this more po-faced tale as the skyboxes are darkened by the thrum of war, but it's still a more vibrant world than many of its peers.

But if you're playing Halo for a well-told story you're frankly in the wrong place, and there's much more to enjoy here besides. Through the nine or so hours that it'll take to crack the campaign on Heroic (a number that won't be dented by playing with partners, as the difficulty now scales up in co-op) there's an amazing array of set-pieces, and if Bungie is perhaps a little too keen on aping the highlights of its last nine years it does at least seem determined to bring its experience to make them shine like never before.

So... what have we learnt?

1. That Halo Reach is basically the most polished version of a well respected series
2. The plot is little more that "sci-fi pulp"

BUT most importantly

3. That point 2 is irrelevant because its Halo. Uhuh...

So what IGN is saying by giving a perfect 10 is that mediocrity can be celebrated; That the below par and the slightly cr@ppy are fine, so long as the gameplay is frenetic and fun and made by Bungie.

Now, without having played the game I can't comment on either gameplay or story but what really irked me was the disregard for the complete package. In a sense we have admitted defeat in gameplay writing if it can be relegated as inconsequential. We don't look at films and say "Gee, that film was great! Made no sense but there was explosions and a funny man, and more explosions!" Now I know that films and games are different media forms and that they can't be directly compared. But when will consumers grow some balls and demand more for their money? As far as I can tell, in artistic terms reviewers like IGN create the impression that Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is better than the Godfather.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Or that they liked the games? Who cares what the critic thinks and how do you know that it is mediocre if you have yet to play it yet. You can complain about it all you want, I'll be playing it on Tuesday and forming my own opinion on it.

Edit: Alright, rereading, you're right, I did miss the point, but I think IGN knows that the Perfect video game will never be made, we all know that. But If they didn't retract points from it, then they probably saw it as forgivable and figured that it was only a minor thing. I just don't tend to listen to Reviewers.

 

[Zhukov]

Yeah... well, it's Halo. People are gonna go nuts over it regardless of its quality.

Hell, some reviewers were giving Halo 3 perfect scores.

 

[Sneaky-Pie]

I've stopped taking game critics seriously a long time ago.

 

[Eren Murtaugh]

Dude. Completely agreeable statement, and very well thought out. Gotta say, it's crap like this that pushed me away from Halo in the first place. Also, the Godfather IS good, but can we stop using it as the "be all-end all" of movie perfection?

 

[Snarky Username]

You can't simultaneously call a game perfect and say it has a bad story. THAT IS NOT LOGICAL!

 

[Thunderhorse31]

This isn't exactly going to somehow change my mind about the game, but the fact that you can say flat out the story is sub-par and still call it perfect does not compute.

Hur hur, you can't spell "ignorance" without...

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Personally I am surprised.

 

[instantbenz]

erm isn't ign owned by m$?

 

[Outright Villainy]

Hur hur, you can't spell "ignorance without..."

No.. no you can't make that joke... It's so...
[small]bad...[/small]

[sub]*head explodes*[/sub]

 

[Bretty]

Hur hur, you can't spell "ignorance without..."

Love it!

 

[Lamppenkeyboard]

It is a number, and I don't quite trust IGN for reviews on games mainstream as Reach.

 

[John Funk]

Having just beat the campaign, it's easily the best campaign (and the best-told story) of the Halo franchise. Make of that what you will.

 

[HT_Black]

...That the below par and the slightly cr@ppy are fine, so long as the gameplay is frenetic and fun and made by Bungie.

Yeah, pretty much. Stories are there to enhance the gameplay, not the other way around.

But even so, you can't throw around the 'perfect' designation if that's the case. 'Pretty good', sure, but 'perfect'? I don't think so.
Something tells me fanboyism has, once again, fudged the numbers.

Having just beat the campaign, it's easily the best campaign (and the best-told story) of the Halo franchise. Make of that what you will.

Lucky review-copy-posessing bastard...

 

[JaymesFogarty]

I agree; the idea of giving perfect scores for a game is flawed enough, without also ignoring a mediocre plot, and/or bad writing. Criticism is the only way to improve people! Stop hiding the imperfection under the mat!

 

[StriderShinryu]

While I find Halo's storyline to be a good one, I think it's perfectly reasonable to not include storyline in the rating of certain games. I'm a fighting game nut and I find this all the time. There are definitely certain games that you don't go to if you want a deep fulfilling storyline.

 

[V8 Ninja]

Ignoring that fifth line of text in your little rant, I do see where you're coming from. When reviewing a piece of media, you can't just say "That doesn't matter!" because, well, it does. Every part of a piece of media should be taken account for. I'm pretty sure that our good friend acquaintance Yahtzee has adopted this approach.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

Perhaps it's that the gameplay isn't mediocre.