erttheking said:
No offense, I don't find your X, therefore, Y argument to be particularly compelling. Because it involves a lot of leaps in logic. Also it generally involves some form of conspiracy or enforced policy on the parts of the reviewer in order for them to all be in on "objective" reviews. The world of game reviewers exists outside of IGN and Gamespot.
And I'm going to point out something I find kind of hilarious. You complain that game reviewers think games are objective. And then you complain that they don't review games in certain ways. You say that reviewers need to focus more on the story in story heavy games. In other words, it kind of seems like you think game reviewers are too subjective.
Also, scores suffering because of disliking one button is petty. Like. Really goddamn petty. I've seen a reviewer or two remark how they didn't like the way the camera screwed with them when they had to push the stick "back." Because instead of pushing down they had to push in the opposite direction of whatever direction their character was facing
I think your arguments would make more sense to me if you didn't say "Game reviewers think games are objective" and instead said "game reviewers are too easy on the games they review." I can actually follow the logic on that one, and it seems to be a conclusion your arguments are more well structured to support.
Game reviewers are most definitely far far too easy on games along with how in-line game scores are with one another (like how close IGN and GameSpot always are). And games on sites like IGN and GameSpot are reviewed by lots of different combinations of people, yet they almost always are right in-line with each other, that's one hell of a coincidence that never happens at those rates in reviews of works in other mediums. It's not just IGN and GameSpot, it's the vast majority of other sites too. My hypothesis for why both those simultaneously occur is that games are treated as objective products. The fact that you see major backlashes over review scores like Greg Tito's GTAV and Dragon Age 2 reviews here on the Escapist or Jim Sterling's FFXIII or Breath of the Wild reviews. It's definitely an idea held by many gamers that game reviews should be objective, that's why Jim Sterling did that FFXIII "objective" review mocking the very idea of that. It's an idea that's been in gaming for quite awhile now as FFXIII is just about 10 years old already, and it didn't start with FFXIII either. It's not a conspiracy or enforced policy, it's something that just became status quo over time. Why else would gamers claim such and such review is objectively wrong and demand reviews be removed from aggregate review sites? Jim Sterling's reviews literally got removed from Metacritic at one point because they were "tainting" precious game scores. I'm open for other reasoning for why aforementioned occurrences happen in video gaming (they don't happen in board gaming) and no other medium. I just feel my hypothesis is the most likely reason why is all.
What's the point of reviews when normal gamers like people here on the Escapist or most gaming forums can predict Metacritic scores without even playing the game? In the "Anthem review" thread, Hansel and Critical were pretty spot-on with their Metacritic predictions for Sekiro. A Resetera poll [https://www.resetera.com/threads/spider-man-reviews-set-to-arrive-on-september-4th-update-poll-added.63231/] accurately predicted Spider-man's Metacritic. I can accurately predict most games, my Division 2 prediction is in this thread (and is currently correct) and I only ever played an hour of the 1st game's beta (then deleted that garbage), and watched a 10-minute video of the 2nd game. So what's the point? Why are people concerned about not getting reviews when you can just predict the scores yourself?
I just listed a single example of one mechanic (grenade button) that "works" but one cannot like. And, the grenade button does affect gunfights a lot in competitive multiplayer and the higher the player health, the more effect it has. For example, Uncharted's multiplayer is infested with people chucking grenades when they know they are losing gunfights forcing the other player to stay to finish the kill (and die to the grenade) or run away from it giving up their kill. What makes matters worse is that Uncharted obviously has regen health so seconds later the player that should've lost that gunfight is now back at full health and they was really no consequence for their poor play. So many video games devs don't think about how every mechanic interacts with each other, a simple thing as a grenade button that works fine in a lower health game like COD becomes something quite different in a high health game like Uncharted. But most devs just see such and such popular game does this so we'll do this too, never thinking about its effect in their game. By themselves grenade buttons, high player health, and health regen are neither bad or good, but how they interact with other mechanics determines their worth. That's a paragraph critiquing just simply a grenade button, you won't find that type of a breakdown of mechanical interplay in any professional game reviews.
If say 50% of a game is cutscenes (like MGS4) with the other 50% being gameplay, why wouldn't the narrative's quality make up 50% of the score? Wouldn't that make common sense? It's like how Jackie Chan movies are about the action scenes and his very unique physicality (that Roger Ebert compared to Buster Keaton) and the plot just acts as a clothesline to get from set-piece to set-piece so the plot is of lesser importance than say a drama and should be reviewed as such. Narrative is obviously more crucial to The Last of Us (a drama) than it is to Uncharted where the plot functions as a means to get from one set-piece to the other. I'm merely using common sense and logic based on how professionals review works in other mediums.
