Game Journalism: Scores for Dollars

   

OK, I haven’t had time write up a proper blog, and technically I don’t have time now, but dammit this has been bugging me for months.

     So, gaming magazines. It used to be getting the latest Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) was something to look forward to. Every month, when it came in the mail, it took all I had to not exclaiming like a little schoolgirl on Christmas. EGM used to be (please notice the “used to be”) a gaming magazine with journalists like no other. They were brutally honest about video games, not just giving a bad game a low score, but explaining in meticulous detail about WHY a game deserved such a low score. There definition of a low score wasn’t a “5” or a “6”, either, as is the norm nowadays (more on that in a bit). EGM wasn’t too proud to give games “0.0” or “1” and explain in technical detail why (“the bump mapping is terrible, the clipping is off, the hit detection is horrid). This was a gaming magazine companies fear/loved to give advance copies to, because if it sucked, they would rip it to shreds AND make calls backs in repeated issues as to how bad it was. For instance, in Turok Evolution, the main antagonist is an 1800’s military officer designed like General Custer. He is the end boss named Tobias Bruckner, and he rides a T-Rex with rocket launchers and shotguns strapped to its back.

                                Please take a solid minute to imagine this.
                                Can’t? Then here, look below. It’s that funny.

       EGM made an entire award called the “Tobias Bruckner Award”, given to games with incredibly bad design choices. GENIUS! EGM has even had industry changing jokes that became reality. Their April Fools jokes involved things like “Unlocking Sonic in Smash Bros. Melee” or “Unlock Ryu and Ken’s trainer Gouken in Street Fighter II”. Years later, these jokes became reality, because gamers truly wanted these jokes to be real. No other gaming magazine has had this kind of impact in the community. Then, as if by some kind of reverse karma, all the beautiful honesty in journalism that the game industry needed stopped, and something terrible happened. EGM closed its doors. That’s right, as if by some malevolent curse, the economy hit their publisher Ziff Davis Media and EGM was on the chopping block. February 2008…. a sad month indeed.

        Now EGM is back…..and everything is changed. The 20-30 plus pages dedicated to reviews? GONE! The snarky reviews of games that don’ live up to their expectations? GONE! How about multiple reviewers for a nice control as to how multiple people thought of the game? GONE! Fantastic, industry changing April’s Fool’s Jokes? Nothing yet so, GONE! This month, they reviewed eight games. Eight. To EGM’s credit though, they still have an extensive regular departments section in their magazine with interviews, previewed titles, and the ilk.

       Is it reliable anymore for game reviews? Shamefully, no. No game, but no game, got below a 6.5 this month. That should mean that everything they played was either great or at least above passable. What about in the last two months? Well Dissidia 012:FF got a 5.0. Why? No, seriously, WHY? According to Metacritic, this game sits pretty with a 78. EGM’s reasoning was “The game is all fan service and it’s a bit of a complex fighting system”. (Sigh). When someone says that a fighting game is complex and it placates to the audience that wants to play it, I really have a hard time understanding the issue. What, would it have been better if it were a mainstream fighting game that just HAPPENED to have Final Fantasy characters? Better yet, should it have been more of a Smash Bros. clone, because an original fighting engine is too scary and hard to learn? I seriously have no patience for ignorance of this magnitude. Of course it’s a fan game! Only the die-hard fans are playing Final Fantasy games anymore anyways, since Square doesn’t know what the hell a good combat system has looked like since FFX (and yes, I realize that last comment is up for debate, but I stand behind it). So of course the fighting system has a learning curve. This is the same magazine that praised Pokémon Black/White with a 9.5, which is the same game that came out 13 years ago except now the box art is different, and yet they thrash a game because “it really only appeases to it’s fans with it’s aethstetic levels of older FF games and semi-complex fighting system.” Seriously, a reviewer who says a game was bad because it does exactly what its core audience wants is just insulting, not only to the audience, but to even potential fans of the series.

Rage subsiding.

         How about Game Informer? Is Game Informer a better magazine to throw down for $15 a year? Pfft. They can’t even get their Game of the Month award right. This month, L.A. Noire got game of the month with an 8.75, but The Witcher 2 scored higher with a 9.25, probably because they thought it was a better game. So, they divided the categories and put The Witcher 2 in a PC slot, giving it PC game of the month. My problem with that is it was THE ONLY PC GAME THEY FU**ING REVIEWED! That not withstanding, Infamous 2 and Dirt 3 scored just as high (8.75), and The Legend of Zelda for the 3DS scored even higher (9.25), so why give GotM to L.A. Noire? I will tell you why, and this is what I have been leading to.

Gaming magazines scores are based on the highest bidder.

         I’m sorry, but you are a damn fool if you believe otherwise. Unless the gaming community as a whole hates it, or unless it has more negative word of mouth than the Hot Coffee mod, than the game will score unnecessarily high. L.A. Noire could have been a buggy and broken mess, but it had a ton a press and Rockstar probably greased some palms, so it was destined to get at least a 7.0 on a 10-point scale. Fair enough, but now this game doesn’t get an honest review. But HEY! At least it got game of the month even though according to Game Informer’s grading scale Zelda should have kicked it’s ass. Oh wait? Did you decide to give L.A. Noire GotM because it’s “fresh, and new” and totally isn’t Grand Theft Auto with detectives? To this, I say bull. If Zelda scored higher, give it the award. It should be a testament to how good one game can be if, 13 years later, it’s repackaged with some minor changes here and there and it can still be a more fun game to play than L.A. Noire.

        My only reason for being so flippantly caustic about this is because I freaking hate what has become of gaming magazines as a whole. It used to be that a 10 point scale was reliable, in that a “0” meant avoid at all cost and hope the developer goes belly-up for not really trying, a “5” meant the game was playable, but only rentable, and a “10” meant add it to your collection today. Now, a “5” is the new “0” and a “10” goes to either an earnestly good game or whoever paid the most to the magazine/publisher. We are now at the point in game journalism were a five point scale (1 -5) is now more trustworthy because 7 has become the new mediocre score.

      Now, I’m not an idiot (so far as I have been told) and I know game reviews are a matter of pure subjective opinion as opposed to fact. This is the end point for EGM though, their reviews were full of such technical analysis and supporting justification it almost seemed like fact. That didn’t just say a game was good because of the “graphics were good”, but instead go into the lighting detail or the polygon detail and/or the attention to texturing.

      Is it unfair of me to have such an acidic tone, accusing the game journalism industry of trying to warp us out of our money towards games that truly may not deserve it? Probably. Having never worked in the game industry myself, my comments would be considered of a layman, taking only my knowledge of over 20 years as a gamer and 3 years in game design and development schools.

     Allow me to close and venture you this thought. What’s the difference between a game player and a modern day game journalist? Answer: An associate’s degree in journalism and/or creative writing. That’s not a purposefully scathing remark, either. Next time you fold open a gaming magazine, and you want a review for a game, ask you self a couple questions before you take that review for its face value:

-Have any of the journalists ever helped CREATE a video game or worked in the game industry?

-Is it a requirement for this magazine to have technical understanding of video games before you start writing reviews for them?

-Magazines companies need money, and does this company need to do what it takes to make sure they stay on the PR good side (padding reviews, giving false awards) to score more dough?

-Finally, when all that is considered, what honestly makes a professional game reviewer more reliable than anyone on this or really any other blog?

The final one has an answer: I have nothing to gain by saying how I feel about games and media on this site, whether it is good or bad. I say again, nothing.

Music while I game.

Whatever happened to the ability to play Last.FM while playing a game on Xbox? It used to exist! Sure you can still play music from a flashdrive or music installed on your system while you game, but getting to that point is nothing short of a hassle.

I got 100% of Oblivion completed, and probably only listened to about 1/8th of the game. I also managed to watch the first 3 seasons of Deadliest Catch while playing Oblivion. How you ask? Well, I had Oblivion on one screen, and Deadliest Catch coming through the headphones from my computer. Made time fly. I got to the errands and collection quests of Oblivion and knew I didn't need to hear anything, so I listened to something else.

Even today I listen to podcasts while playing games that lack strong audio like Borderlands and Brink. Both are fine games, but the in-game music, and occasional dialogue cues often make me wonder why I'm even listening to anything in-game. It's partially killing two birds with one stone (I have thousands of podcasts still to listen to) and it makes the errands and boring travel in the game seem less.... boring. Nothing against any of the games, and most of them have excellent audio... they're just missing something.

Fallout 3 spoiled me. Three-Dog and his interruptions to the radio to announce things that my character was or was not influencing were brilliant. Assassin's Creed did the same thing, sort of. You could hear people talk about my recent exploits and adventures. Maybe it's come from years of playing games in a silent apartment or room, but hearing just the music is sometimes unsettling.

If this were 15 years ago, I'd probably be going insane. Games back then rarely had in-game voiced dialogue, and even if it did it was usually just during cut-scenes.

More to the point though, games like Fallout and Oblivion have excellent in-game music. Games like L.A. Noire have amazing in-game dialogue and meaningless conversations. It's sad to see games like Borderlands where it completely lacks any strong musical cues. Gearbox knows in-game music. Black Mesa had awesome musical cues. But this isn't to bash Borderlands, they're just the first example I could think of where the lack of any sort of audio seemed prominent.

I get their artistic choice to have little music. They're trying to create a desolate and deserted atmosphere. I can totally dig that. Your first few hours in the vast stretches make you think you're the only one around. Problem is ,Borderlands, after a while you're forcing me to run errands. I don't mind it, I know it'll pay off in the end. I just would like to hear some music while I work. So instead I silence the in-game audio and listen to podcasts, or Pandora or what have you.

The Xbox still has the feature to play music off of a flash-drive, but I'm surprised to see they haven't really changed/improved it since that. Of course if I had a Zune I could link my music. But how many people do you know have Zunes? I know of 3. GameStop used to sell them. If I had a Windows PC I could stream my music to my Xbox. But if I had a Windows PC I would be complaining about a lot more than lack of in-game music. (Zing).

Dungeon Siege is coming out soon. Dungeon crawling at it's best. The demos out too. You'll see what I mean. From years of playing D2, Baldurs Gate, and Torchlight I know how boring it can get without some interesting musical cues. I might just have to make a dungeon crawling playlist. I made one for UT2K4. Of course UT2K4 had an in-game music player that would search your computer for all of your music. Now that was a music player you could hang your hat on.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to/yell at this weeks "This American Life" while I search for more badges and film reels in 1940's LA.