Profile of Dullahan

Reric please fix OKW wire.

How is that their fault for making a bad review? They had early press access and review was probably already done before the game released and servers went to shit.

Wasn't IGN one of the publications that wasn't going to score the game until post-release? Or am I thinking of a different game?

Would you say the same about movie, music, or book reviews? Should they also be about informing the reader on whether or not the writer believes the piece of entertainment in question is worth their time/money? Because, with the exception of exceedingly terrible content, they rarely are.

A proper review that discusses, in a novel and interesting way, the title in context with others in its medium is going to be drastically more stimulating and engaging, and it's going to have a recommendation implicit in it simply by virtue of the level of the writer's enthusiasm in discussing it. It's a hell of a lot harder to write something like that than it is to give a "This but this, this but this, this but this, conclusion" pros-and-cons list and an arbitrary number, but the end result is a better read and a review that's still relevant even after everyone has played the game.

I'd argue that games are fundamentally different from movies, music and books. Games have technical aspects to consider. Online connectivity, framerate, features like VOIP, AI etc. If these things are flawed, regardless of the content a game should be given a low score.

Likewise, games also costs significantly more. $60, plus season pass/DLC etc is a far cry from the $15 it takes for a movie ticket, or $20 for a book/cd. More people care about knowing if a game is worth buying than for movies/music/books, which is why those reviews focus on content rather than value.

I'm not saying you can't provide anecdotes in a review to justify why certain features are good, or why they are bad. I'd make a comparison to table top gaming. I don't care about the reviewers experience with D&D, I just want to know if the new release is worth it. If an ancedote helps me imagine situations where certain features of the game are fun, then by all means. Otherwise, I just want an estimation of whether or not it is worth the cost of admission.

It's telling that I can honestly say I have never read a review of a book/movie/album until after I had already experienced them and wanted to see what others thought. Word of mouth recommendations are more than sufficient for those mediums.

With games the most valuable part is not what the writer thinks of the game. It's the summation of features and highlighting of problems that are most useful to me. It's the same with user reviews, all I need is a very quick analysis of value and performance and I'll decide for myself. I don't really care for reviews that gloss over the actual content/performance of a game to focus on the one or two thematic issues the writer had with it. (Like Polygon's Bayonetta 2 review for example, or Carolyn Petit's GTA V review on Gamespot last year.)

The current state of video game reviews is dominated by laziness and boilerplate stock-standard writing. I don't think it's unfair to expect more from people who do this sort of thing for a living.

That's true, and why I think dedicated reviews writers are a thing of the past. Gamespot fired most of their staff earlier this year and you can bet such cuts are coming to all the other sites eventually. Video is infinitely more important in todays environment than written content.

As I said though, more long form analysis is great. But a review isn't really a great environment for it.

But that's just the thing. It's literally impossible to write an objective review of a piece of entertainment. Anything you can possibly say about a video game that a person would care to read is going to be opinion, and opinion is subjective.

That's why the straight-up consumer report "Should I buy this game?" reviews are so useless. I don't know if they still do now, but I know back 7 or 8 years ago that Gamespot legitimately believed their reviews were objective, and it didn't make any sense at all. I have friends I can ask that question to. When I read a review, I want to read an interesting piece on the game in question by a person who has clearly put a lot of time into writing something stimulating.

The review I linked is a perfect example of this approach. It takes the game and looks at it in a way that you might not have considered yourself and it uses other forms of media and other, similar, games as a springboard for discussing the game and its place in its genre in a new and interesting way. It's exactly what I want in a review: a different and compelling outlook on a game that I'm already interested in. Not a bullet-pointed list of pros and cons constructed in the hopes that I might find it useful when making a buying decision.

If you're going to score a game and offer up a review, it should essentially be a buyers guide. It needs to answer the question of "Should I buy this game? Why or Why not?". The vast majority of people who look at reviews when a game comes out are trying to answer that question.


I don't really think a review is a place for a discussion of a game, I think that is better served by proper critiques that go into far more detail than possible in a review. A proper write up of their thoughts and experiences of the game, a breakdown of the mechanics and themes and what clicks about them etc. Something like for example.

I don't find buyer's guides very useful, but then again I also rarely read reviews since I generally know if I will enjoy a game or not just by seeing a little bit of gameplay footage.

Another game w/ partisans & T4.