As someone who has written reviews for games, music and movies, I can honestly say that crossover between elements considered for each medium rarely occurs. Sure, broadly speaking each deals with the psychology of the experience; how each can trigger and evoke certain emotional responses (such is the core of these experiences, after all). But, it is when you begin to analyze why the different mediums affect us that you begin to differentiate between the three. There are similarities yes, but the differences are what not only define it as a separate medium but constitute how the audience or player reacts to them. Therefor a game cannot and should never be judged purely on its intent or artistic vision such as a movie or symphony may get away with. A game by its very nature relies on the implementation of the design- how it interacts with the player, to get across that vision. Games such as Mirror's Edge are innovative yes, but one cannot simply ignore the blatant design flaws that annoyingly get in the way of enjoying this sample of originality.
In regards to video game criticism, I do wish reviews were less wordy and less focused on technical descriptions. I think most reviewers in this current age tend to get wrapped up in the many details of a game and forget to try and convey the experience of simply playing through it. I don't need to know why a control map is clunky through laborious descriptions, I simply need to know that it is clunky, and that's it. As long as we're talking target demographic, the video game audience surely isn't one to be keen on reading thousands upon thousands of words unless there is little else available and demand of news is extremely high. I think that if video game journalism is to be taken more seriously (especially as the slowly dying written-form) the reviews themselves need to -not dumb down- but simply become more concise and less involved with trivial descriptions that do little in the way of painting the bigger (much more informative and decisive) picture.
Okay so I've recently started streaming videos from my laptop to my 360 (I've used media center until now) and it saves a lot of time, but some videos have a red censorship sign next to them and I can't play them. All my videos are .avi, some work, some don't. Anyone know why this is? Any solutions?
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