I'm consistently disappointed in reviews for placating what has sadly become a boring and mainstream-driven industry.
I don't worry so much about scoring schemes as the only way you can properly consume a review is to read it. I'm definitely in favour of eliminating the scores as this attempt to offer a review in pill-form will only further such mediocrity. But beyond that, in reading reviews, I'm disappointed by the lack of recognition for the decline of complexity in games...
I'm not naive to the realities of business - although I think it's equally asinine to think that games weren't profitable before their development became so mass-produced. In fact, it was the willingness to experiment and devise complex systems that built the industry in the first place.
Because reviewers never blew the horn on the decline of innovation and novel concepts in games, we now live in an era of gaming where the balance of production has shifted to more easy-to-manage factors. Off the shelf engines, mixed with inexpensive asset production. From a technical standpoint, while it still involves programming talent, games development today is more a process of integration than actual production of new data models and concepts.
I'd like to see reviewers penalize game makers more often when their titles are simply a re-skinning of a concept that already exists. Maybe it's worthwhile to split reviews into two categories. The first being it's story and production qualities and the second being technical and implementation specific.
The value judgement for me with games nowadays is that if the depth and experience of the game barely exceeds that of watching a movie, I'd rather spare myself the redundancy and just watch movies instead...
need to kill rising...
Log in to comment