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OPINION PIECE: OPINIONS ARE JUST OPINIONS

28/11/2019

22 Comments

 
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I may have already described my slightly pertinent experience with getting Rage 2 up and running. Three hours it took me to try to install the game on my PS4, before I gave up and just bought it via Stadia. I was playing within minutes.

Blah blah blah, and thanks for the backhander, Google. 

No, this isn't another Stadia-just-works polemic, but that does factor into it. This is more about why it's really important to believe, above all others, your own, first-hand, experience. And even then... take what you think you believe with a pinch of salt. 

You see, I'm really enjoying Rage 2. I'd liked the first one quite a bit, though I associate it with an odd time in my life, when I had just come out the other end of a long marriage that hadn't exactly worked, and I appreciated the chance to lose myself in its wasteland. 

I bought Rage 2 upon release, with a view to reviewing it on here, but the other reviews I read put me off. I was busy earlier this year, and fitting a big open world-game that was barely just sort of okay, into my free time wasn't something I found particularly appealing. So I left it in the shrink-wrap, until last week.

​And while I'm glad that the game has gone beyond my (admittedly very low) expectations, thanks to that lowering of this expectations due to others, I'm annoyed I ever allowed opinions to influence me.
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WEIRD THINGS
See, opinions are weird things. We have opinions for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes those reasons can be hidden from even ourselves.

Opinions cannot always be trusted - even if those opinions are our own. Opinions are not the same  as a fact. They're a subjective viewpoint, and cannot be viewed as a conclusive statement. They're built from our own subjective prejudices and psychological make-up, many of which are nebulous and buried somewhere deep in our psyche.

They can even be affected by the mood you're in at any given moment, your past experiences, social influences... In short, they're not, cast-in-iron, indisputable, facts.

An opinion, through all those influences, can even reach a critical mass and become a consensus; that's what sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes do, and why they are - in my opinion - not to be trusted. At the moment, the Rage 2 "consensus" on Metacritic is 67% - which, even though that should be considered above average, usually would put me off most games. 

I think that's why I find it so weary that many are trying to push the consensus on Stadia towards it being a flop that doesn't work. I've got first-hand experience of Stadia working - aside from whether there are issues with the business model. I know the technology works for me; that's not an opinion. That's a fact drawn from first-hand experience. It works. For me.

And talking of first-hand experience, I once wrote a movie for young children, about a talking dog, which was subject to the consensus that it was terrible - a consensus that very clearly affected the reviews it received, because everyone was influenced by it. Opinions had been formed long before it was even made. Consequently, it never really got the chance it deserved, because people bought into that group-think, mass opinion, rather than trying to form an opinion based upon their subjective experience. 

But then why would they? It was a film for kids anyway. Let's just shit on it from a great height to look cool, and be part of the hive mind...! It's like standing outside a primary school, shouting "Wankers!" through the gates.

Even so, by the point Pudsey The Dog The Movie was released, the critical mass of opinion was such that, even if people did bother to watch it, removing themselves from the mob might've proved scarier than just going along with the consensus. God forbid you're the one who dares to admit that it's just a harmless, bog-standard, children's film, rather than an affront to society and the art of cinema. 

EASILY AFFECTED
Unfortunately, as demonstrated by my experience with Rage 2, our opinions - even mine - are all too easily affected by the opinions of others.

I mean, you see it going on at the moment with the General Election; all the parties are trying to affect our opinion with their own opinions. Within different social bubbles, there tends to be a consensus about the opposing side, and I'm not sure how much whingeing about Boris Johnson actually puts people off voting for him, if they already have the opinion that he's the best person to lead the country. 

That's why elections are decided by those who haven't yet formed an opinion; the proverbial voting floaters. I don't think I've ever faced an election where the choice is so difficult (not because the Tories stand any chance of getting my vote, but because I don't know if I can bring myself to vote for Jeremy Corbyn a second time; it has become, for me, a decision as to whether I waste my vote on one of the smaller parties... and even there I don't see much to get inspired about).

I'm trying hard to see beyond the consensus, the opinions, and focus on truth... but it's very hard when everyone has a personal agenda, and it's all buried beneath trying to smear the other side. 

Opinions, are as flawed as people are flawed. Of course, opinions can be based upon experience too - providing our prejudice and preconceptions aren't so strong that they warp our perception of our first-hand experience - but we do rely, perhaps too much, on the opinions of others. 

It's why reviews exist; in reviews we're looking for some sort of assurance, or guaranteed, but all you're ever going to get - unless it's one of those reviews which rather dryly just lists, say, the features of the game, and recounts the story beat-by-beat - is one person's subjective opinion.
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ADMISSION
I'll be honest here, and admit that it took me a long time to realise that reviews are sort of semi-pointless; even my own. Can you imagine?! I think I always knew at the back of my head that my tastes in games were quite specific, and that just because I've no interest in, I dunno, DOTA 2 - whatever that is - it doesn't mean that everyone who enjoys it is fundamentally wrong.

I really don't enjoy turn-based RPGs, but lots of people do. It doesn't mean I've messed up, and it doesn't mean they're stupid (though they might be). It just means, y'know, we've got different opinions.

In fact, these days... I tend to watch YouTube gameplay videos before buying a game, rather than reading reviews, because then I can at least try to form my own opinion, based upon what I'm seeing, rather than risking fifty quid of my hard-earned on the flawed critique of an idiot like me, who thinks their opinion is worth something.

My tastes are not the same as yours. My opinions are not the same as yours. Arguing with someone about their opinion, especially when that opinion is regarding a video game thing, is pointless and stupid. By all means challenge factual inaccuracies, but likes and dislikes are not facts, so don't dress up your opinion as if it was one.

​Stadia, Rage 2... so many other games... if I'd listened to opinions I'd have cut myself off from being able to form my own. We don't always have the luxury of being able to afford to first-hand experience, but if you don't have any, be it of a product, a work of art, or even a person... maybe just keep your mouth shut, yeah?
22 Comments
Dan Whitehead
28/11/2019 09:46:28 am

I don't think reviews are pointless, but I do think people expect the wrong things from then. It's important that we're able to have discussions and debates around art, and reviews and criticism are the key catalysts for that. What reviews can't do is tell you whether you'll like the thing in question - and especially where games are concerned, too many people think they should be buyer's guides (ie the end of the conversation - buy it or don't buy it) rather than the start of the conversation.

Games have it especially weird in this respect, since games can fail in different ways. A game can, literally, not work. It can break, crash, be so glitched that it is unplayable. To cover that, you need a consumer buyer's guide mentality - this product is broken. At the same time, games can "not work" in a more subjective way, like all art. One person may love the combat or the platforming or the handling of the cars or whatever. Someone else may hate them. The game's story may leave one player weeping and someone else skipping the cutscenes as fast as they can. Neither of those people is wrong - those aspects of the game just don't work, for them.

So there's two things at play here: if you want to know more about a game to decide if you want to buy it, then yeah - YouTube and Twitch streams will give you a better idea of how it plays, and if you'd enjoy it. If you want to think about, and talk about, the game's value as a piece of creative media, then reviews are still the best way for that conversation to get started. Too many people think the first option is the only one that matters, and get angry when reviews tackle the second.

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THX 1139
28/11/2019 09:49:59 am

The writer Harlan Elllson said "Everyone's entitled to their informed opinion", with emphasis on the "informed".

If I'm reading a review I want it to be from someone who knows what they're talking about. You can usually tell quite quickly if that's the case, but an insightful review can be a very enjoyable piece of writing, and even enhance the subject in hand.

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Pete Davison link
28/11/2019 09:53:30 am

Yep. Yepyepyep. Been saying this for years, and ignoring most reviews in the process. Since about 2010 or so, the things I know I enjoy haven't aligned at all with the mainstream consensus, anyway; one of my favourite games of all time is like a 45 on Metacritic or something.

My own website is designed with this philosophy in mind -- to ignore supposed critical consensus and approach games that haven't been given a fair shake by the mainstream press with an open mind and a willingness to engage with them on their own terms.

This latter point is really important. When approaching a new game, it's important to consider what it's obviously trying to do; what the developers designed it to be. It's very easy to get bogged down in wishing it was something else, but that's not really helpful criticism at all.

This is also why I don't call anything I do a "review", because that's not what I'm going for; I'm just talking about the things I found interesting about the various works I write about. And if that, in turn, inspires someone to check out something I've written about, great.

As for how worthless Metacritic is, you only have to look at a game like Nier. Rated in the 60s "mediocre" range on its original release, it subsequently became regarded as a modern masterpiece and spawned an incredibly well-received sequel. And yet it's forever lumbered with that "mediocre" rating on Metacritic.

I'm firmly of the belief that it's very difficult -- perhaps even impossible -- to be able to declare most things truly "good" or "bad" with authority, outside of obvious cases where something simply doesn't work. A lot of people get "bad" in particular confused with "I don't like this", and the two things are very, very different.

You can dislike things and argue your case for that all you want. But outside of things where something is just outright broken or deliberately designed to cause harm, no-one really has the authority to say that something is "bad", because everyone has different tastes and "standards" are not universal.

A friend of mine wrote a good piece on this subject recently: https://lethargicramblings.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/standards-arent-universal/ He's currently doing an in-depth retrospective on what is considered to be "one of the worst bands of all time" -- who are an artist that he enjoys very much indeed.

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James Burton
28/11/2019 10:01:25 am

I've always reckoned that reviews are only meaningful when you get a sense of the reviewer's own tastes.

Rather than trying to decide "is this review a statement of objective truth?" (which, obviously, it never will be), you can instead consider "how far are these reviewer's preferences likely to be similar to mine, and therefore how likely am I to feel the same way about [product]?"

Of course, even then you've got to keep an open mind, but it's a start.

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Gaming Mill link
28/11/2019 10:23:11 am

In terms of reviews (and yes, I do read them at times) there is one particular British fella that more or less follows the flow and rarely, if ever, comes out with something original but is revered by his fellow critics. The guy has been making a living out of writing bitter and often angry drivel for years and pretending to be some sort of rock star or suchlike. Such shallowness in a very sallow person.

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Da5e link
28/11/2019 10:56:09 am

If you mean who I think you mean (you do), I really like his writing, and he's equally enthusiastic about the games he does like.

Anyway! Rage 2 is great.

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James Holloway link
28/11/2019 10:43:00 am

The Guardian ran a 1-star review of Jack Whitehall's standup gig at the O2. I happened to see a tweet from Henning Wehn, which said "If an act manages to hold the attention of such a large crowd it simply can’t be a one star show. You might not enjoy it but it simply can’t be a one-star show." I disagree.

I'd go so far as to say that if reviews are pointless, then so are the books, films and video games being reviewed. I say this because I think criticism is, first and foremost, entertainment. Yes yes, hats off to the actual creators – let us revere them etc, but it is ight that their works are discussed, and if thatt's sometimes in a negative light, that's a sign that our society, or at least one aspect of it, is healthy.

Consider the alternatives: a world in which films and TV programmes come out and nobody talks about them, or one in which people only have good things to say about them. I'd rather, quite literally, be dead then live in either of those utopian intellectual wastelands.

Like everyone else I've learned the hard way my tastes don't coincide with any one critic or the critical consensus, or even the consumer consensus. There are too many top-rated games I find boring and many middling ones I've greatly enjoyed. But that doesn't render criticism pointless. It merely puts it in perspective.

Surely I'm not alone in starting out reading a review hoping that the critic really really hates the thing in question? Genuinely, that is. It would be a step too far to pretend to hate it to generate some entertaining copy – but it's that entertaining copy I'm hoping for.

C.f. some of Peter Bradshaw's 1-star film reviews for the Guardian: https://rossvross.com/2010/02/25/top-five-peter-bradshaw-one-star-reviews/

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S Hawke
28/11/2019 11:20:14 am

There was an interesting review of the new His Dark Materials series on the Guardian website where they referred to the 2007 film adaption as dismal, except they included a link to the Guardian's review which gave the film 4 stars.

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MENTALIST
28/11/2019 01:22:49 pm

I fell asleep when I was watching the Golden Compass movie. Although it was like Boxing day, or something and I was tired, and full of food and likely wine. But I didn't feel compelled to go back and watch it properly afterwards.

The new series is top stuff, though. A tour de force from Ruth Wilson, in particular.

Birch Vand
28/11/2019 10:54:07 am

Just been reading a hilarious FB comment thread where iOS and Android fans are tearing each other to bits. This sort of rivalry, in 2019, still being a thing. Weird.

Regarding reviews, I'll take them as a guide, but nothing more. If it's the type of thing I'd like, I'll probably just watch / play / buy it anyway. Biffo's point about watching let's plays is a good one where games are concerned.

Finally, I like review as an art in and of itself. For instance, Kermode and Mayo's movie reviews, Kermode's rants in particular. We all love a well written bad review! (Notwithstanding the comments about the Pudsey reviews above) And Mr Biffo's game reviews are a great read, especially, as in the content of the digi minis, when they digress from the subject matter!

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Zieglinde
28/11/2019 11:40:55 am

I love turn based RPGs so I stopped listening to reviews a long time ago. Everyone play Valkyria Chronicles ok thanks

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HdE
28/11/2019 12:18:19 pm

Speaking as somebody who's written review based content online for some years, this article is the kind of thing that, perversely, reminds me why I ever started doing it in the first place.

Some reviews are indeed pointless. There are good reviews and bad reviews - as in, reviews as articles in themselves that vary in quality. And the thing I noticed about them after years of idly consuming them was that certain outlets or even specific critics really, really aggravated me, while I found other thought provoking, useful and entertaining.

When I write reviews for HdE's Totally Unoriginal Gaming Show on YouTube (that's a plug so cheap it probably came from AlieXpress and will blow up your laptop the first time you use it) I try to bear in mind something I was told years back when I wrote anime reviews. There's a certain audience for reviews that want them AFTER they've checked out whatever the article under scrutiny is. Sometimes, they just want the invitation to discussion it seems to imply. Or they may want some validation for their own opinion of it. Or maybe they want to be challenged (in the case of anime fans, I suspect they also want an excuse to shit up somebody's comment section with impassioned cries of 'WELL, ACK-CHEW-ER-LEE...' - but what do I know?)

So, that's always informed what I do, to an extent. If there's some point of interest I can include, or if there's something to be gained by looking at an old game and talking about it retrospectively, I actively look for that. And I'm not afraid to get into the nitty gritty of how things actually work mechanically. Surprisingly few reviews that come through corporate channels seem to actually do that.

The biggest thing I hope I can do with any of my reviews is usually to make them useful to somebody, somehow. I continually wonder if maybe that's the wrong approach to writing about video games. But, you never know, I guess.

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James Holloway link
28/11/2019 01:22:44 pm

The validation point is interesting, but I think that goes as much for the critics as it does their readers. Opinion pieces in general, for that matter. Like those "why I moved out of London…" columns there was a spate of a few years ago. What is this post validating? A recent Patreon-only announcement perhaps! ;) (Not giving anything away there, I hope. I'm not currently a Patreon subscriber so I'm in the dark. Whatever changes are afoot, I for one am excited to see them.)

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HdE
28/11/2019 05:57:55 pm

That point about folks going to reviews for validation was actually kind of a revelation to me when it was put to me. I mean, it's the kind of thing that makes sense, and explains why certain writers gain a following. We all pay attention to folks who tend to give voice to ideas that resonate with us, even if it IS only over something as trivial, in the grand scheme of things, as video games.

I must admit, it DID change the way I write.

Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
28/11/2019 01:05:56 pm

I love reading negative reviews, especially on Steam. Beyond the entertainment value of those that are just frothing away in fractured English, many are genuinely insightful. Rather than a “hmmm, I like this game very much, look how many hours I have”, you get one or several detailed reasons why they *didn’t* like it.

You can read these niggles and quickly tell if they’d ruin the experience for you as well. They might also highlight restrictions or oddities in the game design that would not be obvious or even mentioned in the store page description. Did you realize in Bomber Crew you’ll eventually be fighting hordes of jet fighters and guided missiles? Did you know Battletech only ever lets you control four mechs against ever overwhelming odds, making anything but the toughest in your own arsenal pointless? Did you know that in Kenshi, even a starving bandit will have more fighting skill than any character you start with?

These are things that ruined the reviewer’s fun and might well ruin yours.

I also used to make a lot of purchasing decisions from strategy mags like Expert Gamer (aka EGM2). These didn’t really review so much as show you the levels, items, enemies, bosses and strategies. By reading these, I could get a good idea of what it was actually like to play and whether I’d enjoy it. Or, I’d see a cool level/weapon/boss and think I just have to see/try/fight that myself!

For Stadia, I watch that Washington Post video of the guy hitting jump and the game reacting a full second or two later. That tells me it’s a no-go, as I’d be pissed off if and when that happened.

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Mr Martin McCurdie link
28/11/2019 01:24:28 pm

Me, wife and the kids enjoyed Pudsey cheers. Rage 2 I very much enjoyed although if I were to review it Id give it a 7/10. I recently finished Jedi Fallen Order, enjoyed that quite a bit too and would also give it a 7. Even though I write reviews myself I haven't paid attention to other people's in years to decide which games I want to play. They are just opinions but I often find the press forms the same opinion based on consensus like you say. So it is like a hive mind. I have a few people who I trust if I need a bit more information but generally I know what I like and am very seldom wrong in the games I choose for myself. I don't think Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order would've got such high praise from most of the media if it wasn't a Star Wars game. They would've said oh here's another Dark Souls ripoff 6/10.

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Carlos Nightman
28/11/2019 05:55:28 pm

I almost always only read reviews after I've played/watched/listened to/read the thing. Then I hunt down the people who felt differently about it from me and shout "Wankers!" through their windows.

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Johnc
28/11/2019 06:50:24 pm

The single reason I got Titanfall 2 was because of Biffo's frequent praise. So y'know, swings and roundabouts innit?

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Penyrolewen
28/11/2019 09:02:33 pm

Same! And while I enjoyed it, I don’t think I loved it as much as Biffo did. Different opinions and so on...but I think most visitors here know Biffo’s tastes quite well and wether they chime with their own. I rarely know that about other reviewers. Oh, and I never watch gameplay videos or even video reviews because of spoilers and that.

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squits link
28/11/2019 07:12:33 pm

I honestly expected a review score of people's opinions at the end.

I agree though, I stopped reading printed gaming mags a while ago simply because you get used to certain reviewers, then they leave. You've then got to trust someone you don't "know" if they review a game you were looking at buying.

Much better to see the game running and love/hate it that way. Most games don't get demos anymore either so you're literally wasting £50 if you hate it.

I've not bought a game at full price on release since Mass Effect 2, I've only ever pre-ordered once, and that was the aforementioned game. Purely because I played ME1 fully through thrice and loved it,

Now that I'm fully erect thinking about Mass Effect 2 again I must quickly adjourn to the withdrawing room.

TTFNBBL

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Chris Dyson
28/11/2019 08:19:45 pm

Opinions are like arseholes. They're spotty and poo comes out of them and you then have to wipe them with paper or leaves.

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Thomas
29/11/2019 11:49:08 am

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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