TELL ME WHAT TO FEEL by Mr Biffo

11/11/2015

To somebody like myself, a washed-up 90s game journalist, the state of gaming media is wholly unfamiliar.

Back when I was in my prime - not the calcified husk that I am today, trading on past glories and begging for some sort of validation - we knew what to think, we knew what to believe. The games magazines told us.

They were the sole authority on whether a game was good or bad. We believed them, and - for the most part - there was usually a consensus. One that we all bought into.

Nowadays, it's all... Halo 5 is great. Halo 5 is rubbish. Call of Duty Black Ops 3 is great. Call of Duty Black Ops 3 is rubbish. Assassin's Creed Syndicate is... well, you get the idea.

I don't think I've ever seen quite such a spread of differing opinions as there has been over the recent clutch of blockbuster games, but it seems to be the way gaming commentary is going. There are more voices on offer, a sweaty abundance of independent opinions, and more in-depth analysis of games than there ever has been before. It's inevitable that not everyone is going to agree.

And that is an awesome thing.

AGREE TO DISAGREE
Seemingly, nobody can agree on which games are great, and which games are rubbish. Is Fallout 4 a bug-ridden mess that renders it unplayable? Or are the bugs easy to overlook, along with the terrible character models, and woefully traditional RPG structure?

Is Call of Duty Black Ops III a "a limp amalgamation of Deus Ex, Crysis, and BioShock" - as Jim Sterling claims? Or is it "the biggest and most feature-packed game we've seen out of the series yet" as IGN would have it?

Fact is, it's both of those things, depending on who you are.

Something that I have sensed from the recent releases of Fallout 4 and Halo 5 is just how loved these big franchises are. Halo and Fallout in particular seem to have a properly fanatical following, and the fans do seem prepared to ignore faults with those games, just to get a fix of something they love. And that's absolutely fine.

Just because I think they were both alright, rather than stone-cold classics, doesn't make anyone wrong. It just means I have a different opinion to you.

It's healthy. You have a different opinion to everyone else you know. So long as we listen to those opinions, and own what we actually want, we're never going to be disappointed.

Ultimately, this brave new world of fragmented opinions reveals a truth that was always there: games reviews are mostly completely pointless.

POINTLESS?
Alright... games reviews aren't as pointless as music reviews, or food reviews (I'd give broccoli 13%, but my other half would probably rate it 95%) .. but they're still pretty pointless.

How do you tell someone they're wrong about their own likes and dislikes, about what they're prepared to overlook, or not? About their own tastes in stories, or settings, or gameplay? About whatever it is that makes them like, or dislike, whatever they like? If you tell them - without room for manoeuvre - that they're wrong, then you're telling them that they're wrong as a person. Which makes you wrong as a person.

We're all wired up in a unique way. I'm always going to favour a game that's pretty - because I've got a fairly strong visual sense - over one that has functional graphics. I don't enjoy games that scatter a load of statistics and numbers in the path to me enjoying action, or exploring an environment, because numbers terrify me, and I'm an impatient sod, with an over-clocked brain.

All a review can ever be - unless the reviews have been bought with PR trips, gifts and advertiser pressure - is one person's subjective opinion. If a reviewer isn't listening to their own subjective opinion - trying to listen to some external voice, or succumbing to pressure - then their work is worthless. Reviews have to come from a personal place, have to be of the person writing them, or there's no point.

All you can ever truly trust at the end of the day is your own sense (Halo 5 is still shit, though, and that's fact).

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
HALO 5: WHAT ARE THEY HIDING? by Mr Biffo
HALO 5: A HOLLOW VICTORY by Mr Biffo
BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE by Mr Biffo

12 Comments

Superbeast 37

11/11/2015 12:19:51 pm

Reviews to me are entertainment these days. I watch/read those that are most enjoyable I guess and that doesn't necessarily mean those reviewers have to share my tastes. I can enjoy reviews that slate a game I like.

I actually buy games based on a combination of whether I like the look of it in preview footage or let's plays and based on what the steam forums say about tech issues.

That's not to say reviews aren't a factor on a small number of titles where I can't make my mind up but it's a minor factor.

I've discovered that just buying "what you like the look of" has the same success rate as studying reviews.

My advice to reviewers that do it for a living is therefore to make it entertaining with their own unique style.

PhilWal

11/11/2015 12:43:51 pm

Is that pie chart percentage a sneaky reference to a certain Sonic review from the before-time?

fungus the bogeyman

12/11/2015 04:20:39 am

I was going to mention the sonic review when I ssw Mr B's broccoli score (vastly overrated by him, 5% for broccoli at most, unless it's cooked by the chinese takeaway down the road then broccoli gets 97% from me at least)

Euphemia

11/11/2015 12:54:52 pm

Personal tastes aside, there's a colossal amount of uncritical, fanboy reviewing on the major sites which does require a hefty pinch of salt when seeing a 9.5 review on almost every major AAA title. Yeah, looking at, you IGN. You read like you've eaten every major press release and free toy for breakfast and shit out an unfiltered, unholy amalgam of fanwank, hype and marketing bullshit for lunch. And eaten it whole again for your tea. No style, and no class.

Steve McPressrelease

11/11/2015 03:47:57 pm

I wouldn't say it's fanboyism so much as it is financial necessity. Much like magazines before them, the big sites rely on good relations with publishers to get exclusives and review copies to make people read them. And of course, more importantly, that sweet, sweet advertising revenue, since games companies do seem to buy most of the adverts in games media (an unfortunate necessity). From what I've heard about the way games PR works, giving the next GTA etc a 7/10 is a virtual death sentence for your outlet in terms of getting previews and exclusives, And of course, money in exchange for flogging the publisher's wares on screen.

That's why people are now tending to turn to smaller voices, those seen as industry outsiders who don't have shareholders to please. The youtubers, the bloggers, the gaming webcomics types. Of course, once they become "tastemakers", they become targets of the PR machine too, and the cycle begins anew...

Col. Asdasd

11/11/2015 02:17:24 pm

I have to admit I read reviews mostly after playing games nowadays. I'm the sort of grade-A chattering-class berk who likes to have his opinions validated, so that's mostly what I'm in the market for when I search up a review.

I've almost come to see reviews as having *negative* value, in that most reviewers seem to be really bad with story and mechanical spoilers. They love to take their favourite bits of a game and splash them all over their copy, inadvertently ensuring that nobody can experience them with the fresh wonder and delight that they did.

(On the flipside, this is exactly the sort of thing I want to see discussed ad tedium when I *have* finished my playthrough. I often wonder if in a more perfect universe somewhere, gamers are gathering in harmony with critics and reviewers some weeks or months after a game's release, discussing their experiences at leisure, like a book club or something.)

Beyond that, even just seeing the score or getting an impression of whether the reviewer liked it sets a yardstick against which your own experience of a game will be measured. Like you say, one man's treasure is another man's trump sandwich, but when the consensus is already established that a game is bad then even opinions to the contrary have their limits defined: it can't just be asserted that it's good from that point, it has to be 'surprisingly' good, a 'cult hit' or 'underrated'.

In the case of games I've no intention of ever playing - and there's a lot, because who has the time or money to play everything that passes through the zeitgeist, professional reviewers excepted? - I'm happy to experience it vicariously, spoilers and all. A review is a quick and dirty way to do that. But even then I prefer to go with something like a well-written Let's Play or even a half-hour on Twitch with an entertaining streamer if those are available.

Jareth Smith link

11/11/2015 04:36:33 pm

I find it interesting to take in other people's review. One of my favourite games from 2014 was DKC: Tropical Freeze by the hugely underrated Retro Studios. Destructoid gave it a 10/10 (which I think it fully deserves), but GameSpot gave it 6/10. It's interesting to see two reviewers dish out their reasoning and comprehending this as a mature, intelligent individual.

Then the Game of the Year articles for '14 came in from the press, and the GTA sycophants queued up to hurl verbal excrement at whomever dared now to hand it automatically to GTA V. Several media outlets gave it to the brilliant Super Mario 3D World, and all Hell broke lose. It's great fun to sit back and watch the lunacy fly, frankly.

Reminds one of Computer Boy back in the Digitiser Teletext days. LOL! ROFLMAO!

Paulvw

11/11/2015 05:59:58 pm

You would hope with the instant reaction that publishing on the internet creates that reviewers are not being lured into chasing clicks by creating controversy.

Must be tricky to review AAA game annual sequels with any hope of not using the previous series entrants as a reference point and then marking up or down on that score, rather than approaching as a fresh piece of work.

Kelvin Green link

11/11/2015 06:55:35 pm

I always thought that games reviews were a bit weird anyway, because surely you'd have to play the whole thing to give it a proper objective(ish) appraisal and I don't think reviewers get enough time to do that.

That said, I give this article 96%.

Matt N

11/11/2015 08:59:54 pm

Games confuse me these days. Nothing seems to grab me as much as it used to; maybe it's fatigue, or maybe I'm just older. Maybe I'm going senile.

Anyway. I used to play Team Fortress Classic to death (QuakeTF was a little before my time..) and absolutely loved it. Tribes 2? Awesome game. 64 players on a server in the days of dialup - now THAT was something.

These days though, almost none of the AAA games grab me anymore. MGS5 is the notable exception because Kojima is absolutely barking and I'm a whore for Snakes and Bosses. But Halo 5? CoD: BLOPS 3? FIFA 6 million? I don't care about any of those. Especially soccerball. It's all just regurgitated stuff with slightly tweaked or advanced stories with maybe shinier graphics. I don't know. Am I burned out? What is this? Am I looking in the wrong places?

chris

12/11/2015 12:08:59 pm

i'm not so sure there is a breadth of opinion in games reviews. it might be better than it was, but it still seems like an enthusiast press, rather than true criticism. it would be industry news if a film had universally positive reviews (boyhood), yet with gaming it's a matter of course.

games like bloodborne (which is my GOTY) clearly don't appeal to everyone, so it seems insane to me that 99/100 reviewers on metacrtic can come away with a positive review. would 99/100 gamers enjoy that game? why are we (say) gating opinion by only picking reviewers from the team who enjoy that series? is that valuable criticism?

if think this piece by tevis thompson should be required reading for gamers and game critics alike: http://tevisthompson.com/on-videogame-reviews/ - it really is a wonderful summary of everything that games criticism is not, yet should be. give it 10(?) years...

Dan link

15/11/2015 11:48:50 am

The purpose and general make up of a review has changed over time, with the advent of new mediums - teletext, internet, what have you. Previously it was a matter of being succinct, but now people have 1000 pages to elaborate in great detail.

But overall, it seems the internet has given people license to be contrarian, often for the sake of entertainment. I should know this as it's something I do all the time. :P

TELL ME WHAT TO FEEL by Mr Biffo

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