Every so often, a new game comes along that is believed to “redefine a genre” or “innovate beyond our wildest dreams.” Game reviewers salivate over these titles, often blindly affixing perfect scores or overlooking hindering troubles.
1up visionary Shawn Elliot said in a blog responding to Metal Gear Solid 4’s off-the-chart scores, “I respectfully disagree that reviewers are overly critical of triple-A titles and believe that the evidence in reviews of MGS4, Grand Theft Auto IV, Call of Duty 4, and BioShock backs me. All of these are excellent games with big budgets. Critics gushed and gushed over each, and practically apologized after pointing out any of their problems. If MGS4 doesn’t sell by the millions it won’t be for scathing reviews. The trouble, if there is any, lies in leading readers to believe that a videogame is the Second Coming…even if it is a lower-case fourth.”
I’m as guilty as the next guy – I stick to anything cool like plasma grenade in Halo. On that note, I almost cried for joy when I could finally lay hands on Halo 3’s adversarial modes, and in retrospect, despite all my undue treatment of Halo 3 as the second coming, I still had more fun with Halo 2‘s multiplayer. I stood outside at midnight on September 25, hence a connection with the game became unintentionally ingrained within me. I initially believed the game was “flawless,” and turned a blind eye to the arguably convoluted storyline and sloppily-paced single player campaign that many insightful gamers were crucified on message boards for daring to address.
Time and time again, with each new game, the hype gets the best of me. When Grand Theft Auto IV came out, I did the same; except there’s a difference this time: I really believed that game deserved it. I can look back now and decidedly say that I would still award that game a 5/5, despite its minor flaws. The same is true of BioShock. In these respective cases, during their initial launches, I would have obliviously proclaimed from the rooftops “perfect score,” whereas now, I can recognize imperfections, but don’t believe they detract from the game’s overall experience.
Reviewing games involves much objectivity, and it certainly can be difficult to separate personal tastes from whether or not the game works. There’s a fine boundary between reflecting your enjoyment of the game and being overly generous, this line a good reviewer knows how to tread. I aspire to remain independent of hype, but sometimes I’m just too wrapped up in “the next big thing.”
I don’t think reviews involve “much” objectivity. Some, absolutely, but so much of a review is personal representation of your experience.
I have to agree with Mitch, reviews are one’s opinion of a particular game. I mean, you aren’t writing a manual. A five star rating doesn’t mean that a game is perfect and couldn’t get any better. To me it means that the game has a perfect balance of awesome, with few flaws that jump out at you.
GTA’s texture problems or strange object physics wouldn’t lower my review score because in the grand scheme of things they are meaningless.
Look at movie reviews, Siskel and Ebert’s two-thumb up reviews didn’t mean that a movie was without flaw, just that as a whole it was worth seeing. It would be nice if the internet as a whole would stop thinking that 5/5 = OMGPERFECT.
GTA being some boring-ass repetition would lower my score…
I think it also depends on the scoring system. The movie style 5 stars system means that the difference between a 5 and a 4 is much greater than many think. I agree that a 5 doesn’t mean that a game is perfect, just that its an game that has to be played.
I myself have been guilty of the Too nice? reviews that you elude to, giving Mario Galaxy and MGS4 98/100 was very generous, especially when the 2 points away from 100 mean much less than 1 point away from 5. Looking back, I wish I had not been so focused on the score.
But the most important thing about a review should always be the review itself, not the score at the bottom. If the score is a 5/5, 3/10, 400/100…whatever it is, the words in the review have to be what gives your impressions of the game, not the score.