I was going to review the second game from PS+ this month (you can read the first one here, by the way)…. that was until I saw a video yesterday from Youtuber ‘Pretty Good Gaming’. They do reviews and news of the video game industry, and are pretty good at their jobs.
This video, titled “Is it OK to SUCK AT GAMES!?”, I originally thought it was a video similar to the style that ‘Outside Xbox’ uses, going over the rage feeling in video games and wanting to throw their controller against a wall…except this hit close to home. It felt like it was firing a warning, at me (at the way I review games).
Let me get to the point here. This conversation is about someone (named ‘Takahashi’) who calls himself a ‘video game journalist’, and has been doing it for 25 years (not sure how different that is from being a video game reviewer… but I digress) who was attending the tail end of Gamescon this year, and he sat down to play this game called ‘Cuphead’ (which seems to be a side-scroller in a 1960’s-like cartoon theme). It was also said to be quite brutal, as it sends waves upon enemies at you. Personally the fact it’s in color, it tends to throw away that feeling of old TV (as we didn’t have color TV ’till the late 70’s).
So this guy sat down to this game while in Gamescon, and was doing the tutorial. He spent, upwards to 10 minutes attempting to clear something so..utterly simple that a 4 year old could figure it out. Basically, the point where you stand on this box, then you got to jump and preform a dive jump. What was so bad, is the instructions of the entire tutorial weren’t just written down, but showed arrows of where the player was supposed to go.
How, can one be so BLIND? And what’s worse, he used this failure at a simple puzzle to do his review. And this is what brings up that question, of are video game reviewers supposed to be ‘good’ at a game to do a review.
And the answer is clearly “Yes”, but to an extent. And this was also a wakeup call, to stop myself (when it comes to reviewing a game) from feeling like the game is too difficult (when I can’t pass a level/kill that one NPC that keeps wrecking me).
It’s OK to suck at a game, but not when you’re reviewing it. People depend on your honest review to make that informed purchase. You don’t have to be good to the point you’re ‘reking scrubs’ left and right, but you still need to have..well, the competence to understand what’s going on around you.
I also heard this guy has reviewed other games quite unfairly, such as Mass Effect Andromeda. And I’m not talking about the bad facial animations, the writing, and the feeling it wasn’t a true Mass Effect game…but something as simple as knowing how to put skill points on your character. He claims he didn’t know. … Wow. This, is why you do lots, and lots of research in and out of the game before you start writing your review. And for a person who claims they’ve been doing this for 25 years, I just find that shocking. It’s almost as if he didn’t take his job seriously.
As for letting my own frustration of a game control the review, as I said I am trying very hard to suppress it and just going on with what I like and dislike. And this suppression started after my Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry review (of blaming ‘Axemen’ for my frustration). That was dumb of me, I won’t deny that.
But as for the general way I do reviews (aka the structure), last time I did a change was in 2016(and that was badly needed with how unbelievably messy they were when I first started). I want to do another one to make the reviews more modern, but I can’t think of anything better. Been thinking of going to WordPress’ forum and ask for suggestions, yet I’m afraid I’ll get ones that are too complicated for me to figure out (aka, going over level design).
Plus, the fact they completely ignored my issue of the Customizer not saving (and I had to get Arvixe to help me with that), I feel it too will also be ignored.
In closing, please give you opinions in the usual way (emailing). Should I stop reviewing altogether, or are you OK (but want “attitude changes”) of the way I do them? This website’s future is really in your hands, as I’m doing this for you folks.
I enjoy doing these reviews. Isn’t that the whole point of doing them?