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View Full Version : What Are "Objective" Game Reviews?



IMPress Polly
02-28-2016, 10:09 AM
This last week I opted to rent Far Cry Primal (a game, rest assured, I'd never actually buy) in order to get informed on one of the big-name popular, commercial games that people are currently buying and thus be able to intelligently discuss its contents in gaming circles (and elsewhere, as may be called on). I try to stay up to date that way these days. Upon completing the main quest early this morning, I took to the web to check out the reviews and see whose I felt were most on point. Surprisingly enough, I found Destructoid's review the most to my liking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGVFQ-Iouls

What I liked about their review was that, unlike the other reviewers, the Destructoid guys weren't fooled by the latest iteration's idea of what progress looks like. Where other reviewers flatteringly described Far Cry Primal's switch from gun play to clubs and bows and arrows and other primitive weapons as somehow revolutionary, Destructoid's review instead characterized it as but "the next step" in the franchise's protracted tweaking of a well-worn formula in which the player's objectives remain the same as they've been since Far Cry 2 came out in 2008: conquer and plunder in a vast open world that offers you nothing else to do. It's the same formula that just about every other AAA game uses anymore, it's worth adding, as evidently that one type of game is the only kind gamers are interested in buying. More broadly, the review praises Far Cry Primal's change of setting to prehistoric times on both aesthetic and moral grounds, while criticizing the laziness of its storytelling even relative to previous installments in the franchise, e.g. the game's frequent reliance on over-the-top copycat scenes and stereotypical characters. Overall, they scored the game a 7 out of 10, which indicates average, not revolutionary.

Relative both to other, more flattering reviews of Far Cry Primal that have been offered by other organizations and other, more flattering reviews of video games in general by the same institution, this one was met with comparative hostility, only narrowly voting out in positive territory on YouTube; a fact I find remarkable considering that the majority of these votes were apparently cast either the day of or the day before the game's release, i.e. before the voters had even played the game, let alone completed it! What I want to highlight here though is the manner of criticism that's been offered. The main thing that gamers criticized about this review was its minor social comments. Here are some typical examples:

"what a bad review. You didnt like havng to kill animals to upgrade your belts in the last few?...Its a game!! There not real endangered animals buddy get off tour soap box" --LookForTheTruth11

"I care about the game. Yes animal pouching [He means poaching. -Polly] is bad. But this is a game review. Stay on topic. Can this not be the norm please" --Daley Kyle

"its a video game for Christ sakes and even then its not like the rich kids from fc3 went to the jungle to murder animals" --d0x360

And here's an exchange that samples what happened when you criticized the game:

"+d0x360 (https://www.youtube.com/user/d0x360) It's still a silly story. And the characters are detestable scum" --Mr. Zodiac

"+Mr Zodiac you broke bastard. poor people are the worst." --Guilherme Duarte

"+Mr Zodiac depressed cuck. Who feels guilty and jumps on the sjw masochist bandwagon in hopes of a pity fuck after self abuse and internalize self loathing. Kys" --Daley Kyle [Note: "SJW" is gamer shorthand for "social justice warrior", which is evidently supposed to be an insult. -Polly]

"+Daley Kyle (https://www.youtube.com/user/tenkashi1992) SJW lol... I am far from a SJW [as that would be the worst offense possible -Polly]... Do you even understand my point/the reviewers point about a rich man gunning down animals? Nothing SJW about it... it is absolutely absurd. You're projecting some shit on me and it's hilarious, pseudo-psychologist bullshit. You're a coward in reality." --Mr. Zodiac

My point here being that the principal criticism of the Destructoid review on offer is that there's a small amount of social content to it that doesn't belong. This conservative attitude isn't a new one in the gaming scene, but it's one I have to strongly disagree with because it belies the idea that video games have potential as an art form. Here's the interesting thing about that: I've been around the gaming scene for a long time and can safely tell you that five or ten years ago, the average gamer LOVED to defend the idea that video games were art because back then it served as a strong counterpoint to the case being made for official censorship by Christian conservatives (like the infamous crusading attorney Jack Thompson), Fox News, many Republican politicians, etc. The case being made for official censorship was the usual one that has been historically applied to all other artistic mediums until they became such massive industries that their lobbies became too powerful to combat in the legal arena: that there's too much content that offends conservative, Christian values. The definition of offending content got pretty ridiculous at times. For example, I can recall a major public debate over whether Super Mario games should be banned on the grounds that the franchise teaches children to be violent, what with Mario cartoonishly bopping Goombas on the head and various other "imitable acts" and whatnot. (Why don't you try imitating that and see how it works out for you, by the way?)

Anyway, in more recent years, the game industry has become too large and powerful to be legally challenged and so has been able to dispense with hack lawyers like Jack Thompson (who was disbarred in 2008 for the consistently BS nature of his cases) and get games proclaimed a constitutionally-protected artistic medium by the Supreme Court in 2010. Gamers and game-makers together succeeded in using the 'games are art' argument to legitimize the medium and start to get it taken seriously. But then a problem emerged: art gets evaluated based substantially on its content meaning and its ability to convince the reader/viewer/player (whatever applies) of the merits thereof. Thus, increasingly the social contents of video games began to be evaluated and criticized in a serious way, now that society was starting to take video games seriously as art. In response to this new development, all of the sudden gamers broadly turned on their previous case and declared that there's no place for social commentary in games criticism because "they're just games; they're just there for fun". You see the inconsistency? For most gamers, it seems that video games are art when censorship is threatened and not when they get criticized based on artistic merit. Gamers broadly seem to want it both ways. Or, more correctly, they actually have no ideology or principles on this subject and just want to be considered artists for how many kills they've gotten, how much loot they've amassed, how fast their speed run is, or whatever like this applies, in the latest mindless blockbuster title.

I am not such a person. I have a definite standpoint on this question: video games should be respected as art, and that includes the application of meaningful criticism. What most gamers seem to want, by contrast, is just the evaluation of tech specs. In other words, they seem to define an "objective" game review as one that treats the game in question more like a car than a painting. When you're evaluating whether to purchase a car, the kind of info you'll want (aside from price) is stuff like its horsepower, its efficiency, its array of unnecessary bonus features, that sort of thing. Sound familiar? If it does, it's because that's how most game reviews read: logically very comparable to an auto evaluation. By contrast, when you're evaluating the merits of an art work, like a painting for example, the essential thing you're looking for is something intrinsically subjective: how it makes you feel. That is the critical point to be made here: works of art and their merits are intrinsically at least a little subjective and thus "objective" evaluation thereof isn't fully possible. Therefore when people demand "objective" game reviews, I have to scoff. It's not that I have a grudge against the competing idea of video games as sports or anything (I've got no objection to eSports and whatnot!), but the vast majority of video games DO have social content whether you acknowledge as much or not, and they deserve to be evaluated based at least in part on one's opinion of those contents because video games aren't JUST sports, and many have no "athletic" merit at all, it's worth adding.

As some final food for thought, here's a video commentary from a couple years back that really echoes, and further elaborates on, my sentiments concerning the hypocritical attitudes of most gamers on the subject of games as art:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_tdztHiyiE

But maybe you disagree with me. Do you think there's such a thing as an "objective" game review? If so, what criteria defines objectivity in your mind?

Private Pickle
02-28-2016, 10:11 AM
Why do you do this to yourself? You don't like shooters..

IMPress Polly
02-28-2016, 10:44 AM
Well like I said, renting the big-name game of the month is essentially something I do out of a desire to remain informed on goings-on in the mainstream gaming scene that I'm not directly more a part of anymore. As I at least hope the OP showed, keeping up helps me offer informed opinions about the current developments in the gaming scene. There's also kind of a masochist element to it for me, I think. :tongue:

I also don't hate ALL shooting games. Take Spec Ops: The Line for example. That's a game I really liked for its sharp critique of war and of the ridiculous way that other popular video games "simulate" it. Though I do have my favorite genres, I care more about what a game says and how it says that thing than I do about genre at the end of the day.

Brett Nortje
02-28-2016, 11:06 AM
An objective game review would be where we talk about the specs and programming of the game?