The Game Critique

Well with Christmas over and the after holiday sales taken advantage of and since everyone else has done their part, I figured I’d give my thoughts on the 2008 year end in gaming. (Spoilers.)

I start with the easy one, my game of the year. The easy part was to write about, not choose. I personally haven’t played every game this year worth playing. Not even close to it. But based on my personal experience of what I have played, I have to say my pick is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

I am a very big fan of the series, I wouldn’t say fanatic, but I still go back and play the original Metal Gear Solid from time to time. At the time of its release I was super excited. I popped that baby in and was off to the races. I plowed through the first two chapter of the game without too much mental fatigue and was eager to keep going. Then the third chapter hit. I beat it with the same excitement, but after I beat Raging Raven, one of the most difficult boss fight of the year by virtue of having no rations left, and the very long cut scene after it I went to bed having spent most of the evening and night getting there. It took me around two weeks to get the energy to go back. It is an exhausting game. When I finally did sit back back down to it I found myself faced with a 20 minute cut scene before I could move on. The game experience is like a diesel engine. Very long and hard to start up, but once it get going it grabs you and can go one for a long time. I finished the game in three extended play sessions really. At the time I was disappointed in its end. And several of its twists. Big Boss being kept alive in a hermetically sealed bag as a computer security measure. Awesome. The twist being pulled on you and finding out no, that’s a lie and that was Solidus. No, not cool.

However, now that I look back on the whole experience, I come away with a little smile on my face. I don’t think after three games of setup, combined with the amount of hype Kojima Productions put into it, that anything produced could have lived up to it. Metal Gear Solid 4 came as close as humanly possible. I remember the boss fights, Raging Raving, Crying Wolf, Laughing Octopus, the Vamp showdown (once killed him 45 times in one continue), and the final beatdown with Liquid Ocelot. I remember the closure give to the characters. Since the first game I wanted to know what was up with Meryl and this game gave me just the right amount. Jack and Rose had the right amount of angst to them, but I appear to be one of the few North Americans not to find Raiden annoying. At the time I thought Vamp’s excuse for being immortal was cheep, but now on reflection, the answer was well set up and there really was no other conceivable explanation. Even just crawling around the active battlefield of the second chapter was amazingly satisfying, killing a soldier that got too close and no one noticing, because everyone was shooting. Not to mention that the game has what I consider the second best chase sequence in gaming.

Even its ending with Snake not dying after the huge hype that he would die is growing on me and my only residual complaint of the game. The more I think about it, the more I revere the game. Every game I can think of worth talking about either comes out to acclaim or disappointment and then comes with a certain amount of backlash to counter the initial point. Eventually it settles down to apporximately where it should be or keep going with the cycle. Metal Gear Solid 4, came out with acclaim, received a large amount of backlash, some of which I agreed with. But on further reflection and the benefit of distance I can call it my pick for Game of the Year. I am going to remember it for years to come as a total package, a genuinely impactful and emotional experience only amplified, not diminished by the fact we’ve been invested in these characters for so long.The original Metal Gear Solid came away with 8s and was considered an amazing achievement, but lacking on elements, like playtime or challenge. Now its considered once of the best games of all time. The readers of IGN put it in the top 10.

Which brings me to my next point. What does that really mean? Everyone is giving out their game of the year picks or their top 10s. The Brainy Gamer did an entire three part podcast with a whos who of critiquers on that subject. Spike TV held a special, yet tawdry, award show on it, but what does it really all mean. Anyone can have their opinion. Certain sites have greater validity, because of recognition and a group of people who devote themselves to the process be involved rather than a individual. Now without getting into any discussion of ideas of integrity of such sites, I’ll leave that for the symposium, what we need is a centralized award organization. Movies have the Oscars, TV has the Emmys and stage theater has the Tonys. The closest video games have are the Spike TV awards or Game Developer’s choice awards. I’m not saying we need it right now, but really a cohesive organization of appreciation of the best art that our medium has to offer could only be beneficial. It took the various award ceremonies time to get where they right now, so there is no hurry. Just something to think about along these lines: the Oscars don’t nominated until late January and voting doesn’t close till mid February and that is for movies that are only a few hours in length not 10+ like video games and yet our awards are due two weeks after big games are still getting released.

I started late, but this is my last post of the year. I’ll start next year with the first video game critical essay for the site. I said before we can’t just talk about writing critical essays or whatever you want to call them, we need to actually write them. Best way to find out what works and what doesn’t is to get ones hands dirty.

Well everyone else is doing their end of the year round up, and I thought I’d join the fun. Of course I haven’t been around for a major part of the year, hell I don’t think I’ve had an active posting site for a week, but I have been around for the last year and instead of giving my best 10 or whatever else, I’d like to state a few predictions I’ve repeatedly made to anyone who would listen (I’ll do this here come next year) and see how I fared. I think you can guess by the title. I’m only going to do the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

Firstly, Too Human. We were shown demos and stage presentations of the game last E3, the 2007 one. After much delay it got released this year. When the presentation was showed I noticed to things. That I could barely tell what was going on the screen and that the movement and animations were severely choppy. Then I heard how everyone after that was so excited by what they were seeing. I was asking myself, “were we seeing the same game?” People explained that yes it was a preview build and there would be time to fix the code, yada yada yada. I still called it a pile of junk and a few other things, but I decided to keep this site family friendly. Come its release and I think I can safely say I called it. It may not have been for the problems I witnessed, but it failed just the same.

Next, Spore. Will Wright’s life simulator, his magnum opus. Patiently everyone waited for years to get a hold of it. And when it came out, the gaming community spoke a resounding meh. I said meh whenever I saw it. Three separate E3s and numerous other coverages. I recognized this wasn’t my game, but I’m wary of any game that if you bought it a week later than someone else could have their entire planet colonized. Also I felt the game was very disjointed as a whole. We were shown the creature phase and the space phase and didn’t seem like the same game. People said I just didn’t get it. Then they got their hands on it and realized neither did they.

Alone in the Dark. I was excited for this game. Not entirely true; I was excited by what this game could be if the developers decided to wipe their fingerprints off the game. Then I was excited when they were releasing a fixed version of the game for the PS3. Then I played the demo and I was reminded of the saying “polishing cr** just gives you shiny cr**.” It did indeed do everything it meant to do, but it didn’t fix the main problem, the story. A survival horror game needs a character they can sympathize with and story that seems real enough they can be scared of it. The game fails on both those counts.

So far I’ve called everything bad in my predictions. There is a connection between how I predict a game and what they show. Every time I see a game and find it lackluster or say that it’s going to be bad there is a common thread, in how it’s hyped. At first I thought the developers didn’t know how to hype their game properly, because there were plenty of times I just didn’t care in what they were showing. Then I realized that each time these previews were bad and then these games were bad was because they were showing off the best features of the game.Contrast this with how God of War was hyped. If I remember they said, “you are Kratos and you will go through numerous levels killing mythical Greek monsters before challenging and killing the god of war.” One sentence and you’ve given me plot, conflict, character and gameplay. That is how you do it right. for an example from this year, Fallout 3 was focused mainly on the Vats system that they added. Of course they also showed off the wasteland and the character of the game.

Yes, your fire in Alone in the Dark looks great, but what’s going on. Ok, you turn into a were-hog, but tell me about running fast instead. In the Too Human demonstration on both G4 and Gamespot the times they showed the screen were few and are between. I never saw any preview gameplay movies for it either. They are trying to hype a product, so they show off its best bits, but you may want to rethink your game if this is the best you have to offer.

On the flip side, however, is a game like Far Cry2. “See how great our fire physics are. If you have on bullet you can start a brush fire to take out your enemies.” Ok, but why should I care. In fact didn’t care until I read Ben Abraham’s account of it and brought the idea that it’s the Heart of Darkness of video games. Now I’m interested. I don’t care about your fire physics, tell me about the character’s decent into darkness because of the environment he’s chosen. Sometimes I don’t think developers grasp just what makes their game interesting.

I’ve rambled enough for now.

L.B. Jeffries is one of the best video game critics on the web right now, in my humble opinion. Back last April through June he wrote a 10 part series on how to critique as oppose to review games. He called it Zarathustran analysis. It is a little dense, but then the subject its working with isn’t exactly easy to work with. These articles are a little old, but are a must read. (Only on the internet is 7 months old.)

Given the symposium going on now and the next part about the idea of reviews and critiques and where they exist in relation to one another I think this is a good time to reread his writings. Okay this is for my benefit too. It’s much easier to have the links here, so I don’t have to go searching every time.

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 2: The Role of Depth

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 3: Plotting the Plot

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 4: Player Input via the Silent Protagonist

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 5: The Four Forms

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 6: Accomodating Nonconformty

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 7: Application of Forms

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 8: The Factions of Gaming

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 9: Flaws in Criticism Today

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games part 10: The Value of Player Expirience

Zarathustran Analytics Synopsis

I also write for the design blog Creativefluff.com, where I turn my eyes towards the design aspects of video games. Here is a bridge article between that site and this one where I examine the PS3 exclusive Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and find the design aspects lead to a little more than just a great game if you’re willing to look.

Read it here: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune – a critique

For those of you not in the know, discussion on the nature of video game reviews has been taking place lately. So much so that Shawn Elliott has started a symposium to discuss the matter between about a dozen video game journalist, who I would more accurately describe as video game critics. He gathered a veritable who’s who of gaming critics, that I’m sure most outside of this interest have never heard of, to embark on the project. The idea itself had been festering in his mind for a while, but its timing spawned nicely from the Mirror’s Edge debates that had been going on all through November.

My first thoughts on this were “great, we’ll finally have a measure of conversation to which we can point to as evidence that our generation’s medium is worth talking about like any other.”

There were supporters out there, some of them taking part in the conversation and some self called “second tier people snipe from the sidelines.” (Which, incidentally, has been encouraged.) Others like Micheal Abbot, Mitch Krpata, and Micheal Walbridge.

Then came the detractors. There are always detractors for everything and are to be expected. Like this now almost infamous response. It’s fine. Healthy detractors keep the “self important bearded tossers” on our toes. However, it struck me as odd and with a minute sense of alarm and confusion, when critics like Pixelvixen707 and L.B. Jeffries, whom I really respect, when they came out unfavorably towards the symposium. I read their articles and in doing so I feel that I misunderstood or misread what they hoped to accomplish during the symposium. So I went back and reread the questions.

The questions are divided up into two parts. The first part is focused on the current state of game reviews and review scores. the problem of the preview culture that the Internet is privy and susceptible to. The second part is the part that interests me: Reviews vs. Criticism. The questions in this category try to determine the place that each has. It is that purpose that I think the dissenter’s latch on to.

Both Pixelvixen707 and L.B. Jeffries have their reservations. Pixelvixen is more about the way we write and Jeffries about the content. I think I’ve broken almost everyone of Pixelvixen’s rules of writing online criticism. L.B. Jeffries brings up a more important point though. That instead of talking about what game criticism should be or why there is so little of it, we should shut up and get to it. Or as he says, “Talk is cheap and in abundance on the internet, it’s actually doing something that’s in such short supply. ”

Along those lines I would have to agree. Many of us wanting to see criticism have to write it ourselves. I don’t think discussing will lead anywhere, not without examples and experience. We could look to other mediums that have learned the way of critique. We could look to Shelly, Kael or Bangs. The idea of this symposium is that criticism for video games must be different based upon the interactive nature of the medium. We can take the story construction from literature and visual nature  from movies, but there is no present criticism to account for the interactivity of video games. That should be the focus of the talks, because that’s what differentiates video games from other form of media.

The best way would be to dive right in and see where it leads us. Trial and error is going to be far more useful than talks about abstract concepts. I’ll do my part to keep throwing stuff at the wall until something sticks.

Of course that’s not saying I’m not going to lap up every word when they post the emails.