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Earlier this week I got several versions of a small talk question I always field this time of year: "I haven't played Madden in X years. Should I buy it this year?" More »
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Metacritic's founder made a little bit of a stir earlier in the week when he went on the A Jumps B Shoots podcast to discuss a wide variety of topics, one of them being that game reviewers were obligated to "review all the shit," not just good games or those expected to sell well. GamePro followed up for a clarification of his remarks. More »
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In the runup to the game's release last year, Mafia II's development studio and publicity team tried, with limited success, to set reasonable expectations of the game. "It isn't Grand Theft Auto," I was told, more than once, in emails and in the game's review notes. More »
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The concept behind Fight Night Champion's narrative "Champion Mode" inspired me when I read of it. I looked forward to it as a breakthrough opportunity for the sports genre. But it served up a tray of disappointingly bland cookie-cut characters and conflicts, and the progression of your career was too short and too rigid. That doesn't mean it was a bad idea. More »
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Tron: Legacy has been, at best, a critical disappointment. At worst, well, "a Dora the Explorer movie would be more interesting." Who said that? The eight-year-old daughter of noted video game academic Ian Bogost. More »
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Kmart's new review policy, which places customer game reviews on their store shelves, recently went live with some important tweaks. More »
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Can video games have a Western canon? More »
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The Chicago Sun-Times film critic has finally revisited his old contention that games can never be art, to defend it "in principle," and to dispute about that which cannot be disputed. More »
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In film or literature, the creation of acclaimed work is sometimes attached to a personal event, or reaction. "That doesn't show up often in game development bios," says one dev. Finding that "why" might save games from a "cultural ghetto." More »
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Few things mar a game, especially a role-playing game, like being sold on creating a complex, even unique character and then being presented with tendentiously noble or evil choices to build out that role. More »
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A U.K. company named Vertical Slice claims it's able to predict video game review scores a year in advance of release, by reverse engineering magazine reviews, combined with an analysis method used by marriage counselors. More »
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As some of you know, I'm living with my grandfather for the near term, because he's 86 and needs some assistance, and the companionship's good for him. But he keeps asking me about video games. More »
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Sega Europe boss Mike Hayes says Metacritic scores are indicative of certain games' success, and while score targets aren't written into every developer contract, Metacritic does have value — especially in judging expensive projects. More »
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More than 80 years ago the movie rating star system was born in the New York Daily News. More »
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The profile of Rockstar and the Housers doesn't really answer that (beyond mentioning the Goatie we gave it for writing). But the writer talks to critics and eggheads who say it's a legitimate question. More »
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When I saw this comparison between the Final Fantasy and the battleship Yamato (the largest battleship ever made), I was wondering how the comparison would be drawn: the spectacular demise, perhaps? Not quite. More »
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L.B. Jeffries over at Banana Pepper Martinis has apparently had it up to here with the 'how to write reviews' debate, and it sounds like the upcoming roundtable was maybe kinda the last straw. More »
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Respected film critic Roger Ebert may still be on the wrong side of the games-as-art debate, but he's slowly coming around, conceding that games are getting better, though he'd rather be knitting. More »
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The blog Hardcasual is back with a bang after a lengthy hiatus, channeling the voice of Cliff Bleszinski of Epic Games (which, if you can't parse that statement, means Bleszinski didn't actually write this) to discuss some of the current problem with game journalism and reviews. More »
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Last week, we mentioned Keith Stuart's meditation on whether or not reviewers really get innovation; since then, several people have picked up the discourse, with N'Gai Croal weighing in on the debate. More »
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Oh hey, now steady on. Can't we all just get along? More »
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Game journalism is a pretty maligned corner of the journalism world as a whole — sometimes for good reason, but as Gus Mastrapa argues, we're not really deserving of the broad brush we get painted with. Why, he even points to Kotaku as a 'sure sign that we've arrived'! Games journalism doesn't lag behind many other enthusiast presses, he says, despite their advantage of age: More »
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Variety's Ben Fritz posted an interesting response to Leigh Alexander's rant on game criticism (inspired by reviews on Silent Hill: Homecoming) in which she said we should probably do a little less nitpicking and a little more championing, and that we've created a review culture where critics and fans alike are just looking for things to dislike — at least when it comes to details. Fritz maintains that critics are too positive overall, getting sold on games before they're out (Leigh's written about the 'four-month bell curve' that goes from hype to disinterest in titles like Bioshock) and discusses the lack of dissenting opinions on the current gaming achievement of the year. On the other hand, where's the championing of certain games or designers for their creative vision — are we just a bunch of sheep?: More »
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It's been a while since the Space Giraffe kerfluffle where Yak Minter threw a hissy fit in his blog regarding poor scores given to the XBLA psychedelic shooter (and the point where it was compared to Joyce's Ulysses, but I came across an interesting piece recently that talked about Space Giraffe in reference to (wait for it) a piece of literary theory known as 'authorial intent.' The post-structuralist conception is (at least in part) that the critic's will and opinion always supercedes that of the author. What does this have to do with Space Giraffe? Well, it's one way to look at why there was such heated discussion over Space Giraffe: More »
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There's a lot of dissatisfaction regarding how games are reviewed coming from a number of quarters; there is an equally vociferous defense of the typical numerically-based reviews. Over at GameSetWatch, Simon Parkin takes up the issue of the reviewer-reader divide, especially in terms of what readers want out of a review (even if they don't know it): More »
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Over at PopMatters, the capstone of a nine-part series by L.B. Jeffries; this edition's topic is the problems with game criticism today. Reviews and critical pieces are generally worlds apart — and critical reviews should be providing feedback for the makers of games in a way that a standard review can't: More »
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Last week, Douglas Wilson made an impassioned argument for why the term gamer needs to go; this week, Rene Patnode, a fellow soldier in the grad school trenches, responds with his take on why the term gamer does not need to go the way of the dodo: More »
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In a slightly different take on the old 'we take too much from film techniques' argument we're all familiar with, a post at the Brainy Gamer takes on television techniques in simulations. Madden et al. aren't simulating playing a sporting event, he says, but watching one on TV: More »
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According to Douglas Wilson, we're a rather unenlightened bunch: mass histrionics from the 'Church of Gamers,' as he describes it, are shooting the industry/people who play video games in the proverbial foot. Of course, he's picking out the worst examples (the militantly defensive) to cry for greater participation, less exclusivity, more political consciousness (beyond media issues), less misogyny .... Ouch. While we're all blindly worshipping at the altar of gaming, we're missing out on opportunities to expand: More »
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Oh, Jonathan Blow. You're so painfully pretentious it would almost be cute if you didn't go zinging so far over the line almost every time you open your mouth publicly. The maker of the forthcoming XBLA title Braid is back with another discussion of his views on the industry, this one really launching off on a new - wait, no, it's the same old, same old. I'm really curious to see the end product of his game, but I could do without the pretentious attitude that reminds me of hipster indie music people. It was fine the first few go rounds, but someone needs a new schtick, pronto: More »
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Chris Dahlen has an interesting post up on the issue of cheating in video games, in particular whether game reviewers can (or should) cheat. Of course, anyone is capable of cheating their way past a tough spot, but should reviewers be held to a higher standard? Dahlen points out that reviewers who admit to taking shortcuts or blowing past extra features or side quests tend to cause people to throw a fit; on the other hand, is galloping through a game at a blinding pace good for anyone, reviewers especially? Is there any hard and fast rule for this sort of stuff? More »
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Jonathan Blow pops up occasionally on the news radar, either in relation to his game Braid or in regards to his view on the nature of games today (frequently both in combination). He's ever so helpfully provided a zip file including the full audio of his Montreal International Games Summit presentation (given a couple of days ago) entitled "Design Reboot" and all his slides from the lecture. The presentation clocks in at one hour, a not insignificant time investment - Blow complains in his blog that "a number of news sites have written stories about it and people have started commenting on what they feel is the validity or the invalidity of the arguments," but the comments are only taking into account 2% of the whole speech. I'd venture a guess it's because that 2% is the stuff we've heard before, and the most likely to spur discussion (and calling modern MMO design 'unethical' will usually do that). Rock, Paper, Shotgun sums up one of the hot points of the lecture thusly: More »
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Since complaining that video game review are broken, I've gotten a lot of questions along the lines of, "Well, what do you like then?" One weekly criticism I can't get enough of is Leigh Alexander's Aberrant Gamer. Like any good critic, Alexander explores all of those feelings we had while experiencing a game that we otherwise might not verbalize (or fully appreciate), combing through the content for themes, subtext and symbolism. More »
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Gamasutra has a piece up by Andy Robertson on what the game industry can learn from the film industry - at least in terms of fostering a sense of community. Game companies, you see, are apparently falling down on the job of giving their fans some 'ownership' in the final product. It's transparency of the design/production process that makes the hit! Who knew? Lord of the Rings wouldn't have been as successful a film without the rabid community surrounding the films (hasn't Tolkein always enjoyed a mass following of dedicated fans)? Halo 3 is a hit because of relative transparency between company and fans? The Playstation blog is turning around years of crappy PR for Sony? Maybe it's just the fact that I'm on my last nerve after a week of fires, declining air quality, and more fires in San Diego, but my gut reaction is 'You've got to be kidding me': More »
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Via GameSetWatch comes an musing on Space Giraffe, Yak Minter's psychedelic shooter that people seem to either love or hate. The author is Jonathan Blow, the guy behind Braid, and he says you either get Space Giraffe (and love it), or you don't (and hate it, giving it 2/10 when you write your review). More »
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The Addicted Geek ran one of our younger brethren, a 12-year-old gamer nicknamed Minigeek, through the gauntlet of GoldenEye and recorded the boy's responses for posterity. Addicted did it for the sake of testing the supposed "timelessness" of the title, and he was vastly disappointed with the boy's lack of sensitivity for his entrenched nostalgia. More »
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Rock critic Chuck Klosterman asks, in the July '06 issue of Esquire, "Why are there no video-game critics?" In a piece titled 'The Lester Bangs of Video Games', Klosterman rehashes a postulation familiar to any fan of games and games journalism. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=183030&view=rss&microfeed=true According to Games Industry, the president of Ready At Dawn studios has some harsh words for PSP developers. Didier Malefant said, "There's obviously not as many titles as people would want on the platform, but at the same time, up until now there hasn't been any title that really gives you the same kind of experience you could find on the PS2." On the contrary, I think lots of PSP games give you the same experience you get on the PS2, just lower res, poorer controlling, crappier versions of it. Oh, a cheap shot! Kidding and snark aside, the PSP is starting to grow into its own gaming machine. This year looks to be shaping up decently for it. More »
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