What turned out to be pure hype?

[Wiper]

No, but a) the editorial staff comissioned both, and the fact they'd choose to comission a critical retrospective a few years on suggests the swaying of critical opinion that was happening even then, and b) that retrospective is itself by a reviewer who in the very text of the retrospective notes that it contrasts their previous review because of a reassessment away from the hype bubble.

[JamesC]

Reviewers should be able to write an impassionate review of a game with minimum influence from hype. 

If they're getting swept up in the excitement they're lacking professionalism in my opinion. 

That's not to say there isn't room to say if they personally enjoyed it over and above the objective score (or vice versa, recognising quality but not having fun with it). 

[Benny]

2 hours ago, Kevvy Metal said:

This is very persuasive to people who can't be arsed replaying or remembering the game and love to eat up YouTube content that tells them what to think. It's prevalent every where. 

 

This could be taken as a bit insulting to the intelligence of people who have actually played through the game and come to their own negative conclusions about it. I played Bioshock Infinite long before the big think pieces about the game started turning up, when it was still riding high in all those glowing reviews.

 

I disliked it immensely. The combat and actual interactive elements felt vastly paired back from what was possible even in the original Bioshock (itself a "simplification" of System Shock 2 I feel). And I was genuinely offended how the story started both-sidesing the racists with the people rebelling against them.

 

It was only later I saw videos starting to pop up actually tackling the many examples of questionable morality at the core of the story.

 

Suggesting people only have opinions about some things because they've just used YouTube videos to tell them what to think is a really self-defeating race to the bottom, where discourse goes to die.

[dataDave]

1 hour ago, dumpster said:

There's a guy at our local Market who sells retro stuff. He has Gran Turismo 3 running on a CRT and it looks like a current gen game with the CRT making it standard definition.  I actually stood and watched it to find out what the game was and when the title came up on the screen I was amazed it wasn't upscaled or something.

I’ve written about this a lot recently but here it is again: Metroid Prime running on a CRT is the best thing I’ve seen since Cyberpunk running with all of the full fat RTX features on a 3080. I’m 100% serious.

 

I couldn’t be any less arsed about a remaster. I don’t need one. The CRT motion resolution also makes it feel like it’s running closer to 120fps as opposed to 60.

[Kevvy Metal]

12 minutes ago, Benny said:

 

This could be taken as a bit insulting to the intelligence of people who have actually played through the game and come to their own negative conclusions about it. I played Bioshock Infinite long before the big think pieces about the game started turning up, when it was still riding high in all those glowing reviews.

 

I disliked it immensely. The combat and actual interactive elements felt vastly paired back from what was possible even in the original Bioshock (itself a "simplification" of System Shock 2 I feel). And I was genuinely offended how the story started both-sidesing the racists as well as the people rebelling against them.

 

It was only later I saw videos starting to pop up actually tackling the many examples of questionable morality at the core of the story.

 

Suggesting people only have opinions about some things because they've just used YouTube videos to tell them what to think is a really self-defeating race to the bottom, where discourse goes to die.

Yeah, but you don’t like anything 

[Benny]

I'm assuming you're joking, obviously.

[Kevvy Metal]

1 minute ago, Benny said:

I'm assuming you're joking, obviously.

It is meant to be more lighthearted, I’d say you’re one of the more critique focused posters on here. 
 

But anyways, I find discourse like that on the things I love to be a bit miserable, so I don’t really partake in it 

[Wiper]

[Kevvy Metal]

1 minute ago, Wiper said:

Touche, this did give me a chuckle. 

[Benny]

13 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

It is meant to be more lighthearted, I’d say you’re one of the more critique focused posters on here. 
 

But anyways, I find discourse like that on the things I love to be a bit miserable, so I don’t really partake in it 

 

Then that actually makes a classic erroneous assumption: how much you choose to critique something isn't necessarily proportional to how much you enjoy it.

 

I think a lot of people avoid these kinds of discussions because they assume criticism means "taking about why something is bad".

 

But that's because people don't generally seem to understand what the word actually means in that context. It's certainly very rare online.

 

Criticism is just as much a way to explore more deeply things you love as well as dislike.

[Wiper]

Probably not so much in a thread about 'what turned out to be pure hype', though, to be fair! This is a pretty inarguably* negative thread.

 

*there's that word again

[Monkeyspill]

4 hours ago, Kevvy Metal said:

 

I certainly don't agree regarding OLED tech, but I'm starting to think HDR is a minefield of broken-weird looking not corrrectly calibrated nonsense that games actually look better with it turned OFF. 

My TV only does HDR10+ rather than the proper one. I can’t notice when it’s on or off except when it’s not working properly and everything looks grey. 
 

My iPhone does weird stuff with HDR photos and videos that looks rubbish and fake. 
 

Is HDR the new 3DTV nonsense?

[Kevvy Metal]

4 minutes ago, Benny said:

 

Then that actually makes a classic erroneous assumption: how much you choose to critique something isn't necessarily proportional to how much you enjoy it.

 

I think a lot of people avoid these kinds of discussions because they assume criticism means "taking about why something is bad".

 

But that's because people don't generally seem to understand what the word actually means in that context. It's certainly very rare online.

 

Criticism is just as much a way to explore more deeply things you love as well as dislike.

Then why are so few of the points made positive? It’s because it’s harder to do, to see the good and value in something, where as negative critiques can be so vague and whim-like. It’s so easy to do. 

That’s been my read of so much of it, and my experience prior working at a few game studios. It’s such a negative non-productive and often unwillingness to try and understand what the creator is intending on you to feel or think. 

[dumpster]

44 minutes ago, JamesC said:

Reviewers should be able to write an impassionate review of a game with minimum influence from hype. 

If they're getting swept up in the excitement they're lacking professionalism in my opinion. 

That's not to say there isn't room to say if they personally enjoyed it over and above the objective score (or vice versa, recognising quality but not having fun with it). 

That's a really good point but there's a problem with being a reviewer which is that hindsight shows the audience whether the reviewer was right or wrong.  That's unfair of course, a review should be a reviewers own opinion. But when that one lone reviewer says "if only you could talk to the enemies" in Doom, it's a genuine take by someone who hasn't followed the hype and is reviewing the game entirely on their own experience.  They're not wrong, they can't be wrong, they're giving their own opinion.  But they're against the mainstream flow and get pillared. 

[Benny]

15 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

Then why are so few of the points made positive? It’s because it’s harder to do, to see the good and value in something, where as negative critiques can be so vague and whim-like. It’s so easy to do. 

 

The vagueness of criticism will depend entirely on how much effort someone wants to expend on the discussion. I don't see how "I really liked it, it was good" is any different for example than saying "I hated it, it was bad". There's no problem only mainly talking about positive or negative aspects to my mind, if you are prepared to back up either take and actually explore why. On Bioshock Infinite for example, I didn't just say it was bad, I explained exactly what I didn't like about it when I played it.

 

Something like A Plague Tale Requiem that I was playing recently: I explored pretty much everything I liked and disliked about that game in the thread while I was playing it, and I would recommend the game to anyone, with a few caveats.

 

If instead I'd just said something like "I liked it. 7/10" I doubt that would actually intrigue anyone enough to bother with it.

 

I also don't think seeing the good in things is harder at all. Only if you're a negative person in general. What's harder is the actual desire to be willing to explore the art in detail.

[SMD]

Listen, it's fucking Daikatana

[Flanders]

Bioshock Infinite is one of those interesting cases where the backlash was so loud that it’s gone all the way round and it is weirdly underrated at this point. Has its flaws for sure but also has a lot going for it and no one should be happy that there’s zero chance a game like that would never be made and marketed to the mainstream these days.

 

GTA 4 is another good example of a hyped game where the backlash was massively overdone.

[Kevvy Metal]

51 minutes ago, Benny said:

 

The vagueness of criticism will depend entirely on how much effort someone wants to expend on the discussion. I don't see how "I really liked it, it was good" is any different for example than saying "I hated it, it was bad". There's no problem only mainly talking about positive or negative aspects to my mind, if you are prepared to back up either take and actually explore why. On Bioshock Infinite for example, I didn't just say it was bad, I explained exactly what I didn't like about it when I played it.

 

Something like A Plague Tale Requiem that I was playing recently: I explored pretty much everything I liked and disliked about that game in the thread while I was playing it, and I would recommend the game to anyone, with a few caveats.

 

If instead I'd just said something like "I liked it. 7/10" I doubt that would actually intrigue anyone enough to bother with it.

 

I also don't think seeing the good in things is harder at all. Only if you're a negative person in general. What's harder is the actual desire to be willing to explore the art in detail.

Well I certainly don’t see myself as a negative person. I mean others who focus on the negative. I often find some of the more negative comments on games to be somewhat moot or nitpicky, which don’t bare the focus of attention. 

[JamesC]

1 hour ago, dumpster said:

That's a really good point but there's a problem with being a reviewer which is that hindsight shows the audience whether the reviewer was right or wrong.  That's unfair of course, a review should be a reviewers own opinion. But when that one lone reviewer says "if only you could talk to the enemies" in Doom, it's a genuine take by someone who hasn't followed the hype and is reviewing the game entirely on their own experience.  They're not wrong, they can't be wrong, they're giving their own opinion.  But they're against the mainstream flow and get pillared. 

I agree with some of this, but when someone wants to talk to the monsters in Doom, they're not reviewing the game on its own terms, they're criticising it for not being something it was never supposed to be. They're comparing it to a game which only exists in fantasy. 

 

A review should communicate whether the mechanics are successful, whether it's bug ridden, if the story or themes are original, if its funny or atmospheric, if it has super-long load times or 120 minute long cut scenes. You should be able to do all that without swallowing any hype. 

[Protocol Penguin]

10 hours ago, Flanders said:

There is a very weird belief among what seems a sizeable subset of this forum that the Dreamcast failed because of this campaign of lies and marketing hype for the PS2, as opposed to the PS2 being an objectively much, much, much better console with an infinitely greater games library, including a good launch lineup and the best first 18 months of any platform ever, and the ability to play DVDs. 

An overlooked reason why the Dreamcast failed, at least in this part of the world – Sega’s brand reputation was rock-bottom after the Saturn. I remember loads of people being gutted after choosing the Saturn over the PlayStation and getting poorer versions of popular 3D games, or increasingly, big mega-hyped games not even appearing on the system. That can’t have helped the chances of persuading those consumers to invest in the Saturn’s immediate successor…

[Wiper]

8 minutes ago, JamesC said:

I agree with some of this, but when someone wants to talk to the monsters in Doom, they're not reviewing the game on its own terms, they're criticising it for not being something it was never supposed to be. They're comparing it to a game which only exists in fantasy. 

 

A review should communicate whether the mechanics are successful, whether it's bug ridden, if the story or themes are original, if its funny or atmospheric, if it has super-long load times or 120 minute long cut scenes. You should be able to do all that without swallowing any hype. 

 

Much as I ought to avoid being drawn in, I can't resist the siren song of a debate on what reviews should be. Namely: I don't think a review should necessarily communicate all of the above.

 

A review certainly can include all that information, and if you're really lucky you'll get the boilerplate, inspired-by-hardware-magazines style review which does all that and nothing more. The "this game has these features, it looks nice, it runs well, it takes this long to complete, 10/10" approach to reviewing, which gives you everything you could pick up from a marketer's feature list, but communicates nothing of the game's actual values, of what makes it really stand out (or not), of what it made the reviewer feel. I'm a big fan of that approach, as you can probably tell. Even so I can appreciate it has its place — sometimes you just want to know the basic details about a game; maybe it's an entry in a series (or format) you know well, and simply want to know if it's a competent execution of that formula. But my god it's not a very interesting format, and when it comes to games I'm less sure about, I find it next to useless in informing me of whether I'll actually like something.

 

Hell, let's take two reviews of two EDF games — Kieron Gillen's review of EDF 2017, and Cara Ellison's review of EDF 2025. Both fail miserably in your assessment of what a review 'should' be: neither of which gives a straightforward breakdown of the game's features or qualities, neither gives a comprehensive overview of either game. Both would, from any 'objective' *spit* standpoint not hold up in their scoring — clearly the first game is too cheap, too clunky to get a 9/10! Clearly the second review is not judging the game based on what it aims to be, and should be higher than a 5/10! But both communicate what the games feel like, and both, despite coming to different conclusions, let me know that I will absolutely love these games. Which I do, obviously, because I have Good Taste.

 

Basically, I get a lot more from more personal reviews; ones that describe how the game made the reviewer feel, what they thought about the game's themes and motifs, and what they think about the design of the game. I mean, I don't think the Edge review of Doom is actually very good, and is more an example of the magazine at the time trying to stand out than anything else — but I think there is a place for that conceptual approach to criticism; i.e. criticising not whether a game is achieving its goals, but whether those goals are ones the reviewer actually respects or not. I'm happy to read someone talking about why they don't like Doom because they don't find shooting monsters with no other avenue for expression to be very interesting, even though I don't share that perspective (and do think Doom is a masterpiece), because them telling me so lets me know what they're looking for in a game, and in turn emphasises what the game is itself setting out to achieve.

 

Basically, if we only get reviews from the perspective of people who like what the game is setting out to achieve, then all we'll ever get is an echo chamber, and that's both boring and unhelpful: we want reviews to cover a broad spectrum of tastes and values, if nothing else than to reflect that the public has a broad range of tastes and values!

 

(all of this is one of the reasons I find Tim Rogers so compelling. His taste in games is vastly different to mine — I'd say about half of the games he thinks are masterpieces I can't stand, and vice-versa — but I know exactly where he's coming from when he critiques a game, because he doesn't spew off a list of Things The Game Has and then say whether he likes it or not; instead he tries to put you in his own mindset, dives into specific aspects of the game, how they affected him as a player, and what he thinks that reflects about its broader design. Thanks to all that I know all of the reasons he loves God of War: Dad of Boy Edition, can appreciate where that love comes from, all the while personally getting nothing from the game itself. That's the ideal, for me; critics that wear their heart on their sleeve, and really go to town on why they love — or don't love — something)

[Rex Grossman]

My answer is: this thread.

[JamesC]

20 minutes ago, Wiper said:

 

Much as I ought to avoid being drawn in, I can't resist the siren song of a debate on what reviews should be. Namely: I don't think a review should necessarily communicate all of the above.

 

A review certainly can include all that information, and if you're really lucky you'll get the boilerplate, inspired-by-hardware-magazines style review which does all that and nothing more. The "this game has these features, it looks nice, it runs well, it takes this long to complete, 10/10" approach to reviewing, which gives you everything you could pick up from a marketer's feature list, but communicates nothing of the game's actual values, of what makes it really stand out (or not), of what it made the reviewer feel. I'm a big fan of that approach, as you can probably tell. Even so I can appreciate it has its place — sometimes you just want to know the basic details about a game; maybe it's an entry in a series (or format) you know well, and simply want to know if it's a competent execution of that formula. But my god it's not a very interesting format, and when it comes to games I'm less sure about, I find it next to useless in informing me of whether I'll actually like something.

 

Hell, let's take two reviews of two EDF games — Kieron Gillen's review of EDF 2017, and Cara Ellison's review of EDF 2025. Both fail miserably in your assessment of what a review 'should' be: neither of which gives a straightforward breakdown of the game's features or qualities, neither gives a comprehensive overview of either game. Both would, from any 'objective' *spit* standpoint not hold up in their scoring — clearly the first game is too cheap, too clunky to get a 9/10! Clearly the second review is not judging the game based on what it aims to be, and should be higher than a 5/10! But both communicate what the games feel like, and both, despite coming to different conclusions, let me know that I will absolutely love these games. Which I do, obviously, because I have Good Taste.

 

Basically, I get a lot more from more personal reviews; ones that describe how the game made the reviewer feel, what they thought about the game's themes and motifs, and what they think about the design of the game. I mean, I don't think the Edge review of Doom is actually very good, and is more an example of the magazine at the time trying to stand out than anything else — but I think there is a place for that conceptual approach to criticism; i.e. criticising not whether a game is achieving its goals, but whether those goals are ones the reviewer actually respects or not. I'm happy to read someone talking about why they don't like Doom because they don't find shooting monsters with no other avenue for expression to be very interesting, even though I don't share that perspective (and do think Doom is a masterpiece), because them telling me so lets me know what they're looking for in a game, and in turn emphasises what the game is itself setting out to achieve.

 

Basically, if we only get reviews from the perspective of people who like what the game is setting out to achieve, then all we'll ever get is an echo chamber, and that's both boring and unhelpful: we want reviews to cover a broad spectrum of tastes and values, if nothing else than to reflect that the public has a broad range of tastes and values!

 

(all of this is one of the reasons I find Tim Rogers so compelling. His taste in games is vastly different to mine — I'd say about half of the games he thinks are masterpieces I can't stand, and vice-versa — but I know exactly where he's coming from when he critiques a game, because he doesn't spew off a list of Things The Game Has and then say whether he likes it or not; instead he tries to put you in his own mindset, dives into specific aspects of the game, how they affected him as a player, and what he thinks that reflects about its broader design. Thanks to all that I know all of the reasons he loves God of War: Dad of Boy Edition, can appreciate where that love comes from, all the while personally getting nothing from the game itself. That's the ideal, for me; critics that wear their heart on their sleeve, and really go to town on why they love — or don't love — something)

Yeah, I think that's fair enough, but to split hairs, I'd call the 'I love this game because it makes me feel excited' approach more of a reaction than a review. It's not really a journalistic review, it's an opinion piece. More like the Claudia Winkleman version of Film XX than the Barry Norman version. That approach does have its advantages though. 

 

[deerokus]

To an extent God of War from a few years ago. Good game but the reviews made out it was the second coming of Christ, a landmark achievement for the video game medium and a defining artwork in human history all in one.

[Qazimod]

1 hour ago, Wiper said:

Basically, if we only get reviews from the perspective of people who like what the game is setting out to achieve, then all we'll ever get is an echo chamber, and that's both boring and unhelpful

 

At the risk of derailing into this (admittedly fun) discussion, I prefer fans of a thing to write about the thing. This isn't just saying that I want circle-jerking over a beloved series or franchise - specialists who care about a thing can be much more eloquent when picking it apart. I mean, we kind of encountered this when we joined @Benny and @Jolly in writing for rllmuk polls - I was confident in my assessments of Yakuza: LaD and FFVIIR but wouldn't know where to start with Star Wars Squadrons or Paper Beast. At the same time, I wasn't afraid to point out flaws in the games I cared about.

 

I guess I'm saying that you don't have to like a thing, but having a modicum of interest in the thing can help!

[Strafe]

The emotion engine

[JamesC]

10 hours ago, Wiper said:

 

Much as I ought to avoid being drawn in, I can't resist the siren song of a debate on what reviews should be. Namely: I don't think a review should necessarily communicate all of the above.

 

A review certainly can include all that information, and if you're really lucky you'll get the boilerplate, inspired-by-hardware-magazines style review which does all that and nothing more. The "this game has these features, it looks nice, it runs well, it takes this long to complete, 10/10" approach to reviewing, which gives you everything you could pick up from a marketer's feature list, but communicates nothing of the game's actual values, of what makes it really stand out (or not), of what it made the reviewer feel. I'm a big fan of that approach, as you can probably tell. Even so I can appreciate it has its place — sometimes you just want to know the basic details about a game; maybe it's an entry in a series (or format) you know well, and simply want to know if it's a competent execution of that formula. But my god it's not a very interesting format, and when it comes to games I'm less sure about, I find it next to useless in informing me of whether I'll actually like something.

 

Hell, let's take two reviews of two EDF games — Kieron Gillen's review of EDF 2017, and Cara Ellison's review of EDF 2025. Both fail miserably in your assessment of what a review 'should' be: neither of which gives a straightforward breakdown of the game's features or qualities, neither gives a comprehensive overview of either game. Both would, from any 'objective' *spit* standpoint not hold up in their scoring — clearly the first game is too cheap, too clunky to get a 9/10! Clearly the second review is not judging the game based on what it aims to be, and should be higher than a 5/10!

 

You know, after reading both those reviews properly, I think  they absolutely do fill my criteria for what a review should be. It's clear from each that the game is light on story and heavy on action, that they're mechanically clunky, that load times are too long, that there's a focus on collecting weapons etc. That's all exactly what a review should be.
Both reviews also make it clear that whether or not you enjoy the game is based largely on how much you enjoy mindless shootong action and that the game won't be appreciated as pushing the genre in any narrative or technical sense. The numeric scores are by-the-by.
 

The hype-laden reveiws I hate are the type which gloss over any flaws and just fawn over a game with stuff like "It's finally here and the quetsion you're asking is. 'Does it live up to the hype'. The answer is yes - it's everything you could have asked for and more"...followed by lots of waffle about how everything is amazing.

 

I fell for the hype big time with 'The Last of Us'. While I can appreciate it's a well made game, it's not for me, and reviews like "You MUST play this game!" aren't helpful.

I wish I'd read a review that said it's mainly narrative driven, with a 'corridor, arena, corridor, arena' structure similar to Uncharted. I'm sure there were reviews like that but I didnt read them. 

 

Edit - look at this shit IGN review for The Last of Us. It's quite long but really light on information about the actual gameplay. https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/05/the-last-of-us-review

[ScouserInExile]

19 hours ago, dumpster said:

There's a guy at our local Market who sells retro stuff. He has Gran Turismo 3 running on a CRT and it looks like a current gen game with the CRT making it standard definition.  I actually stood and watched it to find out what the game was and when the title came up on the screen I was amazed it wasn't upscaled or something.

It's not just that it had great graphics, it also has a fantastic game behind them. Just the stats are astounding: 180 cars, 19 unique (as in not just variations at the same location) tracks or 33 if you count reverse versions, 80 events of up to 10 races. Speaking of which, the competition structure is really well thought out. The physics and handling are amazing and still hold up now. It had support for force feedback wheels, which work brilliantly with it - if you try it with one, you realise it was built around using a wheel and giving that real driving feel. It also has some sound and AI.

 

It's an oversized term, but GT3 really was a quantum leap in the genre and gaming in general. It's the game every "simcade" racing game that came along in the years following wanted to be.

 

I quite like it.

[sbrandon111]

I always thought that the Dreamcast failed because EA never really got on board with it and never released Fifa, Madden etc on it. It only then appealed to the “hardcore” arcade type gamer.

I loved it.

[LowCostMonkey]