Hi Sean,
I follow Metacritic not because I want to see what the reviews are for a game I’m looking at purchasing, but because I’m fascinated by how games are received by critics.
I’ve been noticing that there are more and more games these days that receive extremely high Metacritic scores (well into the 90s), as if everything is awesome. The latest game to enter the mid-90s club is Heavy Rain, which you featured on your site some time ago. As of now, it has a Metacritic rating of 93. What’s more striking to me is not the score, but the review themselves.
Here are some quotes:
“It’s barely a game in the popular sense of the word, but Quantic Dream’s masterpiece makes groundbreaking strides in storytelling and character development, demonstrating that interactive entertainment still has a deep well of untapped potential.”
All of these quotes game from reviews of 88 or higher.
So in summary, Heavy Rain is:
I think this says something about the way outlets review games these days. Here we have a number of outlets basically admitting that there is no gameplay whatsoever, but that the graphics and story are fantastic, and that this merits a high score for what basically amounts to an expensive Choose Your Own Adventure book. I can’t help but think that if this game were on the Wii, and you brushed your teeth by shaking the Wiimote, the critics would be tripping over themselves to pan this game as gimmicky Wii garbage. Is it the fanboy in me or is there a double standard here?
My main concern, however, is that reviewers aren’t really reviewing gameplay anymore, and are instead aggregating a series of scores from graphics, story, music, and then finally gameplay. Occasionally, replay value makes it in. This seems to reward developers who play it safe from a gameplay perspective while upping the graphics and music while punishing those who take risks with the quirky and untested.
I think reviews should simply focus on answering the question: “Is it fun to play?” and also, especially in the era of the Wii/DS expanded audience, “Who might like this game?”
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When Wii was launched, Miyamoto made the suggestion that as games are rated for their ‘graphics’, ‘sound’, and so on, that ‘ease to new players’ should be one of the criteria. And I agree with him. Why shouldn’t a game be graded on how easy it is for new players to play?
If Miyamoto’s suggestion was taken, all the reviews would flip. Wii games would be scored higher because they are easier for new players to get into. And the HD console games would be scored lower due to how many barriers there are to the new player.
I realize now that this criteria is not applied to books. It would make sense if a book review mentioned how easy the book would be to new readers. Instead, the ‘finest reviewed books’ are those whose writings are wordy with complicated styles that experienced book readers like but new book readers cannot penetrate.
Ironically, the books that age well are the ones that use a simple writing style. Books that use convoluted styles age extremely poorly. Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold very well during its time. Today, the book is unreadable.
It must be so with games. Ultima IV is considered unplayable today and the only people who still play it are those who did so when it was new. Meanwhile, Super Mario Brothers, which came out at the same time, is still played. Hell, Pac-Man is still played. While some people may say I am comparing apples to oranges, can you think of any old game that is still played today that is complicated? They are all simple.
With the Heavy Rain reviews, what is there for me to say? We all know the reviews are Industry influenced. With how many millions games cost, they cannot allow the risk of honest reviews. No, the game must declared ‘perfect’ and ‘amazing’.
I hope this practice continues because the Industry is sticking out more and more. Before, the Industry used to hide itself. The Industry used to pretend that it was gaming itself. But in this generation, especially, more and more gamers can see that the Game Industry is more about the ‘industry’ and not about the ‘game’. And you are not gamers. You are walking wallets.