Games Journalism Thread

[Disco]

Continue, please...

Yup. Read the review and find out what the writer actually thinks rather than just skip to the bottom. You can still just skip to the bottom paragraph of course if you're so inclined but it's less shitty than just scrolling for a number.



By which you mean "John Walker has opinions I don't agree with" and rather than a) reading his articles anyway because he's a good writer or b) ignoring him you just gave up on the site altogether. I have about as much interest in DOTA/LOL as I do in bracken but as with any good site I just ignore the shit that isn't aimed at me.

Some of the soap box stuff can be a little much for me sometimes but it's normally attempting to redress the balance in some way (the DI2 thing is a perfect example). Walker gets a bit mental sometimes but his podcast is lovely and he has a nice line in whimsy, on the other had I felt he took the Molyneux thing a step too far.

No, the site lost it's personality of 'games are fun, we're some idiots writing a blog, lets have fun together' to 'games are serious business, we're serious business, here's our platform'. I still occasionally talk with Nick from John Walkers podcast but the blog format of the site has evolved to the point of if you aren't checking it once an hour you're scrolling through pages of shite. The top bar has got a little better but not much. That's fine. It's just not the site for me anymore.

I like Walker even though I think he's often OTT and disagree with him because I think if you're not a mentalist who can't appreciate a voice you don't agree with he's clear in what he's saying.

And I sort of agree on the Molyneux stuff. But then, had anybody asked Molyneux this stuff before? He didn't need to be such a cunt but if it was genuine frustriation I empathise even if I don't accept his way of approaching it. Molyneuz is either a genuine dreamer, a delusional (dunno if those two are the same) or just a liar. And it's hard to approach that question without being a mega-dick or a wishy-washy twat.



I think there's still plenty of that, there's just lots of other stuff. They do take the Voice Of PC Gaming stuff a touch too seriously and as much as I enjoyed Sir I think they've lost a lot with Rossignol leaving (and probably Gillen as well) but there's plenty of nonsense still knocking above. But I know what you mean, there's some snobby bullshit there too. There was always an element of that there though.

And I don't see it as that much scrolling to get to the articles I want, either. I check it daily, though, that might be the difference.

[Disco]

The site structure thing is a very valid criticism, there's no index to speak of which in this day and age is a bit rubbish really. The site has a differenet vibe these day, primarily because it's not Rossignol/Gillen/Walker/Quinns, I just find it different rather than worse.

[phonics]

I pretty much read zero previews these days which has led to me ignoring 'Games Journalism' outside of following games journalists on Twitter. Are there any good places for 'Features' these days?

P.S. EuroGamers pussying out of giving things scores with their 'Reccomended' shit is proper pulling punches. Either do without a score or do one. Although even that place is pretty poor these days.

[Ian]

The basic nature/structure/whatever of the site has been increasingly different since it became anything other than Gillen/Meer/Rossignol/Walker. Whether they should be sticking with the blog-esque format is purely a matter of choice, I used to read because every article on RPS and now I read.... much less than that but the format but doesn't bother me at all. I'm happy to skim past what I don't want for what I do.

Should we have a proper Gillen-fest, Disco, and turn this into a NGJ thread?

[Disco]

I could get on my high horse about AAA gaming (some more) if you think that would help.

[Ian]

The original link in Gillen's blog takes me to some suspicious Japanese shit but I'm hoping this is the same piece:
http://phocks.tumblr.com/post/2976413342/bow-nigger

Everybody should read "Bow, Nigger" if they have a non-calling-it-all-a-load-of-shit in games journo.

[phonics]

Tom Francis' Gal Civ Journal might be the most enjoyable piece of games writing I've read to date.

It's a guy playing with mechanics to make a great tale and why I take such issue with the concentration on stuff like Dead Island 2 and 'wot sum1 sed on Twttr'. Videogames are fucking brilliant and I'd love to find someone just talking about them rather than the shit around them or what they look like before they're made.

http://www.pcgamer.com/galactic-civl...port-part-one/

[Disco]

Have you ever read Living In Oblivion?

https://livinginoblivion.wordpress.com/2007/02/

[phonics]

Yeah, I absolutely loved it. I even went on to read the guys blog about being a temp which hits home now even harder than it did then. I remember reading a piece of his where he got stuck in his wheelie chair while adjusting the height up and down and trying a tactical roll out in the middle of the office, I nearly died reading it.

edit: www.notmydesk.com is DEFINITELY not the site it used to be.

[Shindig]

Metal Gear Solid V's reviews are a bit sketchy from the perspective of those that went to Konami's review camp. If you went to one of those things, played 40 hours and THEN talk about the game breaking taboos, you are talking complete shit.

[Disco]

Yeah, I absolutely loved it. I even went on to read the guys blog about being a temp which hits home now even harder than it did then. I remember reading a piece of his where he got stuck in his wheelie chair while adjusting the height up and down and trying a tactical roll out in the middle of the office, I nearly died reading it.

edit: www.notmydesk.com is DEFINITELY not the site it used to be.

Yeah there's been some changes...

Most of the disorders people have nowadays are due to redness...

I wonder if stuff like Freemans Mind is still going.

[Yevrah]

What's wrong with just scrolling for a number?

I don't know/trust any individual games journalists enough to do it myself, but if I did I'd see no problem doing it.

[Disco]

It's arbitrary, even more so if you don't know the reviewer. Do they think 5 is average? Is 7 the new average like many sites these days? If a game is brilliantly made but the graphics are shoddy does it get the same score as a beautiful game with rather thin content? Is the idea phenomenal but the end product rushed and buggy?

The only way to know is to read the review, at which point the number at the bottom is entirely superfluous.

[Shindig]

I have 7 down as 'good'. I.e. I've had fun without it doing anything particularly special. Our scale's kinda spelled out due to the software we use. If I want to call something average its a 5/6. I think with Tears to Tiara II I aired on the side of caution due to that game having such a slow pace that I couldn't truthfully decide whether it was going to get good at any point. I'm also one of these types that rarely finishes a game before reviewing. It it has me, then it has me. Some late-game thing isn't going to change my mind.

[Ian]

It's also possible to like a game you can't objectively give a good score. I've read plenty of reviews which have convinced me to give a game a try I might not have done if I'd just looked at a number.

Scores are also a waste of time because of the number of big releases which are almost guaranteed to get a good score regardless. Is it not the case that some or many sites don't have the review writer do the score as well?

[Raoul Duke]

What sites do people read? I mostly look at Polygon, RPS and Giant Bomb.

This is a nice bit of storytelling using a game (Sims 3): https://aliceandkev.wordpress.com

[Shindig]

Giant Bomb kinda exclusively but the community points you towards other interesting tat. I only go to Polygon for Monster Factory. Errant Signal and Matthewmatosis for in-depth retrospective stuff.

[Mike]

Just GiantBomb for me, pay for the premium stuff too.

[Yevrah]

Maybe people just do reviews differently to me.

I go 80% on footage and 20% on what the reviewer's saying.

[DC]

Reviews are overblown, I just wait for the community to form a lynch mob and then steer clear of it.

The only games I have bought relatively new were Alien: Isolation (I played 2 hours, loved it, and haven't played it since) and Wolfenstein (enjoyed greatly, completed over a couple of evenings). Everything else is always bought 12 months down the line, on sale, if I can be bothered.

On occasion after completing a game I will go back online and read the reviews just to see what other people criticised it for, if only to see if I think the community was fair, or if they were wearing their fanboy goggles. For instance I enjoyed Army of Two far more than any Gears of War. I suspect that's because I played them both at roughly the same time 4 years after they first came out. I find it strange that one got 90%+ on reviews, and the other 70%+. Reading the reviews you find comments that make you question just what exactly they were looking at. You know bumping the score up on Gears of War for being the "most beautiful game on Xbox" seems quite arbitrary when it's a butt ugly grey monstrosity in 2010 (and was it really better looking than Prey?). In 2010 I want to know, ignoring how great you thought it was when there was no competition, how it stands as a bit of fun.

Donkeys years ago there used to be a Sega magazine that used to retroactively adjust their scores. So instead of having 90% of their games at 90/100, they would instead reduce by a few percent any games when a new, better one, came along that made them change their mind. This was most significant for their reviews of FIFA which got 90+ year on year, but by FIFA97 the older games were now around 80, and the comments updated to "Fun, but the gameplay is dated" etc.

By the end of the console it was interesting to see things like Castle of Illusion sliding down the scale as subsequent games came out with new bells and whistles, especially when Mickey Mania came out.

[phonics]

Army of Two was absolute gubbins.

edit: Mickey Mouses World of Illusion might be the greatest forgotten game of all time.

[DC]

Gubbins doesn't mean what I think you think it means, unless you mean "it was paraphernalia".

In any case Army of Two, actually not that bad, but it was genuinely a co-op game and not entirely butt ugly in split-screen. Almost unplayable pap with just the 1 player. In contrast we tried Co-Op GoW and it was not a good experience.

[Ian]

I dunno that I agree with retroactively adjusting a game's score, but I get where they were coming from. MMOs definitely need covering differently. It's lol seeing first week reviews of new expansions and the like.

[DC]

Well for a good example of why there should be some form of retroactive appraisal try the Xbox360 top charts

FIFA, four entries (10, 11, 12, 13 but no 14 oddly) all 90+ (well one is 88).
Is Call of Duty 2 really the 56th best game on Xbox ever?
Just which is the best Forza Motorsport?

etc etc

[Disco]

Every single one of those can be solved by reading the reviews.

Except for the second, which might be the most pointless question in all of human history.

[DC]

That's fine, go ahead and read every single review which may or may not mention previous installments (or comparable games), but it still means FIFA10 is the 42nd best game on Xbox according to all discernible categories (graphics, sound, AI) while Call of Duty 2 is a game the equal of Borderlands 2, and better than L.A. Noire.

Yeah, read the reviews to sort out if FIFA > CoD2 > Borderlands 2 > L.A. Noire.

[Disco]

First of all, you've changed the goalposts on what you want to compare. Secondly, who cares if FIFA is better than COD, they're entirely different types of games aiming to do entirely different things so any conclusion is entirely subjective.

[Shindig]

I'd probably like Jim Sterling if he wasn't so vitriolic and focused around Gearbox and Konami. Plus, ditch the sunglasses. You're doing this from your house and you're not registered blind.

[Disco]

Yahtzee's 'Let's Drown Out' series is quite good, he's recently also played through all his own games and talked about their development etc.

[Ian]

Has anybody read This Gaming Life by Rossignol? It's something I've been intending to read basically since it came out and yet forget to get it whenever I'm buying books.

Might have to start looking at Let's Drown Out too, was totally unaware of that.

[DC]

First of all, you've changed the goalposts on what you want to compare. Secondly, who cares if FIFA is better than COD, they're entirely different types of games aiming to do entirely different things so any conclusion is entirely subjective.

I didn't change anything, read my initial post.

You guys got out of practice of reading comments in context or something? Thought you were all raised better than that.

[Disco]

It's easy to read reviews of various FIFA's and see which one is best, you'd have to be silly not to take in the progression of graphical fidelity etc. Same for Forza. It doesn't then follow that you can do the same across series/genres, that way lies madness because if I want to play a shooter why would I care how it stacks up against The SIms?

[Shindig]

You also have to consider newcomers in your review and whether the game goes forward or backwards in a meaningful way which detracts from last year's game. FIFA doesn't tend to move in either direction so the review scores largely do the same. Here's an unrelated video from XboxAhoy about how the cold war shaped the entire industry.

[Dark Soldier]

I despise scoring via numbers. The actual review should sell it rather than the number whacked on the end but it still creates an insane amount of tedious bullshit around sites if something gets an 8 when others believe it should be a 9. Although saying that a chunk of gaming discussion out there is tedious, pick a side wank. The EDGE 10 had prestige but that's been cunted to the side by banging it on any old flavour of the month.

As for journalism, I like articles and pieces. Rarely read reviews as 15/30 minutes of a Twitch stream or a gameplay preview normally sells me on most things. I'll read most things linked though, so I'll get on a few of those in here in the coming weeks.

[phonics]

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That is wonderful.

[Shindig]

Some fella in the Metro just hailed Bloodborne an all-time classic and I had to sit down.