Games every critic should play

[DinnerX]

There's a dual stick control option that uses two N64 controllers.

http://goldeneye.wikia.com/wiki/Control_style#Dual_Controller_Styles

Turns out there are more dual controller options than I remembered.

Thankyou for this! Always great to discover a new form of control in an older game.

Perfect Dark is the same way.

[Gunstar Green]

I think its unrealistic to expect critics to have had to play certain games. Unlike movies which can be viewed by anyone, certain people excel in certain genres of video games and not in others. The perspective that you hope someone will take by playing a certain game is lost if they're terrible at playing it.

Also I don't think every review and critique of a video game needs to be so insanely detailed that we judge a game's moral choice mechanic on a roleplaying game from a bygone era that most consumers have never heard of and probably aren't terribly interested in investigating. "_____ game did it first and did it better" is kind of besides the point, you should be reviewing a game based on its own merits. Unless it's a sequel or there's an important comparison to be drawn, what came before it is largely irrelevant.

All that said yes I think a critic should have a good perspective at least on the genres they choose to review and have played as many games as possible. Video games ultimately lack a respected critic not because the talent isn't present, there are many fantastic writers out there, but rather because it's not respected as an art form. Whether this will change or not in the next few decades with the increasing popularity and exposure of independent games, who knows?

[Erik_Twice]

Unlike movies which can be viewed by anyone, certain people excel in certain genres of video games and not in others. The perspective that you hope someone will take by playing a certain game is lost if they're terrible at playing it.

I do not think skill is a determinating factor in any of the games listed, all can be enjoyed by anyone willing to put some effort into it. Even bullet hell shmups have accesible games while movies also have stuff like Baraka, which I doubt anyone can watch and understand.

Also I don't think every review and critique of a video game needs to be so insanely detailed that we judge a game's moral choice mechanic on a roleplaying game from a bygone era that most consumers have never heard of and probably aren't terribly interested in investigating.

What I think is that a critic is someone who shows the way, who tries to instill a deeper understanding of the medium in his readers. Knowing how deep gaming is or understanding what is a real moral choice instead of a trite, designer-fed one, is vital for being a critic. It seems to me that many critics barely scratch the surface and get carried away by gimmicks, instead of sound design, and that happens because they don't know about very important categories of games.

Also note that my point was that video game critics as a whole think "moral choices" is some new invention when it's actually very old and the current implementations are forced and quite backwards in design.

That said, I don't know of a popular game reviewer whose soul focus is to actually review a game. It's more about the reviewer's character than an actual review of a game.

Me neither

[Luke]

I think its unrealistic to expect critics to have had to play certain games. Unlike movies which can be viewed by anyone, certain people excel in certain genres of video games and not in others. The perspective that you hope someone will take by playing a certain game is lost if they're terrible at playing it.

Video games ultimately lack a respected critic not because the talent isn't present, there are many fantastic writers out there, but rather because it's not respected as an art form.

GG, I hope you don't mind that I edited your post a tad. Only done for brevity's sake, and let me start off with saying you made an excellent post. But that doesn't mean we always have to agree.

I think as a reviewer, it is your responsibility and duty to review what is asked of you. Again, this is about the body of knowledge a reader should expect from someone who makes a living off of reviewing a genre.

A movie reviewer isn't judged solely on comedy reviews, or horror reviews. They review the entire genre, because frankly they know "their shit". The same should be expected of a video game critic. It's not about playing the game. it's about the game itself. Yerp (not a typo), that includes playing the game, but there's so much more to it than that. The hype, the packaging, the special editions, the dlc, etc. Reviewing a new game is difficult to do because so many "reviewers" have no clue how to review a game, and that's why the popular game "critics" stick to games that have some nostalgic value to them.

Even worse than the online reviews has to come from magazines and digital print. Games are broken down to: controls/graphics/did the reviewer find it fun? All game reviews I have read are hackneyed.

Luke wrote:
That said, I don't know of a popular game reviewer whose soul focus is to actually review a game. It's more about the reviewer's character than an actual review of a game.

Me neither

^And there is this. Don't get me wrong, AVGN has his moments, but his reviews are about him, not the game. And yerp, there are plenty of youtube videos of people saying "Today I'm going to play *insert game name here*" but don't offer any insight. They usually come off as a Chris Rock impersonation of "every white guy".

A true reviewer avoids all of this nonsense, and points out people that instead of actually getting to the "meat" of the matter, hide behind a false persona. (Check out Siskel and Ebert DESTROYING howard stern http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZOR8ToiLwU). The little things, references, nuances, intelligent research, etc; they make the difference in what makes a good review, or someone just spouting off at the mouth.

[Tempest]

As an area I wanted to get into at one stage of my life, I find this topic very interesting. I've found that game criticism has decreased in quality since the advent of the digital age where anyone with a computer can upload their poorly crafted opinion. When reviews were print based there had to be a certain standard that they met, hence the wider quality of good reviews back then (although there were still some naff reviews too, just less of them).

This was also because gaming was more of a niche back in the 80s and 90s, so reviewers knew the market they were writing for. Now, gaming has exploded into a wide array of markets and perhaps reviewers write with an eye of reaching the widest market possible rather than core gamers. And with the wider variety of games to review these days there is less time to play all the games or for a reviewer to specialise in a certain genre (which, from my experience, tends to produce better reviews where the writer sounds like they know what they are discussing).

I don't think there is any particular game a reviewer should have to have played to review games today. I think they just need to have a lot of experience playing a wide variety of games. It might be good for a reviewer to have played the classics, and if the game they are reviewing is part of a genre to have experienced the classics in that genre, or if it is part of a series, to have experienced other games in the series so they can comment on how it relates to these other games. SEGA Saturn Magazine used to do this: they would review the main game, then provide a boxout commenting on how it related to similar games.

After having studied a unit on game creation, I learned a lot about what makes games good, and I think a game reviewer should do the same so they have a good understanding of these principles. In other words, they should understand the craft they are criticising, rather than just expressing their opinion.

[Gunstar Green]

I think at the very least knowledge is what's important here. It takes very little effort to research the evolution of video game genres and game mechanics. I think any serious critic that's been given a certain game to review has a duty to look into its past a bit before giving a final opinion and I don't think that's an unrealistic request.

Really though, at the risk of igniting the "games are art" debate, its games themselves that have to be taken more seriously by the general public before any critic is going to be elevated to the same status as other authoritative art critics and it's not there yet. It's kind of a catch-22 because at the same time we need more critics to examine video games seriously before video games will be respected.

I've got nothing against the AVGN or Mark from CGR and others like them (in fact I really enjoy their stuff) but the reviewers that get popular are the ones that are entertainers more-so than critics. This is what most gamers want. The people who take the hobby more seriously like those who post on this site are really in the minority. Maybe as the population of people who game continues to get older things will change?

[Erik_Twice]

Very nice points everyone.

Concerning the quality of criticism, I think there are several factors that currently make criticism poor as a whole:

1) Pandering to the mainstream is very effective.

A sad fact is that most people who look for reviews online do it, not to learn, but to confirm their own choices and tastes. This public is easily pandered to and provides instant results compared to the harder to please people who actually look for understanding of the medium.

This way of thinking is normally doomed to failure as readers grow wise and the market becomes saturated but gaming is experiencing a huge growth so any potential losses are greatly outweighted by naïve newcomers.

2) Ease of access means less involvement and thus, less quality.

Reviews require work and the easier it's for the average Joe to write them, the more probable something half-cooked gets published. If you have to keep a constant schedule, check out with an editor and respond to the quality of your work you are at least on the minimun amount of care you need to write something decent.

3) The critic is not valued.

The critics aren't seen as important, only the reviews are. This is most easily seen in magazines or websites that don't credit the authors of the articles but it seems to me that the biggest reason why critics aren't valued is because there's no reason to value them. Someone under the stiff editorial control produced by 1) has little as a writer, everyone can copy someone's else propaganda.

4) Ease of access to the information you want precludes good critical thought.

This is a corollary to the rest. Given that many only want to hear what they want, that's it's easy to find someone who does say what you want and that many are actively seeking to please you, many simply aren't going to stick with a real critic when they can have a fluffy one.

This is what most gamers want. The people who take the hobby more seriously like those who post on this site are really in the minority. Maybe as the population of people who game continues to get older things will change?

While I just painted a very grim view, I have to say there's many, many people who want quality criticism but nobody is really taping into it, at best they do it only tangentially and this number will keep growing. There are many similar-minded folks out there and this is going to come out pretty soon, in the same way that Atlus printed four dungeon crawlers for the DS and Wasetland 2 is one of the biggest games Kickstarter has had.