BoneSnapDeez wrote:This is all related to a greater issue I have: on nearly every major gaming site, retro remakes and compilations tend to be reviewed by people that don't even enjoy retro games in the first place.
It's true. I think part of this is that the best writers on most sites focus on columns or features, they do not write most reviews, much less reviews of something like game compilations.
I do find the lack of appreciation of half of the medium by certain critics to be a bit baffling. I think a critic shouldn't be that limited
Imagine if Roger Ebert hadn't liked movies that were more than 10 years old.
prfsnl_gmr wrote:There is nothing feigned about it. What I wrote is a display of actual moral superiority.
I think Roger Ebert is a great example because no matter what film he was reviewing, he treated it with the same respect he would give to any other movie. He didn't seem to have "more important" reviews, all of them are fun and fresh even if the movies were generic, boring and awful.
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Valkyrie-Favor wrote:Nakamura's Ys I & II Chronicles review contains this gem:
For those interested in the music, it should be noted that the retail version comes packed with a soundtrack CD, while the downloadable version does not.
It's not fair to criticize him for that, but I actually burst out laughing when I read it. I just expected the sentence to end with "soundtrack CD."
It's not even completely true either - as the CD is only bundled with the Premium Edition.
He also complains about the music and the "jarring" electric guitar without even mentioning that you can switch to the original PC-88 soundtrack.
It says much, however, about the respect with which the source material has been treated by the developer that it considers the original a master, even if the end result suggests either questionable taste or a rather rose-tinted memory.
Because the uncomfortable truth is that DuckTales is nothing more than a serviceable adventure, a colourful romp through a variety of bright and inventive settings that does nothing particularly interesting.
As was Gamespot's semi-infamous Simpsons Arcade review and Jim Sterling's review of Bloodrayne: Betrayal where he literally says 95% of NES games were shit and you're ignorant if you think otherwise.
You know? I remember bashing that review in a previous thread and while the review will probably be awful, I have to admit The Simpsons isn't exactly a great game. At all. In fact, it's pretty terrible and cheap and beating it, like beating most Konami games, is more of a matter of abusing the game's engine than anything else.
Jeez, was I wrong about that game D:
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I think there needs to be a happy medium regarding major websites. I honestly don't expect them to care about niche games or retro titles as much as I do or be the Roger Ebert of gaming journalism, because their focus is a general audience that doesn't care about those things as much as I do. They're not really aiming to impress people who have a deeper appreciation of games and ultimately are just a marketing tool for the industry.
I don't even mind when someone is completely ignorant of a certain genre because it gives a different perspective and if the game has standout elements that are truly good they should show through in the review anyway.
I'm only annoyed when a review is openly antagonistic against a specific genre or style of game. Everyone has biases, sure, but when you start questioning a genre's very existence or insulting people for liking it then you've gone a bit too far.
I hate when reviewers and the general gaming public don't appreciate and take older games into proper context when they're being played or talked about. Most of them believe that if something's 5 or so years old then it's outdated and not worth their time. Even now there's people who have gotten a PS4/XB1 and find it hard to go back and play a "current (last?) gen" game. WTF?
I was talking to a co-worker a while back about Bioshock Infinite shortly after it's release and he was asking me if I was going to get it. I told him "Yeah, eventually" and then sort of jokingly said "I'll get to it in a couple years or so". He then proceeded to say "By then it's probably not even worth playing". I looked at him dumbfounded and didn't know how to respond.
I wish I could find it now, but there was a running thread over on the shmups forum that had a bunch of terrible reviews for games by people that just have no clue about the genre.
The 'people who think old versions of games are obsolete' crowd are pretty much a symptom of EA sports/Madden games, which pretty much tells them their game is gonna be "worse" next year and to discontinue use as soon as the next one drops.
But don't get ti twisted, this is what game companies want for the most part. They don't make games hoping you will pay for it once and play it for 10 years straight. That doesn't make much sense from a profiting standpoint.
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