As a writer on the campus newspaper, I've done a few game reviews, short ones, but reviews nonetheless. I've liked most of the games I've reviewed, but one of the quotes from the article "Truth and Judgment" had me think about one I did, which was for Street Fighter 4 on release.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “There are always good facts and bad facts in any game but no review contains everything. You have a generalised impression and then you match the ratio of facts you wish to present to your feeling of the game.”
This is what Kieron Gillen said of his three review scores of the game Boiling Point.
Now, when I did my review of Street Fighter 4, I gave it a B (M-Times grading uses letter grading), because while I did have fun with it, as a longtime fan of and competitive player of fighting games, I found it lacking. Now that I think about it, I wonder whether or not that would've been accurate for me.
Street Fighter 4 was great for the audience who was just coming in to Street Fighter for the first time. The game was simplified; the parrying system from Street Fighter III was rescinded in favor of the Focus system, which was, in my opinion and some of the fighting game community's a easier to deal with. The entire original cast from Street Fighter 2 returned, welcoming players in with familiar faces. Finally, online play was added, giving new people access to a community that is lost on anyone without friends who play or an arcade people frequent. From the perspective of a new player, Street Fighter 4 could be considered a success.
By that same merit, the reasons that someone new to Street Fighter would like 4 are the same reasons that I as a competitive gamer wouldn't enjoy it.
The game's simpler; I felt losing the parry system for Focus meant matches could often turn into Focus cancel wars as both players tried to block a move and get a free damaging combo, instead of learning pinpoint timing and reading the opponent.
The entire cast of Street Fighter III, whom I actually really liked, were completely gone, not even appearing in cameo roles. What were the people who'd spent hours and hours learning how to play Dudley or Q or Alex supposed to do now? (For the record, I was one of said Alex players).
The question I ask pertains to any review we might write. Do I paint in strokes of grey, as the end of Truth and Judgment suggests? Do I write my review toward a specific audience? Or do I review as it's only my interests and likes at the forefront, and let readers decide for themselves?
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I think there's a happy medium. While you might not have enjoyed it as a die-hard Street Fighter fan, you can see where other people would. Maybe point out those traits and offer a suggestion to people coming in to the genre.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I get what you mean in short reviews in that you can't always play the devil's advocate. Instead, the author usually has to choose one side or the other.
Then again, you can always make yourself however you want. There are reviewers out there that I already know I don't agree with (namely G4's XPlay). So I know to take them with a grain of salt whenever they review an RPG.
As discussed in yesterday's class, we already have a pretty well-defined audience available to us (i.e., our class). So, I'd suggest pursuing some degree of consistency over anything else. Given your previous blog entries, your interests and likes should already be known by most potential readers, so there might not be as much need to state those in a review.
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