Breaking Down a Broken Game
You're reading Reaction Time, a weekly column that claims to examine recent events, games and trends in the industry, but is really just looking for an excuse to use the word "zeitgeist." It debuts on Fridays in Engadget's digital magazine, Distro.
"Why don't you just do your job and review the game? Stop shoving your opinion down our throats!"
That's one bit of criticism, nested between comments both cordial and caustic, that I sometimes see at the bottom of Joystiq's thoughtful, pretentious, accurate and downright incorrect reviews (depending on whom you ask). For some, a bit of punditry only pollutes the product evaluation they signed up for. Less thought and more report, please.
That's not how game reviews work at all - not unless it's their goal to confirm factual observations about the video game, which is indeed functional and playable from the first-person perspective, and features a sequence of steadily increasing challenges that must be overcome with considered manipulation of the controller's buttons. And there are graphics!
But the ease at which the mythical "objective review" is dismissed nearly obscures an unusual facet of writing about games. When critics played Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor this week, they encountered a game that had clear, unavoidable faults beyond the usual suspects in level design, storytelling, play mechanisms, and emotions evoked by the premise. What happens when the game just fails to function properly?
"Why don't you just do your job and review the game? Stop shoving your opinion down our throats!"
That's one bit of criticism, nested between comments both cordial and caustic, that I sometimes see at the bottom of Joystiq's thoughtful, pretentious, accurate and downright incorrect reviews (depending on whom you ask). For some, a bit of punditry only pollutes the product evaluation they signed up for. Less thought and more report, please.
That's not how game reviews work at all - not unless it's their goal to confirm factual observations about the video game, which is indeed functional and playable from the first-person perspective, and features a sequence of steadily increasing challenges that must be overcome with considered manipulation of the controller's buttons. And there are graphics!
But the ease at which the mythical "objective review" is dismissed nearly obscures an unusual facet of writing about games. When critics played Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor this week, they encountered a game that had clear, unavoidable faults beyond the usual suspects in level design, storytelling, play mechanisms, and emotions evoked by the premise. What happens when the game just fails to function properly?
