Doubt: It's easy, as a member of the gaming press, to feel afloat in a sea of hype. With massive doses of PR and Internet enthusiasm in my bloodstream, I frequently find myself paralyzed by doubt. Do I really like this game? Or have I succumbed, as many suggest, to some kind of mass marketing delusion. Life's too short (and deadlines too soon) to doubt your feelings. And though reviews may exist for years to come in print and on the Internet, they're not the final word. Reviews are snapshots of one person's opinion at one point in time. So trust that feeling in your gut now, critics. If that sensation changes 10 years down the road, you weren't wrong. Time changes us all.
Diplomacy: In a post about Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Tycho from Penny Arcade pointed out a bit of game review weaseling that I myself have been guilty of. "Most reviews I have read," he said, "can be simmered down to 'If you like Metal Gear, you'll like it.'" This kind of wishy-washy language is, itself, unforgivable. It's a way of avoiding the fight that should be at the core of your review. If you don't like Metal Gear you should be illustrating the series' weaknesses and the way they materialize Metal Gear Solid 4. Reviews are no place for peacemaking. Make your arguments and back them up.
"No review can be all-inclusive... Trying to be totally thorough is a fool's errand – better to pick your battles and win them than to half-heartedly wage war on a dozen fronts."
Forgiveness: Quite a few critics took umbrage with Grand Theft Auto IV's nearly unanimous perfect scores. They cited technical and narrative flaws as reasons Rockstar's blockbuster isn't all that it's been cracked up to be. Good for them. If even the smallest design decision sticks in a reviewer's craw, they should point it out. It's our job to be crotchety nit-pickers. Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation reviews are very good at honing in on the broken or boring parts of games that many of us gloss over or dismiss – though we should be careful when we accuse other critics of giving games a pass. I found the flaws in Grand Theft Auto IV to be inconsequential and beneath mention, when weighed against its many, game-changing strengths.
Purposelessness: Every review needs a thesis – an overarching point to make about the video game at hand. The rest of the story should back up this point. Reviews don't need to be formatted like a five paragraph essay, but they should do the same work. If your job is to run through the rosary of video game features you've got your work cut out for you. Creating a compelling argument around one single idea isn't impossible, even when you've got to address sound, graphics and re-playability in their own paragraphs. Just remember your thesis and remember to use those details to hammer home your overarching aim.
Obsession: No review can be all-inclusive. There's always some detail, observation or criticism that's going to wind up on the cutting room floor. It's impossible to cram it all in. And chances are if you've figured out a way to hit every note you're not doing it very elegantly. Thank God for word limits if you're working under those kinds of constraints. Trying to be totally thorough is a fool's errand – better to pick your battles and win them than to half-heartedly wage war on a dozen fronts.
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Gus Mastrapa reviews games for The Onion, Crispy Gamer, Paste and X-Play. He's sinned in the pages of every outlet and daily striving for salvation.
Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.
Reader Comments (2)
As a Reviews Edtior, I would definitely say you nailed it sir. If I could add an eighth sin, it would be "summarizing the box." So many reviewers nowadays give us the technical details of the gameplay (which is good) but little to no editorializing (which is bad). @droolingmaniac -- "Start building up an industry of professionals instead of fans." I really don't want to agree with this, but it's arguably one of the most accurate statement I've heard in a while.
This piece of superficial nonsense doesn't inspire confidence in the gaming press. So much of it points to the author's inability to follow his own advice. He's conscious of some of his transgressions, but at the same time his own recommendations often display a sheer lack of judgment when it comes to evaluating the criteria he proposes. For example, in "Forgiveness," he suggests it's the job o*****ame reviewer to be "crotchety nit-pickers." In the very same paragraph, he writes that he finds the flaws in Grand Theft Auto IV to be "inconsequential and beneath mention," an absurd, defensive posture that's out of touch with the game's many, many shortcomings. He *forgave* a plethora of serious design flaws - clunky controls, save structure that forces boring repetition, and a broken cover system, among others - because of what? Because the game had an impressive depiction of a city? Because other aspects of the game were fun? Is his proposal that reviewers should nit-pick, but then reason that their own nit-picks are beneath mention? Why bother nit-picking if that's the case? Similarly, how can the author make a call for exciting, involving reviews with top-shelf writing quality when his own article is steeped in cliche and fluff? "Seven Deadly Sins of X" is . "Score like you mean it." "Afloat in a sea of hype." "Doses of PR and Internet enthusiasm in my bloodstream." "Life's too short to doubt your feelings." The author is alternately insultingly trite and hopelessly lacking in apt analogies. Can we expect an engaging review from this person? It's difficult to imagine. Is he representative of his peers' writing aptitudes? That remains to be seen, but I can't say that the majority of game reviews I read are any better. Even putting aside his poor use of writing as a form, his lack of logical support for his arguments is apalling. "Make your arguments and back them up," he demands of his fellow members of the gaming enthusiast press. Yet in the same article, he argues that someone giving a review that's "out of step" with the rest of the press means "so much more" precisely because they're in disagreement with the others. That argument has no logical basis. An opinion has no more meaning just because it's contrarian. The review scores would mean "so much more" if they dared to give the game a score it deserved when everyone else would not. Because they would have journalistic integrity. But the author explicitly states he doesn't care whether it's a review that's more honest than all the rest or one that's simply "a feeble grab for attention." The author is pounding his shoe on the table, calling for reviewers to go out and have an opinion. I have news for him. Having an opinion isn't going to rescue a profession full of gaming-man-children-turned-pseudo-journalists. Maybe someone out there should be calling for reviewers to have *honest* opinions. This one could take or leave the "honesty" part. Speaking of things that aren't going to save gaming journalism, there's nothing in this article that's going to repair its problems. How incredibly out of touch it is for the author to call for reviews that "tell a story" and aren't "totally thorough," and expect his article to be relevant. These aren't seven deadly sins of game reviews. Half of them are just things that make game journalists ****** writers. That's not the actual important problem with game journalists. The problem is that they review games like kids with game consoles instead of like professionals. What are their real deadly sins? Not actually studying journalism. Having no structural division between their department and their outfit's bizdev department. Accepting advertising money from the same industry they critique. Becoming "fans" of particular game franchises or companies and losing objectivity. Giving every new AAA title of the last 3 months a perfect score and believing that that shows they've evolved in their thinking and now finally recognize art and industrial revolution when they see it, while simultaneously failing to evaluate those titles on anything but the most superfluous level, and not taking them to task for their pacing, writing, or craft (GTA IV's story is predictable and hackneyed? Who cares? MGS4 constantly interrupts gameplay with insipid dialogue? Big deal!) the way a film critic would for his medium. Equating high production values with artistic substance. Being so completely clueless as to think that their industry's problem is a need for a bill of rights, or not using enough of the "universe of adjectives." There's your problem. How about you get together and get all that figured out. Start building up an industry of professionals instead of fans. Then you can take some extension school English classes.