My Continual Frustration with Game Reviews

April 16th, 2008

Even though nothing of the sort is on the blog yet, I have recently been writing a few articles about casual and non-gaming themed games. As I’ve been transferring my thoughts into a digital format I’ve started to realize some of the major issues that these types of games face when put up for review. It seems that no matter how well these games excel in their respective area (training your brain, karaoke etc.) they were always seem to fall up short when it comes to game reviews. Upon this realization I have been re-analyzing my stance on video game reviews and over the past couple of weeks I have drawn a series of conclusions that I’d like to share with you.

Prelude

Before my eventual realization I noticed a few strange quirks about some games which I would now like to use as examples.

brain training ds screenshotMy first observation was Brain Training on the Nintendo DS, my personal view on this game, as has been probably already been mentioned in this blog before, is that it perfects a design in which itself has created. The exercises in the game are designed to test your brain. It sounds ridiculous that I have to almost re-phrase the game’s title to actually emphasis my realization of what I am doing when I play this game. Obviously I know that this game is about testing the brain but it wasn’t until I went hands on that I could admire it’s simple effectiveness which it dishes out in strides. It is an odd sensation; you can actually feel your brain working away, its quite incredible.

Brain Training is almost flawless in approach and because of this I believe that it is one of the must play experiences on this system. It is unique to it’s platform and is something that demands to be sampled at least once. Not so according to the reviews generated by Game Rankings which mark this title as being decidedly average 78% (NB: to the average gamer >80% is regarded as ‘average’ or not worthy of purchase).

Lets take another title of interest; House of the Dead 2 and 3 Return for the Wii. This game has been praised but also severely panned at the same time with great misunderstanding from me. According to the game reviews, the dated visuals and presentation are reasons to hinder one’s purchase of this title. But, in my mind isn’t that the point of buying the compilation? Yes the visuals are dated but this is what you should expect from two last generation titles, why penalize the game for what it is trying to be? Why not review this game on the grounds of a (price reduced) retro compilation rather than a fully fledged Wii game?

house of the dead 2 wii zombies

What I am trying to drill home here is context and how the current review model falls apart with varying context.
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Gamer’s Instinct – The Language of Video Games

March 29th, 2008

zelda wind waker gamers instinct

Have you ever noticed that when you start playing some games that aren’t necessarily ‘pick up and play’ games that you instantly can come to grips with the gaming environment without previous instruction? That you already understand how to play before the game has taught you. Have you then tested this example with a less experienced player (maybe a friend or parent) only to find that they take a considerably longer time to adapt?

It is said that a positive quality which game players posses is the ability to adapt to the ever changing variables within their environment. That is we can move form one experience to another (be it virtual or real life) and adapt quicker than our non game playing counterparts. This strange phenomena to adapt to different games, naturally is something I wish to explore. For the sake of this article I will dub this phenomena; ‘Gamer’s Instinct’.

How Do We Form a Gamer’s Instinct?

Simple, through playing games. As we play games our brain begins to notice patterns, we notice that we can use a particular technique to dodge some enemies and not others, we notice that if we jump down a hole we lose a life. Game developers use learning by trial and error (or learning by curiosity) to teach players how to play the way they want their game to be played.

For gamers, years of play has resulted in an insurmountable catalog of stored expectations. We know that breaking pots will reveal secret goodies and that killing all of the enemies in a room will make that invisible wall disappear. A ridiculous number of these variables are stored in our subconsciousness as we play.

Properties

Gamer’s Instinct doesn’t have to be a skill forged out by years of constant adaption. Gamer’s Instinct varies significantly based on experience. As human beings everyone has some sort of Gamer’s Instinct, even if they’ve never played a game before. We all have our own expectations of how to play.

Gamer’s Instinct varies dependent on the games which we choose to play. Someone whom plays a lot of first person shooter games obviously has built up a large amount of Gamer’s Instinct within the FPS genre and as such they can move from different FPS games/maps/scenarios with little time required to adapt.

On the other hand gamers who play a great variety of games are much better at adapting to any game and not just on a set genre.
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