N-Philes

A Message to Game Reviewers

Posted February 27th 2009 by Jacob Barnes.

I was on the internet the other day, imagine that, and I come across this review of Big Bang Mini for the DS. I have to say it's a fun game and has gotten pretty good reviews from most media outlets. Now don't tell anyone I told you this, but I hear the popular video game fansite n-philes.com will also have a review up some time so look out for that. But we have a nuance here with Ms. Gibson's review.

The first thing you'll notice is that she gave it a 5/10. I don't care about that. I could care less about scores in general, and I really think numbers scores should be thrown out altogether. So why would a person give a game such a bad score? Maybe she carefully looked over a set of criteria and saw that it only met half of the total. Or maybe she doesn't know anything about shoot ‘em ups, couldn't get past the first few levels, said "fuck this game" and slapped a big 5/10 onto her review.

I hope she didn't get paid to write this. I'm guessing she did because eurogamer is a pretty big site, but I don't visit it often. The creepy British spelling of "colour" and "manoeuvre" is one reason. And now I have another reason because of reviews like this. Time for an analysis.

"The temptation is to fire away with wild abandon, confident in the knowledge you'll hit something sooner or later. Except in Big Bang Mini, you are your own worst enemy. If one of your missiles fails to make contact with an object on the top screen, it'll explode into dozens of tiny pieces."

-When I'm playing Resident Evil 4 I'm constantly tempted to shoot the cows, that dog that helps you later in the game and Luis. After I go through a dozen or so shotgun shells from shooting a cow's dead body only then do I realize that I'm out of bullets and stuck with a handgun and knife to defeat the next boss. Well God damn those people over at Capcom PS4! I only wanted to "fire away with wild abandon". You see, there are certain folkways that players have to obey and accuracy is one of the things the developers wanted players to strive for. The tiny pieces are barely a factor anyway even if your aiming is horrible.

"These fall right back down on top of you and they're just as lethal as enemy fire. To make matters worse, it's sudden death if you mess up. There are no extra lives or health meters. Make the slightest contact with the tiniest missile and you have to start the level all over again."

-A health meter?! A HEALTH METER??!?!!! *space reserved for a new iteration of capitalization needed for this context, possibly written in Chinese*!??!?!!??!!!! So that's why games like Ikaruga and Terra Diver suck. They need health meters. All games need health meters. Racing games need health meters. Characters in Animal Crossing need health meters. I want to know how much damage I'm inflicting upon Tortimer when I hit him with my net. Wait, why are we calling it a health meter? Is this the British version of a health foot, and if so what is a health foot? Health bar would be the most common term. Again, you don't need a health bar for this game. The levels are so short that it's pointless.

"The concept is simple enough to grasp, but the control system is a little tricky at first. The touch screen doesn't always seem to recognise your swiping gestures, and manoeuvring your tiny icon about is fiddly."

-I think the sensitivity for the swiping motion is fine. It recognizes even tiny strokes, but you have to do so in a straight line. That may be the reason why a person thinks something is off. And I don't see how maneuvering the icon is "fiddly". You simply place the stylus over the icon and move it out of the range of fire.

"But quality presentation isn't enough to make up for the fact that, fundamentally, Big Bang Mini is a bit boring. It may have many qualities of a great DS game, but it's missing one of the most important ones - it's just not addictive."

-Boring? Why? She mentions in her review the game requires multitasking and that it's challenging. Maybe she doesn't understand how to put forth effort to make it fun. Let's talk about that last word "addictive." This is the most overused word in puzzle and bargain games. Almost every single good puzzle game review has the word addictive in the headline. Not only is that redundant, but you're just repeating what you already said. It's also redundant.

"You'll find yourself stuck, seemingly endlessly, on levels where projectiles fall at ridiculous speeds, while enemies put up shields which are almost impossible to shoot past."

-Seemingly endlessly? More like a few minutes, even on the longest levels. This is not a difficult game if you utilize specific power-ups for that level.

"The only way to score a hit becomes to fire blindly whenever you get the chance. This, of course, creates yet more projectiles which have to be avoided."

-Wow. We see the stupidity carousel go full circle here. Obviously she's having difficulty with the game at this point trying to dodge objects on the bottom screen. I don't think much more needs to be said when a person tells you to 1. Fire blindly at enemies and 2. Dodge your own projectiles you've created from being so stupid.

"This is where the sudden death mechanic really begins to grate, and where serious frustration starts to set in. The gameplay becomes entirely about dodging stuff and taking potshots rather than developing attack strategies and aiming well. Completing levels is more down to luck than skill."

-I love that term "sudden death mechanic," like it's a new concept for this genre. I think this paragraph was written right before she slammed her DS against the wall and put together this piece of work. And again she can't mask her own frustration because the last four paragraphs are all about frustration and difficulty.

She pulls out some classic elementary school logic with that last sentence though. Is it really all down to luck or do you just have no skill and suck at this game? I don't see how a game that requires so much skill could require an even greater amount of luck. My friends and I used to play Duke Nukem 3D for the PC back when I was nine. Obviously the difficulty was higher for kids our age so at times one of us would just pass off our lack of skill saying, "This game cheats." But you know what? We actually beat the game and we never transferred our stupid thoughts to a professional game review.

"If you've got massive amounts of patience and skill you might enjoy this game, but we're talking the kind of patience and skill required to solve Rubik's cubes in the dark and balance marbles on tightropes."

-"Massive" skill is a little over the top, and again probably a crutch for her lack of skill. I've also never heard the term balancing marbles on tightropes which is not a colorful analogy. At the end of this mess we're left with a 5/10 at the bottom. After reading this, I might assume that isn't the score, but that she made it to level 5 (Savannah) before she just gave up. I'll try walking out in the middle of a movie when writing my next review and put 1:17 at the bottom so you will know how long my eyes could last before the extreme difficulty of keeping them open took over.

Oh yeah, I forgot that I'm supposed to have a message behind this. Reviewers: play through the game without sucking at it, don't get caught up on one detail and please do some research if you don't know the basics of a type of game you're reviewing.

Comments (2) | Permalink