In Defense Of...

[jameseightbitstar]

HG101 has an "Angry Gamers" section where they sing the negative rant electric about games that everyone else likes, so why not have an opposite section, where we sing the positive ions about games everyone else seems to hate?

I really hate game criticism, because almost invariably, that criticism is based on either ignorance or expectations that were too high, or on some damning bug that makes said game unplayable (that last one, I feel, is the ONLY time ANY game really deserves to be called "bad"). Games shouldn't be played to particular expectations, they should be totally a "this is what it is, take it or leave it" ordeal and there are many perfectly fine games I feel have been unfairly criticized, even by HG101.

And in fact, the first game I will submit for this proposed section is one covered by HG101:

Bubsy
Now, okay, the sequel sucked and I've never played the Jaguar one, but as far as the first game is concerned I fail to see what makes it such a bad game, or indeed all that much worse compared to Sonic and Mario (save for lack of the "classic quality" where everyone gives it extra points just for being a commercial success and having a gazillion sequels).

In fact, if the author doesn't mind, I'd like to tear into the HG101 article itself: It spends five minutes bashing the game for reasons that have nothing to do with the game itself. Bubsy was created as an answer to Sonic... so what? That doesn't make the game bad. That's every bit as faulty as the arguement that He-Man can't be a good cartoon simply on the basis that it was based on a toy--it's a way of avoiding criticizing the game itself by bringing in irrelevent tangents.

I honestly never got annoyed with Bubsy the way the article's author did. Apparently it's because we played it differently--When I became well aware of Bubsy's "one hit and you die" rule I played cautious, as well as exploring the levels to find as many 1-Ups as possible. The author seemed to play it as if it were Sonic the freakin' Hedgehog and ran around willy-nilly. And what's wrong with one-hit deaths anyway? No one complains about that in Contra, which I find to be a much more annoying and unforgiving game than Bubsy.

Sure, the levels are big, but only a few of them are mazelike and they are by no means as confusing or hard as seems to be indicated... actually, most of the levels in Bubsy are straightforeward "go to the right" affairs, only you're given the option of exploring higher and lower areas on your way there. This means in near every level there are three paths to the exit, all relatively straightforeward, so there's some variety--and moreover, you can usually backtrack (and no, there is NO chance of you getting confused or lost) to find those oh-so-precious 1-Ups and 2-Ups. Actually, you should have 20 lives by the time you get to the amusement park, which is more than enough to keep you going until the end (though searching for more lives is always recommended in a game where one hit can kill you). To help this search out the game DOES allow you to look around if you hold the C Button (on the Genesis--I think it's X on the SNES).

My next defense will be
Hydlide
Yes, THAT Hydlide.

Let me put it bluntly: RPGs are the genre with the most absolute BS standards which cause perfectly good games to be looked or harshly criticized simply because the critics came in expecting every RPG to play like their personal favorite RPG. I mean yea, FF6 or whatever may have a good storyline and deep, fascinating characters, but does it ever occur to gamers that sometimes a developer might actually be TRYING to do something DIFFERENT?

Hydlide was a sad victim of this. There's virtually nothing wrong with the game itself, just in people's perceptions of it. No, it doesn't have a deep story or characters with ten psychological disorders each, but it wasn't trying to--this was well before storylines and characters became a selling point of RPGs for one thing, and for another Hydlide succeeds by fulfilling a very sorely-needed niche: the Coffee-Break RPG.

Most RPGs have 100+ hour playing times and involved gameplay, basically requiring the player to dedicate themselves to each individual RPG. Now that's all well and good, but sometimes I want the RPG experience without having to turn it into a religious meditation, meaning I want an RPG I can pick up, play, and put down much the same way I would a platformer or a puzzle game. How many RPGs out there fit this creed? Ummm... Rogue and its various clones, and thats it.

Except for Hydlide. Hydlide succeeds in delivering a full RPG experience in a small amount of time. The adventure, the discovery, the gaining strength, it's all there in compact form.

And despite how many people like to moan about the "run into things to kill them" mechanic, its really nowhere near as bad as is often made out. Okay yes, you DO have to spend some time gaining levels by fighting slimes and kobolds (though this takes like... what? three minutes?) but once you reach the third level of experience it becomes possible to kill monsters while remaining in Defense mode (you do less damage but also take less damage), which really makes the whole ordeal much easier. Really, very little should be able to kill you by this point, unless you get cornered and double-teamed.

I have more games I want to post defenses for, but I'm all tuckered out... and writing this has made me want to go play Bubsy and Hydlide some more.

[munchy]

Good work, soldier! Your next mission is to argue that Captain Novolin is a good game! Ready! GO!

...I kid, I kid. That's seriously an interesting idea, though I kinda thought that defending less popular games was one of HG101's points in the first place.

[Scylla]

I'm afraid I have to completely disagree. In general, I believe games are deserving of MORE critical analysis. Of course, it has to be intelligent criticism. A lot of gamers have the belief that most games are good and even poor games shouldn't be judged harshly, but I think they're just being too complacent. To deserve any respect as a critical thinker and an intelligent consumer, one must have discriminating tastes. Otherwise you're just falling into the "lowest common denominator" category that big business markets to. Not that I'm saying people should be excessively picky, they just need to accept that the concept that, like movies, music, art, television, fiction novels, and any other form of artistic expression, most of what's out there is mediocre - that's the simple logic of statistics. You'll have some great stuff and some awful stuff, but in the end, most will fall around the middle.

That's where intelligent criticism comes in. Most reviewers frankly don't know what they're doing, so they'll write as if everything is one extreme or the other. Unfortunately, the vast majority of negative reviews are just bash fests with no real thought put into the criticisms. Similarly, you'll get lots of gushing reviews where the person can't even express what about it is so great (and sometimes just "liking" a game is enough for some people to give a game a perfect score). Then in the professional realm of things there's even more issues thrown in since they often are more concerned about not alienating their advertisers and readers than presenting their honest views.

In the end, though, a review is an opinion, and while every reviewer should strive to back up their opinions with factual information, there will still be others who see things differently, so no game should be regarded as being good or bad as a "fact".

[steven]

I agree mostly with succubus.... bad games should be noted as such. I remember many of GameFan's ratings being ridiculous... a 98% for Saturn Skeleton Warriors??? Wow. That game at best was mediocre and didn't deserve anything beyond 70% (an average rating)

If a game has holes, I'll say it has holes. I tend to like mediocre games but I never pass them off for being better than what they really are (IMO of course)

[jameseightbitstar]

munchy

As I understood it, HG101's stated goal was to, quote, "introduce people to games they might not have heard of." That's all well and good, but as I said I find sometimes the reviews can be too critical. At the very least, something like this is needed to show people reading the articles that the opinions are, in the end, only the opinions of the article authors and aren't necessarily the de-facto mindset of the entire HG101 population.

[megatronbison]

Sorry dude, but Bubsy is more or less a bad platform game- yes it is playable, and yes it isn't the worst platformer out there. However the controls are really loose, the level designs poor and tbh it just isn't fun :\
I do want to hear you stick up for more games though- just to see if I agree with any

[MRSKELETON]

People are spoiled.
Live with it.

[kyouki]

As I think I've mentioned before on this board, I have a rough time with game reviews. I think a huge part of it is that the video game industry is full of the failures of other industries. You've got people making games like movies because they wouldn't be able to cut it making real movies. And you've got journalists who review games because they don't have the reviewing skills needed to review stuff more people take seriously.

People seem to hate Roger Ebert. However, he's an excellent reviewer. He can review a movie he personally despises, but you still get an idea of what the movie is about, what you might like about it, etc, in his review. I think a lot of the hatred for Ebert comes from gamers who get all upset that he basically can't see video games as art. That should be what video games journalists strive for- you should be able to take something you personally don't like and review it in an objective way while still making it clear (in a professional way!) to the audience that you don't care for the thing you are reviewing.

A lot of video game journalists tend to present extremely subjective opinions on things as fact. Complaints of RPGs all playing the same (and likewise, complaints that a certain game doesn't play to the expectations of the genre), complaints of the Warriors games just being mindless hack and slash, complaints of Street Fighter games reusing sprites. None of these complaints are objective in any way! Whereas I hate RPGs because they are so similar, I know there are TONS of people who love that very thing about RPGs. So why would I review an RPG and give it an awful score because it's the same thing as the last RPG I played?

So having written all of that, I am all for people writing defenses of games that they feel were savaged in the press and in popular opinion. Unless there are technical/mechanical problems with a game, I am very hesitant to write it off as awful. Objectively speaking, as games get more and more complicated (with more and more people involved in making a single game), there is a greater chance of there being serious issues with things like controls, cameras, graphical glitches, etc.

Anyway...

I would like to submit that Deadly Towers needs some defending. It's a very competent game that is perfect for the kind of person that loves to sit down with a game and devote a ton of time into just figuring out how to play the game successfully. It's very much in the tradition of the older Falcom games, as well as the original Legend of Zelda. The game itself is a huge maze with invisible warps all over the place and very little direction on where to go or what to do. It can definitely be frustrating, but putting the time into it and solving its mysteries is very rewarding. It's one of those games where you can get frustrated, start wandering around, get lost, and find something AWESOME and MYSTERIOUS... whichs motivates you to reset the game, put your password in, and try to find it again.

[kyouki]

succubus said:

I'm afraid I have to completely disagree. In general, I believe games are deserving of MORE critical analysis. Of course, it has to be intelligent criticism. A lot of gamers have the belief that most games are good and even poor games shouldn't be judged harshly, but I think they're just being too complacent. To deserve any respect as a critical thinker and an intelligent consumer, one must have discriminating tastes. Otherwise you're just falling into the "lowest common denominator" category that big business markets to. Not that I'm saying people should be excessively picky, they just need to accept that the concept that, like movies, music, art, television, fiction novels, and any other form of artistic expression, most of what's out there is mediocre - that's the simple logic of statistics. You'll have some great stuff and some awful stuff, but in the end, most will fall around the middle.

That's where intelligent criticism comes in. Most reviewers frankly don't know what they're doing, so they'll write as if everything is one extreme or the other. Unfortunately, the vast majority of negative reviews are just bash fests with no real thought put into the criticisms. Similarly, you'll get lots of gushing reviews where the person can't even express what about it is so great (and sometimes just "liking" a game is enough for some people to give a game a perfect score). Then in the professional realm of things there's even more issues thrown in since they often are more concerned about not alienating their advertisers and readers than presenting their honest views.

In the end, though, a review is an opinion, and while every reviewer should strive to back up their opinions with factual information, there will still be others who see things differently, so no game should be regarded as being good or bad as a "fact".

I wanted to quote this because I actually agree with both jameseightbitstar and succubus, even though they seem to be stating contradictory things!!

Succubus, I agree 100% with you in that the vast majority of stuff is mediocre. It's a bit at odds with the well-known saying that 99% of everything is crap. There are very few games that I can say are just totally awful, and there are likewise very few games that I can say are amazing.

To make it more complicated, there are some movies and games that I enjoy that are simply bad. There are so many movies in my collection that are almost objectively awful- poor direction, bad acting, awful script. But I have fun watching them. So is it now a bad movie? Or is it good because I liked it? I guess such a movie would be technically bad, but subjectively (to me) good. With games I'm a little more strict. Why is that?

With a bad movie, I can get a lot of enjoyment out of sitting there and watching the madness unfold. It's passive and easy. With a bad game (i.e. one with bad controls, a terrible camera, etc) it's a little different. I have to actively involve myself with it and actually have to apply some effort into making the entertainment go, so to speak.

Anyway, back to your post. I agree that there needs to be more intelligent criticism of games. Plenty of games receive awful scores not because the game is awful, but because the reviewer is not a very good reviewer. I also have problems with reviews that praise games I enjoy but are so subjective that the review is basically useless.

[michiyoyoshiku]

I remember when Game pro chronicled the entire making of bubsy it was very interesting.......