Columns Yes, Games Critics Understand Innovation

But that's the point Joe was trying to make - I think...

-I think it's good you're making your own opinion on the game. You see - someone isn't "perfectly" happy with the game while you are. In the end it's not about whether reviewer likes the game(or how much) but whether you do.


Joe, were you thinking about changing the way you rate games at BT? I mean - like when Baz reviews PC cases - Features, Build Quality, Performance....etc.
You can rate technical aspect of the game(stability, graphic & sound engine, in-game bugs), game artwork(textures, sounds, music), gameplay experience(if it's based on story like your favourite adventures or replay_ability like Diablo2 or fantastic multiplayer like L4D, generaly how much did you enjoy playing that game, in-game bugs...)
There are games which can't be rated with just one number, like - Stalker: Clear Sky. In review you said that intensive gaming experience was mixed up with terrible technical issues. You could rate these separately - while technical issues can be solved by patches, gaming experience usualy cannot. At least BT readers would know that they might try checking later to see if problems were fixed. Stalker: CS might be completely different experience by now.

 

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=1870767&postcount=9

No, we're not changing our scoring method. If I had my way then there wouldn't be any score anyway. The review should stand on it's own, not require a score to sum it up which only distracts readers.

On the topic of technical issues and pure gameplay, they shouldn't be seperated. They are combined. If a game is good but unplayable because of bugs then it is not a good game; it isn't fun or enjoyable because of the bugs.

We've already promised to revisit Stalker and have planned to do so by new year at the latest. For a game that was obviously so full of promise but so ruined by bugs, that was something we promised to do from the start.

 

Well, I missed that post about game rating. I only made that suggestion because some people seems to skip till the very end of the review to see if it received 9 out of 10 and then read review. If I remember you even received a lot of negative criticism from these people for review of S:CS.

 

Y'know, that would be a really interesting thing to try. See what people make of a review when they can't just skip to the end and have to actually read the thing

 

Pretty much the only thing I care enough to agree or disagree with is the sentiment that people only need to hate films for 90-odd minutes (Except Titanic :/).

The rest of both articles is pretty much a 'meh' for me, because something innovative for me would be a game where you can make the kind of changes to your weapon that you can in the real world - I want to tweak my guns to the point of perfection for my attack style. There isn't a game that caters for that, to the degree that I would want.

How many others of you would call that innovation? I'd wager that, at most, a very small handful of you, if any.

Mirrors Edge bored me - I love the idea, I love parkour, but the game play did very, very little for me. I loved the fact that the main character wasn't a testosterone fueled jerkoff, and I loved the fact that she didn't have hooters the size of a couple of planets. In that respect, in my opinion (Which, might I remind you, is what this entire response is, I'm not saying I'm right, just.. Telling you my thoughts, even though they weren't asked for ), the game was innovative, but it wasn't enough for me to like the game.

Who was it that said something like 'I don't believe a game can be represented by a number'?

Are you and they related?

That said, I haven't paid attention to numbers since I finished Mathematics at school >.>

 

It would be interesting, but for political and business reasons we just can't justify doing it. It's expected of a review and we just have to accept that 90% of people skip to the score and then leave the site. All we can do is try to cater to those who care enough to read the reviews and try to make it an enjoyable, rewarding task.

 

Well, I've always found the reviews and articles here an informative and rewarding read. I have to say the only time I notice the scores on things is when there is an excellence or recommended badge but by that stage I've already read the review and know that you like it.

 

Some reviews just don't make sense. Ever read one of those reviews that trashes a game to death and then scores it an 8 or the other way around? I quit reading reviews on Gamespot and IGN because of that stuff. I almost always read the reviews on Bit, and they are good and compliment the scores well.