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It isn't often that I'm thorougly impressed with a piece of game journalism. This is not to knock game writing, I think it serves an undeniably important role in the gaming industry, and that without the various magazines and websites that keep gamers informed, we would be left groping in the dark at rumors and industry snippets. This said, the shortcomings of game journalism are well known, and in a year marked by over the top review scores, it was nice to see some integrity emerge to against the tide of the negativity.
For those unaware, last month in Electronic Gaming Monthly, the staff opted not to score the much anticipated Metal Gear Solid 4, due to restrictions handed down by the games developers concerning what they could write. While the writers did say they would proffer an actual review later on, when the restrictions had been lifted, for the time being they wrote a round table discussion of the game, describing the things they liked and disliked about the games while not giving the game a numerical score.
It was one of the best reviews I've read in awhile. It really makes me queston whether or not this is a path that would be beneficial for reviews at large. It just seemed, reading through the EGM article, that without a score to worry about, the reviewers could be much more candid about the game. There was less talk visibly influenced by hype, or overbearing developers, and more discussion that sounded just like a group of gamers sitting down and talking about a game they had played over lunch.
Realistically, I know that this is not a viable way to review games. For a game like Metal Gear Solid 4, arguably the largest release for the PS3 thus far, that kind of attention can be paid, but with smaller releases it would just take too much time and manpower to do it that way. It would be possible however, on a wide scale, to remove a score.
Log on to any major gaming forum, especially those devoted to the stupidity of system wars, and you will hear more talk about what score a game received than anything else. I can't count the number of times I've seen someone say something along the lines of, "...it had some really good qualities, I liked it..." and then had someone write back, "It only got an 8 out of 10." Logging on to the EGM forums after the psuedo-review was released, it was almost amusing to see people discuss it. Some liked the style while others seemed almost lost without a number to quantify the value of the game. Advising them to read just the article seemed to be taken as lunacy.
It is this focus on numbers in the gaming community, this dependency on quick portraits of worth that is gradually making game reviews useless. I look to reviews for good, reliable information on a game. How many reviews in recent months have been rendered into trite by the fact that they were written about a number rather than about a game? By most accounts, Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto 4, none of these games were as perfect as they were made out to be by reviewers. But nonetheless they were all hailed as the peak of gaming perfection only to have their flaws quickly revealed by the gamers these reviewers are supposed to be responsible for. Nothing is perfect; no game ever will be, and when I read a review that suggests otherwise, that is the review I'm going to skip over.
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