On Review.

I've been thinking about that review of Gamespot's LostWinds review I posted up, and how it relates to my opinion of the reviewing process in general.

See, I'm not one to get pissy about reviews or precious about the games I like. However, it seems there is a fine line between someone having a subjective opinion that clashes with your own and someone being genuinely unfair on a game. The latter very rarely happens, on professional sites, because they're, well, professional. That said, my feeling about the LostWinds review is that it was on just the wrong side of fair.

Now, to put this next bit in to context, I've only played through one Metal Gear Solid game, and that's the second one (which I hear a lot of people consider to be the worst in series). So, my interest in the series is minimal. Certainly, I enjoyed it and I wouldn't even mind playing the 4th one, or any of the other ones, but I haven't been swept up in the hype like some. To clarify even further, I'm fairly confident it's a great game series and that MGS4 is all sorts of wonderful, it's just that there are other things I'd rather play first. Okay, fans?

What gets me worked up is when a site like Eurogamer dares to give MGS4 such a punishingly low score as 8 out of 10 and then every single fanboy and girl, not just of MGS but of the PS3 in general, crawls out of the woodwork with extreme indignance at such a personal insult. The 360 fanboys aren't innocent, either, with their laughing at MGS4 fans because their game recieved such a... well, a perfectly respectable score (the same one awarded to Gears of War, incidentally, to some but not quite as much outcry).

I joined in the ensuing discussion to see if I could bring about some sort of modicum of sense to it (along with a few allies) but this is the sort of discussion we are talking about:

Us: Come on, 8 out of 10 is a good score. It means it's a great game for anyone to play (with a few caveats), and a must buy for fans, surely?
Them: No, it's worth at LEAST a 9 even though I haven't played it because it isn't out yet, so the reviewer must be some sort of MGS hating idiot.
Us: But he liked the game, a lot!
Them: Oh, clearly his anti-MGS/PS3 bias is written all over the review.
Us: Really, where? I think you're just reading what you want to read.
Them: [Quote taken out of context]
Us: Sigh...

I could see that I wasn't going to convince them that it really was a positive review of the game and so I hoped to attack their assumption that reviews should be objective. My argument went something like this:

There's very little that can objectively said about a game and still be useful. The objective facts about a game are things that can be found out without even playing it. Of course, in a review you need some facts: perhaps some information about the control system, or what you can change in the options menu, or a summary of the general premise of the game and so on. However, the real meat of the review is a highly subjective account of the reviewer's experience with the game.

So, why do we read reviews when we don't know if we can trust the opinions?

Well, what we usually do is we find a web site or magazine whose opinions tend to tally quite closely with our own, because those are the subjective opinions which are likely to be of use to us. But the best thing is, even if there are opinions in the review that seem to differ to our own, we can still find them useful as a guide to whether to buy the game or not.

For instance, in the MGS4 review, the reviewer complains a little bit about just how long some of the cutscenes are. To me, that is something worth complaining about, so I'll take that in to consideration if I ever consider buying MGS4. But to Joe MGS Fan, the long cutscenes might be one of his favourite things about the series, so he can turn that negative into a positive right away. He can even mentally add a point to the score if he wants to. In fact he can add another point just for being an MGS fan, so that's 10 out of 10 already!

Reviews are not handed down on tablets of stone. They are the collected opinions of a gamer whose only responsibility is to approach the game with an open mind, in order that he might assist other people in a decision to buy or not.

The first thing reviews are not, is written-for-fans. Joe MGS fan, this review wasn't even for you. You're only reading it to satisfy some craving that is to do with your excitement about the game. I'm not knocking that - I do it all the time. I read the Lost Winds Gamespot review, after all.

What annoyed me about the aforementioned review was that it may put a lot of people off the game who would otherwise have really liked it. But you can't really say the same about an 8/10 review for MGS4. It tells fans what they already know - you'll love it and buy it. And it tells non-fans, the target audience, what they need to know - it's a great game but you may find that you have a few issues with it if you're not used to this sort of thing. That way the non-fan can make an informed decision about whether those issues are things she can live with in order to play what's supposed to be a very good game, or whether they'll be too annoying for her and so she'll pass this time around. Sounds reasonable to me.



... but of course, they didn't listen.