On the Subject of Criticism

Bianca Beauchamp

It's got to the point where people seem to fall over themselves in their attempts to appear dismissive and nonchalant when it comes to games these days. Every "new" game seems to trigger the same torrent of bandwagon-jumping yahoos attempting to impress each other with how "game X was much better, back in the day, but you wouldn't know about that because you're not as old-school as me".

It also seems like some noob has just discovered The Escapist, because there's been an avalanche of references to it recently, and to "Yahtzee" Croshaw's Zero Punctuation reviews in particular.
I haven't bothered to read many of The Escapists reviews and articles, mostly because the few I have read have been uniformly tired and derivative and written in the same stuck-up tone, where reviewers will refuse to acknowledge any positive aspect of any game that dares to offend their delicate, mature sensibilities with regard to it's themes, misogyny in particular. "Oh no, this female NPC has visible cleavage, this game is worthless and must never be played by anyone".

The Zero Punctuation reviews aren't so much in keeping with the overall tone of the site, rather it just seems to be hosted there as a cynical attempt by the site's management to score some traffic. Which isn't to say they're any better of course. They're relatively amusing the first couple of times you see them, in a sort of "hur hur hur he's speaking quickly and making lots of sarcastic comments and swearing hur hur" way. The problem is, besides having a fucking stupid nickname, his reviews are an absolute one-trick pony. Hilariously tearing something apart when it's quite obvious it's a genre in which he never had any interest to start with, at high speed so as not to bore the ADD kiddies and also to disguise the fact that his hilarious analogies are little more than a very weak Charlie Brooker imitation. And the fact that he's notorious for only ever liking Portal. I mean, fucking Portal? Yeah, that was fun for 5 minutes but even then the hilarious "black humour" was starting to wear thin. It's obvious he's someone who should stick to cerebral games like sudoku or crosswords or online IQ tests, and leave childish video games to people who might actually enjoy them.

And no, I haven't missed the irony of criticising someone who's only job seems to be to criticise things.

In AoC's case the bashing obviously has a lot to do with people who claimed the game would be revolutionary and effectively make every other MMO redundant, only to find themselves playing just another fantasy MMO. Those people now feel foolish, they feel betrayed, and they take it out on the game. And then they make the exact same mistake with Warhammer. It almost defies belief that these people could be so fucking short-sighted, but when the wrath of the disillusioned migrates from AoC's forums to WAR's, just as it migrated from Vanguard to AoC, the cycle will inevitably repeat once again. I almost feel sorry for WAR's developers because the shit-storm is approaching and there's nothing they can do to stop it.

For the record, right now I'm looking forward to Far Cry 2. The environments look impressively large and free, much more so than those in Crysis even they're not quite as richly rendered. The gameplay looks fairly standard, just an FPS with a few gimmicks like the flame-thrower and some faction nonsense bolted on. Naturally I have to be wary of the fact it's also being released on the 360 and PoS3, so look forward to big, chunky GUIs, slow-motion AI that gives you a chance to get a bite to eat while you're waiting for your character to turn using a gamepad's analogue stick, and extensive narrative hand-holding. The graphics are looking pretty sweet, though, and if it'll run on a console there's hope for it being fairly undemanding on a PC. Not that that will prevent an eruption of hate on forums around the world complaining that some idiot's five-year-old box won't run it at max detail on their 30" monitor. Or that the widescreen implentation is wrong, or that the online activation is intrusive and evil and the game should be boycotted at all costs as a result.

Ultimately, being tragically critical of everything is just the forum idiot's way of attempting to garner respect from his peers by claiming to have so much experience in gaming that they're in some sort of special, unique position to judge. The most common trick is to reference other games that the reader may not have played, either because the games are old or alternatively because they're not yet released and therefore only available to people "special" enough to be in the beta. By claiming that those games are superior, the author will attempt the double-whammy of both demeaning the game in question, and also belittling the other readers.
It's a worthless tactic, because in fact no one gives a shit whether the author lives or dies, let alone what beta they happen to be in. But it's becoming increasingly common to the point of ubiquity, regardless of game genre.

Perhaps optimism will become so rare that it will suddenly emerge as the new, cool outlook for people who have the nerve to break from the herd, and we'll see forums starting to spawn posts by people who aren't afraid to enjoy games for a change.