T w e n t y S i d e d
While writing my Borderlands review (more coming later today) and reading the comments from my previous post on the game I suddenly realized that I seem to have lost sight of the original goal I had in reviewing games.
My original goal was to just put games under a microscope and go over why various mechanics work, or not. I didn’t intend to review games in the sense of “thumbs up / thumbs down” sort of way, because the internet is lousy with that sort of business and lots of people do that better than I do. (Hint: Most people don’t want to read 5,000 words over the course of two weeks to determine if they should get a game or not.) But I seem to have gravitated towards that lately. I’m not sure if this is just an easy and welcoming rut for a writer, or if my approach has been shaped by feedback.
Kind of odd. I feel like someone who has just arrived in New York, put his car into storage, secured a hotel room, and unpacked his bags. And then he suddenly remembers he’d meant to go to Nashville.
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Thumbs Up!
That may have been your original goal, but what you’re doing right now works really well for me. I don’t even play (nor would I be likely to play) most of the games you write about, but I like reading about your experiences with them. More, I like that you write with the casual gamer in mind as well. I found “Eschalon: Part I” and “World of Goo” thanks to your reviews though I lost many hours in the exchange.
Now that I think of it, you are the only site that regularly deals with video gaming that I visit. So, please, keep doing what you’re doing. To quote Prince of Space, “I like it very much!”
That in-depth analysis is always a great read, though. Most mainstream reviews are written for a market that doesn’t have the same background as your readers, I’m sure. We’re the kids that found an afternoon of playing video games more enjoyable than gathering around the TV for some FOOTBAAAAHHHHHH!!! Sure, as adults we may find enjoyment of it, but video games are still better.
Most reviews are being written for the sort of kids that sat at the lunch room singing the praises of Mortal Kombat while the rest of us were busy discussing Mega Man X, Descent, Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country 2 or System Shock (I’m sort of guessing on PC time periods here; I missed out on them, though I knew of them at some point in my childhood). Now they’ve just expanded from Mortal Kombat into Halo, Call of Duty and anything with guns that do the shooty thingy.
So when someone intelligent comes along and does an in-depth analysis of a game’s design, and even pointing out really cool technological innovations, it makes the rest of us cheer.
Plus, I personally admire your writing style. It’s got a sort of “nice guy” style to it. Even if I feel differently to what you’re saying, I can’t disagree. Because you’re such a nice guy!
I only wish I could write that way instead of pissing people off all the time.
Long story short: keep doing what you’re doing. The world needs more of it.
I’m personally a fan of your in-depth and sometimes rambling style. I like your comments and thoughts on games and related things because its both perceptive and amusing. I don’t rely on your blog to buy games, (i use other means) I just love reading what you have to say about them.
I agree with Jimmie. I’m sitting here waiting with bated breath for your Dragon Age review – because you’re pretty much the only reviewer I trust. So what if you meant to go to Nashville? New York’s got more stuff to do.
I second John’s opinion about the “sometimes rambling style”!
I also like when you speak about the technicalities – like that post about the BSPs in the Source Engine (do more like that one! it was awesome).
As long as you include these two from time to time, you will have a happy reader on me.
Borderlands isn’t really your bad seeing as how it’s a multiplayer based game where the multiplayer DOESN’T WORK (cept for consoles, but screw those guys! :P). That would throw anyone off.
Yeah, but what score did you give Borderlands?
4/10? 7/10? I gotta have a number!
I was starting to wonder where the old Shamus who pick apart games and make fun of minor problems with said games had disappeared to.
As pointed out by other posters above, I too come here for the fun and wit, not to find out if I should buy the latest Bling Mapped Shinepoly Backbuffered game or not.
I say bring on the nitpicking and humor!
Also I give this blog entry a Squirrel[7.8327499948] out of a maximum of Catnip[PI^2.348573488448590].
I find the in-depth articles with technical discursions (be that into the art of game design and how games adhere or deviate from “good”or plain old Cool Tech, like the algorithmic playing field of whatever that massive-area racing game (“Fuel”?) was) to be the most enjoyable. But the ones (like the continuing adventures of Star On Chest) that are written to pick something apart using humor work well too.
Um, what am I saying? It’s pretty sure that if it says “Shamus Young” in the by-line, I’d want to read it, confident it’s at least p=0.99 that I will enjoy it on SOME level.
If you’re asking (I’m assuming said request is implied in the post) for reader opinions, I’ll take the risk of appearing to disagree with all the posters so far, and worse, of appearing critical, and say that I *DO* wish you’d go back to talking about small and/or old indie games for the PC, at least occasionally. I, too, discovered World of Goo through your writing, and what I most enjoyed was finding little gems through your recommendations, and thinking about mechanics I never thought about before.
Now, I only have a PC, and am never going to wade into MMOs (again). When I have time to play, I generally play cheap, often old titles like Evil Genius, which you reviewed a month ago. I found your originally stated approach to PC games and roleplay in general to be charming, and miss it a bit.
That said, I certainly don’t expect every entry in your blog to be of interest to me. My general theory on blogs is that each one is more for the blogger than the readers. Ultimately, unless this is your main source of income, you have to do this for you, not your readers. Your interests happen to coincide with mine, more often than not. Even better, your writing entertains me, and apparently a whole lot of other people. That’s why I read nearly every entry, whether I know or care anything about the topic.
In short, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you threw me a bone with a “World of Goo” or a review an old PC game a little more often, I wouldn’t mind.
Just say thumb up or down if you feel like it, but never play a game feeling that you HAVE to say what you feel about it. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.
Say what you want to say about a game, about its mechanics and storyline. If you feel very good about the game, then say it. If you feel like the public should make their own mind, then say nothing about it.
By the way, Dwarf Fortress [INSERT DWARF FORTRESS REFERENCE RELATED TO THE TOPIC], you should play it.
Oops. I am sorry, my DF-comment generator bot bugged. It won’t happen again, promised.
SolkaTruesilver:
DF-comment bot interrupted by rhesus macaque?
Well, *I* for one enjoy what you do regardless. Hopefully you can identify which one is more enjoyable for you, and then you can stick with that one. ^^
I do enjoy the “Here’s how Mechanic X works, and here’s how it doesn’t work” posts more. I think it’s just easier to give a thumbs up / thumbs down, so it’s a natural recourse.
Hmm… well I have been enjoying your reviews and like one poster said, you (and my friends) are the only guys I trust. I remember when Gamespot rated Fallout 3 a 9/10 and after I played it was I like, “No… its not a 9 out of 10. A solid game, but not 9/10. More like 8/10”
The same thing happened with oblivion I believe. Everyone hyped the game A LOT but then it came out and it wasn’t as good. It had a lot of little problems (and a few big ones) that turned an amazing, amazing game into one that was only somewhat amazing.
So, honestly, I just want you to review. I don’t need definitive 8/10 or “don’t buy this game” but I do want pros and cons, what you liked, what you hated stuff in your reviews. I also don’t mind you mericilessly ripping apart games like Velvet Assassin or Champions Online because, hey! its fun to read how badly people fail sometimes. :p
@Toasty
The greasted fun I had was reading Shamus’s description of Fable 2
Now that I think of it, I should probably move that Fable 2 story into the new Let’s Play category. Hmmmm.
Youve sold out,man!
I personally prefer you writing about the mechanics rather than just reviewing the game, I find that sort of thing more interesting to read and a lot harder to find, at least in any well written, enjoyable to read form.
That being said I must admit that I love reading your reviews too.
I like your style. Every once in a while I’ll go back to your archives and read reviews just for entertainment. So, don’t change!
If you do end up changing, however, and for whatever reason decide to use a numerical score, make sure it’s in some obscure unit like 67/34.8 Bananas. Or something like that. So you don’t go “mainstream” :P
Rosseloh: That’s it! I should score games in radians.
Or some number base besides decimal.
“I give this game 9/F.”
Ooh, or use imaginary numbers. “This game gets 3i”
Change things up!
Also chiming in that I enjoy the way you talk about games. I don’t even think of them as reviews, really. Just a write-up of your personal thoughts/experience with games. Done in a very fair way.
I’m not one to let a review really sway my opinion one way or the other, but I do enjoy reading what other people’s thoughts are whether I agree or disagree. Kind of helps put games in a different light.
It seems to me that if there has been a change it could be attributable to your work for the escapist. Since you’re doing the comic and the article over there you seem to be pressed more and more to do current stuff. Since you’re doing new stuff that people want to know if they should buy, then your reviews touch on that more.
Previously, when you reviewed a game five or ten years old, people already had a pretty good idea about that stuff. The review stage was over. So it was more about why they were good or bad, what worked, what can be learned from the game.
That said, I enjoy reading your reviews now and I enjoyed them before. I also think you still do go into depth, which is great. Personally, I don’t own any of the newest systems, and my computer can’t run the hottest games, but I still find it fun to read about what worked or what didn’t in games I know I won’t buy in the next few years.
I enjoy reading the multi-post “my experience in this game” type reviews/stories. Most of the games I haven’t played and probably won’t get to any time soon (seriously, how do people find so much time to game?) so I feel a bit like I played them by reading your posts. It’s nice to strip away the marketing hype and show the parts of the game that don’t work as well and to talk about how it could have been better.
Your posts also give me a context for understanding the things I liked or didn’t like in games I did play that you didn’t cover. I think about game design in a whole new way since I’ve been reading this blog.
In the end, though, as someone before me said: you have to do what makes you happy.
I understand what you mean, Shamus. When I started my Serial MMOgamy blog, I specifically wanted to avoid doing actual reviews of MMOs. I just wanted share what I found to be funny or absurd experiences.
But I realized that I have to do a little reviewing in order to give the reader some context.
Ultimately, this is your blog and you should write about WHATEVER interests you. You’re such a good writer that we would probably all gladly read your review of the Yellow Pages!
Leslee
I have to add my nod to your multi-post “my experience with this game” reviews and stories. Its nice for a change to SEE someone actually PLAY the game, FEEL the frustrations of code gone bad or game unbalanced-ness, and EXPERIENCE what the developers may (or may not) have intended – for good or ill. Its also great to see you give the devs a tip of the hat when the devs get something right. I enjoy the stream of consciousness style of your writing. I get tired of reading reviews that say “this game rocks” in part because I always wonder if the reviewer played the WHOLE game, or just a part of it. I also greatly enjoy the discussions generated by your multi-post reviews. You have a great group of readers, Shamus. And its all your own doing.
In the end, though, Girl Gamer just said it – you have to do what makes you happy. If that means you start doing shorter reviews of other types or older games, that’s what it means. If it means taking a poll of your readership, picking a game and sticking with it for a month, so be it.
Can’t speak for everyone in the room, but I know that even if you have threads that arent my cup of tea, I’ll still check in until you write one that is.
Wow. That post was way longer than I thought.
I too have found your writing style to be highly enjoyable, even when you’re talking about something I’m not familiar with you have a way of breaking it down enough to make it understandable.
I’m not interested in reading ratings; a numerical score isn’t meaningful to me in any way. I’m also not interested in feature lists in and of themselves (which are common to many reviews).
I’m most interested in your insight into a game’s design – what works, what doesn’t, what seems outright silly, etc. It matters little to me whether you’re speaking about mainstream games or indie treasures – like many of the above posters, I’m not reading your blog to find new games to play, but rather to read your take on how various game design ideas are manifested, and how you experience them as a player.
E.g. I enjoyed your Borderlands review for its informative take on how bodyboxes seem to be poorly implemented, and how rocket launchers are flawed in re: direct targeting and splash damage. I’m not interested to hear e.g. what you think the optimal skill builds are for a given game, or how good you think a game is compared to some other game. In short, I’m interested in thoughts on game design that are transferable from one game to another, and not so much in thoughts that are specific to one game and only informative about one experience.
To me it seems like you’re doing both “reviews” and “mechanics descriptions” at the same time, in a way. (Since the “reviews” do describe which elements of the the game work or not.) Certainly, the two do seem applicable to write about together.
(However, I will go against the crowd in saying that I utterly, utterly, utterly hate your posts. I hate them so much, I read them every day and comment on them sometimes, just to show how awful things can really get. :) )
I’d have to agree with the general consensus here, you and Yahtzee are the only reviewers whose opinions I attach value to. Even though you’re now reviewing games, you haven’t stopped discussing certain game mechanics in detail. As long as you don’t lose that, do whatever you like.
Let me echo the masses: Keep bringing teh funnay and writing intelligent reviews, and you can do whatever you want.
I enjoy the mixture of both that you deliver. And your reviews don’t come with some icon (thumbs, stars, whatever) to distill your thoughts into a quick rating. I enjoy reading your blog because you are an intelligent individual of approximately my age who shares some experiences/knowledge with me (at least when it comes to games). When you like or dislike something you give a reason that is, usually, well thought out and informed. I have yet to come across an article/post in which you lavish praise without reservation. Nor do you “instantly” hate a game because it isn’t a clone of your favorite game. Your reviews don’t influence my purchases in any overt way, in fact I sometimes read your blog simply because of nostalgia. I don’t game on my PC anymore (I cancelled my LOTRO subscription recently – again) and I like reading your thoughts on the pc games I played or will miss out on experiencing. If you tweak your delivery I will certainly keep reading…As long as you continue to justify your arguments for or against a game or trend. If you go the fanboy route I will have to reconsider.
I’m not a gamer in any sense of the word. Years ago I used to *watch* my housemate play Wing Commander, Descent, X-COM, etc. and these days my son will occasionally coerce me into a round of Mario Kart Wii… but that’s it. Yet I still read pretty much everything on this blog. Like Leslee said, Shamus could review the Yellow Pages and we’d all read and enjoy it!
Make that three votes for yellow pages reviews.
I much prefer when you go in depth about particular aspects of games (especially when it’s general faults that show up repeatedly across titles) however your writing tends to make for an enjoyable read regardless.
The Star On Chest saga makes for a nice blend as you get to make fun of particular aspects of the game while still keeping a nice light hearted enjoying-the-game vibe thing going on, but it’s when you talk in details that I’m really enthralled.
I enjoyed your original approach much better. It’s why I’m enjoying your “Star On Chest” series now – you go into what does and doesn’t work for you, and spend less time on whether or not you like the game.
Occasionally I’ve read a review of yours recently and wondered why I’m reading it – not often, mind, as you tend to analyze the game regardless.
I do miss the week-long scrutinizations of games… I especially enjoyed the one you did with Fable 2’s plot, and I still point people towards your World of Warcraft one when they are arguing that it’s a waste of money.
Sign me up for the “I liked what you wrote back in the day, and I like what you write now” camp.
Your thoughtful analysis of what works and doesn’t in games is what most interests me in your game coverage. While it seems to me that perhaps you spend less time covering a game than previously, it hasn’t generally struck me that the actual coverage is any less thoughtful, or that it’s become “thumbs up/down” reviews.
Even your Borderlands stuff (which I presume is what you’re referring to) is fine. The only thing I might suggest is to follow up the critical posts with some further analysis of why the game is still fun (at least for a while), despite its many flaws.
There’s pretty much zero chance I’m going to play any of the games you review. But I greatly enjoy your dives into the technology and game designers’ art of the games. Thumbs up/thumbs down would bore me. Keep on doing what you’re doing.
I like how you’re doing it, for what it’s worth. Most of the games you review aren’t even genres I play, but I find your multi-part reviews interesting, entertaining and thoughtful. If you keep writing them, I’ll keep reading.
Angie
I know what you mean. When I blog about games my intention is really to explore the details of the game for my own nit picky satisfaction. But when rounding things up I always feel compelled to give a recommendation at the end. It’s an easy crutch to give any article a sense of purpose. Fueling others purchase decisions is an easy foundation; making critical observations that stand on their own is much more difficult.
I make no assertion that this would be a good move for you, but as a reader I admit to a preference for the older style of your work.
As others have pointed out, the programmer’s/reviewer’s/thinking-man’s-eye view of HOW good and bad games are made, WHAT makes a flawed game playable or a seemingly perfect game dull, and WHY so many decisions conspire to make the execution of a good idea fundamentally broken is the very thing that makes you different from so many other reviewers, and why you have such a strong readership among older gamers, occasional gamers, cranky “classic” RPGers, and (dare I say) educated, non-douche readers. Anyone can tell us whether they like a game, and any merely competent writer can tell us why. But it’s the under-the-hood look, from design, programming, and narrative perspectives, that makes your site unique.
Of course, enjoyment of games or arts is a very personal thing and it’s often at odds with our enjoyment of the prose of a critique. I like Joe Morgenstern’s movie reviews but I very rarely agree with them, and I feel the same about you. I mean, I actually fell into the “Shamus liked it and he’s a smart guy” trap a couple of times and I have a dust-covered copy of Saints Row 2 to show for it. So your thumbs-up/thumbs-down determination is not what is ultimately useful or interesting to me, but there’s no other site where I can read some really fascinating layman-friendly explanations of what the hell my video card is doing alongside a C-lit-major-worthy analysis of how to keep up dramatic tension in an interactive medium, and it’s for that stuff that I keep coming back. So tack on the Shermometer rating if you will – I neither mind nor care. But please keep doing what you’re doing otherwise.
That said, your “Let’s Play…” segments are damn fun.
I like your current reviews. They are well thought out and point out PC specific issues to games. A lot of review sites just talk about console versions.
I will add that I do tremendously enjoy it when you get into the game mechanics and design. It’s not something that I feel you need to do with every game review, but it’s the easter egg that makes me keep coming back to your site.
Keep up the good work!
To add to the echo chamber here – I like the old and the new reviews. Whether you give any kind of endorsement at the end or not, you’re one of the only people on the internet willing to give the same kind of in-depth, crunchy analysis to videogames that movies, novels, and symphonies get. We want more of that, write it up however you like.
What I do really, reeeeeally miss is all those table-top RPG related posts. That’s was what brought me in. But I do enjoy your nitpicking reviews, as I find them a lot more honest (and informative) than any other review out there.
So really, do what you feel you must. But bring the table-top RPG back! :p