In defense of using game reviews as purchasing aids

[aozgolo]

Reviews are so much better than let's plays, though. I can read a review in five minutes and get an opinion on the entire game. Am I gonna watch an entire let's play to find out if a game is good? what if a game has a fantastic first level but the rest of the game sucks?
If I had the money to buy every game that came out or the time to watch someone play every game I wanted to buy for five hours then yeah maybe I wouldn't need reviews, but for me they are a huge part of my video game purchasing process

Wrong.

You can watch a review in 5 minutes to find out the reviewer's opinion of the game. You still have no idea if it's good or not.

And of course you dont need to watch the entire lets play. I'm assuming you're not a braindead, drooling moron. After a certain point, surely you have enough common sense to formulate a conclusion as to whether you or not you liked what you saw.

Honestly, games are such a freaking safe purchase with the amount of outlets that give you game information. I can't even remember the last game I bought and didn't enjoy.. Probably Final Fantasy 13? Back before I used the internet much..

Or take it a step further and say that all you're doing there is watching someone else play the game. You may generally know what it looks and sounds like, but still have no personal idea with how it plays. Sure, you could take their word for it, but at that point it's not much better than a concise opinion from a normal review.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Honestly, there is no right or wrong answer as to whether one uses reviews or not; there?s nothing to defend; it?s a personal choice.

Personally, I prefer to form my own opinion. I find critics tend to be flaw seekers; as gaming is a luxury and meant to be non-serious fun, the last thing I need is someone highlighting faults I might otherwise overlook. The way I see it, any money I spend on gaming is better spent elsewhere, so I don?t worry about ?wasting? it on a bad game neither do I need assurance a game ?deserves? my cash. That?s not my bragging; I?m not rich by any stretch of the imagination; I?m just very selective with the games I purchase and RARELY do I buy on launch and pay full price. I find games that pique my interest and time the buying with the level of that interest. If a game ends up sucking, so be it; at least I gave it a fair shot to impress me on its own merits versus my listening to a Jim Sterling ***** about dropping framerates or microtransactions in multiplayer I?m not interested in to begin with.

 

[MrFalconfly]

Well, I freely admit that it's maybe me who's the oddball.

There's actually quite a few games with "great stories" that I haven't gotten into, mainly because I thought the gameplay was shite (not even objectively shit. I just didn't like that particular style of gameplay).

Dragon Age for example (my sister loves those games, and I just find them boring, because I think the controls disconnect me too much from the characters), or World of Warcraft (I really bloody hate RNG based gameplay), or Final Fantasy, or indeed most turn-based games.

Maybe it's because of the games I grew up with. I was born in '92 and my first games were Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped, and Spyro the Dragon. Mainly 3D platformers where you almost developed a "telepathic" link with the character.

I think that might explain a lot. My early gaming days were filled with adventure games and RPGs. The stories weren't just a bit of background info to make the game world vaguely more interesting, something you could easily miss if you skipped the opening or didn't read they manual, they're part of the package. As simplistic as some of those early games were, they did leave me with a lot of admiration for people who tell stories and build worlds. To me, interactive stories are a big part of what makes videogames an interesting and unique medium.

And sure, of course I'll playing something that doesn't really have a story if it's really fun. Super Mario World was one of my favourite games back when I was young. I still think Tetris is amazing (but Lumines is nice, too). However, as long as the gameplay or stability isn't too distractingly bad, I'm willing to play nearly anything with a compelling story. I'm terrible at shooters and don't particularly enjoy them, but I had to find out what Spec Ops: The Line is all about. No regrets there.

Yeah well.

I find that, for me to feel invested in the story of a game, I need to feel "in the shoes of the character". Books achieve this by basically telling the story from the viewpoint of one character (The Harry Potter books were like this, and I absolutely loved them). But for games to achieve the same (for me atleast), the gameplay and the controls have to be absolutely spot on.

Dragon Age for example had you controlling 3 or 4 different characters, almost like in a RTS, and I just feel disconnected. I feel like I wrestle with characters, who have their own agenda.

I'd describe Spec Ops as being on the limit of this "telepathic control", that I like. It's a Third Person Shooter, so you're only "this much" into the character, but you still feel like it's you who are doing it, and not just pushing buttons to get someone to do it.

Another example would be Bioshock Infinite, where you aren't just controlling Booker. You ARE Booker (at least, that's how I felt).

 

[NPC009]

Yeah well.

I find that, for me to feel invested in the story of a game, I need to feel "in the shoes of the character". Books achieve this by basically telling the story from the viewpoint of one character (The Harry Potter books were like this, and I absolutely loved them). But for games to achieve the same (for me atleast), the gameplay and the controls have to be absolutely spot on.

Dragon Age for example had you controlling 3 or 4 different characters, almost like in a RTS, and I just feel disconnected. I feel like I wrestle with characters, who have their own agenda.

I'd describe Spec Ops as being on the limit of this "telepathic control", that I like. It's a Third Person Shooter, so you're only "this much" into the character, but you still feel like it's you who are doing it, and not just pushing buttons to get someone to do it.

Another example would be Bioshock Infinite, where you aren't just controlling Booker. You ARE Booker (at least, that's how I felt).

I have to admit I never really considered that. I've read, seen and played so many stories where I didn't really like (or dislike) the main character. My feelings towards the main character rarely affect my investment in the story. Perhaps the best way to say it is that the ability to connect myself to the story does not rely on my ability to connect to the main character. That connection my stem from other characters, the world itself or simply me feeling engaged by the events in the story.

As a result, the perspective doesn't much matter to me. I've played choose your own adventures and visual novels written in a second person perspective, I've hovered over a cast of characters in turn-based JRPGs, I've played various types of first-person games (dungeon crawlers being my favourite). I'm also totally fine with stories told from multiple perspectives.

I'd go a step further and say creating a rift between the player and character can be a very effective storytelling tool. Many games are heroic fantasies, escapism. These journeys lead the player by the hand and let him do what he wants to do: save the world, princess, whatever. It's a symbiotic relationship between character and player. And then there are games that abuse that symbiotic relationship to force the player to do something they (probably) don't want to do. Games like Spec Ops: The Line, LISA...

I can also think of examples of games that use the symbiotic connection to trick players into assuming something about the main character that isn't true. Plot twist like that can be great fun.

 

[aozgolo]

Or take it a step further and say that all you're doing there is watching someone else play the game. You may generally know what it looks and sounds like, but still have no personal idea with how it plays. Sure, you could take their word for it, but at that point it's not much better than a concise opinion from a normal review.

What? You have every idea how the game plays by watching a Lets Play.

Literally the only thing you're in the dark about is control scheme. But unless it's a a niche title, the chance is high that it uses the same controls as every other game in its genre.

There is no way you can accurately gauge the responsiveness and feedback of a game by merely watching someone else play it. It's like watching someone else test drive a car and telling the salesman "Yeah I'm really sold on how that one feels. Let's start the paperwork!"

 

[Xprimentyl]

I'd bet any amount of money on the assumption that you've never watched an LP before buying a game, and found the game to be completely different when playing.

I'd take that bet. Two words: Dark Souls. I watched dozens of LPs before I tried it and found the controls to be completely unintuitive. What on it's face appears to be a standard-if-brutally-difficult Hack-n-Slash RPG turns out to be an exercise in relearning a console controller.

 

[aozgolo]

There is no way you can accurately gauge the responsiveness and feedback of a game by merely watching someone else play it. It's like watching someone else test drive a car and telling the salesman "Yeah I'm really sold on how that one feels. Let's start the paperwork!"

Terrible analogy. Playing a game has nearly no similarities to driving a car.

excluding motion control games out of the equation. I'd bet any amount of money on the assumption that you've never watched an LP before buying a game, and found the game to be completely different when playing.

Of course, you'll most likely it.

You can get an extremely good judgement, and make an extremely safe purchase by watching an LP.

We'll have to agree to disagree here, because unless there's commentation explaining how something controls and relating it to being "like game x" in one way or another, I'm not going to rely on merely watching someone else play it. I could watch a Let's Play for God of War and Dantes Inferno or Lords of Shadow thinking they're the same, but I'd be disappointed if I relied on that alone.