There's a mix of both no doubt, but the subjective elements are going to dominant how much you enjoyed a game. The majority of the people that loved Witcher 3 obviously loved the writing, which is highly subjective. Even combat is highly subjective. Sure, you can explain the combat system and how it works but how good combat usually is comes down to how it feels most of the time. I find the best critiques of gameplay starting with a subjective statement then using objective statements explaining why it works or doesn't work.Seth Carter said:I mean, you can do both, and objective doesn't go quite to the extreme that Jim Sterling did with the FF13 one.
To take examples from this thread:
Objective : A horse's ass clipping through the person you're talking to in a dialogue sequence is unintended behavior and detrimental to the presentation. Background dialogue repeats a significant amount. Combat systems don't innovate on basic established formulas.
Subjective : Geralt is a boring piece of cardboard. The game is less interesting because it focuses on a character drama rather then epic monster battles. Side quests cause a distracting dissonance with the main narrative.
Or if we take the same point:
Objective : Combat relies on familiar systems with few unique concepts to the game
Subjective : Combat is awful because its not an original innovation, thereby its terrible.
But games have amounts of writing usually lengthier than a movie, they have acting, they have music. RPGs like Witcher 3 usually hinge on how good the writing is. Even most games that aren't RPGs still have more writing than a movie. On the rare occasion that a game does have a riveting story and engaging characters, it elevates the experience so much. Sure if you make a game that's just something like Rocket League, it's all gameplay and that's perfectly fine. However, most games attempt movie quality stories and characters while failing pretty bad in that regard. So, again, how are all these games 8s & 9s out of 10 when you can easily imagine just about all of them being so much better?hanselthecaretaker said:And when reviewers don?t or can?t argue their case worth a shit it makes outlier scores appear less credible.
This ties into ?games as art?, because it?s far more convenient and understandable to be subjective about movies, books, music, etc. than it is for something interactive with its own unique set of qualities. A movie could be a mess and still be considered art and consumed according to taste, but if a game plays like crap it will be considered broken by anyone?s standards.
Games elevate criticism beyond taste more than any other medium because they are more of a product than anything. Stuff like how well a story or soundtrack resonates from player to player could be considered and judged more subjectively, but the interactive element introduces a completely different dynamic that calls for a more rational approach. I wouldn?t say a game plays like shit and rate it a 3/10 because it used hand-drawn animation vs motion capture, but on the other hand I could criticize the use of canned animations vs a dedicated physics system.
There's definitely more objectivity in games vs movies but as I said just above this, gameplay is still dominated by subjectivity. For example, some people just don't like the simplicity of the Arkham combat system. Or the fact that say health-regen might work great for one shooter but ruin another shooter. Regardless of how functional something is, you can still either love it or hate it for legit reasons.