Silvanus said:
No, that wasn't the core of the argument; the core of the argument was that it had not modernised. I might have enjoyed Metal Gear Solid back in the day, and I might enjoy the stealth genre. But if a company released something mechanically identical today it would be entirely reasonable to say it had not modernised, and mark it down. That would not somehow indicate that I disliked the original, or the genre.
When you're statement is essentially "This is a perfect 90s platformer, but that's not a good thing" - I think its fair to say you don't like 90s platformers. MAYBE you did in the past, but you don't anymore.
As for modernisation, what modernisation are we talking about? Honestly up until the last couple years 4X games and RTS barely modernised past the late 90s, yet were still seen as pretty good. Outside of the camera, not much from a 90s 3D platformer needs 'modernising'. In fact, modernisation is exactly what Yooka-Laylee was funded to avoid; we've got Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts, the modern take on the series. It was not as well loved as the originals, for good reason. Needlessly changing things to be more 'modern' without considering your target audience is just stupid, and is one of the biggest complaints people have about the games industry in general; Thief games that go from being stealth to being action adventure because its more modern, X-Com originally going to re-release as a TPS because its more modern, the Total War series going with new 'modern' mechanics for their games, which are basically all round seen as stupid ideas.
Honestly, at this point more games and genres are seeing success by de-modernising and going back to their roots, where they initially found success. Why? Because it captures the core of why people loved the franchise, rather than trying to be a new hip mass appeal product that appeals to noone in particular.
Or, how about Assassin's Creed. Every game modernises and adds in some new mechanic that is almost always universally hated and seen as a useless waste of time. Should Yooka Laylee have done this? Honestly, it should have been docked more points had it lost focus of its core gameplay in order to try and bring some new stuff to the formula that didn't really fit.
And again, Jim has not at any point given any example of a good modern take, or improvement. All he's said is that its a 90s platformer, they're not good.
Honestly this just screams a weak attempt to justify not liking a genre, rather than some actual problem that needs addressing. Nothing NEEDS to modernise to be good. It just needs to be well executed.
None of those statements "imply objectivity". They are value judgements. One does not need to specifically state that a statement is an opinion if it is blindingly obvious.
Define blindingly obvious, because there are several statements in that review that are definitely intended as statements of fact, and they are written in the exact same style as these 'value judgements' you talk about. The difference isn't exactly so blinding, unless you perfectly agree with Jim and allow your own self-confirmation bias to make them so. A good writer would present the two differently so that it IS blindingly obvious which is which. Funnily enough, that's what my complaint is.
CaitSeith said:
Joccaren said:
Because reviewers went purely by their enjoyment of the game, rather than trying to have a review that was actually informative to people.
Isn't the purpose of the game to be enjoyable for the player? That's the kind of information I'd rather get from a review before buying a game, as opposite to using just my biases as a guideline and read afterwards if the reviews were right.
Sounds like you're confusing objective with informative and useful.
No, people keep thinking I'm saying reviews need to be 100% objective {I'm not}, when I'm saying they need to include more informative and useful information, which almost always has some level of objective design base, rather than just opinions. Opinions naturally still play a part, but having detailed information on what the design faults of a game are actually gives you useful information to tell whether what was a 2/10 for one review is a 10/10 for you or not, outside of random guesswork based on how well you normally match to a reviewer's opinions.
If a reviewer simply reviews a work based purely on their enjoyment, its not very informative to their readers. Sure, you know if they enjoyed it, but you'll usually have very little idea on whether you will, unless that reviewer has near identical tastes to you - and even then they'll usually differ in some key aspects. If they make their opinion apparent, but use it as framing to talk about the game as a whole, and where it falls apart and why - you get useful information that helps you decide whether the game is right for you or not. Purely opinion reviews are as bad as 'purely objective' reviews. You need to put some of both in to get a good review.
Pseudonym said:
This doesn't follow. The written text might be quite useful or just interesting or enjoyable to read. It is only really the score which is useless. And, as far as I'm concerned the score was nearly useless anyway. It is, at best, a way to summarise how good the reviewer thought the game was. If you want to know anything insightful about the game you'll need to read the attached review.
Being simply enjoyable to read doesn't a good review make; it makes just an entertainment piece, like someone going on TV and insulting the crap out of Guardians of the Galaxy whether they liked it or not just for laughs. Sure, it might be funny, but its generally not what someone goes to a review for.
And my complaint is that the text itself also isn't useful. Reviewer's often aren't literate enough to actually elaborate on the problems of a game, and instead just post whether they enjoyed it or not - which is summarised by an established useless number at the end. More literate reviewers means more informative reviews, which means we can just ignore the number.
Its the difference for me between Jim's BotW review and Yooka Laylee. I don't agree with him on either, and I don't think he really followed his own posted standards for either review, but with BotW he justified his criticisms far better than with Yooka Laylee. Still not exactly well, but enough for me to go "Yeah, Ok, your opinion and I can respect that", rather than "Why did you even review this?"
Captain Marvelous said:
Joccaren said:
My English professor once told me that i should never write the words "In my opinion" while writing my paper. Why? Because it's my damn paper. I don't need to let the reader know it's my opinion because that's already heavily implied, what with my name being on the top of the page. Never say, "This is bad in my opinion", just say "This is bad". The fact that it's your opinion is already obvious. So obvious that someone somewhere is definitely going to remind you that it's just your opinion. It's actually happening quite a bit in this thread.
Your English professor should also have told you that it depends strongly on what you're writing as to whether you'd do that, as different pieces have different requirements of formality, tone, tense and various other bits and bobs. When writing a piece that contains both objective statements and subjective judgements, one should differentiate clearly between the two.
One shouldn't say "In my opinion" too often because it gets repetitive and is rather lacking in imagination, alongside breaking the flow of a sentence, but rather than saying "This IS bad" when you are merely stating your opinion and not a fact in a piece containing both, writing "This FEELS bad" helps differentiate the two by using plainly subjective language, rather than objective.
Anyway, I think it's time for the return of the 100% Objective Review! Useful to everyone and no one!
-snip-
I'm honestly not sure what people expected his rating to be. He did not enjoy the game. He thinks it's trash. Should such a reviewer be obligated by some objective force to give the game a higher score than the review suggests it deserves?
Going by Jim's standards, a 4 would probably have fit his score for it were he looking at it from the perspective of anyone outside of just himself - which his scores descriptions imply he does.
This would also be in line with his general review scores in comparison to most publications, whereby he's usually only slightly lower - and most reviews for YL lie between a 6 and 8, because it is in no way a terrible experience, its just something that has been designed for an audience Jim is obviously not a part of. As I've said in this thread before, if IGN or someone went up and reviewed Dynasty Warriors a 2/10 for not being Starcraft, he'd have a field day laughing at them - and does with Metacritic user reviews that at times aren't even offensive or bad, just state that they didn't enjoy the game - mocking them for not giving a more objective take on a game that he thought was worth more, or for missing the point of one of his favourite series and scoring it poorly because of that.
If its ok for him to do that, I think its ok for us to do the same right back at him when he does the same. Being a critic does not make you immune to criticism, funnily enough.
Phoenixmgs said:
A game that relies on a lock-on system has aged because lock-on systems WERE THE BEST and now they are not. That's basically what the definition of aging is. Being able to actually aim a bow and arrow is much much better than just locking on. Souls combat has never felt great IMO because of its reliance on archaic lock-on mechanics. It's like how 3rd-person shooters used to suck because devs didn't understand aiming sensitivities and lock-on was required for functionality. Sure, old games are still plenty functional but staying functional doesn't mean they didn't age either. Metal Gear Solid aged much better than Syphon Filter or Winback because MGS isn't really a 3rd-person shooter and it slowly evolved into one as those mechanics became developed whereas the other games were 3rd-person shooters before the mechanics were tuned and properly developed.
This still vastly depends on the style of game. There's a reason BotW still uses a Lock on Camera, with fine aiming for critical shots. It fits the style of play better. Simplistic mechanics and easy aiming aren't always bad, it depends on the game they're in service to. OoT would not have in any way been improved by removing Z targeting and adding a second analogue stick for controls. Hell, it would probably have been made worse. Having two analogue sticks and Z targeting is an improvement, allowing greater camera control, but lock on targeting does have its uses, even in today's games. It all depends on where the focus of the experience is.
EternallyBored said:
Like graphics, PS1 early polygon models were considered good once, now if you released a new game with the resolution and low poly models of a game like FF7 you would rightly draw far more criticism and the graphics that once influenced scores and garnered praise as cutting edge and revolutionary would either be ignored as an indie throw back or even hurt scores with the fuzzy textures and atrocious resolutions that look even worse on the HD TVs of today. The graphics in games age, what was once considered good looking or at least acceptable, can now seem mediocre or downright ugly.
Greatly depends on the art style. The original Wind Waker still looks beautiful, even if the HD update does look better, because of its careful artistic choices and stylised graphics. A lot of games are in a similar boat, having stylised designs that don't become worse with age because they were chosen for that precise reason. While for some games this is true, it isn't always, and in the case of YL its not a problem.
Or story, contemporary stories can be very popular, but they quickly lose that popularity the older they become, the jokes become dated, the once topical political points become dated or even embarrassing depending on how those debates turned out. A game in the early 90's could have a saxophone playing president, with a save the rainforest message, and jokes about rewinding VHS tapes and that would have been fine and even funny. You release a game like that today, your references and jokes are going to fly over a lot of peoples head or just not appeal to as wide an audience.
Some of this is also timeless, however. Honestly, a saxophone playing president could still be quite funny, depending on the context its presented in. A good exposure of certain political points can also be timeless; presenting a fair and nuanced message of 'save the rainforest' reasonably fairly, and in a not on-the-nose way could still hold up in today's climate where calls to save rainforests do still come out from time to time. For example, 1984, while several decades after its release, still holds up today, even in a different political climate, and has held up all these years. So have various other stories with political messages, because of how they present their stories and messages. Hell, "A Christmas Carol" is still showed every damn year on TV, and that is a 100% pure political message telling the rich to stop being so stingy and start giving to the poor, written hundreds of years ago. Good writing is good writing. Bad writing may temporarily pass as acceptable then get seen as the embarrassment it is by those who were fooled the first time around, but good writing does tend to last.
And again, not a problem YL has as it approaches modern topical problems and has modern based jokes.
Presentation is another aspect that ages, replacing voices with repetitive sounds was just a fact of life in the era where you couldn't fit a fully voice acted cast on to your cartridge, but nowadays you can't get away with that in any sort of AAA release without being remarked on by reviewers, indies with limited budgets can get away with it, but if Ubisoft put out its next Assassin's creed title with no voice acting, they would rightfully catch some shit for it.
This is messing up style with objective fact. It is still perfectly fine to use grunts and repetitive sounds in certain games. Hell, even BotW, which contains some voice acting, does it for the majority of voice interactions [Though not in the same way YL does]. Sure, Assassin's Creed wouldn't get away with it, but Assassin's Creed has a completely different artistic style and direction, and doing that style of voice clashes with that art style and direction. Its like criticising Michael Bay's explosions as obsolete because if they were featured in "La La Land" they'd be out of place and panned by critics. At least pick the same stylistic approaches for your criticism, rather than two completely different ones.
A game like Yooka Laylee, honestly, would have been TERRIBLE with actual voice acting. It would not at all have fit the style of the game, and funnily enough there are more styles that can exist in the modern world than "Quasi-realistic with voice acting", and not just because we let indie devs slide for having a low budget.
In fact, in a stroke of irony, the voice acting in BotW is generally criticised as its pretty poor and often doesn't really add to the experience, more taking away from it. Some like it, some don't. It ain't some universal modern tool we all have to use because its better than non-voice sounds though. Hell, the Sims doesn't use true voice acting, and that's still modernising its stuff to ill effect.
Put simply, you're confusing the need for cohesive presentation with a need to be realistic and modern. The former is a real need, the latter is the problem with the games industry people funded YL to avoid.
Even controls, games like Mario 64 and Banjo-kazooie had wonky cameras and imprecise controls in part because they were on a system with single analog stick controllers, it was acceptable then, but those games aged and we no longer have systems with weird single stick trident controllers. We cut those games slack because they came first, we had nothing to compare them to, no idea how 3d controls and cameras could be done differently, but they aged, and other games came along that showed that those camera and control issues could be done differently or even improved. In 20 years, the games of the 90's absolutely have aged, some things aged very well: sprite art, handheld games, RPGs, etc. and some have aged exceptionally poorly: early polygon art, single analog sticks, fuzzy resolutions that look awful on HD TVs, etc.
This I can largely agree with though. Camera and controls have been made more intuitive, and are something that people learn from other games that good designers build on in their own to afford the player a greater understanding of the game, and less tutorial time needed. YL has some problems here, but that's largely it.
Games age, the problems with Banjo-Kazooie are still present today, but critics, and audiences perceptions and patience for these problems has changed greatly as we know have 20 years of games to compare them too.
Honestly, this is the same attitude that led to the death of most RTS, of games like Xcom, of Survival Horror, of 3D platformers, Space Sims, and various other genres. "They were great back then, but people have changed and we won't enjoy them now". That is continually proven wrong by crowd funding where people are honestly clamouring for the older experiences as they had qualities that 'modern' games lack, as they become so homogenised in the pursuit of what is 'modern' and 'popular'. A game doesn't need to be 'modern'. It needs to be well designed. A well executed masterpiece outside its time still holds up amazingly well. Its why people still love Shakespeare, even if many of us also hate it. What matters isn't the age or modernness of a game's mechanics and such, but of how competently it has been designed and put together.
YL definitely has its flaws, however they don't stem from some nebulous "Being old" disease. The stem from less than perfect execution of older ideas - ideas which are still fun and can still hold up just fine these days. Games can age, of course, but not quite to the extent many seem to think. Older games still hold strong appeal, and often minimal work put into 'modernising' them is all that's required.