why scores suck
i'm backing off of this system in future. here's why
currently playing: tomoya ohtani - results (sonic the hedgehog 2006)
so after porting my backloggd... uhm. backlog, onto this site, where i feel so much freer to express myself, my true thoughts and be unshackled to the requirements of arbitrary social standards, i've come to realise that there's a system tied up in those social standards that i've thought to be normal for such a long time that, in reality, is actually deeply impactful to the perception at the very art that i hold dear.
for example, i love the end is nigh. game kicks so much ass that i changed my name to ash and i hold it as one of my favorite (non-sonic) platformers ever made. despite the fact that i adored it with every fibre of my being and will reminisce on what it had me do, what it put me through and my eventual triumph aided by my wife for the rest of my days... i only gave the game an 8. that game means so much to me, so many countless hours, and yet due to some overbearing need for a quantification of the complaints i had put forward about it, i had to dock it quite severely away from being that "perfect" game. and yet, i don't think the game would be nearly as good with all of its edges sanded off. arguably the fact that it did beat the shit out of me is what cemented it in my mind so sufficiently. it would be fundamentally changed without it. therefore, by calling attention to it, and also deriding it to the point of penalisation, i am stuck in this almost anti-art system, disinterested in intent.
make no mistake; i still want to criticise things and rightfully complain when something's pissing me off, busting my chops, or is just plain bad, that's absolutely still the case. criticism is the first step to improvement, after all. no, rather, i wish to unshackle myself from the constraints that a scoring system provides. emotion and impact should not be something plotted on a graph - i have not once had a breakdown and thought "eh, 3/10, abundant plotholes, goes in circles". and that's ultimately what games, at least the ones that i especially like, are supposed to evoke. emotions. i got tied up in my emotions reviewing tomodachi life: living the dream, and that emotional response itself was influenced by an emotional investment in the prior tomodachi life and tomodachi collection, a bond to and recognition of those games that i have spent over half of my life being aware of. and yet, my disappointment in it could only stretch to a 6/10, because i can acknowledge that it has some more objectively good qualities, but to me personally, i'm kinda left burnt by the thing in such a way that isn't so easily quantified. this is another reason why i wish to rid myself of scores; if i want to bemoan something because it left me personally disappointed, i don't then want to arbitrarily feel tied down to the need to score it at least semi-decently because "oh well it functions and has some good stuff about it". if i were doing this for me job, sure, but the fact of the matter is that this is predominantly a hobbyist work done out of passion and care for the subjects that i cover and also god of war is there.
and i suppose in my field of games i like, the most notable part: i like things that make me actually fucking feel like i'm experiencing a piece of art. i would put something like grand theft auto v or far cry 6 as, for sake of example, a 1 or 2 out of 10; largely not due to any lack of functionality, but because of the fact that they are representative of the truly ontological evil that has eaten this industry alive as it has been taken more and more into the mainstream. there is a reason for this: movies cannot pause midway through to nickel and dime you for the second act. games as a medium have been largely demolished by these supposedly larger than life, sometimes multi-billion dollar affairs that appear to be as large as an ocean but in reality have the depth of a puddle. i remember seeing people excited for grand theft auto vi, not because we saw any gameplay or any actual promise, but because of the graphics of a liquid inside of a bottle. this is the exact mentality that lets grand theft auto v and far cry 6 rein supreme; we don't need creativity, we need prettiness. artificial appeal that is as shallow as it is trite. not to mention the vast implementation of microtransactions, generic design choices, bigger but not better. linearity and being palatable in most scenarios so the few places in which it has teeth can become fodder for the most hacky news outlets to get their paid-off word out there, but can be lauded in "deeper" conversation about the game as the makings of something good. to pretend that these games were made with care and with love and with a vision is to be blind to why they are made in the first place. grand theft auto v was a backpedalling from everything that made grand theft auto iv so compelling, because it suffered critically on a few counts and people enjoyed the dumb violence, so grand theft auto v pivoted to being all dumb violence all the time, with minor room for further interpretation or character exploration, and it certainly won't be given to you by the game itself. far cry 6, conversely, is a game buried in a holding pattern because of what it once had; it is a repeat of the same formula that made far cry 5 be in a running for a GOTY award, which itself was cribbing far cry 4, which itself was trying to nick far cry 3's homework! there is a point to be made in both of these cases, as well as the countless imitators and pretenders inspired by them, that AAA attempts to 'perfect' the video game. they shoot for that 10/10. they shoot to be palatable to all people across all beliefs all the time. i'd say that ubisoft are the worst offender just by virtue of the fact that they try to stir mini-political statements with each game release - the marketing of watch dogs legion comes to mind. in the lead-up to that game's release, they cribbed a certain poem for one of the advertisements. which one? oh, you know, just first they came by martin niemöller. you know, that harrowing condemnation of the inaction and complicity of german intellectuals and clergymen during the nazi uprising? what the fuck are we doing? i know that "nazi zombies" was all abuzz for a fair bit there, but that's at least because call of duty was grounded in world war II at that point. it wasn't just to be a catch-all term for "Bloke Who Is Bad"! you know, the internet may desensitise you to the term, conversationally, but seeing an actual honest-to-god corporation trying to evoke imagery that their video game villains are comparable to the actual nazi party just because they are too otherwise braindead to just, you know, allude to that, or maybe do anything else less ham-fisted to let you know that they are evil bastards. the only thing that makes me feel is pure, unfiltered disgust. perhaps rageful, too. and if i was grading things based sheerly off of how much emotional impact that they've had on me, well, watch dogs legion would be a great pick! i don't think i've ever been so viscerally disgusted at a game's marketing campaign before, so nice going, fellas! not only that, but once the dust settles and the copies are sold, some ubisoft lark will come out of the woodwork and reassure us all that "ubisoft appeal to all people and all angles". yeah okay man. i'm sure that's why assassin's creed stopped being about an actually morally grey conflict by like game two, and has been a conflict of inherent good vs obvious moustache-twirling evil for the better part of 15 years now.
meanwhile, a game with nuance and something to chew on, something such as deus ex, for somebody playing it today, would arguably fucking suck ass. i know this because i watched my wife try to grapple with it, bless her soul, and she couldn't deal with how janky it is. i had a similar story with another friend, who powered through it a touch more, but ultimately went back to kingdom come deliverance II. jank, on an objective level, and to most people, sucks. to me, though? fuck, give it to me and give it to me good! i fucking LOVE a good bit of jank. i love skung and jank and all things a little fucky, because they are telltale signs that a game was made by human beings, with imperfections. it lays itself forth for what it is; it's shown up to your date smelling a bit shit and wearing a t-shirt bought from hot topic in like 2009, but it's unapologetically itself. in this analogy, ubisoft would be showing up in a satin red dress and neurotically agreeing with everything you said the entire evening but would never ask you for a second date because its scared of commitment. this is the thing: there is clear objective "quality" to far cry, its graphics, its perfectly fine gameplay systems, its unobjectionable plot, and overall general competence in every department. but that's boring as fuck. likewise, there are objectively poor things about deus ex, like everything sucking shit if you're unlevelled in it, or the shooting kinda always being ass, or stealth melee deciding whether it felt up to it that day being the deciding factor in your ability to kill. but those little snags intrigue me more; i want to get as good as i can with the gunplay, because it feels inherently rewarding to get by a system that pushes you down at first, as it feels like you are having a degree of progression in how competent you are. i want to still go for those stealth melee kills because its so fucking satisfying when i can bean somebody in the small of their back with a nightstick to get past. not only this, but what it lacks in certain areas is focused back into the shit that really matters, that being how the player interacts with things. deus ex, despite its several maps not even being a scratch on the sheer breadth of grand theft auto v's los santos, is infinitely more expansive and deep. deus ex sees just about every single inch of those maps stuffed with interactivity, things to do, people to meet, secrets to find. in grand theft auto v, you get a realistic highway driving experience, insofar as its largely a fucking boring excuse to listen to the radio and stave off thoughts of swerving into the next cunt to cut you off. and yet, the general populous of today won't know what the fuck deus ex is, because it's old, and therefore in the eyes of the masses antiquated, not in any actual meaningful way but just that it's old and has a bit of bite to it so they don't want to bother. meanwhile, something with every last edge sanded off has mass appeal and so gets massively rewarded. it's how something like clair obscur can pop off - and surprise, surprise, it was largely made by ex-ubisoft personnel! who knew?
what a tangent that was. point is, AAA games have the type of effort put behind them where you can tell that it was driven by money, a desire for more of it, and an attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator with the flashiest lights. the games that truly matter, though, are often wrought with imperfections, such that they would do poorly on a critical level. god hand is fucking off-the-wall bullshit that's a little bit lacking in some departments, but that doesn't stop it from being fucking kick-ass. i can admire the technical showing of horizon zero dawn but that doesn't mean that its not setting off my melatonin production with each step i take in yet another cookie-cutter open world. there is impressive (derogatory), and there is impressive (actually made me think).
it's obviously a very deeply nuanced thing. very fluid. hence, i believe the adherence to a score for my reviews going forward is narrow-minded and reductive to the art that i wish to praise, and not scornful enough to the dreck that wants me to like it so desperately. my scores for reviews prior to this date will remain, just for archival if nothing else, but i hope to let my words do the talking more than a single number. if i cannot efficiently communicate what i think of a game with just me words to where you're left wondering whether i like something or not, then i'm a bit fucked. but hey, that's an imperfection itself, and it shows i'm only human. i'm baring myself here, not trying to be some great arbiter of perfect coverage. ahhh you see i totally brought it back right
