Editor's note: There's a difference between taking your opinion into an account in a review and allowing your prejudices to color your opinions. Joshua would like more of the former and less of the latter. -Jason
Recently, Halo 3: ODST debuted to millions of frothing Halo fans in the U.S. and around the world. The Firefight mode received near universal acclaim, and for the most part, the campaign was well liked.
I'd already purchased the game before its release, but as the embargo for the review scores lifted, I found myself troubled by a good number of them. It wasn't their scores, their criticism of the story or visuals that I found distressing -- I was troubled by their complaints about the series and how these issues impacted their reviews.
One reviewer on a well-known gaming podcast said that he felt he had an ax to grind with the game because he felt that Halo 3 received too-generous scores. He follows that same statement with a comment about how he felt that the series was shoved down his gullet.
In the minutes that pass, he gushes about the upcoming Call of Duty release and never once makes the same complaints about it that he levies toward Halo. Aren't Call of Duty sequels more frequent? Why does this series get a pass when it's on its sixth sequel in as many years and Halo is on its (arguably) fourth?
I've never reviewed a game for any type of publication before, but the editorial voices that I value are the ones that acknowledge a games lineage but don't predicate their opinions on whether or not "Game X: The Sequel" is a giant leap in game design or if they think it's their god-given duty to humble a game series with a poor review score.
Of course, a review should take into account previous games in a series, as a game that's cut-and-paste the same as it's predecessor should be discouraged and looked down upon. My concern is that this individual is reviewing for the wrong reason.
Game journalists and reviewers have come a long way since the start of Electronic Gaming Monthly. What used to be barely passable high school fare has been replaced with mostly insightful writing with a snarky comment or two thrown in for flair. I've grown to appreciate editorial about video games and the voice of those editors that write them. Yet it seems that with the recent death of EGM, curbing one's biases (I hate the word, by the way) has become increasingly passé.
I actually bemoan the passing of print magazines -- not for the pictures, but for the reeling back of one's personal feelings in a review or feature. Shane Bettenhausen, a former EGM editor, was often on the 1UP Yours podcast, saying things that branded him as a fanboy (among other things). Â I didn't necessarily like or agree with many of his opinions on gaming that he shared on the podcast, but I respected his journalistic integrity when it came to writing a review.
His criticisms in print were often fair and balanced, and if it was a sequel, he would make comparisons but never base his review upon those comparisons. It's this kind of restraint that the blog-centric gaming journalism of today sadly lacks.Â
Kotaku's probably the most visited gaming news website. The news stories are mostly press releases, with smart-ass remarks thrown in for good measure. The writing sometimes screams for copy editors, but they do one thing that I think more game websites should do: Reviewing games without giving them a score of any kind.
Kotaku's format has their likes (highlighted in blue) and their dislikes (highlighted in red), but nary a mention of a review score. For the most part, they keep the extraneous chatter about other games to a minimum.
I mention Kotaku because of Steven Totilo's review of Halo 3: ODST. In it, he heaps praise on the combat (which has largely seen small, incremental change over the years), and in the same article he dumps on it for the level design, where he compares it to the infamous "Library" from Halo: Combat Evolved. This kind of knock against ODST is wholly deserved and is based on the developer's habit for confusing level design, not against it's notoriety as a series.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, there's the review for ODST on a site called "Game Arena." It reads like someone trying to bad-mouth a basketball player for the publicity, not even taking into account that the whole review comes off sounding like a 15 year old that found a thesaurus.
In the very first sentence, the reviewer makes plain his intentions with the article, snapping that "Halo fans need not apply -- this review will only serve to infuriate you, each word reading like a punch in the face as I pick apart what is probably your 'Game of the Year.'" Do good journalists really engage this kind of blatant flame-baiting? If so, I know about 3,000 "good journalists" on NeoGAF.  Â
In closing, I just want to thank most of the more prolific gaming journalists and editors for their great work in fairly reviewing games in recent years. And on the same note, I want to decry those that score games with the intention of fulfilling an agenda. Reviews like the one found on Game Arena are, thankfully, few and far between. I just hope that more gaming sites can set aside their prejudices in the future and judge games based on their merit, not their history.
