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Sunday, June 15, 2003
Some "New" RPG's and Talk about Scores in Game Reviews
So I tried some new RPG's yesterday, and both seem interesting, but the two are at completely opposite ends of the RPG scale. That is, one is almost completely gameplay (Final Fantasy Tactics), while the other seems almost completely story-driven (Xenosaga Episode I).
I really like the gameplay in Tactics. It's squad based, and very tactical (as the name would imply). In each fight, one move's one party around the battlefight as well as deciding which attacks/magic to use. The direction units are facing, line of sight, and spell-casting delays are a few of the factors one has to worry about. Tactics seems much more challenging than recent FF games - I've died twice in the first 10 fights. Looks like it might be a good bargain purchase. (It was made in '99, I think).
Xenosaga is interesting. I'd read about it's long cutscenes, and the reviews certainly weren't exagerrating. I found it all kind of interesting, though - one just has to put the controller down and watch rather than worrying about when the game will relinquish you control again. I can't comment on the gameplay much - after 1 1/2 of "play", I've only had control for about 20 minutes :)
Both of these games sort of bring up a point I started thinking about after I finished writing my post about MGS2. It's something that bothers me about game reviews in the industry - the fact that they have individual scores for each aspect of the game. Eg, gamepot's format of giving a score for each of gameplay, graphics, sound, value, and "tilt". I think these scores unduly influence how the reviewer perceives the game. When one plays a game, one doesn't have a bit of music played, then an interesting graphical shot, then a bit of gameplay...one has all of these things wrapped up in one big package. Often game developers will emphasize certain features over others - some have better graphics, others nicer music, etc...but when one thinks about how good a game was, it is hard to identify the individual elements that made it so good, and even if one can, one often can not fit them into one the scoring categories that, for example, Gamespot employs. For example, in talking about MSG2 or Xenosaga, I would have to devote a large part of discussion to it's story, as the developers have chosen to emphasize the story and make it central to the experience of "playing" the game. The fact that the story in MSG2 sucked, say, would not be adequately reflected in a gamespot score - except possibly for the ambiguous "tilt" factor. Should there then be a "story" rating? But then what about games where there is no story but still offer an interesting experience (eg. Nethack)?
The solution is simply to give one score (or no score at all). One can talk about individual elements in the review itself, but it seems silly to give an overall score based on arbitrary individual elements such as sound or "value". Certainly movie reviews don't have a "director" score, or an "acting" score, and for the good reason that it doesn't make sense to judge a piece of art but it's individual elements, but rather by overall effect. Why game reviews still use scores is beyond me.
So I tried some new RPG's yesterday, and both seem interesting, but the two are at completely opposite ends of the RPG scale. That is, one is almost completely gameplay (Final Fantasy Tactics), while the other seems almost completely story-driven (Xenosaga Episode I).
I really like the gameplay in Tactics. It's squad based, and very tactical (as the name would imply). In each fight, one move's one party around the battlefight as well as deciding which attacks/magic to use. The direction units are facing, line of sight, and spell-casting delays are a few of the factors one has to worry about. Tactics seems much more challenging than recent FF games - I've died twice in the first 10 fights. Looks like it might be a good bargain purchase. (It was made in '99, I think).
Xenosaga is interesting. I'd read about it's long cutscenes, and the reviews certainly weren't exagerrating. I found it all kind of interesting, though - one just has to put the controller down and watch rather than worrying about when the game will relinquish you control again. I can't comment on the gameplay much - after 1 1/2 of "play", I've only had control for about 20 minutes :)
Both of these games sort of bring up a point I started thinking about after I finished writing my post about MGS2. It's something that bothers me about game reviews in the industry - the fact that they have individual scores for each aspect of the game. Eg, gamepot's format of giving a score for each of gameplay, graphics, sound, value, and "tilt". I think these scores unduly influence how the reviewer perceives the game. When one plays a game, one doesn't have a bit of music played, then an interesting graphical shot, then a bit of gameplay...one has all of these things wrapped up in one big package. Often game developers will emphasize certain features over others - some have better graphics, others nicer music, etc...but when one thinks about how good a game was, it is hard to identify the individual elements that made it so good, and even if one can, one often can not fit them into one the scoring categories that, for example, Gamespot employs. For example, in talking about MSG2 or Xenosaga, I would have to devote a large part of discussion to it's story, as the developers have chosen to emphasize the story and make it central to the experience of "playing" the game. The fact that the story in MSG2 sucked, say, would not be adequately reflected in a gamespot score - except possibly for the ambiguous "tilt" factor. Should there then be a "story" rating? But then what about games where there is no story but still offer an interesting experience (eg. Nethack)?
The solution is simply to give one score (or no score at all). One can talk about individual elements in the review itself, but it seems silly to give an overall score based on arbitrary individual elements such as sound or "value". Certainly movie reviews don't have a "director" score, or an "acting" score, and for the good reason that it doesn't make sense to judge a piece of art but it's individual elements, but rather by overall effect. Why game reviews still use scores is beyond me.
