IGN reviewer can't play or pronounce Ikaruga

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:53 pm

EE KAH RUH GAH = OVAHH RAY TED.

There's some controversy right there.

Post by **spadgy** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:54 pm

jpj wrote:
it is a review as soon as you stick a number on the end.

I see what you mean, but I beg to differ. I do a fair few of the reviews for UK paper The Observer, and what's best about it is the guy running the game page insists we don't put scores - but it's sure as hell still a review. Even got the word shmup in that paper!

It's a matter for another thread though, so I won't go into the 'score's worth' debate...

henry dark · Post by **henry dark** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:01 pm

icycalm wrote:
henry dark wrote:But, oh no wait, he reviewed it wrong didn't he, I forgot
He never reviewed it. It is not possible to review a game which you can't even play. The most you can do then is copy the manual or Wikipedia.

He played the game, he voiced his opinions- it's a review, no more, no less. If you want to continue to invent your own set of criteria about what constitutes a review and what doesn't though, go ahead.

I can't believe a shooter gets this kind of positive exposure and people are dismissing it based on his pronunciation and other absurd, elitist criteria.

p.s I'd give it a 7.0

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:01 pm

I agree with the Spadge, for what its worth. A review can quite easily just be an informed opinion on the content - a score just allows the reader to grade it against other things, and is often a lazy way of indicating how good a game is (hence scores often being incorrect.)

Ikaruga case in-point: You'll always sing its praises, but you know deep down its actually a seven.

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:30 pm

Skykid wrote:(hence scores often being incorrect.)

Yes, because as we all know there are correct and incorrect scores. The correct ones are arrived at using the scientific method, as Josh would explain to us if he was around.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:32 pm

icycalm wrote:The IGN reviewer is praising the game for the wrong reasons. Graphics, sound, or whatever. His review is worthless -- regardless of the rating. The rating is merely a reflection of the opinion of the game he thinks his readers will have. He is merely pandering to the tastes of his audience -- instead of challenging them (and therefore molding them), which is what good critics do.

Most people here and probably everywhere agree that you are a terrible reviewer. This guy does a far better job than you ever did, and that's partly because of his ability to understand the value of art and style in video games, which you severely lack.

Also I suggest you disappear from this board for real because you seem unable to refrain from insulting everyone who disagrees with you. You're making a fool of yourself by calling people names that would suit you quite well most of the time.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:33 pm

henry dark wrote:I can't believe a shooter gets this kind of positive exposure and people are dismissing it based on his pronunciation and other absurd, elitist criteria.

Don't think it will translate to other shooting games this one just happens to part of a narrative that got out of control. It's more about the developer's name and the game's subtitle than anything else, you could've put any number of shooting games from the past ten years into the blank and the same storyline would've played out.

Any of the serious dismissals here were about the quality of the review, which truly is just above the wikipedia article that the author took from. There's no in-depth breakdown of mechanics because the reviewer is incapable of it, either because he's blind to that type of thing or it's just a 2 + 2 arcade game nothing thoughtful going on here. Also, you seem to think hardcore gamers should be breaking out the kneepads because some corporate game journalist threw us a nine-shaped bone but anyone with an ounce of intelligence isn't going to capitulate to what they're selling no matter the product.

The correct ones are arrived at using the scientific method, as Josh would explain to us if he was around.

Yep, it's time to break out the test tubes.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:45 pm

Skykid wrote:I agree with the Spadge, for what its worth. A review can quite easily just be an informed opinion on the content - a score just allows the reader to grade it against other things, and is often a lazy way of indicating how good a game is (hence scores often being incorrect.)

Ikaruga case in-point: You'll always sing its praises, but you know deep down its actually a seven.

p.s I'd give it a 7.0

Last edited by henry dark on Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:03 pm; edited 1 time in total

Glad you agree!

henry dark · Post by **henry dark** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:48 pm

JoshF wrote:There's no in-depth breakdown of mechanics because the reviewer is incapable of it, either because he's blind to that type of thing or it's just a 2 + 2 arcade game nothing thoughtful going on here

I'm a stuck record here: It's a review- one guy playing the game and expressing his thoughts on it in the limited space he was given. Why on earth does a game review of this type need an "in depth breakdown" in order to be acceptable? It just comes across as pure this-is-my-sandbox elitism mate.

And no, I'm not asking people to kneel down and unzip his pants for what he wrote, but I can't be the only one who thinks that this kind of positive exposure can only be a plus for the genre.

p.s I like your avatar a lot.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:49 pm

we're gonna have a falling out, skykid

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:54 pm

but I can't be the only one who thinks that this kind of positive exposure can only be a plus for the genre.

You'd think so until the next shooting game is reviewed and it's back to the same thing we've heard for over a decade now. But wait until this Project Radiant Silvergun 3 is released and oh boy...

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:05 pm

henry dark wrote:I'm a stuck record here: It's a review- one guy playing the game and expressing his thoughts on it in the limited space he was given. Why on earth does a game review of this type need an "in depth breakdown" in order to be acceptable?

I'll try another way of explaining this to you.

My mother never learned to drive. If you give her a car for a couple hours and ask her to review it for a car magazine, whatever text she will come up with will not be a review. It will merely be "my mother's impression of that car". She will write about the car's shape and color, about how it feels like to sit inside it, about the feel of the leather seats and the view from the windows. That's all she will write about. That's all she can write about. But that is not a review of the car. Because a car is made to be driven, and reviews of cars are about how competently the car fulfills that purpose in relation to other cars.

It's the same thing with reviews of books or movies or music. You can't have illiterate people reviewing books, because they can't read them. Or blind people reviewing movies, or deaf people reviewing music.

Games are meant to be played. Games are defined by rules. To play a game you need to be aware of all its rules. Just kicking a ball around a field does not constitute football. You need to know ALL the rules of football to properly play it. Otherwise you are simply running around a field with a ball.

Meh.

I am wasting my time aren't I? Story of my life. Carry on.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:22 pm

Most games don't take any skill to be played well, or don't require to be played well to be appreciated for what they are worth : this includes all the games you loathe because you are unable to understand the value of interesting gameplay (of which you even deny the definition), feeling and atmosphere in games.

I must say though, even if Ikaruga is definitely worth playing casually, most of its value comes from playing for score, but I'm quite sure that a reviewer that can't make high scores is still able to make an accurate judgment if he has seen superplays and dug information about this side of the game. He does talk about it in this review and does a pretty good job of introducing it to his audience.

Now a reviewer that would review Metal Slug wouldn't quite need to know how to play it to review it well, because most of Metal Slug's value comes from graphics, sounds and feeling, just like Half Life 2 or Final Fantasy VII.

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:39 pm

icycalm wrote:I am wasting my time aren't I? Story of my life.

I'm sure everyone here weeps for you.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:39 pm

if you reviewed metal slug on game mechanics and high-level play, it would be the shittest of games.

this guy's review does talk about polarity and chaining, so he does have some comprehension of how the game works, even if he himself isn't very good at it. there are plenty of people here who fully understand a game's mechanics while not necessarily being able to execute them themselves, for lack of practice.

the guy played the game, had fun playing it, and gave it a good score.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:54 pm

Now a reviewer that would review Metal Slug wouldn't quite need to know how to play it to review it well, because most of Metal Slug's value comes from graphics, sounds and feeling, just like Half Life 2 or Final Fantasy VII.

if you reviewed metal slug on game mechanics and high-level play, it would be the shittest of games.

You guys are going to hate my review then, because I know how to play the game very well. Stick with Mrs. Goldstein.

Post by **spadgy** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:55 pm

Maybe we've got too much time in our hands... let's face it... a review is an opinion on an experience with a completed product, and there's little more concrete definition than that, so what more can we argue? (Plenty by my reckoning!). There's good ones and bad ones but whatever they are not one can please everyone as we've all got different motivations, interests and tastes with what we want from a game, and you can't be totally objective when doing a review - it's your opinion... and we've all had bad opinions!

That said, a good reviewer should do his best to satisfy a spectrum of audiences within wordcount, which the IGN reviewer's done to a certain extent..

And Icy, again you've got some worthy things to say and again ruin them by being rude and antagonistic... Being nice gets you further in communities I reckon! But I haven't got your Mekon like brain!

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 3:02 pm

JoshF wrote:
Now a reviewer that would review Metal Slug wouldn't quite need to know how to play it to review it well, because most of Metal Slug's value comes from graphics, sounds and feeling, just like Half Life 2 or Final Fantasy VII.
if you reviewed metal slug on game mechanics and high-level play, it would be the shittest of games.
You guys are going to hate my review then, because I know how to play the game very well. Stick with Mrs. Goldstein.

i don't know who goldstein is, but i'd be interested to read your review. the problem with metal slug at high level is it's incredibly boring, and what's the point of all those cool weapons when you have to use the knife most of the time. "reach stage 5, find leach point, turn the auto-fire button on with my arcade stick, come back in ten minutes"

the things that really separate metal slug and make it such a great game are it's graphics, excellent music, gorgeous animation, easy difficulty. even a casual player can make those observations.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 3:06 pm

jpj wrote:we're gonna have a falling out, skykid

Suck my fat one, ya cheap dimestore hood!

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 3:13 pm

i don't know who goldstein is, but i'd be interested to read your review.

Still working on it.

and what's the point of all those cool weapons when you have to use the knife most of the time

Another layer of strategy/risk vs. reward.

"reach stage 5, find leach point, turn the auto-fire button on with my arcade stick, come back in ten minutes"

Are you talking about the armored vehicle glitch? If you think the leeching is boring you've never tried meleeing the diving knife soldiers.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 3:19 pm

i have

the leeching this game can be abused by can add 2 hours onto the time it takes to clear it (ie 25 mins, to 2h25m). i think if the timer worked in the opposite way (ie it still counts down, but you have bonus points awarded for what time is left on the clock for each sub-section), and the best scores were obtained by no-miss clearing the game + secrets + prisoners + quickest time, it would be nigh-on perfect. 25 minutes is an ideal length for an arcade game. 2+ hours though...? for the armoured vehicle glitch i literally leave the room, go outside and have a cigarette

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 4:23 pm

This is a response to (and an attempt to clarify) Icy's post.

I have already stated that IGN's review is not a strategy guide and sought to briefly explain why.

The metaphor placing IGN's reviewer in the shoes of Icy's grandmother is workable. You can go to a friend and ask them for their opinion of the latest Ferrari supercar. "Oh, it goes fast and looks good, I suppose, never driven one though" would be the essence of their response. It would be better to find a specialist magazine and read it instead if you wanted to judge its ratio of excellence to cost in comparison with the latest Lamborghini, Porsche, or even a BMW.

And this is where the problem lies: Games aren't cars. Cars are expensive enough that they support an industry of hobbyist fanatics. People get paid to go on trips to learn about the latest cars and Street Fighter IV, but not shmups.

But back to Ikaruga: A more perfect review of the game would mention something along the lines of "there are other games that use mechanics similar to this one; they stack up against it for these reasons."

Going to the Internet - like our own shmups forum's strategy guide section - will hopefully give the person an idea about how the mechanics really work at different levels of play, but it still probably won't provide an answer to the basic questions a review will (ignoring the problem of bias), such as "is Battle Garegga's rank obnoxious game design, or good? Is rank decrease from bombing in Donpachi good game design?"

Take a moment to note that these questions are of the same nature as questions like "is this game good-looking?" and they are important for the same reasons.

This is seemingly at odds with the competence (such as it is) of game reviewers for other genres. Game reviewers usually compare one game against others in its genre. I'll contradict what I wrote earlier - it doesn't matter that this is a budget release because the original reviews of Ikaruga were similarly devoid of the overall context.

But that's what happens when most shooters aren't released outside Japan, they are released infrequently (so fewer of the small differences a reviewer will use for comparison are fresh in their mind), and there they've become a niche product.

But there is another issue with this - the danger of missing the forest to the trees. The fact is that the comparison between games rarely rests on tiny points for the game reviewer. They are used to seeing a wide variety of games that take drastically different approaches to entertaining the player, and what usually makes one game "better" than another can be summed up in the word "polish." Today's popular games take pride in being innovative and even revolutionary when possible - it's a part of their marketing. As a result, the idea that a game can be considered better than another even when it is ugler due to some seemingly small difference in gameplay is bound to be foreign to the average game reviewer.

On the whole, mainstream game reviewers have not fulfilled their duty with regards to the shooter community. That is why we rely on ourselves, of course.

Acid King · Post by **Acid King** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 5:13 pm

Ed Oscuro wrote:
On the whole, mainstream game reviewers have not fulfilled their duty with regards to the shooter community. That is why we rely on ourselves, of course.

Really this is all your post should have been. The guy is a mainstream games reviewer. We're not his audience. The average gamer is his audience. It's stupid to jump on his back for this review because a generalized game site for casual gamers is never going to go in to enough detail to satisfy the audience of any niche title. None. Never. Just as a pop music magazine that reviews the odd underground record will never satisfy that genres fans, we shouldn't expect stellar, in depth reviews of shooters from places like IGN or Gamespot. This is idiotic. The proper car analogy would be Ferrari enthusiasts shitting all over a positive piece about Ferrari's in a magazine dedicated to family sedans because the reviewer doesn't REALLY understand why the car is so great. It's fucking stupid, pseudo intellectual circle jerking.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:01 pm

Acid King wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:
On the whole, mainstream game reviewers have not fulfilled their duty with regards to the shooter community. That is why we rely on ourselves, of course.
Really this is all your post should have been.

I agree (I made it my closing statement, after all), but I had to rewrite it a few times to get a handle on everything Icy was saying. There was an attempt to tie into some philosophy he mentioned in an article that I decided was probably not his intention, for instance.

The proper car analogy would be Ferrari enthusiasts shitting all over a positive piece about Ferrari's in a magazine dedicated to family sedans because the reviewer doesn't REALLY understand why the car is so great.

Indeed, that's a bit more apt.

kengou · Post by **kengou** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:18 pm

My issue is mainly with the fact that the guy sucks horribly at Ikaruga and still tries to review it. In virtually any (good) review, the reviewer doesn't actually write the review until he has beaten the game, right? That way, he has an informed opinion of it. Reviewing a game before you've beaten it is more of a "hands on" or "impressions" article instead of a real "review." And as most of us can probably agree to, beating a modern 3D game is different from beating a shmup. You can beat Zelda just by playing through it to the end. To really "beat" a shmup, you need to 1cc it. That's my view, at least. Consider that to play through Ikaruga, it takes about 30 minutes. To 1cc Ikaruga, it takes maybe 15-30 combined hours depending on how good you are. Compare that to the time to beat a game like Zelda (25-30 hours). Would you respect a Zelda review where the guy only played for 30 minutes?

This is the heart of my issue with the review. The reviewer wasn't qualified to review the game properly because he hasn't beaten it. There's a clip of his gameplay where he uses a continue on stage 1. He hasn't gone through the process of figuring out paths through the levels to continue his chains. He hasn't worked out the boss patterns. He hasn't played the game long enough to understand the finer details of the level design that contribute to the gameplay as a whole. Even if he knows about the chaining and polarity, which make up the basic gameplay, he hasn't really experienced the game in a deep enough way to write an informed review.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:26 pm

Bingo. Good thing you said it instead of Icy maybe we can get somewhere now.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:32 pm

am i to believe that icy has 1CC'd ketsui and pink sweets before reviewing it? or any of the other arcade games he's reviewed?

i thought we'd established that you don't need to be an expert at a game to review it (good luck on getting an objective review). let's not start going backwards now

best review of ikaruga was by chandra nair of Cube magazine in the UK (2 page spread, 9/10). i'll have a look for scans.

also: deadlines. a difference between professional reviews and amateur reviews

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:36 pm

kengou wrote:In virtually any (good) review, the reviewer doesn't actually write the review until he has beaten the game, right?

Well, that's a problem. Games are complicated enough that reviewers often go through them and miss important pieces of what's going on.

jpj wrote:i thought we'd established that you don't need to be an expert at a game to review it (good luck on getting an objective review). let's not start going backwards now

Agreed. Reviewers have to admit that the review process is meant to inform the reader so that they can decide if a game's for them, not to bludgeon them into toeing the official party line.

jpj wrote:also: deadlines. a difference between professional reviews and amateur reviews

Enthusiasm too! "Pro" reviewers generally can't pick and choose what they get to review. They're assigned games.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:42 pm

i thought we'd established that you don't need to be an expert at a game to review it (good luck on getting an objective review). let's not start going backwards now

If a game is not worth becoming an expert at then it becomes a negative review. I can remember writing my review for Cyborg Justice and there were a lot of things I would've missed if I hadn't taken the time to become an expert at it, and there certainly wasn't much positive criticism to come from this extra step on my part.

Also, good luck getting an objective review indeed.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:44 pm

JoshF wrote:
i thought we'd established that you don't need to be an expert at a game to review it (good luck on getting an objective review). let's not start going backwards now
If a game is not worth becoming an expert at then it becomes a negative review.

Who plays Zelda games to become an expert in them? Aside from Zelda trivia/storyline buffs & nuts, that is.

The games industry's focus is mainly on the feature / direct-to-video style games right now. Very few current games are worth mastering, but they can be enjoyable enough all the same. Psychonauts comes to mind.