I’ve been toying with this idea for a little while now, but haven’t acted on it for a few reasons:
- I’m not sure if I have the talent to pull an idea like this off properly
- I don’t want this to turn into “Review the Reviewers”
- It could be perceived as a dick move to get hits for the website
Basically I’m not comfortable with the idea of writing something that takes the work of somebody else and critiquing it because I’m not confident that my own work is as close to infallible as it could be. I’m sure somebody with a degree in English could scan over anything I’ve written and pick it apart [Someone with a degree in English is scanning everything Erron writes and finds nothing to pick apart so far. -- Andrew]. So to deal with that I’ve decided to try and limit any criticisms relating to grammar, sentence structure or punctuation. If a review is written well enough that the message behind the message can be discerned from it then there’s no reason to dedicate several paragraphs pointing out why a comma should or shouldn’t be used where it happens to be used.
I don’t want this to turn into a commentary on specific reviewers either. It would be incredibly easy to pick out people on the internet who are easy to criticize and continue to target them — I don’t want that. If I find that reviews that catch my attention are showing a trend of being written by the same person I’ll eventually just ‘write off’ that writer and focus on different sources. I don’t want this to become a continuing statement of “This reviewer sucks and here’s more reasons why”, because I think anybody out there and look at something and decide that for themselves. People don’t need me to sit here and point that out for them.
As to this being a dick move to get hits for this website — hits aren’t what are important. What’s important is trying a number of different things to improve my own writing and having the ability to use this website as an indicator of what I can do. I want to be able to point at the things I’ve written on this website and say “Yeah, I wrote that.”
Having said all that, hit the jump to have a gander at my first attempt at Reviewing the Reviews. Am I way off? Is this a terrible idea? How’s my writing? Go ahead and let me know in the comments — constructive criticism and your own opinions are always welcome.
Welcome to Reviewing the Reviews, where I’ll be taking a closer look at reviews on games I’ve played that miss the mark badly enough that they make me want to throw my hat into the ring. Today I’m looking at Scott Jones’ review of Borderlands for the 360 over at CrispyGamer.com.
Crispy Gamer reviews offer a neat pro-and-con feature above the actual review, outlining the points the review coversfor people who want to see what the review is all about without actually seeing what the review is all about.
Jones claims that Borderlands is a post-apocalyptic dystopian world, that the game fails at displaying an “Extreme” attitude, decries the shooting and the game’s splitsceen. Let’s pick these apart piece by piece, shall we?
Borderlands takes place on a planet called Pandora, rumored to be rich in minerals and host to a fortune for anybody willing to move out there and work for a living. When colonists arrive on Pandora they find the planet is mostly barren and rumors of the rich minerals having been vastly exaggerated. Spending any amount of time playing the game would point out several flaws in calling the setting ‘post-apocalyptic’ — the lack of irradiated areas, the lack of structures with obvious structural damage, even the lack of any mention of some sort of apocalyptic event.
The planet is a wasteland, but it isn’t post-apocalyptic. If we were to run with that sort of logic we could claim places like Arizona and California are post-apocalyptic states — the former for Death Valley, the latter for Hollywood.
Jones claims the game tries (and fails) to present the player with “Extreme” attitude, but it doesn’t actually come across like that. Several of his examples fall flat, like this one:
“The game opens on a bus. Only it’s not just any bus. This is an extreme — or rather, “xxxtreme” — bus. When a dog-like thing called a Skag wanders onto the road — beep beep — the bus runs it down. Because that’s the kind of bus this is: an xxxtreme, dog-running-over, awesome, “Mad Max” type of bus.” – Scott Jones
He seems to think the bus running over the Skag is some throwaway event that only happens to promote what he claims as the game’s “xxxtreme” nature. I could argue the opposite point — that the bus runs over the Skag as an example of how life in the Borderlands really is; kill or be killed. Playing the game past the opening tutorial shows you that Slags aren’t something to avoid. They are mindless, relentless killers who will throw themselves at you until either you or they are dead. So why not run them over?
I could argue that point, but I think I need to argue a different point; a point Jones seems to have accidentally touched on in passing.
“It’s a bus that’s so self-consciously awesome that it’s lame.
Everything in Borderlands is so self-consciously awesome that it’s lame. I’m sick of these scorched-earth futures. I’m sick of the xxxtreme, do-the-Dew aesthetic.” – Scott Jones
I feel like the whole point of Borderlands is how self-conscious it is. It uses every opportunity it has to revel in that self-conscious aspect, be it dialogue, weapons, setting or enemies. The NPC characters are few and far between, but each one is uniquely over-the-top in their portrayal. Take Dr. Zed for example. He’s an unlicensed medical professional who spends his time chopping up corpses. He’s a caricature of an actual doctor, just like everybody else is a caricature of some other stereotype.
The game gets away with being so over-the-top because the story and characters aren’t what matter. The gameplay is what matters.
“One of my problems with Borderlands is that… I never felt all that powerful. Enemies would appear. I would shoot them or burn them or whatever. They would fall over. More enemies would appear.
The game seems to be missing some punch, some pop, some zip. Maybe the gunfire isn’t fiery enough. Explosions are small and neat and lack any kind of kersspllllooooossshhhh. I wanted evisceration… Where are the decapitations? Where’s the dismemberment? Where’s the damn blood, dude? Enemies feel like XP fodder instead of real people. ” – Scott Jones
Jones gives himself away here. He obviously didn’t play the game past the few few missions. It doesn’t take long before you’re earning guns from downing bosses or simply finding them in weapons caches that do all kinds of crazy things. If you shoot a dude in the head with a sniper rifle his head will explode. Any time you kill anybody there are sprays of blood. Kill a dude with a rocket launcher and you’ll be up to your ears in dismemberment. Play a little bit longer and earn personal upgrades that add specific effects to any weapon you happen to be using — shoot a dude with something that adds “Fire” and a dude will be set completely on fire, running and screaming until he dies.
He also gives himself away in that same statement, letting on that he didn’t touch what the game is really about — cooperative play.
The game offers both split-screen and online play, both which play to the game’s strength. Split-screen lets you and a friend kick back for some good old fashioned couch co-op and play through the game that much faster, offering you the same content you’d get with one person.. but better. He denounces split-screen in his Borderlands review, but doesn’t bother to mention it in other reviews/ features he has done of games with the same feature. Split-screen is fine. It isn’t outdated. Plenty of games come out with a split-screen feature, and it’s a welcome feature to any co-operative video game. It’s welcome because there is a significant number of gamers out there with friends.
Speaking of friends, the review stumbles on a point I happen to agree with. Borderlands is at its absolute best when you grab three friends and hop online for some four player action. While I’ve expressed my feelings on Borderlands as a game in a previous post, I also stated that four player action is what makes the game a success. It manages to take all the loot-gathering aspects and mix them into a frenetic free-for-all between you and your friends, that really doesn’t matter in the end because you’re kicking back, shooting dudes with acid bullets and talking about Batman.
Overall, Jones’ review on Borderlands feels shallow. It reads as if he watched the trailers and played the first twenty minutes of the game before turning it off and switching to something more his style. There isn’t anything wrong with not enjoying Borderlands, but don’t turn around and write a review like you actually spent any amount of time with the game.
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