Garple

(IGN.com)

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Fortunately, it's generally shitty games that have shitty communities. Avoiding Call o' Doot Doots goes a long way towards avoiding those sort of people.

I've played a couple hundred hours of Forza on XBL, and have generally had a pretty good experience. A lot of the Forza community is European, which may or may not make a difference, but everyone I've regularly raced with on there is super polite about racing clean and not being a dickhole on the lobby chat.

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I've been playing Resident Evil 5 over the last week and have had some of the best Xbox Live experiences that I've had in a while. One random dude played with me for about 3 hours straight and even went out of his way to not use his overpowered weapons to make the game too easy. It is really weird how every person I've played with in that game has been so awesome.

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This trailer is amazing, everything about it is so awkward and try-hard.

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I like how all the review blurbs are from sites no one has heard of.

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God, those quotes. "Suck it Twilight!" and "Looks to be a fun mix of stealth and action." in the same commercial.

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Ahh, the sort of Stealth/Action/RPG stuff really conjured AP, and a bit of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines for me.

 

Yeah - I was getting VTM:B - although also in the sense of "huh. Those graphics look kind of like VTM:B". I somehow doubt it will feature Brian Mitsoda voicing an Elvis-impersonating ghoul.

 

Maybe Deus Ex: Human Renfield-lution?

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I almost posted this in the Gone Home thread because I didn't know where else to post it, but it's really only tangentially related and also I remembered this thread exists!

 

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/greg-miller-s-top-10-games-of-2013/1100-4836/

 

Now I don't really care about what anyone's personal top ten are, but... take a look at his number one, and then take a look at the first two sentences. I've handily quoted the text in question below.

 

1. Gone Home

Let’s be clear. Over on IGN, I’m voting for The Last of Us as IGN Game of the Year.

 

ign

 

dot

 

com

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Well obviously from a critical perspective you'd like there to be a balance between gameplay and story. Gone Home just has so little game in it that the scales are all thrown off and you spend the whole time slogging through story. At least in The Last of Us all those dreary story heavy cutscenes are spaced out by dozens of hours of killing bandits and zombies. 

 

To be fair, I think the real reason he said that is because Gone Home doesn't have a chance of winning the votes for IGN's GotY whereas The Last of Us does. But his argument about criticism to justify that bit of politics makes no sense whatsoever.

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Well obviously from a critical perspective you'd like there to be a balance between gameplay and story. Gone Home just has so little game in it that the scales are all thrown off and you spend the whole time slogging through story. At least in The Last of Us all those dreary story heavy cutscenes are spaced out by dozens of hours of killing bandits and zombies.

What a fat, heaping load of complete and utter bullshit. That's like saying from a critical perspective a movie critic has to balance the acting and the action sequences. Some movies don't have any action sequences and that doesn't mean they're worse movies. They're just not action movies. Some games don't have a lot of things to do but this just means they're just not the sorts of games where you do a lot of stuff. That doesn't mean they're somehow worse than an equivalent game where you do more stuff. If Gone Home had a bunch of puzzles to solve that wouldn't make it a better game or give it more gameplay to balance out how good it is versus a more traditional game like The Last of Us.

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Miller does make an interesting point (to play devil's advocate) regarding professional opinion versus personal opinion. There is a lot of entertainment I would critic as being wholly awful, but I still 100% enjoyed (White House Down, Fast 5, etc). However, as a 'professional' what is then your obligation? To rank games based on your opinion or on your critical analysis?

 

On one hand I'd think that if GOTY is supposed to be a symbol for an exalting recommendation then you should recommend the highest achievement in Gaming (objective) of the Year.

 

However, I generally turn to outlets who's collective personal opinions I respect (one being Giant Bomb; who have objectively middling games on their list such as DiveKick) and there I would like the GOTY to be a collective agreement in their personal recommendations; but that's just me as a semi-informed/semi-intellectual games enthusiast. IGN is much more of an E than an Ebert, giving their thoughts on games to a more general audience, which should in some weird way be commended (though... fuck ign).

 

I'm torn. Anyone have any input?

 

 

 

EDIT: Additional Thoughts

 

So, thinking about this, I realize it is highly dependent on what the outlet is intended for. Giant Bomb being a cast of game-literate enthusiasts who share their opinion in the industry I expect personal opinion regularly. But IGN focuses on giving more 'objective' scores (even if they do so poorly) for a less game-literate audience and as such it would make sense if their GOTY was more of an "award" for high achievements in gaming. Which means I kind of accept his personal goty being different than his 'professional' recommendation.

 

If I'm wrong tell me why. My opinion isn't set in stone yet.

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My input is objectivity has nothing to do with it. Which game affected you the most? Which game left you with the biggest lasting impression? Objectivity in deciding which game is the best is an impossible and also stupid thing to strive for.

 

If he really didn't think Gone Home deserved to be game of the year, why did he choose it as his own number one? Alternatively, if he really didn't think Last of Us deserved game of the year, why did he choose it as IGN'S number one? There's such a huge contradiction here. As a critic, he shouldn't be choosing what he thinks people want to see. He should be choosing what he believes is the best. No matter if it's for his personal list or if it's for the outlet he writes for. To me it just comes off like he's trying to please both "sides" of the argument. He wants to make sure people know he thinks Last of Us is SO COOL GUYS YOU CAN SHOOT ZOMBIES while also making sure people know he thinks Gone Home is such amazing and beautiful story it affected me so much I'm a human, right guys?!

 

I don't REALLY believe that's his goal. I do understand what he's trying to say with critical vs personal opinion. I think it's bullshit, but I do understand it. It just... feels wrong. It's offputting.

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