| Grampy said: I had always assumed that this game was aimed at children which is fine by me. A lot of children play video games so for a critic to dismiss a game with "there's nothing here for an adult/serious gamer" is a perfectly reasonable and even useful comment for a reviewer to make but I don't see why it should affect the score adversely. There is very little for a (normal) adult in a doll baby but they have been very popular for a few centuries - speaking of legs! However, as I said, assuming that it was a children's game I had no interest in getting it but the IGN review actually made it sound rather fun to me and I may just treat myself for Xmas. And just for the record, making a game failure proof at its lowest level is an excellent idea since it allows even the very young to have fun instead of being merely frustrated. He may have started out to write a damning review but for me, he just wrote a pretty damn good ad. |
I agree with most of your post. It's a childs game and probably a very good child game. Also, it is most important to read reviews. Their are games that get 9+ that I wouldn't touch and games that are 5-7 that I enjoyed greatly and bought the game from reading the review.
The problem is that Nintendo won the casuals to the Wii with very good adult casual games such as Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Wii Play. If casuals buy this game thinking it will give them enjoyment they may feel snakebit and leave the market. Casuals will not read internet reviews. They are going to see the game in the stores and think I love the Wii XXX game and buy it. I.E. I have a co-worker, never into gaming before. Bought a Wii, Wii Fit and of course the included Wii Sports. Then she bought Beach Sports. Now everyone on this site should know that that game is a universally bad game because we look up reviews on the internet. But she didn't and she purchased it. She was upset that she wasted $29.99 on the game and her attitude is now that she is fine with Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Games like this have the possibility of contracting a fragile expanded market.
Also, IGN and Matt Casamassina are not foolproof but one of the better reviewers out there. Here is an article talking about him being excited about Wii Fit (Health) and Wii Music when they were announced and only brief clips have been shown.
http://sickr.wordpress.com/2007/02/04/nintendo-wii-wii-health-announced/
He initially was very bullish about this game as was I. However, during the past several months he has most likely played the game extensively, talked with developers of the game, and say several of the features before the article. That's his job. He doesn't always write up articles about these things. Maybe it's just a ten minute convo with a developer talking about the modes that got cut and he doesn't have enough for his article, maybe it's a 15 second clip that a developer sent him that he can't link on IGN, maybe it's a game play session that he had where he had to sign a NDA to take part in. Either way he soured somewhere along the way and the final game didn't compensate enough for it. I soured on the game at E3 and although the game looks better than it was at E3, it is not enough for me to reverse course and buy the game. I'm not going to go through the history of blogs/articles from Matt at IGN, but I remember him souring on the game at E3 as well.
