| Kantor said:
If a publication doesn't aim for some sort of collaboration on reviews, why have a publication at all? The whole point is that the site should speak with something resembling one single voice. You don't write it for yourself, you write it as yourself. You don't need to actively shove your own views in, because they come out naturally. Those are the easiest things to describe. If there's a flaw which you don't think is important, however, you do still have to mention it. Similarly, if there's a part of the game which you didn't really like but which you can see that other people would clearly like, you should mention that it's possible to like it. The size of the latter category of comments can be minimised by choosing a reviewer who actually likes the genre and the game's style, like the majority of people who are considering buying it. The railroading of Uncharted 3 isn't positive or negative by itself, and that's exactly my point. The reviewer clearly doesn't like it, but fails to account for the fact that other people do. This in particular is just absurd: "Your freedom of choice risks ruining the shot. Indeed, throughout the game, if you jump into an area you are not supposed to visit, Drake will crumple on the floor dead, Naughty Dog switching role from movie director to vindictive god. That is not your predestined path: Game Over." Your freedom of choice? Since when has Uncharted, or any remotely linear game, had anything resembling freedom of choice? You walk down a narrow corridor and shoot whoever they tell you to shoot, solve the puzzles they tell you to solve and scale the walls they tell you to scale. If any action adventure TPS has deviated from that formula, please tell me about it, because it could potentially be quite brilliant. Absolutely, some people - RPG fans for instance - might hate being "railroaded" like that, and knowing this (because, sure, you should mention it) would know to stay far away from Uncharted 3. If indeed, the reviewer is one of those people, he really shouldn't be reviewing Uncharted 3, because the target audience, not being morons, know that they like linear games. Not only does he only give one side of this (other than briefly mentioning graphics) but he spends a whopping five paragraphs bashing an intentional, omnipresent and clearly well-liked design choice. His opinion is valid, because no player's opinion is invalid, but his review is invalid because it approaches the game from entirely the wrong perspective. Nothing separates a good critic review from a good user review, except quite often length, but the majority of user reviews aren't good at all. The difference between a good critic review and your average user review is that the user will either rant about the game or shower it with love and give it somewhere between 0 and 2 or 9 and 10, and a critic review will look fairly at aspects of the game's presentation, execution and design and describe why each of these is a good or bad thing, or in the case where it is ambiguous, like here, why it could be good or bad, with a clear focus on the audience for whom you are reviewing. And to commit the cardinal sin of looking at the score, deducting 20% because you have moral problems with linear games is a little harsh, especially when the game's predecessor is by your own description "flawless" or "masterful" if you prefer. |
By "your freedom of choice" I belive he meant just that, the players freedom to chose what to do, you as the player could very well deviate from the path that the designers decided on. But if they do they are met with instant death, something that I think sounds rather annoying making levels that give you the illusion of openess but as soon as you try to take one step of the path you are just killed. A game can be linear while still keeping the illusion of player choice, the Portal series for example handles it brilliantly by trapping the player into a maze of puzzles that you must figure out one at a time yet you are given full control of your actions and any deaths are expected.
As for linear action games that offer player choice I think Batman: AC and Assassin's Creed are the best examples off the top of my head. Both offer a story driven liniar experiance but offer you a very wide path with plenty of side passages that reword exploration but also manage to keep a strong narative thread to pull you along (Batman more so than Assassin's IMO). Imagine for a seccond an Uncharted game that managed to blend the semi open nature of those games with the cinimatic scripted sequences they are so famous for, sure it probably wouldn't be possible with today's technology but imagine a next generation UC4 that actually let you do a bit of the tresure hunting with large areas to explore and treverse. That would be another round of 10/10s I think
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