Reasonable said:
1 - there's these things called making of's, interviews, articles, etc. which communicate a great deal regarding design goals - just like films. If a game interests me enough I'll seek them out and watch them. Maybe you should - they can be very informative.
2 - just like understanding a film you can just play a game or you can deconstruct it to see what makes it tick. Compare design decisions to other games, etc. I consider myself just as able to do this as produce disertations on Kubrick films. I've also worked on mods, built and released levels (on Unreal engine ironically enough) and know how to code/develop working in the software industry. In short, I consider myself very capable of discerning a developers goals, as well as being able to see where they were unclear or weak or just poorly realised. The result is poor gameplay or weaker overall structure: it tends to stand out.
3 - it's pretty clear from my comments that of course I don't mark down older stuff. That's the point - you consider it relative to its time and what was possible. Ico was amazing at the time on PS2, and I still judge it as such. Heck, while I enjoy lot's of the best games today I also consider many titles that came before them superior overall when taken in context - titles like System Shock 1 & 2, Doom and Quake, Deus Ex, Elite, etc. etc.
Your second two paragraphs are fine, but again that was Bioware's choice. I'm the consumer. If they decide to use middleware to cut costs and the final result is buggier that's their problem and my bone of contention to point out. ME2 isn't horrible technically by a long shot, but it's not as clean as Uncharted 2 either. ND chose to build an engine from scratch. I'm not aware they had to. This was their choice based on how they operate. Obviously ND have plenty of access to Sony technicians, but I doubt Bioware or EA would have to shout very loud to get equal assistence from MS (which is to MS credit).
Really, I don't see the point of your post - other than the sense you felt I was somehow slighting Mass Effect 2 by seeing it as a 94% title - wow, what a slight. Or pointing out factual technial flaws - how outragous. Or recognising a slightly superior piece of coding as being, well, superior.
As far as I'm concerned, every point I made stands.
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Im not debating haha. Im just asking for further clarification because I thought your opinion was interesting. I would term it a discussion rather than a debate, im not interested in proving you wrong.
1. I tend to find the Gamasutra style after-action reports to be the most lucid. In a general sense the making of video interviews are as interesting for thinking about what is not said, vs what is said.
2. My interest in this Uncharted 2 vs Mass Effect 2 is in how both share a lot of similarities and have contrasting approaches in key areas. They are both 96 rated games, they are both exclusive to a particular console, they are both second iterations which have shown marked improvement and they both scored similarly with their prequels. Whats interesting is in some of the key design decisions, especially relating to how they tell their particular stories. To state it simply, Uncharted 2 showed a marked difference between full motion video captured through the game engine and the capabilities of Nathan Drake in regular gameplay. This shows the difficulties of combining the two formats of story delivery into the one game as full motion video cannot be as easily changed. It appears that both sides are opperating on similar but different paradigms.
3. So you score relative to the time and not against a fixed scale, interesting.
