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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Reviews by The Walrus: Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze

 

Would you like me to keep reviewing with my style?

Yes 24 31.58%
 
No 50 65.79%
 
Total:74
Blinker said:
Dulfite said:
Blinker said:
Pavolink said:
Sounds like it's not a good game!


More like its a not good review. 


It is an excellent game and I would recommend anyone buying it! I had a blast with it and it's my favorite side scrolling platformer of all time. Still though, I stand by my score.

Okay, okay! I just think its a weird way of ranking it, especially since I care about more about gameplay than story. 

I know :) I designed my ranking style because it appeals to me and I share it with people in case it appeals with them. One person on this board (I think maybe 2-3 so far) have expressed a liking of my style, so that's all I need. If you think it's crazy that's ok by me :)



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the_dengle said:
Graphics, art style, story, controls...

So, in your system, a game's score is not affected whatsoever by the quality of its level design. The actual hand-crafted design of stages, enemy placement, boss patterns, and so on holds no sway over your analysis. If you reviewed a Zelda game, the story would affect 30% of your score, the dungeons and overworld, 0%. Well, maybe that's not fair. If the dungeons and overworld are fun, maybe they can be half as important as the story.

...


The originality, fun, and probably control categories take those things into consideration. I don't just forget about those things as I'm playing/reviewing a game lol that would make me a horrible reviewer. I just call them different things.



MTZehvor said:

You lost the majority of your credibility when you equated story quality to an objective measurement. How good a story is is by and large subjective, an opinion. There is no definitive right and wrong where opinions are concerned.

There certainly are some ground rules for storytelling that are applicable to all stories, and many video games follow these rules. Many games have underlying themes, subtle commentaries, expertly developed characters, twists and turns in plots. Regardless, not every single one of these rules needs to be kept for a story to be good. For example, stories do not need to linear in order to succeed; a story does not have to progress single mindedly from point A to point B, with no room for deviations, in order to be quality. The Deus Ex series is a perfect example of that.

But regardless, this assumes that all stories must follow a checklist of items in order to qualify as "good." I will grant that there are some areas in which the design of video games makes it more difficult to tell a standard story (i.e, it's hard to switch back and forth between developing various characters is harder to do in a game than a novel or movie), but that merely restricts what video games can do; it does not prohibit them from telling good stories. The interactivity of video games also opens up a whole new realm of storytelling possibilities as well via interactiveness. I'll bring up Deus Ex again, a story that would have been nowhere near as good as it was were it not for the player's ability to make decisions and watch how the world around them changes. That is a type of excellent storytelling that is exclusive to interactive entertainment.

And before you bring up the "no, you just enjoy it because it's immersive" argument, let me keep within your shallow expectations of what a story is allowed to be by saying that the immersion is only one part of how good the story is. The character reactions are all expertly written, and the way events shift and play out in response are expertly crafted and told as well. If nothing else, it does an expert job of communicating how one single person can change events simply by speaking a few words differently here and there.

Or I could reference the Ace Attorney titles. I watched the first two games on Youtube before finally purchasing the third and getting into the series that way, and found myself incredibly engrossed in the story without even playing the game. I can also easily list reasons as to why I enjoyed the story as well besides "I enjoyed it." The narrative balances humor and seriousness very well, keeping tongue in cheek references going while continuously pushing forward a highly engrossing and captivating plot; the characters are all expertly developed, and the main characters in particular all have well fleshed out motivations that make it easy to care about them. The pacing is done incredibly well, the various twists and turns of the narrative are all expertly laid out, and the resolution of each case is incredibly satisfying. If that doesn't prove that a game can have a good story, when I can enjoy the story without even playing the game, I'm not sure what possibly could.

To summarize, traditional movie/novel methods of storytelling and video games don't perfectly go together, certainly. However, narratives do not have to abide by the "by the book" (pun intended) method of storytelling to be good. Saying that no video game can have a good story, when a good story is in and of itself nearly entirely subjective, is incredibly pretentious for one, and quite arguably ignorant for two. The interactive element of video games doesn't exclude them from telling a good story, it just means that they have to adjust their method of story telling, and rely on certain things less and other things more. In the same way that good stories cannot be told exactly the same way through a movie and a novel, so to do stories have to adjust their methods of communication when they move to an interactive medium.

As I said before this long, long post: The people who think video games have great stories are the people who don't think there are objective standards that applies to storytelling. I know that you don't think these standards exsist, simply based on your attempts to nominate a slew of mediocre to poor stories as great story telling achievements.

In reality however, there are many well established rules for story telling. And yes, linearity is one of them. The Deux Ex series is not a perfect example of otherwise, and I suspect you mistake linearity here as chronology. To put it simply, a great story requires structure, a great game requires interactivity. These two elements are incompatible, to get them to work at all you have to compromise one or both and so compromise the end result. That's not to say that a great interactive story is inherently impossible, but the complexities of something like this are so mind bending that I don't think we will ever see it implemented.

Of course, if you don't know of or want to acknowledge that there are standards that can be applied to both video games and stories and want to live in a fantasy land where the quality of something is subjective then of course, you will forever claim that The Last Story is a great story based on your own arbitrary enjoyment of the game, and your opinion will carry as much weight as someone who claims 'Call me maybe' is a great work of music based on how much they like it.



The Lord of the Rings novel should get a 30/100 rating.
Wonderful story, but terrible graphics and sound.



impertinence said:
MTZehvor said:

You lost the majority of your credibility when you equated story quality to an objective measurement. How good a story is is by and large subjective, an opinion. There is no definitive right and wrong where opinions are concerned.

There certainly are some ground rules for storytelling that are applicable to all stories, and many video games follow these rules. Many games have underlying themes, subtle commentaries, expertly developed characters, twists and turns in plots. Regardless, not every single one of these rules needs to be kept for a story to be good. For example, stories do not need to linear in order to succeed; a story does not have to progress single mindedly from point A to point B, with no room for deviations, in order to be quality. The Deus Ex series is a perfect example of that.

But regardless, this assumes that all stories must follow a checklist of items in order to qualify as "good." I will grant that there are some areas in which the design of video games makes it more difficult to tell a standard story (i.e, it's hard to switch back and forth between developing various characters is harder to do in a game than a novel or movie), but that merely restricts what video games can do; it does not prohibit them from telling good stories. The interactivity of video games also opens up a whole new realm of storytelling possibilities as well via interactiveness. I'll bring up Deus Ex again, a story that would have been nowhere near as good as it was were it not for the player's ability to make decisions and watch how the world around them changes. That is a type of excellent storytelling that is exclusive to interactive entertainment.

And before you bring up the "no, you just enjoy it because it's immersive" argument, let me keep within your shallow expectations of what a story is allowed to be by saying that the immersion is only one part of how good the story is. The character reactions are all expertly written, and the way events shift and play out in response are expertly crafted and told as well. If nothing else, it does an expert job of communicating how one single person can change events simply by speaking a few words differently here and there.

Or I could reference the Ace Attorney titles. I watched the first two games on Youtube before finally purchasing the third and getting into the series that way, and found myself incredibly engrossed in the story without even playing the game. I can also easily list reasons as to why I enjoyed the story as well besides "I enjoyed it." The narrative balances humor and seriousness very well, keeping tongue in cheek references going while continuously pushing forward a highly engrossing and captivating plot; the characters are all expertly developed, and the main characters in particular all have well fleshed out motivations that make it easy to care about them. The pacing is done incredibly well, the various twists and turns of the narrative are all expertly laid out, and the resolution of each case is incredibly satisfying. If that doesn't prove that a game can have a good story, when I can enjoy the story without even playing the game, I'm not sure what possibly could.

To summarize, traditional movie/novel methods of storytelling and video games don't perfectly go together, certainly. However, narratives do not have to abide by the "by the book" (pun intended) method of storytelling to be good. Saying that no video game can have a good story, when a good story is in and of itself nearly entirely subjective, is incredibly pretentious for one, and quite arguably ignorant for two. The interactive element of video games doesn't exclude them from telling a good story, it just means that they have to adjust their method of story telling, and rely on certain things less and other things more. In the same way that good stories cannot be told exactly the same way through a movie and a novel, so to do stories have to adjust their methods of communication when they move to an interactive medium.

As I said before this long, long post: The people who think video games have great stories are the people who don't think there are objective standards that applies to storytelling. I know that you don't think these standards exsist, simply based on your attempts to nominate a slew of mediocre to poor stories as great story telling achievements.

In reality however, there are many well established rules for story telling. And yes, linearity is one of them. The Deux Ex series is not a perfect example of otherwise, and I suspect you mistake linearity here as chronology. To put it simply, a great story requires structure, a great game requires interactivity. These two elements are incompatible, to get them to work at all you have to compromise one or both and so compromise the end result. That's not to say that a great interactive story is inherently impossible, but the complexities of something like this are so mind bending that I don't think we will ever see it implemented.

Of course, if you don't know of or want to acknowledge that there are standards that can be applied to both video games and stories and want to live in a fantasy land where the quality of something is subjective then of course, you will forever claim that The Last Story is a great story based on your own arbitrary enjoyment of the game, and your opinion will carry as much weight as someone who claims 'Call me maybe' is a great work of music based on how much they like it.

And as I said before, there certainly are objective standards; it's just said objective standards do not apply to all types of storytelling. Not every great story needs to be structured. Not every great story needs to be linear. It's as simple as that.

Even if there were absolute standards that applied to all stories, regardless of style, your argument still wouldn't hold water, because it would be quite possibly for a video game to include some interactivity, and some linearity, and still have a great story and great gameplay. Take Bioshock Infinite, which tells a compelling story mostly through certain mostly non-interactive segments that break up rounds of interactive gameplay. Or, as I've already mentioned, the Ace Attorney games. Very linear, rigid story structure, and player interactivity cannot derail the story away from it, and yet it still remains engrossing to play. You could easily (and people have easily) tell a great story simply by breaking up the flow of gameplay. There's no need to "compromise" anything in this scenario, you simply contrast gameplay and storytelling, using one to pace the other. It's already worked quite effectively in titles such as Devil May Cry 3, for instance, despite that game's story in and of itself not being that great.

I've never claimed that there are no objective guidelines to anything, just that not every single one of those guidelines apply across all forms of media. For instance, good character development and interesting underlying themes are essentials to nearly every story. But some others, such as a deep commentary on some aspect of life, are not necessary to have a good story for all forms of entertainment. It would be quite silly to think that a deep social commentary on Capitalism would have benefitted Wall-E, for instance.

Regardless, you've been talking for quite some time about these supposed "objective standards to story greatness" for some time now, without actually listing any of them besides a rigid story structure. To that end, I'd like to hear: what exactly are these requirements that a story must meet in order to qualify as good? I'd be willing to bet the majority of the games I've listed so far will meet your standards.



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MTZehvor said:

And as I said before, there certainly are objective standards; it's just said objective standards do not apply to all types of storytelling. Not every great story needs to be structured. Not every great story needs to be linear. It's as simple as that.

Even if there were absolute standards that applied to all stories, regardless of style, your argument still wouldn't hold water, because it would be quite possibly for a video game to include some interactivity, and some linearity, and still have a great story and great gameplay. Take Bioshock Infinite, which tells a compelling story mostly through certain mostly non-interactive segments that break up rounds of interactive gameplay. Or, as I've already mentioned, the Ace Attorney games. Very linear, rigid story structure, and player interactivity cannot derail the story away from it, and yet it still remains engrossing to play. You could easily (and people have easily) tell a great story simply by breaking up the flow of gameplay. There's no need to "compromise" anything in this scenario, you simply contrast gameplay and storytelling, using one to pace the other. It's already worked quite effectively in titles such as Devil May Cry 3, for instance, despite that game's story in and of itself not being that great.

I've never claimed that there are no objective guidelines to anything, just that not every single one of those guidelines apply across all forms of media. For instance, good character development and interesting underlying themes are essentials to nearly every story. But some others, such as a deep commentary on some aspect of life, are not necessary to have a good story for all forms of entertainment. It would be quite silly to think that a deep social commentary on Capitalism would have benefitted Wall-E, for instance.

Regardless, you've been talking for quite some time about these supposed "objective standards to story greatness" for some time now, without actually listing any of them besides a rigid story structure. To that end, I'd like to hear: what exactly are these requirements that a story must meet in order to qualify as good? I'd be willing to bet the majority of the games I've listed so far will meet your standards.


No, it is impossible for a game to be a great game and a great story at the same time. There is no way to make a story interactive without compromising the quality, and there is no way of making a game without interactive input and still make a great game.

You are right however that some aspects of story telling can be recreated in a video game, such as character development and following a plot line. There is no requirement that a story has to have a complex metastory, so where that is coming from I don't know.

Anyway, to answer your question, the aspects of story telling that are incompatible with video game design are these:

Linearity of the story. This is the most obvious clash and one you refuse to aknowledge, yet, to be able to tell a great story, you need to have a clearly defined structure. The story requires a set begining, a middle and and end. Whats more, the parts need to be tied together so that objects and events in one part of the story has impact at other parts of the story. This structure can be mimicked in games, but it has to be broken if you want to allow meaningful interactivity.

Also, a great story is without surplus. Meaning everything that happens is tied into the progression of the story. Redundancy is the enemy of good story telling. Games routinely break this requirement by adding mountains of fluff and filler.

Finally, a great story has a tightly controlled suspense arc. Timing of the story is of the essence, and this element is completely removed from an interactive videogame. Unless you force the pace of the game you can not control the suspense arc, and you end up with a compromised story. You might want to counter that people should be free to set their own suspense arc and a free playthrough does that, but this is not the case. The only reason people think this is because they are more or less enamoured with the interactivity of a game and so their enjoyment is driven by the sense of immersment, not by the strength of the story.



To me the FUN thing is the most important of all, should be valued at 50% of the score.



My grammar errors are justified by the fact that I am a brazilian living in Brazil. I am also very stupid.