shikamaru317 said:
Angelus said:
Whether they are personally good at them or not, these are great games, that totally deserve high marks. And I'm sure they don't exactly put their worst gamers on these titles for review. There's no reason to be salty about it, just because they're not your personal cup of tea. |
High sure, but this high? I will always be of the opinion that a game that probably 70% of gamers can't beat doesn't deserve a score so high that it will not only most likely win GOTY, but also be a strong contender for GOTG. Accessibility should be taken into consideration when reviewing a game, just like gameplay, story presentation, technical issues, etc. and yet looking through reviews I only see a handful of critics who are actually listing the lack of accessibility as a negative. I know that I hold an unpopular opinion on this, I've seen the way that people are attacked when they dare to criticize FromSoft's refusal to implement a difficulty scaler, I've seen the "filthy casual", the "get good", the "you suck at games", etc. I know the way that many gamers see those who chose to play on lower difficulty modes, and those who want difficulty scalers in all games. But you know, I've never really cared what they thought. It's 2022, gamers come from all walks of life these days, we've got gamers with only 1 hand, gamers with no hands that manage to play by using Microsoft's Adaptive Controller with their arm stumps and by blowing into tubes or pushing pedals with their feet for certain inputs, people who are legally blind that play games by making out fuzzy shapes and turning on menu narration to get through the menus. And yet FromSoft doggedly sticks to their refusal to implement a mere difficulty slider, something that most games have had for 2 decades, and their fanbase often defends that refusal, claiming that a difficulty slider would somehow water down the experience, even though the nightmare difficulty or whatever they would name it would be just as hard as From's past games; truth is they know they are weak and would succumb to the temptation of lowering the difficulty to get past a hard boss, so they'd rather gatekeep the games from a much larger audience who would play them if a difficulty slider was added. |
Well, I'm gonna have to strongly disagree there. Accessibility options are certainly commendable wherever present, but they should not be a determining factor in whether or not a game is worthy of top accolades. Not least of which, because it would be very difficult to the draw the line of where the acceptable threshold for accessibility lies.
Is making a game mechanically simple enough? Is there a minimum difficulty threshold? What about sequels in long running franchises? Do I need to make every entry as beginner friendly as possible? What is that maximum amount of prior knowledge I can expect the player to take into the game? What about games with huge item inventories and class builds that people theory-craft over for ages? Is there some sweet spot the game should hit there so as not to be overly intimidating in the breadth of it's options, and scare people off? What about the length of the game? How much of a time commitment is too much to ask of the average casual gamer?
You can go down a very big rabbit hole of HIGHLY subjective accessibility criteria that could potentially make it unappealing to large demographics of people. It's not the job of a reviewer to mark something down for NOT being this, that, or the other. It's their job to tell you how well the creators executed what they set out to achieve, and whether that might be something you'll appreciate. The average Fortnite player probably isn't going to find Deus Ex to be a very approachable game, for a litany of reasons. The person that mostly goes to the movie theater for big comic book blockbusters probably won't appreciate some arthouse indie movie, or character study. Doesn't mean that we then withhold those projects from consideration of being among the best craftsmanship in their field.
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