Loose Triggers and Iron Lore

My tooth hurts, but I’ll get over it.

But while drowning the sorrows of dental pain, I’ve been poking around IGN, which always results in some kind of frustration or another. I’m not one to publicly rant about the competition, mostly because I know what we all go through. Reviewing games is a great job, but it’s one that leaves you open for ridicule from the dregs of the Internet. And I have no doubt that when they’re all sitting around at IGN, they must have a good laugh from time to time about GameSpot, and I don’t like the thought of being the subject of peer ridicule at a competitive site–I’d rather foster the spirit of healthy competition and camaraderie. And now that our own Jason Ocampo has defected to the other side to help out their PC editorial department, I’m in no position to judge.

Oddly, though, the PC end of IGN is the one that needs the least amount of quality adjustment, since the PC guys there tend to, in my experience, write with a good degree of quality. That’s probably why I am most pissy today. Not at IGN, mind you, but at the nutty gaming community at large, which it seems attacks the folks at IGN with the vehemence I usually see directed at us. I avoid reading about games I am reviewing at other sites before I have written the review, and that’s all for the best. It’s common habit for me to see what the other big guns are rolling out once I’ve finished writing, though. So after I was finished with Pirates of the Burning Sea, I was curious to see where the critical mass stood. IGN’s review is pretty good and it hit many of the same points.

But let me tell you, I think I would go insane if we allowed user comments on reviews the same way IGN does. I am not sure whether it gladdens me that other journalists face the same uphill battle, or if it destroys my faith in the human race entirely. People were pretty tame on this one, but it’s worth noting I think that their user score for the game (like ours) is lower than the critical average, which is pretty unusual. I discovered with C&C3 that giving a high score to a game opens you up to as much criticism as a low score, but I was surprised, initially, with the wildly differing perspectives on POTBS. But then again, MMO players are right up there with JRPG fans with regards to their vehemence of opinion. The hardcore are fickle, as are the folks that don’t get their reward immediately. In 10 hours of play, I wasn’t convinced that I was getting anything out of the game. At 60 hours, I didn’t want to stop.

Though I may need to add shmup fans to that list above. My Triggerheart Exelica review is going up tonight (it may already be up, actually), so I took a peek at IGN’s review. Again, a lot of the points are the same–I mean, how could they not be? The game is only 20 minutes of content. But the poor guy got raked over the coals by shmuppers, with the usual “it’s just too hard for you” mantra. But please people. Shmups have a standard too, for God’s sake. I have a feeling part of the fanbase grumblings are due to the game’s arcade-to-Dreamcast roots. After all, Triggerheart was released last year on the Dreamcast in Japan. It then follows it must be a great, unerrated gem, right? Well, not really. I can list any number of arcade-style shooters of far higher quality available via Xbox Live Arcade, and the suggestion by some folks that Triggerheart reaches the heights of Ikaruga is… insane.

Seriously? The thing is the most bare-bones kind of release. Most competent shmups are hard, folks. That doesn’t mean that they’re all good. The game isn’t getting middling scores because we suck at it. It’s getting middling scores because it’s a middling shoot-em-up. Being associated with the Dreamcast doesn’t make it a gift from the heavens.

My favorite comments from IGN users?

Seriously, mainstream sites like this shouldn’t even bother reviewing shmups. I believe it is impossible for them to undertand the shmup culture, it’s too alien a thing for them.

Whoever wrote this review should be fired.

Get a clue IGN. If your not a fan the review has no chance. I will get it ASAP. Im a true old school gamer.

This is genre apology, of course. If a reviewer tells it like it is, he hates the genre, doesn’t understand it, isn’t part of their “culture,” or doesn’t get its “nuances.” In other words, if it’s a shmup, it’s the BEST GAME EVAR! And if you don’t agree, I’m gonna cast GREATER ELITISM at you with my WAND OF SUPERIORITY +1. These folks you just don’t satisfy, but then again, the actual quality of the game is secondary to them. If it’s hard, makes them memorize all the attack patterns, and lets them put their high scores on the leaderboards, how the game stands up to others in the genre is meaningless. To suggest that this is the next Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, or Gradius is, I would imagine, born of that same elitism. But I can’t guarantee that every shmup will get a perfect 10 at GameSpot, and the “nuanced culture” of shoot-em-up fans are apparently kicking me from the club.

That said, bring on Ikaruga!

In other news, Titan Quest developer Iron Lore shut down. This was followed by a post from THQ’s Michael Fitch on the Quarter-to-Three forums in which he ranted about the annoyances of PC development, the effects of piracy, and the gaming press. In the process, he tossed a good friend under a bus:

We had one reviewer – I won’t name names, you can find it if you look hard enough – who missed the fact that you can teleport from wherever you are in TQ back to any of the major towns you’ve visited. So, this guy was hand-carting all of his stuff back to town every time his inventory was full. Through the entire game. Now, not only was this in the manual, and in the roll-over tooltips for the UI, but it was also in the tutorial, the very first time you walk past one of these giant pads that lights up like a beacon to the heavens. Nonetheless, he missed it, and he commented in his review how tedious this was and how much he missed being able to portal back to town. When we – and lots of our fans – pointed out that this was the reviewer’s fault, not the game’s, they amended the review. But, they didn’t change the score. Do you honestly think that not having to run back to town all the time to sell your stuff wouldn’t have made the game a better experience?

I am red in the face over this, but what do I know? Gamers are morons, by and large:

Which brings me to the audience. There’s a lot of stupid people out there. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of very savvy people out there, too, and there were some great folks in the TQ community who helped us out a lot. But, there’s a lot of stupid people.

This entry is long enough as it is, but I have a lot to say about Fitch’s blame-everyone-and-take-no-responsibility monologue. In fact, it’s pretty telling that he takes no responsibility… and then decries PC gamers for doing the same. As one user says in that thread, “If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.”

Words to live by.

~ by fiddlecub on February 29, 2008.