Here's an interesting little metareview by Destructoid's Jim Sterling of a trend in the seamy underbelly of "real" games "journalism". Somebody out there is putting a lot of effort into making it as easy as possible to give a game a good review (short of actually making better games). PR guides are old hat, of course, but it looks like the trend might be toward giving those a little more zazz.
I feel a bit behind the curve here. In addition to avoiding non-Zero Punctuation video reviews like the plague until just recently (a topic that deserves its own post or three - observe at your own peril, for example, Sterling's own sunglasses-and-blazer look in the linked video above), I'm far enough out on the fringe that I never actually see any PR materials of this...let's be magnanimous and call it "caliber". I'm surprised that so much effort is being put into trying to sell these games to a class of people who spend their time in a state of cat-like readiness waiting for something to insult their intelligence.
Okay, disappointed but not surprised, but still! With all the hand-wringing about gaming being such a low-margin business and how the slightest economic breeze will inevitably spell DOOM for the industry, the kind of money that goes into getting stuff like this into the hands of reviewers really could be better spent elsewhere. In Epic Mickey's case, it could have been spent convincing Warren Spector to make the game more like the fascinatingly creepy concept art that made everyone initially interested in it when it first came out. For Splatterhouse, it could have been spent coming up with a better property to remake than Splatterhouse.
I feel a bit behind the curve here. In addition to avoiding non-Zero Punctuation video reviews like the plague until just recently (a topic that deserves its own post or three - observe at your own peril, for example, Sterling's own sunglasses-and-blazer look in the linked video above), I'm far enough out on the fringe that I never actually see any PR materials of this...let's be magnanimous and call it "caliber". I'm surprised that so much effort is being put into trying to sell these games to a class of people who spend their time in a state of cat-like readiness waiting for something to insult their intelligence.
Okay, disappointed but not surprised, but still! With all the hand-wringing about gaming being such a low-margin business and how the slightest economic breeze will inevitably spell DOOM for the industry, the kind of money that goes into getting stuff like this into the hands of reviewers really could be better spent elsewhere. In Epic Mickey's case, it could have been spent convincing Warren Spector to make the game more like the fascinatingly creepy concept art that made everyone initially interested in it when it first came out. For Splatterhouse, it could have been spent coming up with a better property to remake than Splatterhouse.
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