Some games are simply great. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, BioShock and Half-Life are only a few of the legendary games that critics and fans adore in unison, but games like that are few and far between. We get one truly great game a year if we’re lucky. That leaves us hundreds of less than great games each year to squabble over.
Sometimes these games are loved by critics and hated by gamers, sometimes it’s the other way around and sometimes we can all agree that a game simply sucks. The big question is, how should we judge these games? Should Call of Duty be reviewed on the same scale as Firewatch?
Over the last few years especially, gaming has branched into two major sections: tech and art (each with many, many subsections of their own of course). The tech games are the ones we’re used to. The Call of Duty games, the Assassin’s Creeds, The Division and a good portion of the games overall. The art games are often indies and games like Firewatch, Journey and even more mainstream options like The Walking Dead. Some games overlap into both categories, but most lean pretty vigorously one way or the other.
Call of Duty, for example, is a very specific type of game, as is Firewatch. People like and dislike each of them for different reasons. These games aren’t apples to apples; comparing them isn’t even apples to oranges. At best it’s like comparing an apple to a steak. You can eat them both, they’re both food and both good in their own way, but you’re not going to get anywhere comparing the two side by side. To compare them one to one is just ridiculous and ultimately fruitless.
What critics and gamers typically do with any game is break it down into parts, reviewing pieces of the whole before passing a final verdict on the finished product. They’ll take a look at everything from the themes to gameplay to graphics, story, art design and more, but not all of those criteria are important in every game. That’s where so many reviews go wrong. Does the art design really matter that much in Call of Duty? Is the gameplay the most crucial part of Firewatch?
Of course if any piece of the puzzle is missing entirely, then the final result is glaringly incomplete and virtually useless. However, not every piece is of equal importance. It’s vitally important to treat games individually and not be fooled into putting them all under one umbrella. If that sounds like common sense to you, you’d be surprised by how often this actually happens. The problem is that so many gamers consider any game that they don’t particularly like a bad game, without taking into account that just because you don’t like fighters or sports games it doesn’t mean they’re all bad. They just might not be for you. It’s what happens when you use the same criteria to judge all games.
The only universal criteria for all games is functionality. Games need to work first and foremost. Glitches, bugs and crashes will ruin a game equally whether it’s artsy or technical. There’s really no getting around that. After functionality though, the criteria becomes more or less significant depending on the game. Gameplay in any technical game, whether it be an FPS, a sports game or a fighter, is of the utmost importance. Equally important to art games is the visual design. When you switch it around though, gameplay is significantly less important in an art game, as is visual design in tech games.
The same goes for other criteria like originality, creativity, engagement, theme and more. Each one holds a different level of importance depending on the game. Games that excel in every criterion regardless of the type of game are, the great games we talked about in the beginning, but they’re the outliers.
One of the reasons that there are often such huge discrepancies in game reviews is because so many people neglect to uniquely weigh all these different criteria. They treat the gameplay in Firewatch the same way they treat it in Call of Duty.
Luckily, the gaming industry is shifting. Gamers, critics and companies alike are paying more and more attention to indie and artsy games each year and with big companies like Ubisoft delaying annual franchises, we may be seeing a shift away from cookie cutter tech games as well. These moves make it clear that the entire industry, from developers to gamers, are all becoming more self-aware. Meaning that we’re beginning to appreciate games as individuals more and more.
Tech games and art games simply aren’t meant to be judged or reviewed in the same way. What makes some people love Firewatch is completely different than what makes others love Call of Duty. Either game may or may not be your cup of tea, but that’s why this is such a great time for video games. There’s something for everyone. You don’t have to be bound by what others like. There are unique and interesting games around every corner, Steam alone has over 6,000 titles, just try not to judge them all on the same basis.