"mirror's edge and the wrath of the internet"

OR how do we talk about games?

storm in a handbasket this one, but throws up issues worth discussing as well as some rusty canards

guardian writer's "hastily scribbled diatribe about innovation and games journalism" in which he asked whether "game reviewers really understand innovation"... his tossed off post drew the attention of n'gai croal, neoseeker, variety (links lifted from today's guardian post for ease of ref) and I'm sure there are others

"should we really be marking mirror's edge down for control issues – a game that aspires to re-interpret the very interface between player, screen and character?" - this is similar to the reaction I have to those who complain about FO3's "repeated art assets, identikit dungeons" etc - not that FO3 is innovating beyond the bleeding edge but that the stuff being complained about is inconsequential against the import of the story or the world (tho tht is a little disingenuous bcs the art assets, dungeons obv compose pt of tht world)

anyway - I think the original piece trying to hold games criticism to the same standards (<-- wrong word) as film criticism is noble (<-- also wrong word) but ultimately futile

^^^^bunch of random ungathered thoughts, apols : /

link to today's guardian post which giving the thread its title

lolguardian I know, but have at it

I think that reviewing games is only partly like reviewing a movie. There are the parallels of narrative, characters, setting, etc., but there are differences too. For a start, most movies you only see once, so the question of "replay value" is not important there. But with a game, you want to know if it's the kind of thing where you're going to play it again and again or whether you're just going to play it through once. That's important when you're paying £50/$60 for a title. But there's also the investment of time as well as money. You want to know if the amount of time you'll spend playing the game is going to be rewarded, or at least reasonably enjoyable. With a movie, if it's boring you can walk out. And even if you stay to the end it's only an hour and a half long. But if a game gets stodgy after twenty hours of play, it's harder to walk away from it.
Maybe games have some elements of albums. You want to know if the album you're buying is something you'll want to listen to repeatedly. You don't want to buy an album that you'll listen to once and then put on the shelf never to be played again.
I think that one of the problems of innovation in games is that new games can only really be described in terms of the games that have gone before. This is both a strength (new games can be easily explained) and a weakness (new concepts are difficult to get to grips with).

my stream of consciousness:

"Do game reviewers really understand innovation?"
Uh, do guardian writers really understand game reviewers?

any reviewers have criticised the combat, the repetition, a smattering of trial-and-error moments [...] if it were a movie, Mirror's Edge would be critically lauded by the specialist film press – it would be considered a forward-thinking masterpiece.
This is silly. If a film came out with wonderful, innovative parts, checkered with tired, poorly-finished half-thoughts of cliche garbage... I'm sure there'd be a similar reaction. Of course, there are a lot of different kinds of film critics with wildly varying tastes; game reviewers are pretty homogenous (the cause of this is debatable-- can games be objectively "good" or "bad" in a way that movies aren't, necessarily). Perhaps that should be the topic, not what he's talking about. Even within the "specialist film press" you have those who hate, say, Gus Van Sant, and those who hate him; they'd rate his films accordingly, where even rabid Hideo Kojima haters wouldn't dare put MGS4 under 8.0/10.0 because A) the internet is full of easily-mobilized idiots and B) the game engine itself is bloody good, pretty much objectively, in spite of the story stuff.

For example, no-one complains that, say, Pan's Labyrinth or Eraser Head lack the formal, easily recognisable narrative structure of a conventional movie
Again, miserable comparison. Mirror's Edge is being ciriticized for something it included, but implemented poorly, not something it failed to implement it.

Not much else to say, aside from the direct comparisons between film and games re: sequel are fucking STUPID because a gameplay experience is proven to gain quality with iteration; a story or directorial style or setting such as those in a film are not necessarily going to produce a better product (in fact, popular opinion seems to think that it's a bad thing, hence why jokes like "CITIZEN KANE 2: STILL KANIN'" are funny to some people).

All in all, an exercise in point-missing. Will read the reactions next.

xpost i am probably repeating some of snoball's comments

too many "it"s in there. oops.

The idea that film reviewers are more likely to trumpet an occasionally groundbreaking film in spite of its immense flaws is beyond ridiculous, and suggests a thorough lack of familiarity with film reviewers.

But also, Mirror's Edge really isn't all that groundbreaking. It's Prince of Persia in first person with a cool color scheme and an intuitive control layout. Basically it's just like Skate, another beautiful game with a good control layout that got mixed reviews because the game doesn't give you much to do, and because parts of it are broken or awkward.

That makes me want to play Mirror's Edge, because I LOVED skate.

I bet you didn't like it as much as I did! But Skate received a lot of 7.5's and similarly lackluster reviews, and there were no articles bemoaning that fact in the Guardian and accusing games journalists of being toadies or whatever.

The idea that film reviewers are more likely to trumpet an occasionally groundbreaking film in spite of its immense flaws is beyond ridiculous

Guardian guy mentions Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner as examples of innovation in movies that were accepted by critics - but he doesn't realise that this acceptance came much later. When they originally came out, both those movies were panned.