Critics with Double Standards or are Games Evolving?

Strictly just out of curiosity, I wanted to see how bad the GI Joe game is. I started to read an IGN review by Hillary Goldstein and something he said caught my attention.

“Destroying the same enemies, conquering the same obstacles and running through the similar levels gets old. G.I. Joe is a lengthy game and will probably take about eight hours for most people to finish. But I wish it was half that length, because it gets bogged down by its repetitive structure.”

Is he calling an eight hour single player game “lengthy? Ok, with simple math an eight hour game at half the length would be four hours. (Now that we have the subtraction out of the way) About this time two years ago every critic was complaining about the short length of Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Of the many that made the complaint, lets point out one. Hillary Goldstein at IGN, here is what he said back then.

“Rounding out COD4's very short list of complaints is the campaign length. On Regular difficulty, you can probably beat COD4 in 5-6 hours. As you move up towards Veteran (which really separates the men from the Marines), the completion time can get closer to 8-9 hours. Still, it's a very brief experience. At least it's a great one.”

So 8 hours in 2009 in too much, but 8-9 in 2007 was too short?

Infinity Ward had a strong stance on the length of Modern Warfare. They did not want an epic story to be watered down by filler. Why ruin the flow of a great story to give the critics one less thing to complain about? Where the single player campaign has "fallen short" for the critics, the multiplayer has made it up to the gamers ten fold.

All of that raises the two questions in which this article is titled. Have developers changed there strategy? Have they started producing shorter games, giving you a better experience? Or is it the fact that critics can’t let a game be just a game, and need something to complain about?

I think it is a little of both.

With the aspect of the games, when you are playing a single player campaign you want it to play out like a good book. For instance in Modern Warfare, you never knew what was behind the next corner as in a book when you don't know what's on the next page. And that is what gets you hooked. Unlike other hits that came on the scene at about the same time, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry 2. After playing them for about an two hours you have figured out how the rest of the book is going to play out. Now you can either trade it in or play it just as a means to an end. Left 4 Dead gives you a slightly different story every time you play, but after a while you know the out line and the slightness just fades away.

Developers that take pride in there work don't put filler in just to please somebody. They now give you an intense experience from start to finish. Bravo IW for bucking the system and creating a gaming revolution.

Now to the critics. It seems to be that everyone of you put out your own little blurb about a game and then give it a number scale based to some typical categories. Visuals, Sounds, Gameplay, Controls, I could go on but we know the standard structure to game reviews. Who cares about frame rate, the resolution, which console was better suited for the game? The structure of game reviews as we know it doesn't help. They are written to impress the peers in the industry, the developers, designers among others.

But do these reviews really count? I don't see that they do. Gaming production is based on sales, to make sales you need to touch the masses that will purchase these games. The experience the game gives the player is what makes or breaks it's sales. Reviewers should be telling us about the gaming experience that a given game creates. Some games may not be the best looking but still provide you with an experience that is promised by the developer. As an example, Left 4 Dead has it's glitchy times, and isn't the most stunning game I've played. But it delivers. It gives you an experience that plants you in your seat with sweaty palms, taking a sigh of relief when you finally get rescued.

I am going to take the time to review games at my new standards. I'm going to go back and review these games I've played and spill my experience. Not tell you how the frame rate was.

[Edited for sexual correctness -jn]