Double Agent
Rating the ratings - November 17, 2000 - Chris Jones

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. There is a hole in your mind. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Once more, lots to do, not a lot of time to do it in, so minimal intro. However, there are some announcements with regard to the column below, so you should read that if nothing else.

Onward.

An appeal for the lowest common denominator to be well executed... no, wait, that's backwards...
Since David's letter brought up reviewing in general, it's time I got something off my chest. Some games deserve a perfect rating despite the fact that not everyone will like them. Vagrant Story is my favorite example of this. Vagrant Story has a near perfect translation, a more than healthy dose of innovation, very in-depth gameplay, and an excellent storyline. However, the gameplay is perhaps overly complex, and its pace is too slow for some people's comfort. As David put it in his letter, some people find the game "downright tedious."

Is this a flaw? The very things that make it tedious to some- the need spend much of one's playtime in the game's workshops experimenting and the methodical building of weapon power over many battles- are what some consider its greatest virtues. Were those aspects to be toned down, what made its gameplay great would be gone.

Of course, there's also an argument for a well executed appeal to the lowest common denominator, but that's another letter.

-Davon

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Like I've said in the FAQ, you should expect to get two things out of a review - the basic facts about the game, and their subjective interpretation of those facts. I'm not one of those people to whom a 5 (or 10, or four stars, or what have you) means absolute perfection, I'm just looking for something that significantly raises the bar on what we expect out of gaming. And by and large, I think just about all of the games we've rated as 5s have accomplished that... in my opinion.

Parlez vous francais? You damn well better.
Laughs or news, this is up to you -

In a rush to distribute Final Fantasy IX, the third party that has been inserting French Manuals into the canadian-bound copies made a mistake.

They forgot to include the *English* manual.

Despite this, all shipments were delayed by a day, resulting in courier deliveries late Thursday afternoon. English manuals are expected to arrive by courier for purchasers early next week.

I can't say for sure if this has occured outside of my city (Calgary), but its interesting nonetheless.

Richard "KZ" Knight

I'd seen one or two letters on this, but only today has word started circulating (at least to my ears) that the problem was widespread. Major bummer, my Canadian friends, but fortunately if this FF's like the last few the majority of the game mechanics are explained in-game anyway, so it shouldn't be a total loss. And hey, at least the game itself wasn't delayed.

D'oh! Missed one!
FF Tactics and Xenogears the only 5-level RPG's in '98? You forget, Jones-san, that Panzer Dragoon Saga (still the best RPG of all time) was also released that year.

While I'm throwing my two cents in, I don't think Xenogears was quite all that.

-Anson (I have opinions, but am not driven to back them up)

Ah, right, the legendary PDS. I surely wouldn't have forgotten about it had I ever been able to find it and play it, but alas, that's not the case, and I surely don't have the time to do so now even if I could find it. Still, point taken... although you're pushing it with that Xenogears thing.

Clash of the Titans

"Sakaguchi (FF creator) and Horii (DQ creator) talk about DQVII Famitsu: Mr. Sakaguchi, you are currently playing through Dragon Quest VII, right?

Sakaguchi: I was hoping to finish it by today, but I couldn't do it. (Laughs) It's a really long installment to the series.

That's from Gamer's.Com's translated Famitsu interview with the two grandfaters of RPGing. Turns out the FF creator is a DQ fan... Sorta. No mention of Yuji Horii playing FF9, but it's only part one of three. Check it out -- it's a good read.

As for my impressions of FF9 -- It's great. I haven't been able to stop playing it, except for those annoying college classess that keep getting in the way. All in all I love it -- the FMVs are still there, but they're in managable (ignorable) chunks and only happen during extremely important events -- they don't totally interrupt the game like in FF8. Cut Scenes are back in the form of Active Time Events which beat FMVs all out.

Everything reminds me of Pre-PSX FF games. Of course, since a lot of the FF fans in America started the series at 7 or 8 no one will recognize things like the opening beat to the fights, Moogles or Dragoons, but that's their loss. The "learn abilities" reminds me a LOT of Vandal Hearts however. Still, it's a good way to balance the party's abilities while still having the characters keep some sense of individuality -- no matter what you do, Dagger is going to be your cleric. No changing that by just changing a materia.

The only worry I have is that it will get credited for being innovative... Unlike FF8 it's fairly standard Final Fantasy fare (note: this is a good thing) but since the American mainstream isn't used to old school FFs... I donno. It'll sell well in the US -- that's a given -- but there's going to be a lot of people surprised, I think. Either plesantly so (like me) or "*Whine* this is too hard, lemme go to GameFAQs" so.

Viva la Vivi! Viva la #DQ!

Mark Cantrell
[KiTA]

...Yeah, this is the DQ fanatic saying FF9's good. Get over it. =) I liked FF8 the first two weeks as well, and we all know how THAT turned out. =/

Looks like a very cool review, but unfortunately I can't spare the time to read it at the moment. Thanks for the heads up, tho. Glad to hear you're enjoying FF9... it'd be a kick in the head if we've finally got a game that both DQ fans and FF fans can enjoy, but only time'll tell if that's the case.

Reviews reviewed, part 1
Chris,

David's letter yesterday finally helped me identify a rub I've had for a while. I've also have been a bit disenfranchised with GIA's review scores lately, but I couldn't lay a finger on what exactly displeased me.

The problem lies primarily with the five-point scale in use. Correct me if I'm mistaken here, but to me it implies 1-terrible, 2-poor, 3-OK, 4-good, 5-great. This doesn't provide a great deal of description, and lends itself to misuse fairly readily. When attempting to condense an entire game into a single five-degree score, it becomes extremely convenient to say "This game does have a few flaws, but they're dwarfed by its strengths," for a preferred title; likewise, "It had a couple cool features, but the effort as a whole was fruitless," becomes an easy cop-out for a disliked game.

The question at hand is whether a review's responsibility ends at reporting of a game's strengths and weaknesses, or if it extends to passing judgment on the quality of the finished production. The very name review suggests the answer to this question--the reviewer's obligation is not to judge the game, but to evaluate it.

Subtle distinction? Absolutely. Pointless hair-splitting? I believe not.

Overall scores are, overwhelmingly, highly unreliable indicators of whether an individual will enjoy a particular game. Why? Video games have dozens of attributes. Graphics, music & sound effects, difficulty, and so on ad infinitum. Each and every gamer measures the different categories differently. More important still, each individual weights them differently. I enjoyed 7th Saga quite a bit when I first played it. I can't stand it now. What happened?

Well, it came out back when domestic RPG's were few and far between, so my standards were much softer then. Second, despite its thin story, which I cared much less about then than now, it had solid gameplay, which was critically important then but can be taken more for granted today. The seven year transition from then to now resulted in different measurements, and in shuffled priorities for those measurements. The same can be said of the transition from quasi-professional reviewer to Joe Gameplayer.

The problem with overall scores is that they typically represent, rather than the cake that comes from baking a game's ingredients together, a static snapshot of how much the reviewer enjoyed the game. Let's go back to 7th Saga for a moment--most reviewers would assuredly give it a 1 on GIA's scale. By my old standards, however, it would have warranted a solid 3. If individual scores are given on a game's characteristics, the overall score becomes unnecessary and the entire review much more accuratively depictive of the game on the table. Some might say that GIA's primary focus on news and media relegates its reviews to a secondary role--but if something remains important enough to do in the first place, it should remain important enough to do well, or at least better than now.

--Bill Johnson

Good letter, Bill, and it's certainly a valid way of looking at reviews. This is a man who puts his money where his mouth is: Bill's the one-time editor of TotalRPG, and their excellent reviews run very close to what he's outlined above.

But as valid a viewpoint as it may be, it's not one that I particularly agree with. For me, opinions in reviews tend to be seen in much the same way that engineers see error signals in systems they design. In both cases something other than the desired output is creeping into the system, and in both cases there are two basic options: remove the opinion/error entirely, which isn't generally possible, or accept it and find ways to deal with it, and if you're really smart, incorporate it into your system.

The fact is, no one can ever be truly objective about a game, although they might come pretty close in some cases. Hopefully the people writing the reviews enjoy playing games in general, which means that they'll get caught up in the excitement, or the hype, or the general disappointment that might be surrounding a game. We could always opt to have non-gamers review games, but in that case the cure would be worse than the disease. The people playing games will always harbor their own thoughts and feelings in a game, and there's basically no getting around it.

What the readers of reviews can and should do is balance their sources - read many reviews, from multiple sites, to get an impression of what people on average feel about a game, and keep in mind how specific reviewers match up with their own tastes. Those of you who have been reading this column for a while should know by now what types of games I do and don't tend to favor, so if I were to hail a game as being the next Vagrant Story hopefully some of you would stand up and take note, whereas if I attack a game as being as archaic as the DQ series, others would just (perhaps correctly) blow my opinion off. Just remember that you can't plot a curve from a single data point, and by and large you'll be ok.

Reviews reviewed, part 2
Mr. Jones:

I'm not one to buy games based on reviews. A review is an opinion that's supposedly more sophisticated than that of the average person. While Siskel (spell check?) and Ebert are renowned movie critics, they're still just people that have seen a damn large amount of movies. Just so happens that they have other movies to compare the new ones to and have an opinion that's well established.

I could've given many games a five that didn't get that high of a score, simply because the game floated my boat. What matters is why the game gets that high of a score. If the GIA's reviews are well-written and explain the grade the game received, I think we could easily look past a five when another gamer thinks it needed a four. Whoever is reading the review knows what they enjoy; if the review says it has a good plot but lacks battle tactics, the reader should take that into consideration. It's a far better idea to read what follows the grade and base a decision upon that.

Furthermore, I disagree with about every review I read. Just so happens that I'm a teenager, and most critics aren't. The critics and myself have largely differing opinions to the point that I assume in some cases if the movie gets a bad grade and it's directed at teenagers, I'll enjoy it. Most movie critics who're adults have no idea what teenagers think is humorous. Are all those reviews wrong then? Nope, they're just another look at the movie. Same applies to games, I thought Chrono Cross and Vagrant Story were both amazing and I'd have given them five's myself. I haven't played Zelda: MM, or OB 64, and am currently playing FF IX, so no comment there.

However, I don't want people to think I'm disagreeing with Mr. David. I, as well, would suggest going to a ten point rating system simply because it gives more room for consideration. Moreover I suggest grades based upon categories such as plot, battle system, interface, music, etc. That more than anything would give the reader a chance to analyze what they might enjoy about the game.

Call me Krelyk, over the word limit once again.

The most common comment we got regarding the review process was that a 10 point scale needed to be introduced, and although you can consider the point noted, I doubt you'll be seeing it anytime soon. Many psychological studies have shown that a scale of 5 is what most people feel comfortable with, and agree or disagree, I think there's a good amount of merit to the statement. The differences between a 3, 4, or 5 ranking are easily grasped by the mind, whereas an 8.9 teeters on the brink of must-buy and maybe-buy. Famitsu may grade on a 40 point scale, but mostly that just seems to breed argument in the gaming community: this got a 34, but that other title scored three more points! Wow! When you see a single number out of a 5 point scale you know exactly what needs to be known about it... as long as you keep in mind that it's the reviewer's opinion, and not holy writ handed down from up high.

Other than that, you pretty much nailed my views on the subject of reviews. Good job.

There's always room for obscure trivia
Dear Letter guy (Chris??)-

This question has been bothering me for some time now- What were the ABSOLUTELY LAST games relesed for these systems: NES, SNES, SEGA? I just can't think of it!! And it would be really neat to know..

-Queen Godzilla, who wonders what Harle's hair-color is.

Hmm... that is an interesting question, but not one I have time to look up at the moment. I can tell you this much - by some standards, all of the above are still viable platforms. Nintendo released the latest game in the Fire Emblem series in Japan just last year on the SNES, and it's always possible that someone else will come along with another serious commercial release for the system. Meanwhile there are those who toil on homemade NES and SNES roms in a legal gray area, but as long as there are people out there with the technical know-how to build a new game for an old system, I don't know that you can ever say that any particular game is "the last".

At any rate, I hope that covered up my own ignorance well enough for you folks to focus more on the question than on my lack of knowledge - I'm sure you'll now flood the weekend columns with the correct answers to the above questions. Go to it.

Closing Comments:

Ok, one minor piece of news, and two major ones. Let's get the minor out of the way first: I won't be doing the column next week. I'll be away from my net connection, I've got to spend some serious quality time with my family, and every spare moment I have beyond that has to be dedicated to writing some term papers. Fortunately Nich and Ed have agreed to guest host for me, so you should still have something to read in the meantime. And I'll be back on the 27th, so no worries there.

Now for the big news, part 1: Andrew Kaufmann has decided to retire from doing the weekend column. I don't know the reasons why, but I know we all wish him the best of luck in the future. AK pretty much founded the Internet gaming letters column, and his work will surely be missed... but I'm also hoping that we haven't seen the last of him, so let's not get too maudlin.

The second big news is his replacement... a gentleman I'm sure you'll all recognize, a man whose legendary skills are enshrined forever in our hearts and minds, an individual whose sarcastic wit is matched only by his dangerously enlarged heart... the one, the only, Mr. Drew Cosner! Yep, that's right, ol' Drew is now our new weekend guy, so send him some mail to welcome him back into the fold. One way or another, you're in good hands, so I won't worry too much. Until I return, here's hoping those of you who celebrate it have a happy Thanksgiving, and that everybody enjoys FF9 and Skies of Arcadia. See you when I get back.

-Chris Jones, gone for 9 days

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