rhodanum | on reviews

Haven't played the game myself (and probably won't until it comes out on PC, since I don't own a PS4) but Death Stranding made me remember something that's always served me well, in fandom and otherwise:

Don't get hung-up on what reviewers say.

Some of the very first reviews I saw for the game were trashing it backwards and forwards (with one reviewer going so far as to imply that game-developers should never be given the creative freedom that Hideo Kojima currently enjoys). And yet, every person in my circle of friends and acquaintances who has gotten to play the game so far, has been more or less raving about different aspects that appealed to them.

There's a very good reason I keep insisting so firmly on the notion of the fundamental subjectivity of art and why I have no patience for certain Big Geek Media types and their obsession with labeling art 'objectively X / Y' ('objectively good' for what they enjoy and what appeals to them, 'objectively bad' for what they don't enjoy and doesn't appeal to them). Meanwhile, I'm sitting there, quietly scoffing and going "there's absolutely nothing objective about you labeling this as 'good' because the tone and the aesthetics happened to be on-point for you." When I say that something is 'good', I judge it so from the point of view of my own subjective perception and personal tastes, rather than any sort of universal litmus test that would never actually be 'universal'. Even when I'm unhappy with something, I also acknowledge that my own individual expectations are in play (for example, I don't expect others to be as critical of She-Ra's storytelling as I am, if 'building believably military operations and a believable military hierarchy' isn't a priority in their own suspension of disbelief).

Which brings me back to reviews and reviewers. My rule of thumb has always been to use reviews as a loose guideline at best and, particularly where video-game reviews are concerned, to focus on those highlighting actual technical issues with a game. I say this because I would have missed out on many things that I dearly loved upon watching or playing, if I had let reviewers' opinions about tone or story or characters influence my own decisions.

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I'm asking myself the same question. With games themselves being such an immensely subjective medium (one person's immensely satisfying mechanics can easily be someone else's "I'm going to rip my hair out!" moment) I've always looked at game-reviews with a lot of skepticism, outside of clear-cut "is the game stable / is the game buggy and what bugs are there / is the game a good PC port?" questions. It doesn't help that many sites have been so utterly inconsistent in awarding scores that they're now become utterly meaningless as any sort of metric (what does a 9 out of 10 even mean, when barely anything scores below 8 on a site?)

It's so easy to get weighed down in other people's ideas of what games should be, especially considering the loudest and most obnoxious voices often dictate the direction. Recently, I've been playing the new Pokemon game, and it's far from the best game ever, but it's such a relief to me after a year or so of "live service" titles, like, "oh, they still make games like this? wow."

I've gone back to a few old favorites -- mostly Morrowind and Planescape Torment. I look back very fondly on Morrowind in particular and recall that this was effectively the last Elder Scrolls game before they started to nickel-and-dime their userbase with small addons in Oblivion and then went into high-gear with Skyrim's Creation Club. By contrast, in Morrowind, only expansion-sized additions cost money and the team added a wealth of small creations (from enchanted arrows to allowing the PC to play an instrument in taverns and earn money that way) at no additional cost.

I was so convinced Creation Club could be a good thing the first time they announced it, and with each bit of info they released, the more my hopes sunk. I brought a few pieces for Fallout 4, but it was such a disappointment. I really want to re-play FF IX and XII on the Switch but they're absurdly priced right now - hopefully Baldur's Gate will be affordably though.

Ugh. This turned into a mini-Switch rant, sorry.

I had the same initial impression of the Creation Club. My hope was that the combination of skilled modders + Bethesda oversight + pay would result in if not expansion-sized mods then at least the sort of mods that the community can't reliably produce at a consistent rate (such as professionally-voiced companion characters, well-written quest mods, new gameplay systems, etc).

What we got instead was half-baked at best, downright insulting at worst. Even 'Survival Mode' one of the most feature-rich mods on the CC, is a poor man's copy of Frostall + Campfire (both free mods) in terms of what it offers and how it actually integrates with the game and other mods (can you tell that I've got a bone to pick with the CC? :p)

As for the Switch, I don't have the pleasure of owning it (like all Nintendo products, it's blisteringly expensive here and will drop in price very slowly) so I can't comment on the prices of the games. I can recommend FF IX and XII on PC, though, if you have one that can run them. Particularly XII, whose 'Zodiac Age' version launched on Steam around two years ago.

The Switch is still super expensive here, if that helps - I'm literally just using my brother's until I can afford to pick one up. sigh I adore XII so much, I'm sure I have a playable copy of it somewhere in my flat if I just made an effort, I'm just doing that horrible mid-21st century of being too lazy to go and find it.

I was so hoping CC would be quests and more possibilities for storytelling. When it was announced I was like, oh, that's awesome, that means they're committed to continuously updating this game, I can just keep playing forever, but, ah, well, that never happened...

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