A Quick News Post and Opinion Piece.

There’s two things that’s been annoying me recently:

1.Here’s a news post that really got to me.

It’s an article indicating that the Wii Animal Crossing: City Folk was a game that caters to only two kinds of consumers: Kids, and pedophiles. They basically state that, because of the graphics and the gameplay, that adults have no business playing it, and that it’s a ‘hotbed’ of pedophile activity. There’s two problems with this. First, here’s the ad Nintendo was running:

Did you notice the two ADULT women playing it? I sure did. Are they pedophiles? Maybe, but it didn’t look like it. Nintendo knows that it’s a casual game, and therefore attracts all kinds of people. The second problem is that, with Friend Codes, a pedophile can’t talk to random children using Animal Crossing. They would have to already have exchanged codes from somewhere else, and even then they can be blocked. This was the whole purpose of Friend Codes, preventing that exact kind of behavior. So the entire argument just fails under any form of scrutiny. Another example of the lack of research we see in many video game detractors.

2. Am I the only one that is frustrated at the quality of reviews that we see on big named websites lately? Some websites like Gamespot only give us about 10 reviews a week on average, while IGN gives us tons of reviews, but many of which are lacking in quality. I’m going to use two examples of reviews that, to me, bring to the forefront some of the biggest problems we see today: MadWorld and Rune Factory: Frontier, both reviews provided by IGN.

With MadWorld, we see a review that focuses on the game style and gameplay, which is perfectly fine. The problem is that, when you play the game and break it down and compare to what you see in the review, some discrepancies immediately arise. First, they talk about the variety of the environmental kills, but in the game, they function and look mostly the same. In one level, you’ll see large, rolling medieval drums rolling made of barrels that you can throw enemies into to crush them. In a different level, you’ll see slot machine wheels that function identically. Spikes are everywhere for you to use, and end up being the prefered method of killing for convenience. There’s a train in one level, and an anti gravity beam… thing you’ll encounter, but they’re just not that interesting. And they say the game is 6 hours, but my save file says 3 hours. That’s a huge problem, especially since you’ll see everything the game has to offer in those 3 hours. In fact, you’ll see it over and over in those 3 hours.

Keep in mind, I haven’t played Rune Factory: Frontier for the Wii, but I’ve played the DS games and I have a very basic idea of what the game is: Farming and action RPG, together at last. Now, I liked Harvest Moon, because I have peculiar tastes in games, and I have a lot of questions, naturally. However, the review, a two page document, answers as few as possible. Has the farming changed at all? Were there improvments to it? More importantly, how is the combat? Does it just involve me walking around and pressing the attack button? Do you have multiple attack buttons? What are the controls like? I’ve read the entire review, and they deem them to be ‘good’. I need to know more if I want to spend $50 on this game. I need real details.

I think we need to demand better quality reviews from these sites. If we’re to trust them with our $50 or $60, then we need more from them.