On EDGE’s K2 Review…

Don’t know if you’ve taken notice of the eruption of arguments across gaming forums in the last few days, but EDGE magazine’s recent review of Guerilla Game’s Killzone 2 ranks very high on top of those threads. For purely informational purposes, the link to the review is here.

Done reading? OK, let’s get on with it:

The dispute, contrary to popular belief, is not because EDGE simply gave an “against the grain” score of 7 out of 10 (amid a sea of upper 9’s, mind you), but rather because the reviewer utterly failed to justify their reasoning behind it. For all intents and purposes, it seems EDGE had given the “lower” score in order to intentionally separate itself from the pack just to seem “cool” or “better” than everyone out there. Not that there is ANYTHING wrong with dissenting opinions, but when there is a clear lack of evidence to back up those opinions, than it must be questioned. 

Sharing my beliefs is the folks over at PSXExtreme, which, while mainly a Playstation-centric site, make some very valid points in Ben’s article here. Since I’ve already ranted over in the comments section over there, I thought I’d repaste my thoughts here in this post:

“Jesus christ here, people… how many times do Ben and others here need to repeat it for you? Forget any of that fanboy non-sense, either 360/PS3/Wii/Dreamcast/Genesis, what have you, and realize from the get go that Edge’s review is a poorly worded article filled with ambiguities masked in poetical jibber jabber. Please just TRY to defend that review after reading it… I think you’ll find it quite the challenge.

The writer basically eschews clarity for, it seems, the sake of sensationalistic headlines. Aside from citing a “weak” plot point and the game’s lack of innovation – which is a whole ‘nother point of contention entirely – the reviewer fails to give any other concrete evidence for their 7/10 score. Ben is calling him (and others like it) out on the validity of their journalistic integrity: as others have already said, there is a FINE line between fact and opinion when it comes to game reviews, and this review has simply chosen to cloud their review with more opinion than fact. God forbid that a review actually INFORMS readers on the merits of whether a game should be purchased or not…

We’re not denying his opinion, no; opinion does indeed play a role in reviews no matter what anyone says. The problem comes when that opinion practically overwhelms the FACTUAL evidence needed to give consumers proper information… for instance, while I may not enjoy Halo 3 as much as many other people do, I still can RESPECT its technical achievement and contribution to the industry at large. Opinion should have little effect on an overall score for a game, which should be judged by its technical merits and not what the reviewer just happens to think off the top of his head. In this regard, Edge has failed spectacularly…”

Hopefully you see that the problem has nothing to do with having a different opinion, but rather using that opinion to try and wrongly persuade others to your reasoning, without much evidence to back it up. The job of a reviewer is to properly inform readers about the technical merits of a product, and while subjectivity does indeed play a role in this process, it should not be an overwhelming factor in deciding a “score” – see why I write scoreless reviews now? ; )

It’s important to be able to distinguish between opinion and fact in video game reviews, and to avoid such cases as EDGE has done here in trying to pass the former for the latter. The industry is growing at an exponential amount these days, but it’s disappointing to see that gaming journalism itself must witness enormous setbacks detrimental to its survival.