In the gaming community there’s a myth that permeates the mind of almost every person to pick up a controller. Something every hardcore gamer yearns for yet, unless they do it, they don’t understand. The myth that being a video game reviewer is the best thing that could happen to a man apart from a supermodel 6-way naked action mega festival. I am here, once and for all, to put this myth to rest. In reality the art (if you really wanted to call it that) of game reviewing is a funny one. An Average Joe with a half decent ability to put words from his head into a legible piece of work on the internet gives his opinion on whether or not a game is either amazeballs or total balls (big difference). That’s it, that’s all. Seems simple right?
Well, in theory this would be true. We get the game, we play the game, we write about the game. As factual as that is there’s so much more to it than that. We need to develop other skills and sometimes those skills are hard to learn. For example, when an uber-fanboy rips you a new one and threatens to ‘teabag your mom’ you need to learn to develop a thick skin, also you need to trust that chances are that if he teabagged your Mom he’d certainly regret it (seriously, you guys haven’t seen my Mom). You have to learn how to spend countless hours playing the biggest piece of garbage to ever grace your TV screen for hours on end. My fancy 60” HDTV deserves so much better than Double Dragon II: Wander of the Dragons, a game so horrible that I spent the next week crying myself to sleep every night. Why, why, why would anyone release this to the public? I’d rather have a 400lb inmate give me a Cleveland Steamer (if you don’t know it google it, this is a family site… kinda) than ever play that thing again. Ok, well that may be a bit much but you get my meaning.
Anyone who writes editorials in this industry, and especially reviews, will invariably tell you that despite having a forum with which to broadcast our work they still amount to not much more than an opinion. A news post is fact, go ahead and scream. A review on the other hand is one person’s attempt to objectively tell other people why the material being covered is great, good, bad, or horrible. A review is not gospel but a guideline yet nine times out of ten you wouldn’t know it if you read the comments section. As a side note a good reviewer should know better than to ever read the comments because it’s a very rare occasion when anything good can come from that. Grade school shit slinging all because this one person has an opinion that might not line up 100% with your own. Lesson 1: Don’t take it personal nerds, if you don’t like Subject A’s review take a look at Subject B’s work. Christ knows there’s no shortage of us on the internet. MOVE ON and please avoid making lewd comments about my genitalia.
Another point to make is how frustrating it is when we hear the ‘they’re paid to say that’ line. Are you kidding me? In the entire time I’ve ever been reviewing not once have I received any payola for a favourable review. Not only that I can say without a shadow of a doubt that never, EVER will I sacrifice my integrity as a writer for the sake of making a publisher happy or extra hits on my website. If we’re counted on to do our best to be objective then that’s exactly what we’ll do. I don’t care if my swag bag included a totally badass toy made for a 3 year old I STILL WON’T DO IT. I’d bet dollars to donuts that nearly every other writer in this industry would say the same. Lesson 2: Payoffs are a myth; otherwise I’d be rich and not just barely getting by in a townhouse with a view of the local dump.
For anyone who thinks that reviewing is all sunshine and unicorn farts I can say without a doubt that it can be some of the most painful time in front of a screen ever. For every amazing game review there’s a half dozen three coil steamers to get through first. When I look back over what I’ve done I can count great titles on my own two hands and would need a small village of hands to count the crap. While a lot of us collect paychecks to do this as a job (I’m not one of them) a few of us do this for the love of the industry (oh hey, here’s where I fit in) and we want you to realize one thing; We played the shit out of that game that ranks a 15 on Metacritic for 20 hours so YOU DON’T HAVE TO. You’re welcome, don’t mention it. Just think about that the next time you tell me that I gargle men’s privates for a living mkay? Lesson 3: This job is many things but glamorous is not one of them. In fact most of my reviewing is done on my couch, in my underpants with a shameful amount of Cheeto dust on my hands. HOW’S THAT FOR GLAMOUR BITCHES?
Of course it’s not all bad. There are times that we get to review something that we truly want to play and would have gladly shelled out hard earned dollars for the privilege to do so. In all honesty, despite being in the position of being a reviewer/journalist, I still pay for most of the games I want to play. Regardless, on occasion we all get to review something we loved and that’s when it’s the most enjoyable to tell others about it. Even better is when someone reads it and then leaves a comment (not that I read them…) that simply states ‘Great review, you made me go get this game and I love it. Keep up the good work’. That is when the job is rewarding and for every one of those I get I slowly shed the shackles of the hundred or so other dick jokes I had to suffer through first. Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of reviewers out there who forgot why they started playing games in the first place, to have fun. They tend to grade at the point of being over-critical but I wouldn’t say that’s indicative of the majority. At any rate maybe those guys deserve the dick jokes more than the rest of us.
I’m not sure if I had much of a point when I started this but I can say now my simple point is this; A game review is simply an opinion and it’s perfectly OK if it’s different from yours. Find some reviewers that you tend to match up with and your game buying experience will likely be much better. Different strokes for different folks and all that right? You might never 100% agree with what a reviewer has to say but I implore you, for the sake of humanity and all that it holds dear, please stop making nasty comments about my Mom and how many balls she can juggle with her tongue. It’s giving me a damn mental complex.