finally, Ubisoft seems to be making a move that implies they actually want to advance one of their AAA franchises. this title is indeed the perfect setting for Far Cry and I'm genuinely excited. we're watching you Ubi, donts screw this up.
glad to see you guys talking about this candidly. your review process seems professional in that it is so thorough and has gone through constant revision over the years. I don't think the score of one game should be held up against all former games as many frequenters of gamespot seem to make a habit of. a game review ought to be an isolated entity. what is important is that the game fulfills the aspirations it sets up for itself. how well do facets of a given game (like gameplay mechanics, art/design, interface, sound, etc.) lend themselves to the overarching goal or theme of that game?
@golfpanther I agree with your point that developing a methodology for critiquing games is troublesome. HoweverI think there is a solution.
As an artist, I've often run into this problem while critiquing the work of my peers. How can one make an objective assessment of artwork when the nature of art itself is so subjective? There are myriad mediums to work with- two dimensional, three dimensional, installation, photography, digital video, film, and any combination thereof. When you critique the quality of artwork, you cannot EVER make a judgement of 'good work' or 'bad work' by comparing it to another piece. Yet this is what I see every time I read comments about reviews for games like Destiny ("this other game got an 8 and it was worse, so Destiny deserves a 9").
So how do artists gauge the quality of artwork? There is a methodology, believe me. The premise of artwork critique resides in the assumption that every work of art is a game playing by its own rules. If an artist has done his or her job, they will have established clear visual, auditory, tactile, contextual, or emotional cues that describe these 'rules' and said artist will have adhered to them as they created the piece. The more you break your own rules, the more messy the work becomes, and the shittier it gets. Its just a matter of good craftsmanship.
The same can be said about games. An example of this methodology applied to video games would be the narrative in Far Cry 3, where themes of insanity, allusions to Alice in Wonderland, and hallucinogenic first-person effects all seem to be reaching a crescendo at the end of Part 1. It all seems to be leading you to some realization. But as soon as the player reaches the next island, the entire Alice in Wonderland motif drops away without any explanation. The incongruity is shocking between the first islands atmospheric setting and the second islands sparse landscape and its equally barren accompanying narrative. The lack of thematic catharsis between Parts 1 and 2 of Far Cry 3 is evidence of poor craftsmanship.
whats ridiculous is the amount of back-patting thats going on in this comments thread. every time somebody makes a politically correct argument in a public forum, all the onlookers have to pipe in with the SAME IDEAS and reaffirm that they too, are politically correct, and they too, are compassionate, nice people who the community should think highly of. Its like watching a landslide.
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