I mean it's DocSeuss, a person who has a reputation for particular bias and the promotion of certain related falsehoods, but I'd rather not get into all that.
What I'd say about his writing and this article is that it is too often riddled with vague descriptions and contradictory analysis or assessment, presumably in order for him to justify a confirmation bias inclined narrative, or make himself feel better (or more superior) about having such outlier taste. And I don't mean bias specifically against Sony games, but often times critically acclaimed (key words critically acclaimed) titles in general, more so ones that aren't exclusive to Microsoft.
Ordinarily I wouldn't ponder on someone who was consistent in their dislike for big AAA or cinematic games, the issue is Doc isn't consistent on that front.
At all. In fact he's often contradictory.
He does also clearly have some sort of a particular hang up against Sony, evident in his laughable aside rant in the article against the PS3 and its level of power, the snipe to Sony's artistic integrity relating to the unrelated Emoji movie, what seems like recurring resentment towards Sony exclusives critical acclaim and/or successful marketing, and his past articles and ramblings even going so far as to calling the PS4 a "
basic bitch console" lol.
- Gears and Halo are Prestige titles.
The most obvious contradiction in the article however is the fact that Gears and Halo, which naturally he loves, are both clearly "
prestige games". They are expensive blockbuster heavily marketed cinematic narrative heavy games.
Hell, Gears is arguably more Michael Bay esque (eg dumb, military glorifying, action focused testesterone fests) than Uncharted, a comparison he loves to levy towards Uncharted no doubt to demean the latter and presumably its fans and audience, missing the irony altogether, which is that the 4-5 games he has listed in his ultimate S class tier of games (all Halo's and Gears), all fit the Michael Bay comparison just as, if not
more apltly.
- Incoherent summaries and irony.
He also states, and I quote; "
It's hard to define a prestige game, but I guess what I'd say is that a prestige game, like Red Dead Redemption or The Last of Us or Uncharted 2 or Max Payne 3, is a soulless game, one that just seems to go through the motions, imitating other, better games and pretending it can hang with the best of them."
Let's ignore the fact that this entire paragraph is laughably vague, and that "
soulless" is one of the laziest, most useless and poor ways to summarise or critique a game, since it is literally unquantifiable, and let's look instead at the point he's stated regarding these games imitating other better games.
An irony here is that the Gears 5 developers (a game that he loves) are literally on record as having taken major influence from God of War, and there's clearly influence from Uncharted 4 too. The open ended Skiff segments are also very remniscant of the Madagascar and Island vehicle segments from UC4, an otherwise linear game like Gears used to strictly be, and now they've added in RPG light and stealth light too, and I'd argue even more exposition and narrative/character emphasis as well, including sad dad elements that he loves to decry.
In other words, the game he loves has taken cues from the very critically acclaimed games he dislikes or often criticises (games the devs themselves heap praise towards), something he's ironically lambasting these other games for doing lol.
- What makes a good narrative, and double standards.
But I think this speaks to the double standard and approach differences I find Doc often has when it comes to critiquing certain critically acclaimed games, almost as if he'll play some titles knowing how positively they've been recieved, and then try to purposely find ways to discredit their achievements, something he won't necessarily do to the same critical extent for other titles.
For example, we know TLOU was widely lauded for its narrative, and it just so happens that he's being especially nitpicky and critical of TLOU's narrative elements.
Forget that the quality of a narrative isn't actually just about the story or whether it's innovative (if it were, The Godfather and countless other amazing cinematic and literary works would be considered derivative and unworthy of acclaim), rather that the execution, characters, relationships, quality of dialogue, writing, emotional impact, way scenes play out etc are equally if not far more important.
His reductive summary of why UC2's story is bad, sort of highlights how skewed his understanding of narrative actually can be. Forgot all the interesting dialogue, characters, events etc that unfold in UC2, for him it can simply be reduced down to "
the bad guy just wanted power!". As if that couldn't be assigned to the overwhelming majority of similar media, including the very games he loves.
And look to his complaints about TLOU, which are that its story is too predictable or unoriginal, that he can tell when a certain part of the map is going to feature a gunfight, and which characters are likely to die, and then notice how none of these issues or complaints are levied at the Microsoft titles, or specifically Gears 5, which he and I both love, but that literally has all these same exact issues.
Eg, it has a largely unoriginal and predictable story that heavily borrows from other ideas, it has levels that are littered with ammo etc signalling combat will take place there in a much more obvious way than even TLOU, and it has characters that are arguably even more predictable and/or bland, or less well written, but for reasons unknown, with Gears and Halo, these aren't similarly noteworthy complaints. There's a double standard, and it isn't even like Gears 5 isn't trying to be as serious or focused with its story or characters.
Likewise, God of War was lauded for many things (predominantly its gameplay and narrative), one of them being its one take camera and how effectively it was implemented, and he's seemingly committed to looking for ways to discredit that too. I remember him stating HL2 did it years ago, but when I highlighted how HL2 clearly had loading pauses throughout the game, something God of War doesn't have, he didn't appear to care. That didn't fit into his favoured narrative that this feature was holy unoriginal and/or unworthy of its praise, and that people only cared for it because they were brainwashed to.
And how about God of Wars innovative and satisfying axe and all its related fundamental gameplay elements that have been widely acclaimed? His feigned praise concluded by referring to it as just a "
gimmick" lol.
- Vague and inconsistent notions of what constites as good gameplay or design.
Which brings me on to the confusing and often contradictory stance on what to him even qualifies as great, diverse, shallow or mediocre gameplay (especially amusing when games like Crackdown 3 are the ones getting praised).
He's commended Gears for having diverse gameplay and combat engagement design compared to say Uncharted, because you can on occasion shoot things down for pseudo cover, or because you have a chainsaw (rather weak examples to justify such praise, but that's besides the point). But here's the thing, whilst Gears features satisfying shooting, it still plays as a predominantly typical stop, pop and shoot cover shooter. A gallery shooter so to speak.
Newer Uncharted titles conversely feature much more expansive and layered arena designs, with far more verticality, approach options, obscure cover and pathways, not to mention much more emphasis on dynamic mobility (climbing, shimmying, jumping, swinging etc) along with stealth and contextual melee etc too.
The arenas in the Uncharted games (bar UC1, which he ironically enjoyed more) are essentially more of a sandbox in which greater player freedom is afforded, predominantly due to the increased traversal and mobility options. Why does none of that constitute as diversity or competency in engagement or combat design?
If you want an idea of how these titles diversify or expand their combat arenas or design, simply compare the train level from UC2 to the train level in Gears, or just about any other shooter.
In any case, I could go on and on, but the article ultimately speaks for itself, and based on many of the responses, I think many agree that this is a rather poorly written and articulated piece, and on a more personal takeaway, also Doc's questionable and ultimately outlier or bad taste, and often perplexing, one sided or contradictory understanding and/or critique of game design.
Going through and really disagree.
Nearly every story at this point is derived or inspired by elsewhere by now. This isn't just strictly games but nearly every medium out there. There's complete over saturation that at some point, the plot will hit the same story beats found elsewhere but at a slight different concept. What makes the stories now is purely execution. Predicting the outcome does not make it a poor story, It's whether the game is able to sell the moments in which it was earned and it's a huge reason why I think spoiler culture is terrible in that people put way too much emphasis on not being spoiled on the large plot points rather than focus on the smaller moments in general and how well everything is put together.
So now the article goes on to this particular part with whether moments are earned or not with
But it doesn't even explain how it fails to do this in anyway just being a surface level comment which happens frequently throughout. What parts did the story copy from another medium and why did it work in the previously in which the developers failed this time around and how it could have been done instead. Article does none of this with just cheap shots at the particular games without explaining further.
The whole Jock/Nerd talk that follows straight after seriously reads like a persecution complex and hypocrisy. In making one huge assumption that people haven't explored every other game, film or TV show enough for that matter.
Playstation itself was a system that lent itself huge amount of audiences of both varieties that labeling a few stylized games does not mean it was centered around kids. It's one of the reasons why it was such a popular system at the time. The best selling games on PS1 included Gran Turismo, Tomb Raider, Tekken, MGS. PS1 also had other games like Syphon Filter, Twisted Metal, Silent Hill, Resident Evil etc. PS2 went even more heavy in this regard. It's the point that Playstation themselves didn't suddenly out of nowhere wanted to attract an audience that was interested in realistic games when they already had a system that already did that and was expanding in this part for a long while. I mean, really, Best PS2 selling games include GTA, MGS, Tekken God of War etc. That's what defined the system so PS3 was a natural progression of PS2 focusing on more realistic games when that is what was drawing people to their system.
I'm just quoting this particular segment but it's a discussion of Uncharted series in which UC2 is described as a mistake. Very telling that UC1 is clearly the weakest of the series as a whole in which that the encounter designs are generally way to repetitive, there's not enough good pacing and unique local and settings to keep player interest going. In that regard, UC2 wasn't a mistake when it heavily radically improved on the original in huge way. Encounters drastically improved, set pieces were much more interesting to react. Camera Control or even slight restriction does not mean total control is taken away from a game. It's a massive fallacy people have when it comes to video games. Plenty of games out there ranging from different genres have different fixed perspectives and fixed perspectives have their own uses whether it's for gameplay or story. UC get's criticized for this a lot but there are plenty of these moments which at least gives players control particular during setpieces which a lot of games do as a quick time event or cutscene. There's a noticeable progression with each game where Naughty Dog themselves have strive towards in giving players more control during any form of action sequences. I watched a GDC talk from ND about 1-2 months ago which was talking specifically about Lost Legacy in regards to the Elephant ride which happens. They go to great lengths to designing such a level and explore various different levels of controls to give to the player and it's a balancing act between believability, design and story. You may wish to the game to feel "gamey and retain control over everything at all time which is something developers clearly explore but not everyone feels the same way and appreciates carefully thought out moments and would take slight restriction over a particular moment if it meant overall better experience. Like, even if you weren't particularly restricted, how would those moments be enhanced with the control except take the players views away from the particular moment of what is happening? It just doesn't make sense in the same reason why even the best games described still have cut-scenes which take complete control away because it requires players to be fixated on a particular moment and point in time.
I'm not even going to discuss further about the story except it's clearly a pulpy action adventure type game that clearly doesn't take itself seriously in the same way that Indiana Jones has the most ridiculous premises which was clearly the inspiration and that's even more grounded and takes itself even more seriously in a lot of ways and that goes for a massive amounts of action films which have insane scenarios and people have to use the suspension of disbelief otherwise you would never get through any of them. Not sure that's a dock against it being a good action game.
Most of the developers who initially made these games likely never knew they would eventually went on to make critically acclaimed games because there's no set definition of what a prestige game is and the article itself can't even explain this either. Author forcing their own subjective views of the quality of the games and then trying to assume that that's the kind of view the company has at large is the worst kind of premise or take one can have.
And then there's this kind of garbage comment.
I mean really?
Studio accusations of sexual harassment and assault and crunch are terrible, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the premise of the article itself more than it is about making cheap negative points to add on to and it's disgusting the way actual working condition problems are framed in this particular way.
Just reading through the rest of the article itself is just so damn stupid. In fact, the praise in Gears 5 in the article is fucking weird in relation to the story given how predictable the plot beats are that it beats the players over the head for 8 hours that it criticizes other games for.
Just other quotes I'm picking out on
Gears has one of the most satisfying TPS mechanics but it's not the only game with subtle mechanics and details and neither is it perfect either (I'd say melee could use more work). There's a huge amount of details that goes into the the gameplay mechanics that players likely aren't even aware of until it's mentioned that makes up the experience people take for granted example, Particular games where you use melee hit after certain health fluidly transitions using animation if hitting the right button after which sets up execution head shot kills which makes for satisfying game-play which does two things, gives players close shot of the enemy face and the feedback while also knowing 100% kill happens. There's plenty of others which make up for the experience.
I'm not even sure how this could even be claimed.
However, this quote is probably my most despised word I've come across plenty of times.
About the most worthless kind of critique one can make of a game. I'm not even sure how anyone can even agree with much of the points of what was said in it.
Yeah. Goes to great lengths to accuse others of doing this and then goes around and doing the exact same thing spending so much time trying to convince why one set of games is awful while the other is great.
Great post. Agree with a lot of what is said here.
