Articles

Games
Radar, a site owned by parent company Future
plc, is yet another in a long line of internet game sites that
imagine themselves as cutting-edge because a) they said so and b)
they post controversial articles designed to get a rise.

The Future plc portfolio
is comprised of over 100 magazines and 70 websites such as PC Gamer,
Nintendo Power and Official X-box Magazine. Games Radar culls their
reviews from their various sister sites and magazines. Their editorials
and articles appear to be unique to the site.

During the week of July
21st – 25th, Games Radar featured a ‘Mediocre’ week
for – among other gaming interests – box art, lame clichés
and crap games. The following excerpt from the Crap Games article
should be of interest to readers of Just Adventure.

CRAP games that
scraped a seven out of ten
Reviewers thought these titles were okay. They were WRONG
Contributions by: Tyler Nagata and Shane Patterson

Let’s be honest.
You don’t need a certified games “journalist”
to explain why Grand Theft Auto IV is awesome or that the Dirty
Dancing videogame is shit. You’re intelligent. You know what
kinds of games you love and which ones you despise.

But once in a while,
there’s that rare occasion where you’ve got a few extra
dollars burning a hole in your pocket and have enough leftover to
splurge on a game that you’re on the fence about. And when
it comes to these situations, it’s frustrating when the professional
critics seem to be sitting on the same fence as you.

The average score on
an aggregator site like Metacritic
may seem like it’s giving you an accurate idea of how good
or bad a game is. But dig a little deeper and you’ll often
find that one overly enthusiastic review is responsible for letting
an obviously awful title scrape by with a so-so seven out of ten
score. All it takes is one or two rogue reviews with hyperbolic
clichés and an inflated score to make these crap titles seem
like fairly decent buys. In celebration of our seven
out of ten week, we’ve listed what we feel are the worst
offenders that managed to scrape by with an undeserved seven.

Nancy Drew: The White
Wolf of Icicle Creek
Platform: PC
Metacritic Score: 7.3/10
Who’s to Blame: Just Adventure for giving a game marketed
toward young girls a passing grade

Why do game reviewers
continue to let themselves off the hook by tossing softball scores
to niche titles that never graduated past the 1990s? Maybe they’re
lazy and lack a pair. Maybe they’re worried that they’ve
become jaded reviewers who only care about popular games like StarCraft
II or Diablo III.

Or maybe they’re
just like this
guy and are overrepresented on aggregator sites like Metacritic.
Just Adventure writer Ray Ivey gave Nancy Drew: The Haunted Carousel
a flawless score and is “looking forward to the next troublesome
situation Nancy gets herself into.” We can’t say that
we agree with him or the reviewer who gave The
White Wolf of Icicle Creek a similarly high grade.

Above:
Niche games like these enjoy inflated scores from niche game review
sites like Just Adventure. It’s a symbiotic relationship that’s
full of male critics and curious little girls

Like most ‘respected’
game journalists, you made sure to not post your email address, so
it is necessary to post a public response to your article. If you
feel the need to respond, then sharpen your Crayolas and email me
at [email protected].

Dear Dumbasses:

Like your attention spans,
this will be brief.

I seriously question that
either of you have played the Nancy Drew games referenced in your
article. I also doubt – and if you can prove me wrong I will
issue a public apology – that either of you have ever played
any Nancy Drew game from start-to-finish unless it was with the aid
of a publisher-supplied walkthrough which leads me to question the
credibility of anything either of you writes.

Unfortunately, you both
seem to be part of the breed of game ‘journalists’ who
constantly blacken the image of the industry with your ‘I –don’t-have-to-play-it-to-know-it-is-crap’
attitude.

As a niche site for the
adventure genre, Just Adventure writes reviews for people who enjoy
such games. We realize that not every game is a masterpiece, but we
also know our audience. Not many of us – though some probably
do – give a whit about cutting-edge graphics or the newest technology
applied to an adventure game. No apologies offered.

So while you’re happily
circle jerking each other over the latest and coolest way to pimp
your ride or ride your pimp in Grand Theft Auto IV,
we’re busy finding 1,001 ways to solve a puzzle with a crowbar
or new ways to push a key under a door and just as happy as you are
with your discoveries.

My main point – and
I will type slowly so that both of you can understand – is that
there is one very simple reason why the average scores on sites like
Metacritic are accurate: for every ‘niche’ site like Just
Adventure which is accused of inflating scores, there is an opposite
‘hardcore’ site like Games Radar that hands out uncommonly
low scores to adventure games because the reviewer (choose one):

a) Does not like point-and-click
games
b) Thinks every game must show some advance in technology
c) Had to read too much text or listen to too much dialogue
d) Does not like pixel hunting for hot spots
e) Got a headache from solving puzzles that require more effort
than just choosing the correct ammo

Need some proof? How about
this quote from Tyler Nygate’s review of Secret
Files Tunguska
– “you’ll find yourself skipping through the game’s lengthy and
frequent dialogues as fast as your right-clicking finger will allow
in this good looking, yet derivative adventure title.”

Even more to the point
is Paul Byrnes conclusion in his Games Radar Secrets
of Atlantis
review: “You’ll hate: Stupid, pointless puzzles, Stupid,
pointless dialogue, Cookie-cutter story.

(As a clarification in
order to avoid the same misunderstanding that occurred with PC Gamer
a few years back, we’re not claiming that these games are classics,
immune to criticism, only that most reviewers are dumbasses with no
knowledge of what constitutes an adventure game).

And, if there is one subject
where the ‘journalists’ who contribute to Games Radar
are experts, it is adventure games. A search for reviews on all platforms
for adventure games, revealed the following under All Adventure Reviews:
DK
Jungle Climber,
Bomberman Land Touch, SD
Gundam Scad Hammers and, of course, that most classic of adventures
Metroid
Prime 3 Corruption – and we’re just scratching the
surface of their ‘adventure’ expertise.

I hasten to add at this
point the
mission statement of Future plc: ‘At this time of overwhelming
choice, people want trusted editorial services more than ever before.
And this is what Future does best.’ If based on the above misinformation
that is what they do best, then I shudder to think what factual misinformation
their worst efforts must yield.

Your final remark rankles
most though as it oversteps the boundaries of decency: ‘Niche
games like these enjoy inflated scores from niche game review sites
like Just Adventure. It’s a symbiotic relationship that’s
full of male critics and curious little girls.’

I don’t like what
you are insinuating here. Nor did a few of the publishers I spoke
to appreciate what you are insinuating and I hope their memories are
fresh when it comes time to spend their marketing dollars on their
next product. This statement needs to be either written a little more
clearly or retracted completely. Not to mention that Just Adventure
has a history of having more women (and minorities) writing reviews
and working behind the scenes than any of the male-dominated, lily-white,
twenty-something staffs of almost every video game magazine and website.
One would hope that Future plc management will take the proper steps
to ensure against such future irresponsible and factually incorrect
articles.

Sincerely,

Randy Sluganski
Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Just Adventure

PS – In case you
are wondering what the best-selling pc game in North America was for
the third week of July 2008 – according to the retail sales
figures compiled by NPD – well, it wasn’t Devil
May Cry 4, which received a score of 8 (awesome!) from Games Radar,
nor was it Mass
Effect which received a score of 9 (awesome!) from Games Radar.
Nope, it was little ol’ Nancy Drew: The Phantom
of Venice. Now isn’t that a crock of seven-out-of-ten!

PPS – Does Games
Radar give every game that features weapons or fighting a score of
awesome? If so, it must really skew those Metacritic scores!

*The original
State of Adventure Gaming was a series of monthly columns intended
to point out the absurdities in both the adventure and the gaming
community. The NEW State of Adventure Gaming will be a series of articles/editorials
focusing on one subject and published on a sporadic basis.