Super Mario Strikers Review

Rent It.

Game Reviews ... How Do You Review Art?

The Escapist (easily the single best game industry "magazine" on the planet) is running a piece on the seedy underbelly of game reviews. I can't help but agree with a lot of the points in the article. Reviewing games (or movies, or any other sort of art) is always going to be controversial. They never seem to do a product justice, they're totally arbitrary and loaded with bias (or worse, favoritism), and really don't seem to affect how a game sells at all.

There are aspects of game reviewing that the article never quite gets to. Reviewers are unconsciously pressured into not only skewing a review score because of the pressures mentioned in the story, but even the language can be crafted to try to get a review onto the box or into an ad campaign as promotion for the publication.

The "games as art" thing is a oft-debated issue, and despite the fact that every game "journalist" (as if there was such a thing, don't get me started) has broached the topic at one point or another, I decided to wade into it for a research paper at the University of Washington. I took it in what I feel is a different direction, keeping it personal as all artisitc experiences should be. You can download a PDF copy of my "Video Games as Art" paper, or you can e-mail me for a file. One thing that I came across is that some of the games that were most like art (to me) didn't sell very well.

And there's the root of the problem. For as much as games (and movies) are an art form, they're also a consumer product, and anytime someone is exchanging money for something, they want to know what they're going to get in advance and whether or not it will be worth it. The product has to make a value proposition, and the end result needs to meet or exceed that proposition. Valve is a company that gets this on a deep, fundamentatal level. Gamers know that if they buy Half-Life, they'll get a great game. But they'll also get enough free content and other game experiences with it that they could play that game for YEARS. The reviews just don't matter, because the value proposition is blown out of the water.

So I've finally reached a level where I feel I can put my metaphorical foot down and say, I'm not going to review games anymore. Everyone's experience will be different with a game, so all I can really tell you is whether or not you should Buy It, Rent It, or Skip It. Anything else is just background and opinion, but those two words are enough to tell you whether or not a game meets or exceeds its value proposition. I could talk at excruciating length about how gorgeous a game's graphics are, or how the controls work, or how it sounds, but in the end, none of that matters unless you play the game (or don't).

Thus, I'm getting rid of all the fluff, and Two Word Reviews is born. The great part about this is that it simply doesn't matter how long I play a game, or finish it, or anything about me. It becomes all about whether or not a game is worth the price they're charging, or the price to get it into your hands temporarily. (On that note, I should specify that when I say "Rent It", I'm talking about a service like GameFly, so we're talking roughly $20/mo. or just under half the price of the game.) Pretty much all opinion is taken out of the equation, because by and large, the value proposition of most people is the same.

It'll be an interesting experiment. I'll probably never get my review on a box, most game websites wouldn't want to run these reviews (or pay for two words), but I know I'll feel a lot better about it.

More Impressions of the TX1000

The more I work with the HP Pavilion TX 1000 Entertainment Notebook (and I just now decided that I'm never typing all of that again) the more I realize that despite having tablet functionality, this machine was not designed for me. This is not a "Tablet PC", and I think that the lack of Tablet PC branding on the machine should have been a huge clue. In fact, I'm seriously debating at this point if I should even try using this machine at school next week. You can't write on it ... well, you can in a technical sense, but it requires so much effort to write anything legibly enough that it just isn't worth it. Ever try to write on the screen of a PDA? It's exactly the same thing.

It's clear now that HP knew this, and thus the "Entertainment Notebook" branding. So what exactly is that supposed to mean? It means that it's designed primarily as a computer you can watch movies on. So why can you turn the screen? Because it's actually easier to watch a movie when you swivel the screen and put the keyboard behind the machine. The speakers are part of the screen, so they'll always be posititioned correctly for you. Combine that with dedicated DVD playback buttons, DivX codec preinstalled, and a free trial for Vongo, and you've got a capable entertainment device. So what's up with the touchscreen and stylus? Well, it looks like the touchscreen is for ease of video watching when you've got the screen turned, and the stylus is for fingerprint prevention. The only problem is that the touchscreen turned on the Tablet features and that causes a bit of an expectations issue for someone familiar with a Tablet PC feature set.

I'm going to talk with an HP representative later today, and will probably adjust my review plan to focus more on the entertainment features, but that will depend on whether or not HP really wants to position this machine in the Tablet space or not.

HP Pavilion TX1000 Entertainment Notebook PC en route ...

It's been a while since I got a new piece of hardware to play with, and very shortly I should receive a new HP TX1000 Tablet PC (which oddly bears no Tablet PC branding) to run through the ringer. Big shout out to Chris at AMD who worked out the details for me, after hearing what a big fan I was of the Tablet concept.

I'll give you a bit of the "out of the box experience" in terms of how the pre-load runs, then I'll load it up with my standard config and see if it holds up to my work and school schedules. I love my Tecra M4, and it'll be interesting to see how a smaller unit puts up with me. This won't be your typical review, but it'll give you an pretty good picture of how this machine lives up to the expectations of a serious tablet user.

The new machine should be here sometime today, so expect some first impressions this afternoon. I've heard Andru over at GearLive should be getting an identical unit around the same time, and I'm sure he'll have all the great unboxing shots and that sort of thing, but maybe I'll have a few as well.

Fair Disclosure: This laptop is a "loaner" and will not be kept by me unless I pay for it in some fashion, unlike the "free" laptops some bloggers received a few months back when Vanishing Point began. Should this change, for example, HP decides to let me keep it (highly unlikely), I will make a full post disclosing the fact.

Update: The Tablet is actually arriving Tuesday morning, so the first impressions will be delayed a pit. Patience, grasshopper.