Wednesday 22 October 2008

There are a number of issues that face reviewers, one of which is whether to go on their likes and dislikes of go straight for the technical qualities and to review it objectively.
However if the reviewer does decide to include their own opinions they must also decide how much to include and how to balance their piece without sounding biased or one sided.

The articles taken from the NGJ are subjective. In my opinion the subjective reviews from such websites are more useful to the consumers as the objective reviews are more likely to be set into 1 category and may just focus on the negative parts of a game for example if a game has poor graphics, which may then just label the game crap and not up to standard. Whereas a subjective game reviewer may write about small details which an objective reviewer may not have taken into consideration, such as side missions in a game etc.


The following review is taken from: http://www.eurogamer.net/ and uses objective comments to explain why the reviewer liked the game

"I got this game for Xmas as did most people, and I immediately fell in love. Everything is so perfect with it there is not one bad comment I can say about it, graphics are lush, framerate is stunning and controls are like silk."

"When i have been playing on it I have been thinking,why is this game so good. And just the other day I realised that the combination of good gameplay and suberb graphics is going to result in an outstanding gameing experience. My two mates woody and scott have both played on the game and both say the graphics are good."

Although this review is obviously quite biased, the reviewer has explained why they liked it using technical reasons such as the quality of the graphics and controls, whihc would generally make this game subjective.

I value subjectivity in game reviews as most of the time issues like the quality of the graphics and the game play dont usually affect whether i personally like a game of not.

For example games like "Bully". I found so many glitches in that game (especially in the cut scenes, and the controls) but i still loved it. However other games like the first Devil may cry, the graphics quality only helped me to enjoy the games more. Whether or not i like a game mainly depends on my personality. I love Manhunt and Grand theft auto, but don't like the more family based games like the Lego games. So my enjoyment of a game comes from the storylines and how much the player can do within the game which is anther reason i like bully and grand theft auto because there are small side missons and unlockable items which I feel is a subjective opinion. Whether i like a game is based mainly on genre, and audience, but aesthetics and game play may also play a part.

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