Review Fallout: New Vegas - Contrarian Corner

[Mister Arkham]

Some of you are fucking dumbasses. I can't stand retards who comment on an article after just reading the excerpt. Read the whole fucking thing, then comment. Either that or shut the fuck up.

Overall the guy is full of hot air and upset that he didn't get to be a film critic for the NYT. His review is fairly positive, however. He writes like a film critic -- the deconstruction of the work is more important than some numerical score that doesn't mean jack shit anyways. If you actually read what the guy wrote (and yeah, his high-brow complaints that things are "too complicated!!" is just that -- high brow snobbery) he is pretty fulsome with his praise for the game's overall narrative structure. He just doesn't like some of the mechanics.

Not saying I agree with the guy, but at least I read the article. Jesus.

If you want to get specific, he writes like a film student. The endless reliance on pseudo-intellectual hyperbole and drag-and-drop comparisons is evidence enough of why he couldn't get on-board with the NYT. I read the article, and what it is is acres of masturbatory drivel cribbed from film history texts that were written in an equally self-congratulatory manner. It isn't a review, it's barely an opinion, it's just a pile of other people's words that only make sense as sentences because they were arranged by a person with a grasp of the English language.

 

[Decado]

He writes like a film critic

A film critic reviewing a video game.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that style, per se. In fact, it's almost necessary if people want video games to be taken seriously as an art form.

hahahaohwow.jpg

Yeah, you're right. Just continue to post "reviews" that culminate in a numerical score that means jack shit, that'll get the job done.

It's very filmcritic-ly, and surely a step in the road to get games accepted as an art form:

Why would you post another article by the guy who I already admitted sucks? It's easy to discredit the idea when you post a bad example. What you just posted is the wrong way to do it.

Here's the right way:

http://fallingawkwardly.wordpress.com/2 ... nd-part-2/

 

[Decado]

Some of you are fucking dumbasses. I can't stand retards who comment on an article after just reading the excerpt. Read the whole fucking thing, then comment. Either that or shut the fuck up.

Overall the guy is full of hot air and upset that he didn't get to be a film critic for the NYT. His review is fairly positive, however. He writes like a film critic -- the deconstruction of the work is more important than some numerical score that doesn't mean jack shit anyways. If you actually read what the guy wrote (and yeah, his high-brow complaints that things are "too complicated!!" is just that -- high brow snobbery) he is pretty fulsome with his praise for the game's overall narrative structure. He just doesn't like some of the mechanics.

Not saying I agree with the guy, but at least I read the article. Jesus.

If you want to get specific, he writes like a film student. The endless reliance on pseudo-intellectual hyperbole and drag-and-drop comparisons is evidence enough of why he couldn't get on-board with the NYT. I read the article, and what it is is acres of masturbatory drivel cribbed from film history texts that were written in an equally self-congratulatory manner. It isn't a review, it's barely an opinion, it's just a pile of other people's words that only make sense as sentences because they were arranged by a person with a grasp of the English language.

I don't disagree with any of that. I just get all when people don't read the shit they're commenting on.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Some of you are fucking dumbasses. I can't stand retards who comment on an article after just reading the excerpt. Read the whole fucking thing, then comment. Either that or shut the fuck up.

Would reading everything make the excerpts we did read less retarded?

No?

Yeah.

 

[racofer]

Decado moar leik Defecado.

 

[Decado]

Some of you are fucking dumbasses. I can't stand retards who comment on an article after just reading the excerpt. Read the whole fucking thing, then comment. Either that or shut the fuck up.

Would reading everything make the excerpts we did read less retarded?

No?

Yeah.

No, but at least you could post a response that was in context.

 

[Decado]

Decado moar leik Defecado.

You already used this one, bro.

 

[jiduthie]

baiting hope for the sake of a dark but irresistibly sarcastic punchline

Who hasn't felt, at some point or another, that that line would be a good description of life? The reviewer seriously can't bring himself to experience art that doesn't end with flowers and rays of sunshine?

I didn't want to be compulsively locked in a world of waste with no clear exit

Would he write the same thing about 2001, Slaughterhouse Five, or Stalker?

I think the real problem here is that IGN is hiring shitty english majors.

edit:

Mike cut his losses and took a degree in English.

I really hadn't seen that when I initially posted...

 

[racofer]

It's true, though.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I think the real problem here is that IGN is hiring shitty english majors.

There are no good english majors. Anyone who writes well does so in spite of whatever english degree they may have, not because of it.

 

[Decado]

It's true, though.

 

[Morkar Left]

To his defense it's not stated in the manual how to change the active quest. Ok, it should be pretty obvious to try it out for most, at least with the pc-version but maybe he just didn't cared and wanted to write a witty line.

I don't care about him bashing or not bashing the game but his writing style is horrible. I don't know how somebody could earn money with this "look how intellectual I am and I am very serious about art and videogames and things". Compare this for example to the reviews written by Scorpia and it gets silly. Even BLOBERTs article puts him easily to shame.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Yeah, you're right. Just continue to post "reviews" that culminate in a numerical score that means jack shit, that'll get the job done.

Which job?

The job of getting games accepted as art? I don't want to do that job, it would be hypocritical, and worse, it would be false.

I read the first two parts of the "elder scrolls metaphysics hurrr" link and I have yet to see anything that justifies games as art.

 

[Decado]

I think the real problem here is that IGN is hiring shitty english majors.

There are no good english majors. Anyone who writes well does so in spite of whatever english degree they may have, not because of it.

As an English major, I agree. Writing is like any other art, you either have "it" or you don't. If you don't have "it", no amount of training and/or instruction will help. If you do have "it", get all the help you can get. Either way, it is a self-regulating atmosphere, provided you aren't deluding yourself or other people aren't lying right to your face about how good you are.

 

[jiduthie]

="Overweight Manatee"
There are no good english majors. Anyone who writes well does so in spite of whatever english degree they may have, not because of it.

I agree, was just driving my point home.

 

[Decado]

Which job?

The job of getting games accepted as art? I don't want to do that job, it would be hypocritical

Lol, what makes it "hypocritical"? Do you know what this word means?

, and worse, it would be false.

Video games aren't art?

I read the first two parts of the "elder scrolls metaphysics hurrr" link and I have yet to see anything that justifies games as art.

Literature is art, broham.

 

[jiduthie]

I think the real problem here is that IGN is hiring shitty english majors.

There are no good english majors. Anyone who writes well does so in spite of whatever english degree they may have, not because of it.

As an English major, I agree. Writing is like any other art, you either have "it" or you don't. If you don't have "it", no amount of training and/or instruction will help. If you do have "it", get all the help you can get. Either way, it is a self-regulating atmosphere, provided you aren't deluding yourself or other people aren't lying right to your face about how good you are.

I disagree with this entirely though. Writing is like any other skill, it's more about practice then some nebulous concept of "it."

 

[Decado]

I think the real problem here is that IGN is hiring shitty english majors.

There are no good english majors. Anyone who writes well does so in spite of whatever english degree they may have, not because of it.

As an English major, I agree. Writing is like any other art, you either have "it" or you don't. If you don't have "it", no amount of training and/or instruction will help. If you do have "it", get all the help you can get. Either way, it is a self-regulating atmosphere, provided you aren't deluding yourself or other people aren't lying right to your face about how good you are.

I disagree with this entirely though. Writing is like any other skill, it's more about practice then some nebulous concept of "it."

This is like suggesting that every person who picks up a pen has the potential to write like Shakespeare if they practice hard enough. This is quite clearly not the case.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I think the real problem here is that IGN is hiring shitty english majors.

There are no good english majors. Anyone who writes well does so in spite of whatever english degree they may have, not because of it.

As an English major, I agree. Writing is like any other art, you either have "it" or you don't. If you don't have "it", no amount of training and/or instruction will help. If you do have "it", get all the help you can get. Either way, it is a self-regulating atmosphere, provided you aren't deluding yourself or other people aren't lying right to your face about how good you are.

I disagree with this entirely though. Writing is like any other skill, it's more about practice then some nebulous concept of "it."

I would submit that any art can be trained. You could take any able-bodied person and, with enough time, have them replicate any work, whether it be literature, art, music, what ever. The question is whether you actually know something if all you can do is copy others, but cannot understand it to create your own. In this case, we have a someone who has seen writing done by others. He has read the works of good writers himself. He has been told how to put words together in patterns that resemble those of others that he has been told are 'good'. But he doesn't understand how to write well himself.

 

[Tycn]

He writes like a film critic

A film critic reviewing a video game.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that style, per se. In fact, it's almost necessary if people want video games to be taken seriously as an art form.

hahahaohwow.jpg


Anyways, in the interest of greater rage I'll post some excerpts from this article on ME2. It's very filmcritic-ly, and surely a step in the road to get games accepted as an art form:

At the end of A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking lamented the distance that's grown between modern science and art. Over the last century, science became a theoretical cloud in which all of the old laws are linked to the mysterious chaos of sub-atomic particles and cosmology, written in a language that might as well be hieroglyphics. Art can't provide any answers to these murky questions, but it can account for what the eventual answers would mean to us. Mass Effect 2 is a brave and deluded attempt to bridge the gap between science and art. The end result is a beautiful catastrophe, a stolid combination of RPG abstraction with the occasional heat of interpersonal exchange.


Mass Effect 2 is an interactive plunge into the mystery surrounding dark energy, among the most vexingly unknown quantities in modern science. Its name refers to a technology that can harness this invisible energy to make possible space travel and empower sensitive life forms with biotics. While our future selves will be able to manipulate dark energy, its origin will remain a mystery. Or rather, a conspiracy. In the tradition of human paranoia and death anxiety, BioWare has created a version of the galaxy where ancient life forms use this dark energy to regularly siphon precious life force from everyone else, and then retreat into the dark corners of space. It's like a legion of space devils have decided to spend eternity playing evolutionary whack-a-mole.

. To fully appreciate the complex personas of all your squad members you'll need a rich understanding of the worlds and species that affect them. I would argue this is a wholly unnecessary, a relic of writing which only bogs down games. Books are, by nature, an information-poor medium. Complex emotions, ideas, and characters are hard to communicate directly in writing, so books tend towards figurative language that evokes, makes metaphors, and spins interwoven yarns that mirror the complexities an author might want to capture.

Film contains an order of magnitude more information than writing. It carries music, image, color, shadow, performance, inflection, and human expression on top of the words written in the script. In a few seconds of film, the longing of a character can be instantly communicated in a way that would take Hemingway five pages to fully lay out.]Games arrive next in the evolutionary daisy chain bearing even more information than film.

Wow. That is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever read.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Which job?

The job of getting games accepted as art? I don't want to do that job, it would be hypocritical

Lol, what makes it "hypocritical"? Do you know what this word means?

He doesn't believe games are art. I disagree, though, movies are considered art but they are for entertainment, just like the vidya. I guess it's just a mental block people have; "games = toys, therefore they cannot be art".

I'm not gonna argue about this, though, there's always someone ready to write an essay on how a lump of poop plastered on a canvas is totally art but a game that joins music, visuals and interactivity isn't, because.

 

[J1M]

After all these years we have finally found the guy they used to consult on all the game design changes to Deus Ex 2.

 

[Topher]

I think the real problem here is that IGN is hiring shitty english majors.

There are no good english majors. Anyone who writes well does so in spite of whatever english degree they may have, not because of it.

This. Also this IGN guy is a total dipshit. At least his work is so shitty it's laughably funny.

 

[Sceptic]

Books are, by nature, an information-poor medium. Complex emotions, ideas, and characters are hard to communicate directly in writing, so books tend towards figurative language that evokes, makes metaphors, and spins interwoven yarns that mirror the complexities an author might want to capture.

Jesus fucking christ on a stick.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I don't disagree with any of that. I just get all when people don't read the shit they're commenting on.

Get some perspective, retard. Nothing folks commented on was in contrast with what the full article held. Where did you even get that idea? That a shitty, pretentious writer is a retard and cannot grasp basic gameplay-concepts?

Maybe save your precious counter-rage for the threads that actually need it. Otherwise you are going to run dry and sneak back to RPGWatch.