It’s time to retire game company evangelists

*sigh*… Sorry, sorry, sorry.

At around April of this year, my ties with a similarly-named weblog about Nintendo were severed. Up until that point, i used them as a well of content to play off of for this site (as sort of a diary suppplement to my work there), which worked wonders for traffic and internet soap operas involving me and countless faceless nerds on the other side of all this computer circuitry. Afterwards i was left to flounder about on my own and develop this blog into what it is now, which is a terribly irregular but terribly respectable forum for critique and clear-sighted discourse, as was always my intend-tion. As a result of the severance and the divergent paths each blog was taking, i ceased partaking in the former place not only as a writer, but as a reader, too.

Several days ago, a cat who i will leave anonymous in this post emailed me regarding the current state of said place, because his google search for “[blank]fendo Fanboy” brought him to our beloved anti-fansite. He explains the rest:

Anyways, I just wanted to say I like what you’re doing on your blog. I’ve recently become a more outspoken critic of [that site], after silently being angry at their content for months. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who can’t stand fanboys who give Nintendo fans a bad name.

So i read a couple articles of the editorial kind to get a grasp of what this guy’s talking about and saw absolutely nothing i wasn’t familiar with from my tenure there. The common thread: most of them shared the same author – the very same author who i had multiple editorial conflicts with. Yes intendo regulars, it was frisby’s favoritest blogger — Jill’s brother, the pumpkin lantern, the dude in the box, Vajayjay, etc. That guy.

Yesterday i am looking through some Kotaku content to see if there’s anything of interest worth talking about here on Wartendo, and i stumble across the “frankenreview” (their version of a meta-review) for that game Halo 3. So i read through it, recall history and my email exchanges with the Nintenblog dissenter, and warn him of a surefire retort from VJJ during the upcoming week. The very next day, as reliably as menstruation, my predilection hits its mark.

He did it with Gears, he did it with Bioshock, and now he did it with Halo 3. Basically he uses Halo 3’s perfect 10s as a launching pad to discuss – in one of the most flagrantly delusional and unengaging fan pieces you can come across – what’s wrong with the industry in that typical hypocritical fashion with the pink-tinted bifocals set firmly on his dome. But of course, contrary to what his subsequent comments suggest, the editorial had little to do with any great problem that needs a greater solution, and lots to do with the fact that he wants to patronize anyone who likes Halo 3 enough to deem it a perfect incarnation of the series. Quiet, he was, when twilight threatened Hyrule. Quiet, he was, when Samus sought to rid the universe of its corruption. Nothing was wrong with reviews then. Matter of fact, these fan-pleasing perfect scorers made the guy that much more excited over these games which he surely was going to (and did) buy on day one regardless of their meta-tallies.

But Halo 3 is a hype monsoon. One that clearly got to him. One so big that it caused him to, in this article, use semantics against the word “perfect” – a relative term in game reviews – to try to diffuse the praise received by Bungie’s juggernaut. Listen, i loved Earthbound on the SNES and Xenogears on the PS to the point where i’d fellate the entire development staffs behind each, twice; maybe thrice. If expert game reviewers are having a similar experience with their Halo 3s, and their reviews — which are their expert opinions — reflect that in a professional and rational manner, let them do their job as they do. Stop the comparison to the film industry, because the only difference is that film critics are criticizing art and game reviewers aren’t. They’re basically the same, since even film critics have wildly ranging opinions of the same films. If you’re that in need of being told to buy a game, read every single review on the game of interest you can find. Then, gauge everything you read with your brain and decide for yourself, like adults do, if it does or doesn’t meet your desires. Better yet, play a fuckin demo. (Oh wait.)

Reviews can certainly improve, but moaning because a game you can’t play on your Nintendo box got some high scores and even higher publicity, then calling out a “flawed review system” as subterfuge for your envious derision, isn’t expanding the industry any more than a 1UP grading. But hey, at least somebody’s grandmother posed for a picture at a Nintendo press event once.