Broken up Reviews Breaks Reviews

Just recently a certain big game review outlet started breaking certain reviews into specific sections for different game modes/ types.  Two recent examples would be Call of Duty: Black Ops IV (I refuse to write IIII), and Battlefield: V.  Each was given separate reviews, Multiplayer, Zombies, and Blackout for COD, and Single player and Multiplayer for Battlefield.  This raised a lot of negative comments on the videos, a lot of which I agree with, but not for entirely the same reasons.

Let me just say this first: There is no point in separating parts of a review if you cannot purchase those individual parts.  COD comes as a package with those three main modes, and while each will certainly have positive and negative aspects that don't apply to the others, there is no benefit it just looking at each in isolation.  That said, I think this is just a weird step that kind of goes in the right direction for how reviews are done because even in single reviews, for the most part, each primary mode is given a spotlight of sorts.  A traditional review would look at things like story, game play, graphics, sound, multiplayer, and so on, sometimes with certain parts mixed together.  Each part is important, and I don't disagree with the fact that a mode like zombies in COD does need specific focus and attention that doesn't completely overlap with the other modes.  Basic game play, graphics, and things like that will probably be more or less consistent across all the modes a game has, so that specific section would focus on what makes it different, what works, what doesn't, how enjoyable it is, and anything else unique it brings to the complete package.  The key term there being "package."  So far, each mode being reviewed separately is being scored as if it stood alone when they do not.  Yes, they are giving an overall score as well, but if a game got a perfect score for it's single player but had an awful multiplayer component, that's just being disingenuous to anyone who doesn't know to seek out separate reviews for the same game.  Even for people who do, is there that much value in seeing each part rated separately?  Scores in general are something I've already spoken about, so I won't repeat my ideology on it again here, but more and more outlets do seem be moving away from a scoring system entirely.  Putting in more scores just dilutes our ability to relate to what the review actually thought about the game.

Except that it gets even worse.  Not only are these individual reviews made, scored, and published stand alone, but they are being done by separate reviewers.  Now, I actually kind of like the idea of multiple people reviewing the same game, even though I know how unrealistic it is in terms of time, money, and resources, but giving different people individual sections of a game to review is beyond ridiculous.  Any sense of consistency goes out the window.  What if one person found the shooting boring and lacking any good sense of feedback, while the other thought it was the pinnacle of the genre? Or what if the mechanics were at odds with the story, which wouldn't apply to multiplayer?  Those kinds of things would sway both scores and even further dilute the message readers/ viewers got.

There is a tiny, muddled, silver lining in this though.  Each piece of a review has been about the length of a normal review, which means that those who actually consume each part get a more fleshed out review than they otherwise would (excluding the whole multiple reviewer issue).  Longer reviews are not necessarily better, but The 5-7 minute video reviews that most major outlets put out can certainly be lacking, so getting more would be a benefit in most cases.  However, the issues already described obfuscate this minor advantage to the point it might as well not exist.

Reviewing a game in pieces is like reviewing each color of Skittles in a bag individually.  Yeah, each one is technically different, people will like some more than others, but you're not buying just one color.  You get the bag, all colors included whether you like them or not, and a review should do it's best to convey the good and bad as clearly as possible.   Split reviews provide less context, and when its hard enough to find a reviewer who's opinions line up with your own, this just makes the entire review industry even less useful to consumers.

When it's okay that your choices don't matter.

We all want our choices to matter, or at least feel like they matter, in games.  When we see that they actually don't, when players discover that no matter what choice they made will result in the same outcome, we feel insulted.  This is a completely understandable reaction to have.  It can feel like the developers are trying to deceive us, or even insult us, by giving us the so called "illusion of choice."  To be fair, in more cases than not, it's kind of true.  Games built around choice, like those from now defunct developer TellTale games, would need to basically build dozens of versions of their games to actually make every important decision a player makes have a true payoff beyond slightly different dialogue or one character being swapped in or out with another.  This is not a new issue, in fact it comes up all the time, but I want to look at it from a different angle (I hope).  We all know the argument that choices should matter, but it's not realistic, so it's okay that they don't as long as we feel like they do.  That's all well and good, but there's another type of choice that games can throw at us that sometimes matter, sometimes don't, but even in cases where they clearly don't can accomplish something even greater in my mind.

One of the difficulties I have when approaching a topic as broad as choice in games is how to handle approaching it on a general basis.  Specifically, games that feature a lot of choice are often RPGs or have RPG elements in the sense that you are role-playing a character.  This can either be a blank slate, or a somewhat established character.  In the latter case, there is a large range of how far the developers allow the player to divert from that base character in their choices.  Sometimes you can turn a pure, good character into the most vile and ruthless anti-hero, while other times you can only slightly tip the morality scale.  So there's that issue, but another one that compounds on it is how the player chooses to play.  When you get a character with a baseline of personality, however small, do you make choices in the way you think they would, or how you would if put in that situation?  There are so many things that make talking about choice so difficult because not only does each game treat them differently, each player going through that came will come with a unique approach.  All that acknowledged, hopefully my main point will still make sense.

Hot take coming up:  My favorite choices in games are ones that not only don't change how the game plays out, but often times can't.  Let's explore what I mean.  Regardless of if you're playing as yourself or the character built for the game, you absorb each choice and view it through a unique lens of experiences and morals to make a choice.  At least when the choice is well crafted and all aspects are properly built up and understood by the player.  The most common is the traditional choice of who to save and who to let die.  This choice typically occurs somewhat early to midway through a game, so that the player understands who each character is, what they offer, and their faults so that they understand the weight of their decision.  While all well and good, this choice, among most that effect a game on a mechanical level, can be broken by logic too easily.  Everyone has preferences in how to play a game, and if one character offers a more enjoyable experience than the other, I would guess a large majority of players would make that choice regardless of how they actually felt about their personalities or any other factor.  Please let me know if I'm wrong in that assumption.  So, what does that have to do with choices that don't, or can't, matter?  It's all about divorcing the choice from being strictly grounded in the mechanics of the game.  If the choice can't possibly have repercussions on you, as a player, then you're going to think about it without the baggage of wondering if you're making the game harder or on yourself, or anything else along those lines.  

But, if the choice presented makes no impact on the game, or even the narrative, then how could it possibly be the "best"?  What's the point of a choice with no stakes?  Simple, my dear reader: introspection.  The examples I think of are usually ones near the end of games, but not always, that involve the larger universe.  Think the choices at the end of Dues Ex: Human Revolution where you are asked to decide to reveal the truth about what happened with all the augmented people going crazy, blame it on the anti-augmentation terrorists so that augmentation technology can progress, cover up the Illuminati and allow them to continue running things from the shadows, or do nothing and let the populous come to its own conclusion with no interference.  None of these choices will have an impact on your game, at this point its clear the game is over, but also are so wide-reaching that the consequences of your choice are essentially for everyone but you.  You know everything already, that can't be undone, so the choice is if you want to share or hide that information, with the potential ramifications of each option explained.  There's no 'right' answer, and no way to make one by gaming the system by looking for some objective positives or negatives.

In a way, uninvested or mentally lazy players might see this kind of choice as pointless.  If the game's over and the choice has no bearing on anything, why give it any deep thought?  And I can't really argue that except to say that games are amazing at positioning these kind of deep philosophical thought experiments and hypotheticals to work through.  After living in that world, knowing the characters, getting a grip on society, politics, and everything presented to the player, what better way to end that experience than by asking: "Would you change this world, and how?  Would you do it if it was based on a lie - your lie?"  The rabbit hole of questions goes as deep as you want, which can't be said for choices like which character you want to save, or which side of for choices that do have an impact on the game like which side of conflict you want to fight for.  I don't remember those choices very often, but I remember the ones that ask me to really think about my own moral alignments because even  though they don't matter in the game, they matter in learning about ourselves.

Thank you for reading,

J.Lennox