Though it is the easiest example of insane hyperbole, GTA IV isn’t the only game to have such praise lavished upon it. Another more recent game, which I also found to be quite lacking despite every website telling me different, received unearned accolades: The Witcher 2. Let’s start with Eurogamer:
“Fans of RPGs should consider The Witcher 2 a must-buy. There’s simply no competitor that can touch it in terms of poise, characterisation and storytelling, or the way in which it treats you not as a player – someone to be pandered to and pleased – but as an adult, free to make your own mistakes and suffer a plot in which not everyone gets what they deserve”
The story of The Witcher 2 is very average. There wasn’t anything there that I haven’t seen before except for the fact that the consequences of your choices are not readily apparent until much later. Which is a nice touch. The characters were the usual RPG fantasy types except the “heroes” were sometimes dicks and the “villains” weren’t mustache twirling evildoers, but had legitimate reasons for their actions. Which is also a nice touch. One that many video games fail to achieve. But it’s not as if this is anything new in storytelling. Books, movies and television have all had morally grey characters for years. Just because it happens in a video game is no reason to lose our shit and reward a game for doing what should be a given.
1UP, normally a bastion of reservedness, threw this one out:
“One of the most memorable and best written fantasy video games you’ll ever play.”
Ever? Really? That’s a hell of a statement considering it’s not even the best written fantasy game of its generation. What line of dialogue or scenario is so enchanting? The game, like I said above, has an average story. Maybe above-average if you are really into it. But best ever? Come on. There was nothing here that wasn’t better than anything I saw in Fable.
RPGFAN sums up what annoys me most about The Witcher 2’s praise:
“Geralt’s role is not insignificant by any means, but in the company of kings, he cannot help but seem subordinate. The forces of the world push him about, and TW2 makes amazing use of this to craft a realistic world and uncompromising plot. Those pushing him around come alive with concealed motives, varied allegiances, and one of the best scripts in a video game to date.”
Best scripts. I was ready for something really special. What I got was the usual stuff. It’s not bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s just nothing special. It’s completely average, nothing more. The dialogue was the same you would hear in Dragon Age or even Kingdoms of Amalur, but those games didn’t receive such praise from the press. And it even had a complex character like Loghain, who did bad things for good reasons! I don’t see why the press suddenly decided to single out The Witcher 2, but it is not worthy of it.
“To mention the game’s flaws seems a disservice, for they weigh lightly on the overall experience.”
To mention the game’s flaws would be the responsible thing to do as a reviewer of video games. But why would anyone let that stop them from trying to out-praise the rest of the Internet? The flaws of The Witcher 2, in my own opinion, weigh so heavily on the overall experience that I quit the game and traded it in a few hours into Chapter 2. I don’t care if the story picked up: the dialogue was rote, the combat was shaky and the countless reviews that had promised me something special had mislead me. For a reviewer to even suggest that mentioning the game’s flaws is a disservice IS a disservice: to you, the reader.
What I am trying to say is this: we praise GTA IV and compare it to the greatest films of all time simply because it took itself seriously. It tried to tell a story like Scorcese or Coppola or Michael Mann. It didn’t accomplish that, but since we are so insecure about our hobby, let’s act like it did and hold it up to the all-time classics. What is the mission we all remember from GTA IV? Three Leaf Clover, right? The bank heist mission. Awesome mission, no doubt. The problem is that it was taken right from the movie “Heat”. Which is what most GTA games do and they don’t even try to hide it, which is fine. They are paying homage to the things they love. But it fools reviewers, who mistake it for high art, for something worthy of being bronzed and exulted. It’s not. It was a decent game. Nothing more. To earn this kind of praise implies something else is at hand: we want games to be on the level of movies and books, so we rush to praise in them in ways that are comparable. We know the mainstream press isn’t going to do it, so we do it ourselves. It’s silly, childish and it needs to stop.
We do the same for The Witcher 2 simply because it gave the bad guys a motive for being bad. This isn’t something we should be rewarding for the sake of heaping praise. We should look at the actual quality of the story and of those motives. It’s great that nuance is is a part of the game’s story and characters. But it’s not the first game to do so and it is certainly not the first medium to, either. Why are we rewarding video games for doing something that other mediums do so much that we don’t even notice it anymore? I realize that games are still a young medium, but it’s not like it exists in a vacuum. We know about these other mediums. So why does The Witcher 2 get praise that makes it seem like it invented a new way to tell a story? Because we want to act like it did something fresh and exciting. It didn’t. It’s just another fantasy RPG, albeit one with morally gray characters and a whole lot of boobs.
I’m starting to repeat myself, which means I will probably get a job offer from IGN soon, but I want to leave you with this: Video games have come a long way. But they still have a long way to go. The next time you read a review like the ones I just cited, stop and ask yourself if what the reviewer is saying sounds like the truth or like someone who is trying to convince himself that his hobby is worthwhile. That it holds its own in the pantheon of great entertainment experiences. Because if GTA IV is the best that games have to offer ever then we all might as well just pack things up and go home to read a book.
If reviews like this are going to become the norm every time an anticipated game comes out, where will it end? Will GTA V cure cancer while I play it? Will The Witcher 3 showcase characters that even the acclaimed series The Wire couldn’t hold a candle to? Doubtful. But I’m sure we will read such things in the coming months. The trick, for us common folk, is to try to look past all that, read a wide range of reviews and try to get an idea of a game’s quality in the best way we can with the tools we have at our disposal. And don’t be afraid to tweet or email the website’s that abdicate their responsibility to you, the reader. Be respectful, but let them know that you can’t trust their reviews any longer if the examples shown above are written and then make it past an editor for publication. You expect better and you should. It’s bad enough that some sites act as a marketing apparatus for publishers during previews of games. We shouldn’t have to deal with reviewers competing to have their quotes put on the back of the box during the reviews, too.
Expect better and demand better. Otherwise, the entire games industry will collapse and it will be all your fault…
Sorry. Couldn’t resist a little hyperbole myself. It should be expected after I just wrote what is obviously the greatest article to ever grace the Internet. Wow, this stuff is contagious. Okay, remember this: Who watches the watchers (reviewers)?
You do. So watch them.
Sources:
IGN
Game Informer
GameSpy
Kotaku
Eurogamer: GTA IV & The Witcher 2
1UP
RPGFan
U mad?
I enjoyed reading this even if you hated on one of my favorite games of 2011 The Witcher 2. It should be noted that the story in The Witcher 2 gets better towards the end of the second act and into the 3rd which, had the gameplay issues mentioned above had not stopped you, I think would change your tune just a little about the praise. The last conversation you have with Letho (Kingslayer ) is nothing short of amazing. Yes that was supposed to be just a little hyperbolic but I stand by it nonetheless. However that does not excuse the hyperbolicness of said reviews, and I agree that the review sites that praised the game were often a bit excessive in there praise. yes the combat was a little wonky at first, before they patched it, I enjoyed it but I can see where others would not.
for the sake of not sounding like a fanboy who’s wounded ranting is compensating his own insecurities I will stop defending my game. I think that there should be more of these types of articles in the future, perhaps you could even have the community vote on which game you analyze next.
@Gadfly Jim,
Haha, I tried not to hate on The Witcher 2. It was okay for a while, but I just wasn’t having any fun with it. And after the things I had read, I expected more. Maybe I will go back to it someday, but it became a struggle to get through.
I like the idea about voting though. Thanks for understanding while I crapped on your game!
Great article, I’d like to see more of this (although I’ll ignore the blasphemy of the Witcher 2 hate lol). And it’s funny you wrote this article now, because I picked up GTA IV during the Steam sale and started playing it for the first time. I’m 12 hours into it, and I literally have to force myself to play it. The story has hardly got me the least bit interested, and I’m just waiting for this “Godfather quality story” to show up. And the mission design. Dear God is it boring. Get in a car, drive here, pick up this, defend this, kill him, and then come back. Rinse and repeat. Most of the gameplay comes from driving though, and good God its like Nico is driving after 10 beers and a cocaine hit. Whenever I need to go somewhere, I sprint to the nearest taxi. And what is money for? Clothes and taxi rides? I would buy new guns, but you can’t buy weapons unless you’ve picked them up before. Seriously? Also why when I die or get arrested in a mission I can’t just restart at a checkpoint? Instead I pay a fee, lose my weapons (if arrested), and teleported far away from my mission. I could go on and on, but the game has such archaic game design that I don’t know if I will continue to play it anymore, especially after glancing at the list of missions and seeing I’m barely half way done. For those that have beaten it, is it worth beating? I got the complete collection, so are The Lost and the Damned or Ballad of Gay Tony stories any better?
Oh man, thanks Anthony. I’ve been looking for something in-depth and game related to read for a while now. I like Gladfly’s idea for a vote too.
I’ve found that many of the sites I used to frequent can no longer criticise games. Indeed, that’s why I stopped reading the magazines I so loved a few years ago. It’s got to the point where I rarely look at reviews beyond the score (to see whether it falls into “unplayable”, “average”, “give it a go” or “play it asap”). Instead I combine the scores with what gamers say. I did that with Spec Ops most recently and a few other games based on opinions from fellow Sushians. Word of mouth is fast becoming the primary way I decide upon game purchases. At least then it’s easier to sort out hyperbole from plebeian gamers as they don’t have that “voice” that journalists do. You’re meant to trust those people, but really it’s “that guy” on the internet who steers me towards these great experiences.
An enjoyable article that addresses an issue that appears constantly in game reviews. Although I had a blast when I played GTA IV, It’s impossible to ignore the games flaws, and how outrageous those quotes were. It seems that the reviewers are a little too eager to tout a game for doing a little bit better than some other games in regards to story and such. Heck, most reviewers will celebrate a greatly anticipated game for being worse than other games. And the reviewers do nobody any favors by ignoring a game’s faults. Thanks for the great article! 🙂
Hah, I really like this article. I mean, I loved GTA 4 to death but the reviews surely were over the top, nonetheless.
But I can’t remember if reviews were ever any different. I think I gotta search through boxes of old magazines to read some ‘retro’ reviews from back in the day when Internet access was something only very few people had.
Anyway, this article should serve as a reminder that you got to take reviews and scores with a grain of salt. Just because ‘professional’ (read: butt-smooching) magazines/websites say so, it doesn’t mean that it’s true.