I hate strategy games. I hate them so much it isn't even funny, and so I thought it'd be fun to take a crack at the latest in the Fire Emblem family, Path of Radiance. Especially because I'd heard so much about the intriguing draw about this title -- your fighting forces can die, permanently, supposedly forcing you to levy a whole new armload of investment in your troops.A tactical game forces you to treat your characters as strategic assets, right? So why in God's name would you want to have to mourn them? Especially with the shallow plot they've got going on here, the only effect losing your troops is going to have on you is making you into one of those psychos who chucks the Wii remote straight through the TV screen.
I am, of course, getting flak for being a tactics-hater reviewing a tactical game. But reviews are largely a comprehensive assessment of features and overall experience, and you don't need to love the genre to do that. In fact, going back to all of the chit chat about reviews we've been having here lately, I think that reviewing only in genres you love -- in other words, having the leisure of only reviewing games you were planning on buying anyway or are already interested in unfairly predisposes you to overlook flaws and seek out factors to reinforce your high hopes. Anyway, it was an interesting exercise for me, but I still hate tacticals.
And of course, I don't just write reviews for fans of a game; I don't write so that loyalists can have their fandom reinforced. If I were a total bitch, this is where I say, "this is why I'm the reviewer, and you're the one who sits there and reads it." I would hope I have enough experience with video games to understand positives and negatives separately from how the format affects my personal enjoyment.
Perhaps it isn't the review system that's broken at all. When your audience doesn't permit you to call a game "average," and when you're not permitted to review a game unless you're a fan of the series, it's the culture that's a bit messed.
Anyway, you can read the whole debacle at Destructoid. I don't suppose any publications out there who write for grown-ups need a review gal, do you?
