When I came out swinging in defense of Silent Hill: Homecoming and reacted a bit strongly (okay, flipped my lid) on my fellow reviewers, it wasn't really that I felt anyone was necessarily wrong in their criticisms of the game. I didn't expect to convert the un-convertable; I was either preaching to the choir, or I was the annoying Jehovah's Witness ringing the bell of a staunch atheist.
My point -- and please indulge me in quoting myself -- was this:
"When a title attempts to explore uncharted areas, it risks stumbling into areas that have been neglected for a good reason -- because they don't work as well. But when we fault them for trying, without recognizing that the game might have done a few new things well, or when we treat creativity or an attempt at inventiveness as a design flaw, we're sending the industry some problematic mixed messages. We demand innovation and invention, and then we crucify any attempts in that direction."
The Guardian, which tends to do freaking excellent writing about games from time to time, has a new article up to a similar effect. This time, the lynchpin is Mirror's Edge. I have not yet played it; haven't even seen it since E3, since I've decided to combat my seasonal overwhelm and burnout by focusing on just a couple titles and leaving the rest for the desert from February until July.
Nonetheless, I've been aware of Mirror's Edge's critical reception, and the Guardian's Keith Stuart's reaction to it reminds me strikingly of my own response to Homecoming's. He notes "a general compulsion to counter the sequences of innovative genius with niggling doubts about core mechanics," in game reviews, which he finds "frustrating" and "depressing," and writes:
For example, no-one complains that, say, Pan's Labyrinth or Eraser Head lack the formal, easily recognisable narrative structure of a conventional movie. Their aspirations exempt them from that requirement. So should we really be marking Mirror's Edge down for control issues – a game that aspires to re-interpret the very interface between player, screen and character? Yes, I know, it's a clumsy comparison, but the underlying point is – should reviewers just accept that sometimes incredibly new experiences will lack some of the formal substance we expect from traditional games? That's what innovation is, it's leaping out into the unknown.
Before you get all on him for drawing the film-game comparison, he does admit it's imperfect, but faults IGN's review for looking forward to the inevitable sequel to see if it "fixes" the problems, instead of valuing the first installment, a mentality that would be unheard-of in any other entertainment medium:
What are we really saying about innovation when we require a sequel to prove the concept was valid in the first place? What are we saying about the artistry of games? And ultimately, what does it mean for games criticism, if we can't appreciate visionary moments, because of these weird little checklists of gameplay qualities, constructed and adhered to with near-autistic fervour?
It's a point I myself feel strongly about, and it outlines one key issue: Reviewers know how to evaluate games against the systems with which they're familiar, and not how to evaluate games that break the mold.
And the reviewer's stance is startlingly aligned with that of the consumer, either incidentally or by influence, which suggests a truly depressing possibility: We don't really want games to innovate, we just want them to perfect and repeat the formulae we already know.
And hey, even I plan to forsake all others for Chrono Trigger DS this week. I like games I've already played, I admit.
