So the site is called, fittingly enough, as you will soon discover,
Scathing Accuracy, and after a relatively lengthy exchange of emails with them, I have obtained their permission to feature some of their content on my frontpage. Now, I would have liked to feature all of it, and even more: I would have liked them to fold their site and move themselves and everything they've written over here, but, as they've told me, it's apparently not something that would appeal to them at the present time. Moreover, they are very strict about allowing me to edit anything, which means I can't feature as much of their stuff as I would like to on the frontpage, because roughly 50 to 70% of their reviews contain at least a little material that goes against the theoretical framework and editorial policies of this site. Most of the time it's nothing too pronounced, just the odd unconsidered comment here or there, or the odd omission which could be fixed with a little direction from me and a couple extra lines. But they seem to be against adding anything themselves as well... so it's a little frustrating. Finally I decided to cherry-pick what I am mostly happy with for the frontpage, and then dump the rest in the forum and pick it apart: what sucks and should be changed, and what is missing and should be added. They seem to be open about receiving feedback and perhaps, if they agree with it, integrating it into their future reviews, but not, unfortunately, about reworking their old ones. So, like I said, the latter will be dumped in the forum and regarded as mere impressions, instead of full reviews, and all of us should benefit from the the detailed dissection (either in the form of red-colored comments added to the text of the review, or additional commentary
after the review, or both) which I'll be carrying out.
Perhaps the worst idea contained in their entire site is the idea that, and I am paraphrasing here, "graphics do not, and should not matter at all in videogames", which Shepton seems to enjoy blathering out of the blue in every other review, thereby making it impossible for me to use it :( He even goes as far as to explain that by "graphics" he means the technical aspect: resolution, number of colors, polygons, etc., whereas he seems to have a little more respect for the artistic side. And of course the unfortunate "geamplay" is harped on every other line.
But dear Shepton, in all these years of playing games, it never occurred to you to realize that graphics -- and especially the
technical side that you so contemptuously dismiss -- are an integral, inseperable part of the "geamplay"? Do you think that RTSes with hundreds or thousands of units running around are possible on machines with puny resolutions like the Odyssey or the Intellivision or whatever? Or FPSes, or 3D action games, or or or? Was your first machine a PS2 or something?
Nothing is more important in the "geamplay" than the graphics -- nothing at all! For what are the graphics if not the game's reaction to your input? And the more complex you want your input to be (i.e. the deeper the game), the more complex the graphics have to be (i.e. more high-tech) in order to depict the gameworld's reaction. And you have to go and litter half of your otherwise excellent reviews with this asinine chatter, and then refuse to retouch anything :( What am I gonna do with you two guys? :)
Anyway, let's clear a couple of other things up.
The dudes use an 18-point rating system (A to F with three gradiations of each). Yet another huge groan :( See here for the reason:
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/how_good_ ... s_perfect/At any rate I need to convert the ratings to my system, at least for the frontpage and the review index, because I can't suddenly have As and Bs and Fs along with all my star ratings -- the frontpage would look like shit. So in the actual review pages everything will be as on their site, and the converted rating will work sort of like Metacritic, so you can safely leave that to me. But if any of the star ratings seem fishy to the authors, they can let me know after taking into account my rating scale, explained in the aforelinked article, and copy-pasted here for handy reference:
***** Highly recommended
**** Recommended
*** Good, but has been done before, and much better
** Playable, but without much merit
* LOL
What else? That's all I can think of for now. I will be linking all their material that I import to Insomnia in this thread, so that no matter across how many frontpage articles or forum threads it ends up scattered, people will be easily able to find all of it by visiting this thread. Finally, please note that most of my comments will be negative, for the simple reason that, if something's good, as most of their stuff indeed is, there's nothing to say about it. The mere fact that I am going to all this trouble to feature this stuff here means that I love it -- it would be pointless for me to say anything else on top of that (see also section 20
here). If I am not saying anything on something, then that means it's good. That's it for now, more later.