Overly Critical

I believe that nowadays, we all tend to be much more critical and harsh on most things we review.  It could be a standard brought upon by many years of growth in development and advances in respective fields, but I just feel that we get so "high and mighty" about our thoughts on stuff that we tend to lose focus on what it is we are seeing.

Take for example something like Medal of Honor that came out last year.  Now, as you all know, Doug and myself had good things to say about MoH, and we still do.  Most people criticized it for a bad story or it's graphics or overall generics.  Some would even say the multiplayer was a complete throwaway.

Was it all as bad as that sounds though?

When taking Medal of Honor on it's own, there is a lot of good to be had from that game.  The graphics were not the best in the world, but they are some of the prettiest in later years.  Story, sure, can be perceived as "just another shooter" but I felt that it just wasn't over the top and a more solid take on that formula.  Should we fault a game for being a solid title that plays similar to something like Call of Duty?  Should we use that as a standard as to compare games?  I don't think we should ever compare games as the brunt of the review; there is always going to be similarities that we have to point out because the way that games use each other to advance, but it really doesn't feel wrong that way.  When CoD is the game that really nails the feel of a fun shooter on a controller, why wouldn't others try and use that to help their game work better?  Speaking of which, the engine for CoD is just a tweaked version of the Quake engine, so really, its good that games work that way - using each other to grow.

Now granted, the MP for MoH wasn't as good as Bad Company 2, and that is something we have to point out given the developer and the framework used.  That feels like more of a disappointment than most for me, but at the same time, it worked well and looked really sharp so I don't feel like it's just something to throw away.  I still get into it here and there.  Overall we just live in this world now where games with the best online shooting are the ones that everybody will play and only that.  Heck, they don't even play the SP portion of the game anyhow, that's how the community has gone.

In short (excuse my rant here) I think we do too much comparing and are too spoiled.  Is MoH as good as CoD?  Is Devil May Cry as good as God of War?  Is Gears of War as good as Killzone?  Does any of that actually matter?  I can tell you right now, I like all of those games, they are all really good games; and to me, that's what should really matter.

-Eddie