M.R.I. #3: IV, "Proper" Reviews, and PSP Price Drop? - Editorials

More Randomness from the Internet (M.R.I.) is an on-going editorial series from The Armchair Empire's Omni.

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M.R.I. #3

IV, "Proper" Reviews, and PSP Price Drop?

From last week’s release of the official Grand Theft Auto IV commercial

gta 4

It’s a phenomenon that is repeated yearly. The ads shown during each Super Bowl tend to receive an amount of attention that far exceeds the usual attention allotted for commercials. That is, none. The day after the big game, you’ll hear more people talking about the ads than the actual game. So it came as no surprise to me that the Grand Theft Auto IV – simply labeled “IV” – sparked forums and serious game journalists to hypothesize the plot of the game, what you’ll be able to do in the game, etc. based on a minute-long commercial that showed no gameplay. It seems like a lot of energy wasted. Some people actually provided a frame-by-frame analysis of the trailer, circling points of interests, such as the guy

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adjusting his rearview mirror as he drives by or the billboard ads in the background.

I’ll admit the graphics are the best they’ve ever been for a GTA game – it’s a fully realized New Yo—Liberty City – but I refuse to spend any amount of time longer than it takes to type this trying to figure out just what we’ll be doing in

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the game based on some nice pictures and a couple lines of monologue.

“Life is complicated; I killed people, smuggled people, sold people. Perhaps here, things will be different.”

Maybe that’s enough for Dr. House or Sherlock Holmes to extrapolate the overarching plot, but for the rest of us, let’s leave it at, “That looks nice, can’t wait till they show us some gameplay.”

Note: Apparently the trailer was graphic enough that a spokesman for the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, stated, according to the NY Daily News, “The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers.” Hmmm, maybe he can show me in part in the trailer where members of the law enforcement community are beaten – no other “analyst” has reported it. Another comment worth pondering is from City Councilman Peter Vallone, chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee. He is reported as saying, "Setting Grand Theft Auto in the safest big city in America would be like setting Halo in Disneyland." (Bonus points to Councilman Vallone for mentioning Halo.)

From one of the GFW podcasts (3/27/2007): A "proper" review

I agree with practically every gaming pundit that proclaims that any moron can write a game review. For a person that is a full-patch moron, I never gave it much thought beyond that but after listening to one of the recent GFW podcasts it felt like someone had whacked me over the head. In the context of a conversation around the response to Shawn Elliott’s STALKER review, here’s a quick (paraphrased) transcript of the parts that really stood out for me:

Jeff Green: Anybody can write the cookie cutter [reviews].

Shawn Elliott: “…that [game journalists] approach [reviewing games] as a Consumer Reports kind of thing, is partially responsible for that homogeneity. Because we can all agree that “this works, this doesn’t work” and go down that checklist.”

The crew went on to explore the difference between reading reviews online and in the context of the magazine.

Like a murderer plagued with doubt that he had disposed of all of the evidence, I immediately went back and read a dozen of my recent reviews. Oops. Though it’s not quite as pronounced as about 90% of the gaming websites, I could easily distinguish the parts where I write about the weapons, the environments, the AI, online play, etc. I went to the local newsstand and bought a copy of GFW. (For some reason, GFW is kept right next to Penthouse Letters. PC Gamer sits next to Swank.) I frantically read the reviews, hoping that GFW would point the way to writing a less compartmentalized review. And it did. Read a review in GFW and it feels like you’ve read something – something beyond just a game review. It’s true that most of the component parts can be identified after you pick the review apart, but those parts are woven together in such a way as to make them invisible – you see the forest rather than the trees.

I’ve sworn that I’ll try to change up my style and challenge myself to write better. Right after I finish reading about what happened at a particularly wild office party…

From Sony’s Announcement that the PSP has been given a price drop

$30CDN (~$26US) doesn’t actually sound like a lot of money to me, but Sony has called it a “significant” savings; it brings the PSP down to a price of $199.99CDN (~$172US). A price drop can mean only one thing. Invasion.

Invasion of a redesigned PSP.

If you follow the trends, hardware price drops typically means that a better, newer model will be available soon and the manufacturer wants to slough off the old model to make space on retail shelves for their better, newer product.

My sticking point is the idea that $30CDN is significant. That’s roughly a 13% drop. That’s what I’d pay in taxes if I went to my local EB or Sony Store and picked up a PSP. (That’s in British Columbia – tax rates vary from province to province and state to state.) Really, it’s like Sony is taking care of the taxes for me. Yipee. I don’t have a PSP and a $30CDN drop just doesn’t seem like enough to lure me into buying one. Between $50 and $75, then I’d be interested. Or throw in a game.

- Omni

(April 6, 2007)