on ratings and objectivity

the mainstream gaming scene is much too focused on the objective qualities of a game, a score, mostly. i don't like giving games a score, even on my backlogged, a site i mainly use for tracking what i buy more than anything i just give games scores based on how much i enjoy thinking about them, how much i feel good looking back on them, objectivity be damned. i'll put sonic R and resident evil dead aim on the same level as i will games like the last of us 2 and residnt evil 4, because all 4 of these things bring me joy, they're fun, do neat things nartively or artistically, have great soundtracks and vibes for days, they're all taken on their own merits as they should be, not rated by a number that says one is worse than another, some games i do score worse than others, for example i put far cry 5 at a half star, not because its broken, i'd barely even call it janky, it works fine, is playable and is *mostly* complete if you disregard all the content cut to sell back to you wholesale via the games store, it's there because it represents everything that's wrong with the industry, it's a cynical made by comittee product made to get headlines and sales, it's not a piece of art made by people that cared, it has a MTX store, the same generic design every modern game has, with liniar missions being forgotten because most of the game is just checklist missions inbetween innofensive story beats. it's made to be *good* on an objective score, it got its high ratings, its GOTY awards and sequels and all, because on an objective scale its fine, but it's also a souless husk. a game undeserving of my time and my thoughts, a perfect example of what the industry will become under this line of thinking.

i do this because when you begin to rate art on a scale like that it just opens it up for exploitation by capitalist buisness ideas, they become things to be perfected with systems to get people to buy it or buy into it if the game has an exploititive microtransaction economy, rather than a piece of art that does its own thing. they become games as a service titles, run by meaningless content and skins, with a single gameplay loop you grind into dust. which will get you tons of fairly hollow GAAS games like your typical ubisoft fare, or whatever first person battle royale of the week that's taking over twitch and less of those smaller, more artistically meaningful games. games like balan wonderworld, stranger of paradise and kamiwaza may not light metacritic ablaze, they may be mocked and derided by people that don't know any better like balan was, but they all do something interesting, you can look at balan and see how much creativity went into it, it was a real attempt at making something whimsical, it has a killer ost and just some of the coziest vibes in a game in years, and look at the tims, hecking friends, but it got hated on and mocked by every youtuber that thought they were original and funny because the game's a little jank. stranger of paradise too does a lot of cool stuff with its narritive, pushing a new kind of isekai story that i loved watching play out and it has the best combat system in an rpg this generation, but was also hated and memed on for a bad trailer and because it lacked graphically (which the game is actually very pretty in its environmental design actually but whatever). Even kamiwaza, an old game, granted is also another that got hit by this, being reviewed bad by critics for being "not up to modern standards" and "archaic". the game even ended up on metacritics worst games of the year list, all this while the game is, in reality, a very cool, very experimental game with a unique style, a ton of cool systems and some immaculate vibes, having one of the coziest worlds i've been in this year. all of these games are fantastic games i think about all the time, stranger is even my GOTY, but all of them are arguabaly lacking in objective qulities, and i think that's unfair because all 3 are full of charm and soul where it counts, and a lot of the real GOTY fodder tends to be the opposite, having objectively good qualities in some ways, but also having no soul to speak of, something that will not be remembered or thought about in a few years to come.

my point really is to never rely on scores to decide what art you partake in, because if you do, you'll absoluetly miss out on a ton of wonderful, experimental experiances that you may never see anything the likes of which again, and i think that's sad. even with those qualities that get marked down, jank and skung can be fun, a bad graphical style can have its own atmosphre and short games can be replayed easier, these aren't always bad, also balan was and is still a GOAT, free yuji naka, insider trading isn't even a real crime