Sessler’s Soapbox: Heroes
By Ron on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 11:56 AM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Games, Nintendo, Nintendo
Adam Sessler’s weekly video column covers a lot of territory. This week, he takes up the defense of the recently released Wii title, No More Heroes, which X-Play gave a 5 out of 5 stars review to. He elaborates on a number of things that he enjoyed about the game, and states that while it isn’t perfect, it’s definitely a 5 out of 5 title.
Now, if you read my weekly Sessler’s posts, you’ll know that I tend to agree with Adam’s opinions on a lot of things. Unfortunately, this week I have abandon that stance. Any game that receives a perfect score, regardless of what rating system you use, should be a perfect (or at the very least nearly flawless) game. By Adam’s own admission, this game has issues. This goes back to something we’ve addressed in previous articles and on our File-N-Forget Podcast, and that is that too many review scoring systems allow perfect scores for imperfect games.
No More Heroes is just such an imperfect game. In my time playing it, I would say that it’s one of the more boring titles I’ve played recently, simply because it forces you to do a number of repetitive side quests to make enough money to fight each boss. The dialogue is poorly acted and written, and I came away from the whole experience feeling disappointed.
Sorry, Adam, but this week you’re on your own.
Thanks, G4 TV!
There are really different “perfect” games.
Games such as Halo 3 that delivers an extremely well put together multiplayer and solid gameplay receive perfect scores.
Games such as Bioshock that delivers immersive storyline and gameplay receive perfect scores.
And games such as No More Heroes that deliver a fascinating feel, a different perspective, going the extra mile into something generally no developer wants to touch.
Every game has bugs. The question is, is the game good enough to over look the bugs? In Sessler’s opinion, yes, it is; which is why he gave it a 5 out of 5. Whether or not I agree with that score is not important, but I agree with his stance and his reasoning behind it.
In essence, from your perspective, no game should be rated perfect since:
Humans are imperfect
therefore,
Games are imperfect.
Instead of looking at the score like a real number based sort of deal, look at it like the enjoyment factor of the reviewer. A review is essentially a writer’s soap box. This is where he declares why or why not he likes a game and follows his opinion with an easy number based system.
Read reviews, not the numbers. If I went to read the numbers, games like Assassin’s Creed would have never been played by me.
And if you believe the dialog is boring, then the humor is either lost on you, or goes over your head