Objective ratings don't exist

I am a frequenter of the anime database website MyAnimeList, and through this website I've come to recognize a lot of strange OCD-like quirks about the anime community; from its obsession with adherence to source material to its insistence on defining anime by country of origin. While I would love to pick apart many of these views, today I will be addressing a commonly misunderstood subject that even many outside of the anime community get wrong: objectivity and its relationship to reviews. I've seen the topic crop up on MAL numerous times, so I feel motivated to address the issue in full. Brace yourself now because this is going to be an incredibly lengthy post, but if you're a novice looking to delve into the world of media criticism, I highly recommend that you stick with it because I'm sure you'll probably learn a lot from this.

An "objective" critic.

The most critical problem at the heart of this topic is that people attempt to separate quality (as some kind of objective measurement) from their personal enjoyment, not realizing that they are actually referring to the same thing. By any meaningful definition of these terms, saying that a show is "good" is essentially the same as saying that you liked it. Before I make my case for this though, I should be clear with my definitions and what is actually meant by "objectivity", as much of this issue often boils down to semantic misunderstandings.

Objective - (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
Example of an objective statement: This anime's action scene was animated at full 24 frames per second.

Subjective - based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
Example of a subjective statement: This anime's action scene was really good because it was rendered at full 24 frames per second.

Notice that objective statements tend to be necessarily descriptive, as they merely describe an object or event as opposed to evaluating it, while subjective statements tend to be more qualitative; communicating to the listener how good or bad the writer personally found the material to be. Now as I mentioned previously, at the heart of this issue is the notion that people believe you can separate this qualitative measurement from subjectivity and somehow arrive at an objective (factual) measurement of quality. However, what they are most often really doing is conflating consensus opinion with objective facts, because even if everyone agrees on a particular judgment of a show, this still doesn't make the judgment in question objective; it just means that everyone happens to agree upon it. Take for example that a long time ago, it was the consensus belief that we live in a geocentric universe; that is to say we live in a universe where the Earth is at the center of all celestial bodies. We now obviously know this to be false, but more importantly it was also *always* false and at no point did reality change simply because a lot of people believed differently. Collective belief at no point turns into fact just because enough people can be persuaded to agree on something.

In the realm of art and entertainment media, qualitative statements are necessarily subjective because you cannot entirely remove one's personal biases from an evaluation of quality. I used the animation framerate example above because it is a great illustration of this point. Most people would consider an action scene rendered at 24 frames per second to be pretty visually impressive, but someone could still legitimately object and say that the action scene wasn't good because the choreography was lackluster, or the artwork was otherwise low-detail. Even if we restrict ourselves to solely evaluating the framerate of the scene and nothing else, someone might still object and say that 24 frames per second is outdated and looks bad, and the only way they can watch shows now is using smart TVs that can convert the video to 48 FPS using frame interpolation, or even using special computer software to achieve as high as 60 FPS. And relative to a 60 FPS standard, 24 frames per second would certainly pale in comparison as lackluster, but that's just it; even if we try to define a standard that is otherwise completely internally consistent with its measurements, the decision itself to accept that standard is still based on subjective opinion. Yes, 24 frames per second would "objectively" evaluate poorly against a 60 FPS standard, but maybe someone doesn't care about 60 FPS and views it as excessive, so they don't accept that standard in the first place. Maybe they would draw the line somewhere well below that, or maybe they actually prefer less frames. Maybe framerate doesn't even factor into their opinion at all so long as the majority of animations reach some moderately passable threshold, and the rest is just superficial icing on the cake. As I write this, there are film critics who staunchly dislike HFR (High Frame Rate, 48 FPS) film and prefer the standard, 24 FPS. They believe the higher framerate actually makes the film look worse, as if the motion is sped up and unnatural. One would think that more frames = smoother animation = superior animation, yet this is clearly not the case for them. Understand that when someone derives a feeling of pleasure from a particular action scene while citing the fact that it was animated at 24 frames per second as a justification for it, someone else could take that very same fact and have a completely opposite emotional response to it, and neither person would be technically incorrect for doing so. Either way, there isn't a wrong answer here because ultimately what standard someone decides on is a matter of opinion. And you know what? That's OK.

Well excuse me princess.

Just because quality is all a matter of opinion doesn't mean the conversation ends there. It seems as if many people fear the idea of admitting that their opinions are in fact "only" opinions and not facts; as if to make such an admission is to concede that all of their statements have now automatically lost all their value. That's just not the case. As I've mentioned previously, it turns out many people already share the same tastes on a variety of different subjects. Take the framerate example again; the vast majority of people would consider 24 FPS to be a high quality standard relative to the animation industry, so we can use this as a baseline to make a case for justifying our opinions and gain common ground with people from there. And if you can relate to other people's opinions, then their opinions can start to hold value for you. Even in cases where opinions disagree, this can often lead to more fruitful discussion because you might just gain insights and see something from a different perspective that you never noticed before. Many may find it hard to believe, but yes, people do actually change their opinions all the time; mine have certainly changed in the past as a result of seeing things from a different perspective. On the Internet, that may be hard to see because people have egos that they often choose to hide behind, but nonetheless it does happen, and I would wager beneath all the ego-stroking that goes on in a lot of arguments, almost everyone ends up reflecting at least a little bit after a heated debate.

So don't be afraid to admit that you have an opinion. Embrace it. Improve upon it. It's funny that people think the conversation often ends at, "Well that's just your opinion," because the reality is opinions are far more malleable than facts. Facts generally don't change, but opinions do, so make your case for your opinion. You might just find that you can change a few minds.

There is another problem I've encountered more recently though. There appears to be a second camp of critics that acknowledge their reviews are a matter of opinion, yet they still insist that it is useful to separate their personal opinion on some level from the score, which is problematic again for a number of reasons. To give an example, one critic made a statement to the effect of, "I thought Trigun was boring, but I gave it an 8/10." This score is perplexing because it seems to contradict the statement that precedes it.

As an anime belonging to the action genre, Trigun's goal is to entertain a particular audience that it might appeal to. If you are not entertained by it, then that should reflect in your score. At this point however, critics of this particular variety will usually point out that they're not rating based on enjoyment. The question then becomes though: what is even the utility of such a score? What usefulness does it serve if it no longer reflects the reason why people would be interested in watching the show in the first place? By basing a score on values that may drastically differ from your actual enjoyment of the anime, you effectively make your score incomprehensible to grasp to the average reader, since for all we know, an 8/10 could still mean it's bad to you, or a 3/10 could still be fun to watch. Who knows? I could understand if this were a documentary film that perhaps it would make more sense to base the score on how effectively it informs the viewer on some pressing social issue rather than strictly its entertainment value, but we are already working off of the foundation that this is an entertainment-based medium and therefore it should be judged on its entertainment value accordingly. Trigun is not a documentary. It is an action anime. Whatever ideas it brings to the table are only relevant insofar as they add to the entertainment value of the show.

The justification I've been presented with as to why these scores are useful is because they supposedly promote discussion and communal worth by separating "feelings" from the score and establishing a common shared standard. The biggest fault with this reasoning though lies in the suggestion that it is practical to remove one's "feelings" from the score. Since entertainment value is pretty much entirely subjectively determined (for reasons which I have already covered above), it is therefore inherently rooted in a person's feelings, so attempting to separate your feelings from the score effectively defeats its purpose in the first place, since the score no longer reflects its actual entertainment value but instead some arbitrarily-defined criteria.

Let's make something clear here: Nobody just likes stuff because they like stuff. There are always reasons behind it, even if viewers are poor at or completely incapable of expressing their reasoning. All opinions and/or feelings about a particular piece of media are rooted in facts about it on some level. That is, considerations like animation, plot, and voice acting are all what contribute to enjoyment; they are more or less inseparable from it. Some people are more lax at judging these criteria, and others are more critical, but exactly no one just likes something based on some nebulous visceral feeling they had about it which is completely removed from any actual facts about the media. The feelings we experience while watching a show are directly linked to the events occurring within it. So when critics say they are trying to separate their "feelings" from the score, I can only conclude that what they're really saying is that they are trying to separate the reasons why they like the series from liking it itself, which is a completely nonsensical notion. As I mentioned, these things are inseparable. You cannot like something when you take away the reasons for liking it, and likewise you cannot have reasons behind liking something if you don't actually like it. It is simply a self-defeating exercise to try and separate enjoyment from quality.

When a critic makes a statement like "I didn't like Trigun but I recognize that it's a good anime," what they are actually saying is that they recognize why other people might like this series, but they personally didn't. Make no mistake however that none of those reasons why others might have liked Trigun have anything to do with objectivity. These are just a collection of reasons that many people have come to agree upon as to why they like it, and the critic has grown a keen eye to recognizing these key elements in the narrative. When a critic can't reconcile their personal feelings with the consensus, this is where confusion often occurs, causing them to feel like they aren't justified in their own opinion. But failure to properly articulate why you might like a particular series in spite of others' hatred toward it or vice versa doesn't mean your opinion isn't justified; just that you may not be good at articulating why you feel the way that you do about the media.

In fact, it's perfectly reasonable to even recognize that one series has more flaws than another, while still coming to the conclusion that the former is better than the latter. This is because a good critic will recognize that scores don't start at a 10/10 by default and then get points deducted as mistakes are accumulated. Rather, they start with no score at all and earn/lose points as the story progresses, and sometimes the emotional and dramatic heights that the narrative reaches can counteract the mistakes that might be made along the way, so while one piece of media might suffer from fewer technical flaws compared to another example, it could still be considered inferior overall to its competitor simply because it doesn't hit its notes as high. You could write some very sophisticated and nuanced dialogue for example, but if you don't find a way to weave it into a narrative that makes it engaging to watch, then it still merely amounts to boredom and doesn't entitle you to being ranked above something like the Transformers movies just because it is more nuanced. At the end of the day, Michael Bay can still be more entertaining than you. Scenarios like this can sometimes be the catalyst for the previously-mentioned confusions. Certain critics might like something of less depth and therefore take their personal embarrassment of their taste to mean that they are objectively incorrect in their opinions. But they are not. Depth can certainly be a factor in determining quality, but it doesn't have to be the deciding factor.

Let's examine a previously-discussed point again; this time from another angle. "Objective" scores are useful because they supposedly promote discussion and communal worth by establishing a common shared standard. For starters, I don't see why this same goal of "discussion and communal worth" can't simply be accomplished by having a conversation like I already described earlier, wherein critics might agree on some things and disagree on others, but more importantly, what this really seems to be doing again is attempting to conceive of another consensus-based score and trying to pass it off as more "legitimate" or "credible" than other subjective scores because of it. In reality, it is just as opinionated as any other score, it's just that the author is trading some of his opinions and biases for the opinions and biases of others, or even worse, he is trading his opinions for an arbitrary standard that neither reflects the views of others nor his own. You don't arrive at a more credible or useful score just because you can recognize that your opinion might be more niche than others and compensate for that in the score accordingly. And to be certain, this is what the aforementioned critic was doing, because remember, he said, "I thought Trigun was boring, but I gave it an 8/10," which implies one of two possibilities: either he personally was not very entertained by it, but he put his personal opinions aside anyway for what he perceives the consensus to view as more valuable, or even though he didn't like it, he's basing the score on some arbitrary merits that don't necessarily reflect anyone's opinions (and let's not forget that he already conceded his scores don't reflect any kind of factual measurement of quality either). In the latter case, this renders the score completely useless, because at the end of the day, if the merit in question doesn't contribute to your enjoyment, and it wouldn't necessarily for anyone else either, then what is the value in acknowledging it and incorporating it into the score in the first place? Who even cares?

The audience response to your arbitrary score is in.

As for the former case, it's at least slightly more respectable, but why bother when we already have much more useful tools at our disposal for gauging the consensus view? MAL already has a system for automatically calculating the average aggregate score of an anime. Similarly, other websites like Metacritic do the same for other forms of media like movies and video games. So riddle me this: How should I interpret your apparently consensus-based score in cases where it doesn't actually mesh with the consensus? Since your score is only an approximation of what you think the consensus values and therefore can be prone to inaccuracies, why should I trust your score over what the actual consensus reads? The answer of course is that I shouldn't. In fact, it's a complete waste of time when I can just go straight to the more reliable source. Another irony of this whole approach is that by attempting to adjust your score to account for the consensus, you help throw the actual consensus calculations off. If everyone was busy trying to guess what the consensus thinks with their scores instead of leaving that type of measurement to the actual consensus calculations, you end up with one giant fabricated bubble where no one knows how each other really feels because everyone is trying to reflect what they think other people think rather than what they actually think. Just sit and think about that one for a while if you have to.

Let's take another step back though and examine scoring systems based on technical merits. The irony of a technical scoring system is that in its attempts to aim for more consistency, it makes things more inconsistent. Take for example a typical "divide and average" system that will usually be broken up into various sub-scores like art, sound, story, and characters, and then these scores are averaged together to get the final score. The first problem with this that many critics don't often consider is that different aspects should be weighted differently depending on the genre and premise of the show. As an example, art and animation might frequently weigh heavier into the score for an action series as opposed to a slice of life series. Since action choreography and visuals can often make or break a good action scene, the artwork becomes much more integral to the score than it normally would in a different genre. Whereas a slice of life series can get away with less while not detracting from the plot, an action series would suffer significantly more in contrast. Often times shows just don't all fit neatly into the same criteria and have to be judged differently according to their strengths. Yet, our previously described scoring system does not account for this. Instead, it treats all values equally regardless of circumstances. This can result in complications like one anime rating slightly higher than another despite that the critic may actually view the lower rated series as superior.

One of the most egregious examples I've seen of this type of scoring system is from a critic by the name of "roriconfan". One of his criteria for rating the story is "plausibility", of which he awarded 0 out of 2 points to Attack on Titan in his review for the anime. Obviously though, we know that Attack on Titan's premise isn't plausible; the author assumes that a certain level of suspension of disbelief should be considered as a given when delving into it, and the lack of realism in this respect should not by itself automatically detract from the entertainment value of the series. This is the problem the more specific you get with your sub-scores though; many of them just simply don't apply to the quality of every show. Plausibility might be relevant to consider for shows that are aiming for a greater sense of realism, but this is certainly not one of those cases. We're talking about giant zombie-like monstrosities devouring humans for pleasure here. In any case, as can hopefully be seen here, the more specific that technical scores get, the further away they get from actually accurately reflecting a show's entertainment value.

Now, some critics are smart enough to recognize these faults in an averaged system, so they attempt to account for it by adding an additional sub-score like "enjoyment" or "tilt" to balance things out, and while this is a nice improvement, I think in many cases a single additional sub-score may not be able to weight the overall score enough in the desired direction. In still some other scoring systems, these sub-scores are not factored into the overall score at all, which then sort of begs the question, do we really need to know these sub-scores when the overall score can ignore them anyway? It would seem that the overall score is all that really matters at that point, and the sub-scores merely become superfluous details.

But most of all regarding technical scoring systems is that you still don't really avoid the influence of pure subjectivity in the score no matter how much you may try to put everything into neatly concise measurements. While some measurements like framerate are easy enough to precisely quantify and rank, when you get into measurements like narrative quality, the waters become much murkier. Sure we can to some degree go down a checklist like whether a particular story adheres to traditional hallmarks of storytelling prose, such as a typical exposition setup, rising action, climax, and then falling action, and we can take into account variables like how many plot holes there might be or how many of the show's themes introduced are brought full circle, but even when a show may contain all of these storytelling elements while keeping plot holes on the down low, there is still a whole slew of subtle nuances that can derail the execution, which simply can't all be accounted for in neat little measurements, and ultimately whether one finds the execution satisfactory or not can very much boil down to raw personal preference. And similarly, the reverse can happen where an anime may not even adhere to traditional storytelling prose at all and still be received as a critical success. Hayao Miyazaki is one such director that I can recall achieving this with his movie entitled "My Neighbor Totoro", which has virtually no rising action, no conflict, and little exposition throughout at least 80% of the movie, and yet it is regarded as a masterpiece by many. Are technical rating systems really equipped to deal with anomalies like this? I would be willing to wager that at least some critics have to break their scoring systems in order to justify some of their scores when they adhere to strict standards like this. This is why as a general side note, I think it's a lot simpler and more practical when writing a review to just give a singular straightforward rating based on your overall response to the media, and as a further aside, critics should stop trying to shy away from acknowledging their feelings in their reviews. Entertainment should be attempting to invoke an emotional response from the viewer; it should emotionally resonate with its audience. Attempting to remove feelings from that equation with cold detached numbers in their place undermines the great majority of what entertainment is all about.

Still, some critics continually insist on some vague notion of "greatness" that is somehow separate from one's personal feelings. Let's examine some more arguments from another critic to see where the semantic confusion lies:

"I think you can admire something without liking it. I don't think it's particularly impossible to fathom the possibility of someone who acknowledges something's greatness but disregards it due to personal preferences."

In reality, this critic is actually making one of several possible conflations. What might be more accurate and consistent to say is that it's possible to admire a certain quality about something while still disliking it as a whole, or you can dislike a certain aspect about something while liking it as a whole. You can also like one aspect while disliking another, or you can acknowledge something's "greatness" relative to a consensus but not your own opinion. But to say that you can simultaneously think something is "good" and yet dislike it at the same time is a contradiction of terms. This is only possible when we're no longer strictly talking within the context of art and entertainment-based mediums. And as we're about to see, when we look at some examples that this critic gives in support of his statements, these types of conflations appear to hold true. Let's examine one of his examples.

"For instance, I think Djokovic is a magnificent tennis player, but I hate his play. I find it boring, uninspired, and lacks the finesse of the masters before him. That doesn't stop me from thinking he's a great player though."

As we see here, our critic is actually talking about two separate aspects of Djokovic while conflating them as the same thing. On the one hand he is evaluating Djokovic's skill as a player, while on the other he is judging Djokovic's entertainment value. Taking this context into consideration, it is not an equivalent analogy to strictly evaluating entertainment like a movie or anime.

In sports, there are clear predefined goals that are universally established as the rules of play from the outset. Since these rules define the sport, we can use them as universal standards for judging players, and thus objectively evaluate their skills against other players to a degree. If one player can score more points than another while they are playing against each other for example, this is a clear objective standard from which we can use to evaluate their skill. However, all of this is only made possible because there exists a predefined standard. The teams must score against each other and those with the highest scores always win. No team can simply disagree and declare themselves the victor when they scored less points. When it comes to entertainment in contrast, no such standard exists. One's entertainment value is necessarily mind-dependent; that is, the enjoyment one gets out of something is determined by his or her own personal thoughts, which can fluctuate from person-to-person, and therefore by definition makes it subjective. How much enjoyment one gets out of a particular piece of entertainment is not bound by any externally-imposed rules.

By essentially saying, "I think Djokovic is a good player, but I dislike him," our critic is not actually talking about the same thing throughout the entire statement; it's just easy to get lost in the semantics due to the ambiguities in the language. Again, the first part of this statement is evaluating Djokovic's skill as a player, while the second is evaluating his entertainment value. If we strip the first part away from the statement until we are only left with "I dislike Djokovic," we now have a fair analogy, because we are now strictly talking about the entertainment value of something (or in this case, someone). Remember, since entertainment mediums like anime do not possess any inherent "rules" for enjoyment, there exists no objective "skill" level to measure against. There is only one's subjective opinion about it. The important point of contrast to note here is that this particular statement only works in its own specific context. If we re-worded the statement to say, "I think Trigun is a good anime, but I dislike it," the statement becomes a contradiction, because now we are talking about the same thing in both parts of the statement but describing conflicting reactions to it. In both parts of the statement we are talking about the entertainment value of the product, but acting as if there exists an objective standard to measure against as well as another subjective one when no such dichotomy exists like there was in the previous statement. There is only the subjective measurement of entertainment value.

With all this in mind, we can finally conclude that what our guinea pig critic is actually doing here is admiring one aspect of Djokovic's character (his skill as a player), while disliking another (his entertainment value), but in neither case is he having a positive and negative response to the same thing at the same time. And furthermore, there exists no equivalent objective standard for measuring the "greatness" of an entertainment-based medium versus the skill level of a tennis player, as one is the measurement of entertainment value while the other is a measurement of how well a player can adhere to the predefined rules and goals of the sport. Let's move on to deconstructing his final statements:

"I'd like to stress the inherent difference between base preferences and substantive criticism. I may write off Homer's 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' as works I don't enjoy, but that's because I'm not a classicist, and not because I can come up with any substantive criticism on why Homer's works are bad."

And herein we reveal the heart of the problem: what he categorizes separately as "base preferences" and "substantive criticism" are really one and the same. What this is doing again is in some way covertly trying to dismiss some opinions as less legitimate than others when all that's really being argued is an appeal to popularity (IE, comparing people's personal preferences against that pesky consensus we've been talking about). Just because Homer's works might adhere to certain standards of narrative prose that many people have come to collectively agree upon as marks of quality does not make criticisms based around these attributes more "objective", or in his words more "substantive". It just means that more people are likely to agree with your preferences when you make appeals to these particular points rather than appealing to one that might be more niche like your preferred character traits in a protagonist. The reason these standards developed in the first place was because people collectively found that they tend to make media more appealing, but even so, they are not set in stone in the same way as the rules in a game of tennis, which again we can clearly see this demonstrated by the way critics have responded to My Neighbor Totoro. And I would say the only reason our example critic lacks any meaningful criticism against the Iliad and Odyssey in this case is not because the reasons he dislikes them are invalid in any sense, but because they are vague and inadequately described, which as I already covered earlier, is more a problem of failure to communicate rather than those reasons not actually existing. Recall what I said earlier regarding feelings not just existing in a vacuum independent of reasons behind them.

Whatever the case with our critic's possible confusions, I think it should also briefly be noted that to have a positive response to a particular work is to like it on some level, whether it be minor or major, simple or complex of an emotion. To simplify enjoyment down to only a rudimentary emotion equivalent to the kind of shallow pleasure you get from masturbation I think is too narrow and restrictive of a definition. Critics often tend to agree that deeper narratives are better because depth can make things more enjoyable, and the process of thinking critically from a piece of work can frequently provide a strange and unique form of pleasure unto itself. When you rate based on "enjoyment only", that doesn't have to mean you're only looking at it surface-deep, or just saying you liked something without really having a reason why. Aspects like plot, character development, animation, etc. all directly contribute to enjoyment. They are inseparable from it. The whole reason we rate based on these elements is because succeeding at them makes the story more enjoyable. If a character is poorly-developed, then this will impact your entertainment value negatively. If an action scene is slickly-choreographed, then your enjoyment will be impacted positively. If the quality of these attributes didn't actually impact anyone's enjoyment at all, then would anyone care what score you slap on them? Of course not. What we find likable about a particular plot, character, or art design is nonetheless subjective though, and attempting to treat that as if it isn't subjective is dishonest.

What people should really be asking for instead of "objective" "unbiased" reviews is that critics should provide justifications and reasons in support of their opinions, which is much more accurate to say and doesn't muddy the waters with terms that people don't really understand. Obviously when someone says "Trigun sucks because I didn't like it," this isn't very helpful, but not because their opinion is "biased" or isn't "objective"; it's because their opinion is vague and lacking reasons in support of it, and whether you may disagree with those reasons, that doesn't necessarily mean their opinion is illegitimate. If you really want "objective" reviews though, you can always get a taste of what to expect from Jim Sterling's "unbiased" review of Final Fantasy XIII.

The constant struggle and balancing act that I see many critics going through between what they call "quality versus enjoyment" is in actuality a struggle between their desire to have their opinion validated by others versus their desire to express their own true opinion. In essence, they want the score to be representative of how they feel about the media but at the same time they want it to be recognized as fair and legitimate by their peers. But in sacrificing part of your opinion in your score for what you think the consensus values more, you do not arrive at a more objective or unbiased score. You merely arrive at a score that more people will likely agree on. But popularity should never be mistaken for quality, and by attempting to remove your own feelings from the score, you are missing a fundamental point of what entertainment is all about.

Even if you still maintain that basing your score on consensus opinion has some kind of value or utility, does this really eliminate enjoyment from the equation? The reality is no, it still doesn't. All you've done is attempt to eliminate your personal enjoyment from the equation, but you're still evaluating based on standards that ultimately the consensus has deemed as enjoyable.

In the end, consensus or "objective" scores are impractical because they neither reflect any kind of factual measurement of the show's quality nor the author's true opinion on the show; it's just a nebulous mixture of partly the author's opinion combined with an approximation of what they think the consensus would/should be, which is itself also just an opinionated estimate. Ultimately if you're going to admit that your score is a reflection of opinion, I don't know why you wouldn't just fully embrace your own opinion. It's a lot easier to gauge how a particular show really is when critics are being upfront and honest about their opinions and not trying to kowtow to what they think other people have to say about the show. There is certainly plenty of discussion to be had about art and entertainment media even when people don't precisely agree on the standards of why they like it. Let's be clear here though: I'm not trying to force my opinions on anyone here. It's actually quite the opposite. I'm just pointing out what is really being said when people talk about objectivity, and what I'm actually advocating for is more diversity of opinion. I just want people to be honest about their own damn opinions. Stop obscuring your true opinion out of some concern for what other people might think, and embrace plurality of opinion in media. No score is "objective" and that is perfectly OK.

4/8/2015 Footnote: After analyzing this subject in more detail I realized that while my overall conclusions are still correct, some of my underlying reasoning building up to them was flawed and I might have been previously misinterpreting the views of certain critics quoted in this article, so I have now gone back and completely rewritten several paragraphs to (hopefully) remedy these errors and better clarify my points. I may also continue to make adjustments as I review this article again, since this can get to be a complicated subject and I want to eliminate as much ambiguity as I can.

Is the Wii U truly as underpowered as we are led to believe?

Nintendo has seen no shortage of hatred from the mainstream gamer community in recent years, some of which is deserved, and most of which isn't. One such criticism that is frequently leveled against them is that their hardware is "underpowered". And relative to the other current generation systems, the Wii U certainly can't compete on their level. However, some critics have gone a step further and dismissively asserted that the Wii U is a relatively weak system even when compared to the last generation of consoles, which is a claim that I immediately found dubious. Looking over what we know about the Wii U's hardware, the specs certainly don't suggest that it should be underperforming when stacked against its last-gen counterparts. Take a brief look at a comparison between the systems for yourself.

A typical Nintendo troll.

As can be seen, the Wii U boasts a similar tri-core processor to the Xbox360, clocking in at 3.0 Ghz. However, the Xbox's processor clocks in at 3.2 Ghz, giving it a slight edge. This does at first glance seem to suggest that the Wii U is still lacking, but now let's analyze this a bit further. 0.2 Ghz is only a 6% difference, and any PC gamer worth their two cents will tell you that the processor is rarely the bottleneck for performance in a gaming system. Consider GameSpot's gaming PC on a console budget challenge as a reference. Even Peter Brown's build running on a low budget dual core Intel Pentium processor was still able to push stable 40+ framerates at 1080p with current-gen games. That's a weaker processor than what's currently in the Wii U, and yet his PC can compete on the level of a Playstation 4 and Xbox One.

And once we factor in the Wii U's memory which dwarfs the competition with a full 2 GB of RAM compared to the Xbox360's 512 MB and the PS3's 256 MB, the Wii U should theoretically be able to offer higher resolution textures and improved load times. The biggest determinant of gaming performance overall though lies in the graphics card, better known as the GPU. The Wii U utilizes a similar-performance AMD Radeon GPU compared to its other competitors here, but it's based on a much newer architecture from AMD, which should again give it a slight edge in performance.

That's all fine in theory of course, but the naysayers are quick to point out that in practice the numbers don't add up, and they have the benchmarks to show for it, citing disappointing results from multi-platform titles like Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty. I decided to investigate this for myself, and the first example I encountered was an Assassin's Creed IV framerate test. Check it out for yourself. Now here we see that it looks like the Wii U is underperforming with consistently lower framerates than the 360 and PS3 by a margin of 5-10 FPS, so that must settle it, right? We can sit here and crunch numbers all day long, but at the end of the day the actual results just don't add up. Or do they? See, it's not that simple.

I immediately suspected that something was still amiss here. Indeed, while it's true that plainly before my eyes the Wii U is still underperforming despite what should be a fully capable hardware set, there are still a lot of other factors to consider here before just jumping straight to the conclusion that the Nintendo hate wagon would like you to reach. For one, it is very possible that given the Wii U's new architecture, developers have not been fully acclimated to it yet and don't know how to best optimize for it. It could also very well be possible that they were just lazy and not given enough time to finish optimizing for the system. And finally, there is the possibility that the developers over-estimated the Wii U's hardware and made it shoulder more graphically intensive tasks than it can handle; more so than even the PS3 and Xbox360. To that last speculation, I found another comparison that might confirm this, which you can view here.

In this latest comparison, we see that the PS4 obviously has the best visuals, with sharper, more detailed textures, better lighting, and more special effects such as thicker rainfall and more reflections. The differences naturally start to become harder to notice when we limit ourselves strictly to the PS3/360/WiiU combo. However, we can quickly make one further elimination within the first pause at 20 seconds into the video. It is quite obvious that the PS3 screenshot has virtually no visible rainfall whatsoever, while the 360 and Wii U shots in contrast have at least some noticeable rainfall effects. Therefore at the very least, we now know that the Wii U is being expected to shoulder more graphical effects on its hardware than the PS3 is pushing, and had the developers scaled back to the same as the PS3's level, it could be argued that the Wii U would perform equally or slightly better than the PS3. But now it's a contest down to the Wii U versus the Xbox360; is there any noticeable difference between the graphical detail of the Wii U shots compared to the Xbox? I'll be honest here. I tried my hardest to look through every single pause point in the video for an obvious difference, but couldn't find any to the best of my ability. The only difference that can be noticeably observed is that the Wii U seems to have a very subtle edge with lighting, allowing the player to perhaps see slightly more detail in the textures, but it isn't anything that can really definitively say that the Wii U is being pushed harder. Thus, at best we can only conclusively gather here that the Wii U is being worked harder than the PS3, but not necessarily the Xbox360. That's still slightly problematic though, because the Wii U's specs suggest that it should be able to do at least a little more than even the Xbox360.

But we're not done yet. Now things get really interesting once I discovered Need for Speed: Most Wanted. In various articles discussing Need for Speed with developer Criterion's Alex Ward, he remarked that not only does the Wii U version of the game feature higher resolution textures based on the PC version of the game, but it also maintains more stable framerates than its PS3/Xbox360 counterparts, thanks to Criterion's decision not to do a straight port and instead take the time to properly optimize the game. That's quite a statement, but is it just empty hype? Well the framerate tests are in for this game too. Lo and behold, there's no doubt about it. It turns out when you actually take the time to do a proper conversion, the Wii U performs even better than the other last-gen consoles while outputting higher resolution textures to boot. Of course, some might remark that during this framerate test the Wii U version was missing shadow effects from the metal beams, and the texture difference can be a bit hard to verify because of the cramped spacing in the video and all the fast movement going on. To the first point, this is actually because the game features day-night cycles, so playing the same course at a different time of day will affect where the shadows are projecting, but they are in fact still there. To the second point, we have another video for closer inspection. Pause it at 3:20 to see the most obvious difference. The texturing on the spiral concrete structure is quite inarguably more blurry and has inferior lighting on the PS3 version compared to the Wii U. And would you look at that at 2:57? The shadows from the metal beams are indeed still present in the Wii U version.

Rosalina will drink your tears now, haters.

So there you have it. The Wii U does exactly what its hardware should be capable of doing when third party devs actually optimize for the system like they're supposed to. Now, it is true that regardless of this point, the Wii U's hardware is still significantly inferior to both the PS4 and Xbox One, so if that is the only point that Nintendo hecklers want to get across, they are technically correct. But don't try to bite off more than you can chew and claim that the Wii U is an inferior system even when stacked against the last generation, because it's just not true. The Wii U not only matches the last-gen, but surpasses it.

Anime Roundup #1: No Game No Life

I've been really slacking with my blog lately, so I'm trying to find ways that I can keep myself motivated to continue maintaining it. One such way I've decided to do that is by introducing the first of what will hopefully become a regular segment on my blog: Anime Roundup. The premise is simply this: I talk about the anime I'm currently watching, give a brief description of my thoughts on it, and offer a tentative rating so people can get a feel for my impressions on it, as well as get a feel for whether they might be interested in it too. Let's begin now, shall we?

Never get a life. You two are far more interesting without one.

For my first Anime Roundup, I've got quite some heavy-hitters this anime season. Kicking this off, we have No Game No Life. The story follows the very enthusiastic nerd gamer Sora and his adorable younger sister Shiro, who together make up a truly unstoppable force in online gaming, having never lost a single match in any game they play. The impregnable duo plays under the handle "Blank", which is literally represented as a blank space on the screen in-game. Clever guys, really clever. How they might've managed to get past the "invalid character" splash screens in numerous account creation menus is beyond me, but in any case, they've made a rather well-known reputation for themselves in Internet circles, with many speculating on just how many people are actually controlling their characters, whether they cheat, or whether they're using some kind of hacks. Despite their lofty reputation and clear strategical brilliance though, for some reason it must've never occurred to Blank that they could win a million dollars rising through the ranked ladder of League of Legends with their talents, because instead they mostly opt to sit in their basement all night munching on junk food and living as bums. But before you start to think this is all a lead in to a cheap ripoff and cash-in on the Sword Art Online craze, suddenly Sora and Shiro are messaged by a mysterious person asking them strange questions about whether they feel like they belong in this world and how cool would it be to live in one that revolved entirely around gaming. They of course answer that they prefer the latter, and next thing you know, NGNL goes full-on anime, and by that I mean shit gets really bizarre.

Say goodbye to your Steam account, Blank.

Sora and Shiro are warped across dimensions into another world, or rather should we say several-thousand feet above another world, as they quickly find themselves plunging rapidly to their deaths. Miraculously however, the fall doesn't hurt them despite the nice crater they leave in the ground, and before you know it, you are introduced to the unbelievably vibrant new world of Disboard with some really impressively unique artwork to boot. In this world, war is forbidden and all disputes between its various races and inhabitants must be settled through challenging your opponent to a game. The art indeed deserves very high marks here, because I've never seen anything like it. The lineart is often drawn in red instead of black, which you would think looks really weird, but instead it works quite nicely in creating the effect that this is a truly alien world not like Earth. No Game No Life has some serious style. Seriously. The music deserves some mention too, as it's got a Phantasy Star Online-like ambience to it that fits very well with the setting.

Anyway, there is a lot to say about this anime because it is just brimming with so much vibrance and emotion. There is never a dull moment between the absolutely hilarious character interactions and insane scenarios that unfold from the games that Sora and Shiro find themselves engaged in. At no point is my jaw not hurting from all the laughing I'm doing, because NGNL never misses another opportunity to put a big dumb grin on your face from just how silly the characters are.

In many ways, NGNL takes on parallels to Code Geass, with Sora's charismatic inclination to give impassioned speeches and his uncanny strategic abilities very much mirroring that of Lelouch Lamperouge. And that aside, you can also never quite tell if he's just completely insane or a true genius. With this in mind, I really can't see anyone other than Johnny Yong Bosch voicing Sora for the English dub when it eventually comes along, as he is naturally the perfect match to bring Sora's brilliant madness to life. And while we're on the topic of voice actors, might I also recommend Emily Neves or Cristina Valenzuela as Shiro, Michelle Ruff as Stephanie Dola, and Wendee Lee as Jibril. You're welcome Sentai Filmworks; I just saved you the trouble on all the major casting. No payment necessary (but would be preferred... please hire me).

As much praise as I've been showering on this series, you might be thinking that I'm about to score this a perfect 5 out of 5, but nonetheless I do feel there are some significant caveats that are holding it back. As it currently stands, No Game No Life has only 12 episodes planned in the works, and having seen 8 episodes so far, I can tell that there is no way the story can be completely wrapped up in 4 more episodes without turning it into a train wreck. There is just too much lore that has still been left unexplored, and if a second season doesn't get announced, we will most likely be left with an incomplete ending. Given NGNL's huge popularity right now though, it is most likely that we can expect an announcement for season 2 eventually, but until then, its future is still uncertain. In addition, while it's true that there is never really a dull moment in this anime, at the end of the day there isn't a whole lot of depth or substance to it either, and it has a tendency to go off on tangents of fanservice, with an entire episode being devoted to humiliating, stripping, and putting dog ears on Stephanie Dola.

Holy waifus, batman!

And finally, the first episode was deceptive in that it gave the impression that we could expect to see a good deal of flashy action set pieces from this series too, with an opening scene that showed off some impressive combat in an online game world, but that was quickly replaced by much less impressive board games, card games, and even rock-paper-scissors matches in many cases. Nevertheless, No Game No Life is still highly entertaining, and while my score might seem a little like tough love on it right now, I think I will likely convince myself to give a final verdict of 4 out of 5 by the time it reaches its end.

Current Tentative Score: 3 out of 5 - Good

Wow, that turned out to be a lot more writing than I expected it to be, so I'm going to have to end my first Anime Roundup here. Hopefully I can tackle more than just one anime in my next roundup, but with NGNL being the biggest anime of the currently airing season so far, I guess it couldn't be helped.

If you liked listening to my opinions here, you can also read some full anime reviews I've written on my MAL profile page.

Samus Aran and Sexualization in Video Games

Long time no see. As it turns out, yes, I am still alive; just been busy with other things. Anyway, it has come to my attention that Samus' apparent sexualization in the upcoming Smash Bros title is somewhat of a hot-button issue as of late, coupled with Hideo Kojima's recent comments on sexualization in his latest work with Metal Gear Solid V. As such, I thought I'd offer a somewhat brief commentary on the matter.

Screenshot of upcoming Nintendo eroge game. Rosalina DLC route TBA.

Some fans jumping to Samus' defense have argued that her look is necessary to gain credibility with more mainstream gamers, but if sexualizing Samus' character is Nintendo's idea of gaining street cred with the "mature" crowd then that's a pretty weak justification and I don't agree with that. Nintendo doesn't need to waste their time with people who think that boobs and blood are marks of maturity in gaming, nor for that matter should they waste their time with people who think games need to be "mature" to be fun in the first place. I took issue with Kojima's character sexualization in MGSV for similar reasons because his justifications were pretty shallow and dubious. I view games as an artistic medium and when devs resort to blatant pandering to a particular audience, or in Kojima's case, making a shallow decision that has nothing to do with actually enhancing or making the game experience better, that hurts the medium more than anything. If games are to be taken seriously as a legitimate artistic medium, you can't have the producer coming out and making statements like, "I made this character sexy because I just want to see girls cosplay as her." Really Kojima? That's pretty pathetic coming from someone who's been known for creating much deeper plots in video games.

That said, I'm not really opposed to the idea of sexualizing a character by itself. If it's actually relevant to making the game better somehow, all the more power to the dev. For example, if the character is supposed to have a seductive-type personality as part of the story, then it would make sense to make them extra sexualized for that reason. In MGS1, Kojima was actually pretty brilliant with his use of sexualization with Meryl, as he used her "feminine" way of walking as a clue for the player to detect her apart from the other soldier disguises at one point in the game.

Like I need to be told.

Hell, I'll even accept amping up the sexualization to a certain point if the only reason is simply because you think it will make the character look better. There's nothing wrong with trying to make your characters look attractive for no other reason than to make the game's visuals more attractive; provided that this doesn't conflict with the narrative (IE if you have a female lead running around in a bathing suit for no apparent reason when the characters aren't in an appropriate location for bathing, that's not going to pass by me, or likewise if you have a bunch of characters that are supposed to be coming from an impoverished background in the story yet they all look super attractive and well-groomed, that's definitely not cool).

With all that out of the way, what do I actually think of Samus' latest redesign? Not much really; because she really hasn't even changed that much since Zero Mission in 2004 when the Zero Suit was first introduced, which is why I find it strange that all these critics are suddenly showing up late to the party to complain. She's changed even less from Brawl to Wii U. I think her chest size may have grown a few millimeters at most, but we're still far from Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball here people. In fact in the 3DS version it doesn't look like her size has changed at all. It's not like there's a mini-game specifically designed for poking around Samus' breasts and watching them jiggle. As far as Nintendo's sexualization goes, they were pretty conservative here and they could have done a lot worse. My only real issue with the new design is that they added yellow stripes and wrist cuffs which just seem unnecessary and make the suit look a little aesthetically unbalanced. But overall, when I bought Metroid: Zero Mission during its month of release back in 2004, my immediate impression of the Zero Suit was that it is the most iconic design for Samus with her armor removed that I've seen thus far, and I'm pleased that they've pretty much kept that look for her since then, especially because there was no definitive look for her prior to this installment. It hasn't made her lose any of her badass appeal so far, and if anything, I take more issue with her narrative portrayal in Other M than whatever Nintendo has done with her visually, but that's a story for another time.

All in all, I just don't see anything of merit here to complain about. Move along.

Objective Game Reviews: Be careful what you wish for

I'm not sure if this is a phenomenon that is exclusive to GameSpot, but in recent years the review site has received an alarming amount of vitriol for its scores on many highly anticipated games including Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Last of Us, DuckTales Remastered, and now most recently Grand Theft Auto V. While some of the criticism leveled against GameSpot might be legitimate, it is mostly drowned out by a sea of seething hatred and completely uncalled for remarks. It seems that many people are coming to GameSpot not to get informed before making purchasing decisions but rather just to confirm their own egos and pat themselves on the back for having such great taste. I would like to take this time to remind anyone expressing these views that GameSpot's role is not to pander to its audience and tell you what you want to hear; they are here to express their own opinions and inform you about games both technically and critically.

Typical aftermath of a GameSpot review.

Putting aside the hatred and insults though, there is a recurring theme among many of the negative comments that GameSpot's reviews are being too "biased", or "not objective", as if implying that these are virtuous goals that reviews should be aiming toward in the first place. This kind of perspective shows a failure of understanding of how critical analysis of media is supposed to work, as the context in which these words are thrown around demonstrates that these people don't really know what these terms actually mean and how they should be applied. Video game reviews are fundamentally a subjective opinion-based medium, as critics are offering up their own opinion on the experiences they had. To remove opinion from a review is to remove the entire critique aspect of the review along with an accompanying score, as any score is ultimately a numerical representation of the critic's overall opinion, and thus cannot be objective. This would of course result in a very boring and uninteresting review, as Jim Sterling infamously demonstrated with his brilliant "objective" review of Final Fantasy XIII. However, it should be acknowledged that any good review generally supports and grounds its opinions in actual objective facts that it can reference about the game that it is evaluating. This is where the technical aspect of a review comes in. Obviously if someone just writes a review saying that a game's graphics suck, its gameplay is boring, and the plot is lame without bothering to offer any specific examples to reference in support of these points, such a review would equally be uninformative. By combining technical and critical analysis of a game, potential players can get a much greater sense of what the game might actually feel like to play. I want critics to touch on objective aspects of the game, but anything beyond pointing out technical specifics, the critic's personal opinions should be entirely welcome.

Let's look at some small examples of how to combine the two aspects I've been talking about so you can see how much it helps when a review contains both objective and subjective elements.

Example 1: "The leveling system in Guild Wars 2 sucks."

This is bad because it's only expressing an opinion and doesn't tell you anything about how the leveling system works.

Example 2: "Guild Wars 2 uses a unique leveling system that scales your level down based on the zone you're travelling in."

While this might seem more informative than the previous example, this is still bad as well because it's too plain and descriptive without offering any critical insight on how this might affect the gameplay.

Example 3: "While Guild Wars 2 makes it easier to group with your friends through its unique level scaling system, this also results in a feeling of lacking character progression because your avatar's strength is always being reduced based on the zone you're travelling in."

This is a much more insightful example because it touches on specific technical aspects of the gameplay while extrapolating potential consequences and problems that follow from it. Even if you might personally disagree with the critic's conclusions, you're much more informed about what to expect from the gameplay of Guild Wars 2 than through the other two examples, and that's the most important thing, as a review's primary goal should be to inform.

Now that I've hopefully established the necessity of subjectivity in reviews, let's jump back to Carolyn's GTAV review for a moment. What's particularly annoying to me about criticisms of the review is that many players are basically admitting that her points about misogyny and sexism are right, but they should just be ignored anyway, citing that personal politics shouldn't factor into the score. But why not? As I've already pointed out, a large part of doing a review is expressing the critic's opinion, and since enjoyment can certainly be affected by political messages in the game, then it's fair game to offer commentary on them. Yes, there can be a wide range of opinions where controversial issues are concerned, but such can still be the case for any other aspect of a game as well. Some people enjoy level grinding for example; others may find it tedious. Either way, it is completely appropriate to talk about politics in a game that deals heavily in political commentary. In fact to ignore it altogether would almost be dishonest. I'm not saying anyone needs to agree with Carolyn's opinion, but this idea that she shouldn't even be allowed to express it out of some strange notion of professionalism is ridiculous. Being professional doesn't mean you need to tap dance around controversial issues; you just need to be respectful when expressing your point of view, which I believe Carolyn certainly was. Another argument I've heard is that it's GTA so misogyny should just be expected, as if to imply that if something has already established itself to be morally repugnant previously that it somehow no longer becomes a problem in subsequent iterations. I'm sorry but that's not how it works either. Garbage is still garbage and it doesn't suddenly turn into decoration just because it's been laying on the floor long enough without getting picked up.

GTAV ultimately got a 9/10, which last I checked is a superb score and an editor's choice. In other words, in spite of Carolyn's annoyances with its sexist undertones, she still thought it was an amazing game anyway. At the end of the day I don't see what there is to fuss about considering this. Even if you disagree with her view on that particular point, it did little to affect the overall score of the game, and if we're seriously going to start complaining because of a difference of 1 point, this is clearly no longer about trying to get informed about a game but instead seeking validations for one's own ego, because whether a game gets a 9/10 or 10/10, with that high of a score, it shouldn't stop you from enjoying the game regardless.

I've been saying for a while now that game reviews have become inflated, and anything that receives less than an 8/10 is regarded as a failure. For some well-established franchises, even a 9/10 is starting to become no longer enough. This madness has got to stop. The more we inflate game scores, the more we just devalue the scores anyway until they become meaningless. Ask yourself before you hand out that next 9/10 or perfect score; does this game really stand tall above all the rest as a game that will truly be memorable and revisited for years to come? I'm finding more and more games receiving very generous scores that I end up buying and being sorely disappointed by. These are games that are from genres I normally enjoy as well. As a result, it's becoming harder and harder for me to find critics that I trust.

I literally read from another commentator on Carolyn's GTAV review that if game reviews weren't objective then the scores wouldn't all be the same; as if implying that this would be a bad thing. Oh my god, really? You mean... people might actually have... A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION?!

Someone call the Gamestapo Secret Police! Such dissent must be silenced at once! Unbelievable that this is a commonly shared opinion among seemingly many gamers. There is value to be had in varying opinion being that no one shares exactly the same tastes. If all reviews shared the same opinions then many people could not find critics that they can relate to and trust. As much hate as Tom McShea got from his review of Skyward Sword for example, I actually gained a great deal of respect for him since then. I like many others ignored his review initially, thoroughly convinced that he couldn't be right, but when I actually sat down to play the game myself, I had to honestly admit that the controls were as problematic as he had described. Not game-breaking, but enough of a nuisance that it took a high toll on my experience. The fact that Tom was willing to take a step back and not automatically assume that a Zelda game is entitled to a very high score just because of its established pedigree, and instead gave a score that accurately reflected his true experience with it, I became much more trusting of Tom's insights from then onward.

The bottom line I guess I'm trying to get at here is be careful what you wish for. If you want truly objective reviews, you're asking for a snorefest. An uninformative, bland and boring snorefest. I welcome opinions, and lots of them. Gamers need to stop using terms they don't understand or they might just get exactly what they want, much to their own detriment.

BattleForge: A glimpse into the future of gaming?

EA has recently announced that they're essentially flipping the kill switch on their free-to-play real time strategy game BattleForge, terminating all server support for it by October 31st. As the game requires an Internet connection to play, this means in the absence of a server to host the online content, the game will be rendered totally unplayable in the coming months. Though I have never played the game myself, looking over some reviews of it, there were many players who were quite fond of the game and had much praise to say about it, even though the game has failed to reach the mainstream market penetration that it might have deserved. What's more from what I've read, it is technically possible to solo through the game by yourself without necessarily needing to interact with any other players; in fact some missions are exclusively single player by design, and in-game currency can be earned through playing the game and without necessarily needing to spend real world money.

With these points in mind, this begs the question to all those always online digital future supporters a few months ago, who ardently supported Microsoft's DRM policies: What happened to all that good faith you had that these companies will provide an offline patch later? I've been told on several occasions that surely if it ever came to this, these benevolent corporations who think only for what's in the best interest of the gamer will simply provide a patch for offline play, and thus problem solved! Nothing to get worked up about, so see? What's the big deal? You're all just making a big scene about nothing. Well here we are; that theory has been put to the test now and it failed. Even though BattleForge theoretically has enough of a framework in place to offer an offline option, none will be given even in its final hours.

It's worth noting that BattleForge is far from the first video game ever to suffer this kind of digital fate, as there have been many free-to-play style web browser games that have come and gone over the years as well, but BattleForge is particularly unique in that it's a much more advanced and in-depth game produced from a well-established AAA publisher, which gives us a frightening glimpse into what we can truly expect from this grand "digital future" for hardcore gamers that always online proponents speak of so fondly. Some players have actually invested well over $100 into this game and now they will have nothing to show for it. BattleForge wasn't originally free-to-play either; it came in full retail boxed copies, which have now been effectively repurposed into paperweights too. Isn't always online great guys? I love it when my software discs come with an arbitrary ticking time bomb attached. In fact, I think I want all my games always online. That's the world we live in after all, isn't it? #AdamOrthLogic

Where's Batman when you need him?

In EA's statement, they remark that they find it unfortunate and never easy to shut down an old game like BattleForge. That was a nice sentiment, but wait a minute, BattleForge was released in March of 2009. The game is only four years old! This is considered an "old" game? Even World of Warcraft is still being supported after all these nine years and counting. Of course, one could argue that Warcraft is a significantly more popular game, and as long as a game maintains a healthy level of player activity, it will always be supported. Perhaps, but the lasting value of a game really shouldn't be left up to the whims of the majority. If a player feels like revisiting a game they paid for with their own money even many years into the future, there's no reason that option shouldn't still be left open to them, regardless of whether that game ever managed to achieve popular widespread appeal or not. It's their game; they should decide when they feel like playing it or returning to it, especially when the game theoretically should have been capable of offering offline content in the first place.

BattleForge may not be one of the more iconic and well-known games to suffer this fate, but it raises a warning flag for what we can expect from bigger games to come as more AAA mainstream games are fundamentally integrated with online functionality. The clock is ticking for some of your favorite games, and someday many classics may be lost to future generations because of arbitrary restrictions created by an online service-based approach to gaming.

Smash Bros Wii U: Nintendo drops the ball again

As I feared, the Wii U's slow adoption rate appears to be taking its toll on Nintendo, and it seems they're now rushing some of their big name games out the door in an effort to boost sales. Sakurai has announced that they're cutting the story mode from the upcoming Smash Bros game, citing that the cutscenes from Brawl were leaked to the Internet which ruined the element of surprise and sense of reward from that first-time playthrough. While this is their official statement, I think it's fairly obvious that we all know the real reason behind the omission, because the excuse given is pretty bad. Really, because the cutscenes were leaked to the Internet? Everything gets leaked to the Internet. Deal with it. I guess Hollywood should just pack its bags and find a new industry then, because obviously no one must be going to the movies anymore since it's all being leaked to the Internet, right? Oh wait.

Not swimming in money at all.

To punish legitimate players like me who actually waited for the game to come out before viewing the cutscenes is just stupid, and even if I had seen them before, what good does it actually do to just cut the content entirely? It's not like viewing them online meant that I now had no incentive to play through the story mode, nor for that matter an incentive to play the game at all. If anything, I would have just been hyped more to see what kind of gameplay is in store for me between those cutscenes.

What this really comes down to is that now the new Smash Bros already feels like it's going to be a significant downgrade from the last game and my hype has dissipated for it. One of the biggest attractions for me with Brawl was that the series was now getting a proper fully-featured adventure mode as the Melee version had previously felt tacked-on and incomplete. The idea of being able to play through a large expansive world with all my favorite Nintendo characters was a very attractive concept to me, and I was looking forward to seeing how Nintendo was going to continue to expand upon it in this latest release, but now that interest has been evaporated. My biggest disappointment about this whole omission is that the series has historically always been adding and expanding upon its features with each new release; never taking away from them. The roster was always getting bigger, and the gameplay modes were always getting better. Sure there would sometimes be some small things here and there that wouldn't always carry over, but all of the bigger features of the franchise have always been taken and expanded upon in each iteration. Now for the first time this feels like it's not the case, and it's really killed my excitement for the game.

Look what you made Samus do, Sakurai.

Perhaps I'm wrong though; maybe even though they're omitting a story mode, they intend to make up for it by expanding much more of the game's other features. I know they did mention that there's going to be character customization this time which has never been done before within the franchise, and it will not only affect appearance but performance as well, and that will be interesting to see, but so far that feature by itself is not nearly enough to make up for all the content we're going to be losing out on from having a story mode instead. I know a lot of fighting game enthusiasts don't really care for a story mode in their games, but for me personally, I've never been a big fan of the fighting genre outside of the Smash Bros games, and this is in part due to the feeling of there being a lack of content in most typical games of the genre. The single player modes often only feature the same content that you can access from versus mode; it just pits you against an AI and takes away your ability to customize the matches, which ends up leaving me feeling bored pretty quickly, and only able to play the games in short bursts. Features like Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode on the other hand add a lot more value to my purchase and allow me to absorb myself into the game for much longer periods of time.

I think it's fairly clear that the real reason behind Sakurai's decision is that they just want to rush out the Wii U's killer app, as it currently doesn't have one. Nonetheless, it's not doing right by their fanbase to be cutting corners like this. It's not our fault that they thought they could pass off another Mario Bros sidescroller as a must-have launch title for the system, and it's not going to make their situation any better by continuing to make lazy releases while the system is so desperately hurting for new adopters.

A few new characters and some shinier graphics aren't enough to cut it for me anymore, especially when most of the additions are so lackluster as it is. The WiiFit trainer? Animal Crossing villager? Seriously? Those can barely even be described as "characters". Where's Marina from Mischief Makers? Crono and Magus from Chrono Trigger? How about Krystal from Star Fox? I'm sure they could come up with a creative move set for her if she's equipped with the magic staff from Star Fox Adventures. There's still plenty of awesome characters that haven't been used yet in spite of Nintendo's lack of new iconic IPs as of late. Even as nice as it is to finally have Megaman, they're only using his older NES iteration instead of the more appropriate X variation which would have opened up options for them to bring Zero and Sigma into the cast of characters as well.

My reaction to this character announcement.

The omission of the story mode harkens back to a longstanding issue with Nintendo in that while they're usually on the cutting edge of inventing crazy new gameplay mechanics, they have been very slow to catch up with the rest of the industry as far as narrative development goes. While western game studios have been creating deeper and richer stories, Nintendo ignores an opportunity to improve itself in this aspect almost every time. Mario is still stuck saving the princess, and Link is... still stuck saving the princess too. But the thing is, we know Nintendo is capable of doing better than that, as evidenced by examples like Metroid Fusion, which did an excellent job of providing quality gameplay coupled with a compelling story. And then you have examples like Super Mario RPG that--while it was produced by Square and not directly by Nintendo--it still shows that you can tell a more interesting story even with a character as absurd as the classic Italian plumber. There's no reason you can't have great gameplay while telling a good story too, and I'd really like to see Nintendo try to improve in this area.

As things currently stand, the latest addition to the Smash Bros series feels like it's only shaping up to be another Melee with an HD coat of paint and with not even as strong of a character roster to show for it. I don't know what Nintendo is thinking, but I hope they can get these bad decisions turned around very soon because now I doubt even the latest Smash Bros can entice me to pick up a Wii U at this point.