One request: can we keep the pretentious quoting of poetry to a minimum?
[quote=“wumpus”]
And since when does moral slant belong in a game review? Does the C in CGW stand for “Christian” now?
If it’s morally offensive to the reviewer, why shouldn’t he say so? Give the reader credit for intelligence enough to sift through the reviewer’s viewpoint.
Didn’t anybody here show up for those ethics 101 classes in college? The last, oh, 400 years of western ethical/political thought has been an attempt to establish a system of justice that doesn’t rely on a religious foundation. Seeing the word “moral” and assuming “Christian” is like seeing the world “building” and assuming “church.”
The truth of the matter is that the reviewer thought the game was a stinking piece of shit from every single conceivable angle. If you had to review something that was totally against every single thing you think a game should be, you’d give it a toilet rating too.
The fact that the magazine didn’t give other classics like Outpost the same rating means absolutely, positively nothing.
You guys should have better sense than that.
— Alan
Didn’t anybody here show up for those ethics 101 classes in college? The last, oh, 400 years of western ethical/political thought has been an attempt to establish a system of justice that doesn’t rely on a religious foundation. Seeing the word “moral” and assuming “Christian” is like seeing the world “building” and assuming “church.”[/quote]
wumpus is a witch and should be burned. Or we should at least see if he floats.
If it’s morally offensive to the reviewer, why shouldn’t he say so?
If the reviewer is that easily offended, he’s in the wrong line of work. I don’t want this guy reviewing Carmageddon 1.
The fact that the magazine didn’t give other classics like Outpost the same rating means absolutely, positively nothing.
Giving a game zero stars is grandstanding, pure and simple.
I guess it’s just easy to dismiss anyone you diagree with as a bible thumping bumpkin.
Frankly, even if the score was completely divorced from the quality of the game, I have absolutely no problem with giving Postal 2 a political score, a zero. At the very least when Dateline comes calling the editors can say, “hey, we gave that piece of shit a zero.”
The thing is, we can challenge morality in games as well as we can in other mediums by putting them into context. In MGS2 you can play through using the tranq gun to avoid killing the bad guys. In RPGs you can play evil characters, but that effects the way the world reacts to you. With Postal 2 it’s just obscene acts of brutality, because I guess that kind of violence is hilarious and fun!
Give me bad guys, give me innocents, and give me choices that will effect the fate of both. Don’t give me a machine gun and push me out into a world filled with nothing but soccer moms and kittens and tell me, “have a good time!”
With Postal 2 it’s just obscene acts of brutality, because I guess that kind of violence is hilarious and fun!
It’s a game. And how is this any different than, say, Jackass The Movie? Or American Psycho? Remember, Hitler Wrote a Book Too!
Didn’t anybody here show up for those ethics 101 classes in college?
Ethics are overrated. Believe me. And on the religion thing-- I only had 3 letters to work with, and “Jain” wasn’t fitting in there.
Maybe if they wanted more stars they should have made a fun game.
I’m telling you, a lot of people on the 'shack liked that game. The forum buzz was surprisingly positive-- granted expectations weren’t very high, but this is the definition of “tough crowd”… they’ll give it to you straight up, Paula Abdul stylee.
So, that’s primarily why I’m not comfortable with a zero stars review. It’s not a good review in the sense of predicting actual enjoyment from purchase.
True, but why can’t someone go beyond simply judging how a game plays and make claims about how it portrays its videogame world? Say, for example, about its representation of women, or its use of violence, or how it does or doesn’t manipulate the player’s emotions, etc. Does it bother you when critics from other mediums like literature, film or theatre make these claims?[/quote]
Ummmm offhand: ‘because that’s not their job’? How about that one? ‘Is the game good or bad’, not ‘does the game contain improper moral lessons for todays young teens in this modern world.’
Of course not, cause those effect the game. Like I said: 'If you can’t tell the enemy from a trash can, then that is most certainly gonna effect the gameplay. Vice Verse; Beautiful and crisp graphics will aid you in playing the game as you are able to recognize and register the items quicker as well as give you incentive to perform actions that are rewarded with special effects.
Wow. Not sure if you’re being serious here or not, so I’ll just assume that you are and say that not all moral claims are based on a religious tradition. As a matter of fact, most moral theories aren’t, as the three main Western moral philosophies, including the version that most inspires our political tradition are based in opposition to religous claims.
“WESTERN MORAL PHILOSOPHY” Are you in fact implying that moral standards may be different in some places?
In that case couldn’t ‘morals’ change from region to region, or even person to person? Heavenforefend!!
I see it as a stupid video game, you see it as a lesson in todays attitudes towards ethnic groups in America today. I forget, was No One Lives Forever or the sequel dinged for it’s negative stereotypes? Isn’t that immoral? (and not based on religious morals)
You skipped over my question: Where is the ‘morals’ line?
Should we start listening to Jack Chick instead of Tom Chick just so we get a ‘moral’ review of a game? Do we run each and every game through a multi-racial panel just to make sure they aren’t offended? Should we start adding warnings on games that aren’t PC alongside the ratings? 'Warning: may contain the word ‘wop’?
I’m not defending the game here, I’m just pointing out the obsurdity of reviewing a game on morals.
How do you figure?
Worked for GTA3. Oh wait, there were criminals in the game. Thus it deserves to be considered one of the greatest consoel games of our time. My bad.
My problem with the review is this:
Outside of potty humor, and the use or urine, there wasn’t anything different in Postal 2 than Grand Theft Auto III and that game was CGWs game of the year. As far as morality, Postal 2 doesn’t cross any lines that GTA 3 crosses. So unless urine = 0, you would have to view how Postal 2 and GTA III differ. So you have to look at such things as stability, art quality and so on. There we have a huge difference, However as the first poster mention, there are a lot of games a lot worse that Postal 2 in this catagory but recieved much higher scores.
The fact is, its was a stupid movie that only serves to bring CGW down another level.
Hey Jim? What was that doctorate degree you earned again? Oh, that’s right! It was Philosophy.
-Vede
Actually, that’s not what happens. It’s not a repeat of the first game (which was pretty much a spree-killer simulation). While you can still go around killing innocents in horrifying ways, your role in the game world isn’t imposed on you. (You can avoid much of the combat, or just kill those who try to kill you.)
Peter
As tempting as getting into a flame war over the single worst game I have ever played (and this includes the “Bang Your Head Against the School Wall” game I played in third grade with some of the other kids in the problem child’s class), I find myself moved to respond to a few of the points raised in this thread.
Content matters. Content affects that whole pesky “fun” thing. You could make a Where’s Waldo? rip-off called Where’s Anne Frank? and regardless of how cunningly designed it was, the premise alone would make it pretty unbearable. To review it on its alleged merits while ignoring its deplorable content I would find myself writing “top-notch level design makes finding the secret attics a constant challenge but leading to a real sense of accomplishment when you eventually discover the Jews and cart them off to their grisly end.”
Be that as it may, I believe I did make clear that Postal 2 was shit anyway. Crappy levels. Jokes that were lame even if they weren’t offensive. Fucked-up combat and a damage model that lied. This game literally gave me a headache, thanks to shitty art, amateurisly animated and drawn character models, horrible voice-acting, overbearing long repetitive level loads and so much more. Oh, yeah, and it wasn’t fun. No fun to be had. Nope. None. Outpost and Trespasser–unmitigated pieces of shit, no doubt. But at least they didn’t have “Fag Hunter” and lame hanging chad jokes.
Postal 2’s biggest drawback isn’t that it is “politically incorrect”, though Running With Scissors and the defenders of this game throw that phrase around with an awe-inspiring ignorant brio, as if they and it were the last line of defense against Thought Police. Honestly, if anyone had half an inkling of what constitutes humor and appropriate dinner table discussion in my day-to-day life, this argument against my review would never have been attempted—but I digress. So, um, Postal 2’s biggest drawback isn’t that it is “politically incorrect”, it is that little more than the digitized version of the angry scribblings in the back of a Social Studies notebook of a disgruntled middle schooler. Ill-informed, ill-conceived, ill-focused, angry rambling self-aggrandizing rants pocked with graphite starbursts where the pencil lead broke when Little Mister Self-Pitying Angry Guy pressed too hard. All that and a bad drawing of the Iron Maiden zombie too.
But again, I digress. So I bid you a fond adieu. As much as I’d like to bicker back and forth about this, I think one post, however insufficient, is all I’m going to feel like posting.
On an unrelated note, I’d like to inform the world that the PC version of The Hulk game has the most disc-swappingest fucked up install ever.
We’re getting to a point with these crossplatform games that get released on DVD for the Xbox and PS2, where they’re going to have to put the CDs on a spindle for the PC version. Publishers have to mainstream DVDs for PCs here pretty quick, cause it’s pretty ludicrous now.
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages4/21796.asp
Based on the aggregate review scores so far, 0/100 is a fairly severe statistical outlier.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but unless CGW has a habit of giving zero star and half star review scores to bad games in the past-- because god knows there is absolutely no fucking shortage of truly horrible games-- then I refer you to my previous grandstanding comments.
Ironically, awarding a previously unheard of zero-star score to Postal 2 only calls attention to the moral indignation of the reviewer rather than the quality of the game-- which is exactly the button-pushing response this game was designed to provoke. Synthesized outrage fueling curiosity, fueling real world game sales.
I’m thinking it would have been a more noble and brave act to award this game the mediocre score it truly deserved, rather than succumbing to knee-jerk urges and goose egging it. Not only does zero appear to be unrepresentative of most players’ experience with this game, it’s actually counterproductive if your goal really was to warn people away.
That said, I urge Bob Coffey to continue raging against the machine as he deems necessary.
I hope Mr. Coffey comes back. It’s cool to see the important people swear like longshoremen :D
They should come by here and vent their rage on a regular basis. Qt3 could set up a forum called “Editor’s Unleashed!”
Okay, maybe not.