Penalize for “consolitis”, no. Penalize for “crappy port”, yes. If a game is ported and care isn’t taken to make sure the control system actually works well for mouse/keyboard the review should harp on that fact.
CoD2 was not a crappy port, everything worked well in the PC version. I generally find checkpoint saves annoying, but they were at least well spaced for the most part. “Consolitis”, whatever that’s supposed to mean, does not apply.
Hey! You! You know I can see you right? GIVE ME MY GODDAMN TRIDENT: >:[
I like what this man says - and what’s been said above. Why spend time trying to analyze why a game has shortcomings? Just put out the good and bad parts of the design, rate the game between 7 and 9, and let users decide if they want to purchase it or not.
And this gets them off the hook why? At some point, they must’ve made the decision, “Y’know, let’s make this a PC-only game.” Approximately 3 seconds later, they should’ve asked themselves, “What can we do to make our interface work better on a PC?”
A shitty interface is a shitty interface is a shitty interface: I don’t care about whatever intentions or design goals the developer had, nor what platform(s) they were planning to support some day; I only care about the finished game on the platform I choose to play it on.
A cross-platform title or port isn’t necessarily inherently gimped, but PCs and consoles have their own strengths and weaknesses. Developers fail to take those factors into account - and the differing tastes of the PC and console markets - at their own peril.
A good review cites both the strengths and weaknesses of a game and informs you of major design decisions, like save systems, which will impact gameplay.
I think console games should be penalised for consolitis.
Modern consoles aren’t so puny anymore.
The problem is that they cater to the LCD (remember that from math class?)
The LCD on UI is a console. If you can make it work on a console, then you do not need to worry about making it work for a PC.
There are of course, exceptions, such as fighting games. A game controller is the ‘right choice’ here and trying to do Soul Caliber with a keyboard and mouse would be nuts.
However, in a lot of cases, it is the console as the LCD and publishers do not want to spend the extra money to pay a developer to create a second UI for PC gamers.
If reviewers mentioned UI weaknesses over and over then maybe, just maybe, a publisher might consider some extra money for a PC centric UI.
I can only see a UI review as a good thing in the long run.
Good console games don’t suffer from consolitis, though. RE4, for example. What could you change about it that wouldn’t make it worse?
TDS did suffer from many consoley touches (the garish interface, loot beacons, etc), but some of the devs have recently admitted that the swimmable water and rope arrows were missing because they simply couldn’t get them to work. Apparently the hacked-up Unreal engine TDS uses is a rather shoddy effort.
Most reviews mention UI weaknesses when they exist, and it’s hard as much effect on games as the constant harping on bugs, copy protection, poor single-player, bad AI, lack of skirmish mode, blah blah blah.