| Title | The official Journey review FAQ |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Features |
| When | March 24, 2012 |
Last week, I reviewed Journey. If you gauge an article by the quantity of comments in the comments section, it was Quarter to Three's most successful article..
Read the full articlehow dare you frustrate the beautiful Allison Janney you swine
An insightful, considered rebuttal. Preaching to the converted, of course.
Sadly, I fear a link to this FAQ won't be posted on NeoGAF or Gamefaqs and the next influx of strange, insecure gaming "fans" will coincide with another honest review.
Never change. Someone still loves you, Tom Chick!
Bastion's an indie game?
The gamespot review for MOO3 is a fairly negative 6.7. Just how negative was your review?
Quit being so reasonable, Tom Chick.
You should add this to the end of your Journey review itself. I'm afraid the rest of the Metacritic readers won't see it, and they should.
Dear person who posted Quarter to Three reviews to N4G,
THIS should be posted to N4G.P.S. Tom, you frustrated Joss Whedon? I want to know about that! You're a nerd after my own heart.
Hey, what happened to my carriage return?
I was wondering this as well. Bastion was published by Warner Brothers, and Journey was published by Sony. Neither of them are really "independent." Possibly a development studio with few enough members could be considered indie, but that doesn't seem quite right.
In any case, the term (as in music) is increasingly referring to an aesthetic rather than publishing structure. Which is kind of too bad, as it's probably worth considering the economic structures that deliver (and regulate) our entertainment.
Referring to IGN as doing pretty much anything well is being extremely generous.
Well, I guess they must do well at making money, since they're still around.
That's a totally fair point, Amandachen, but I think it's mostly a semantic issue. But one worth considering.
For instance, Bastion was developed by a handful of folks who eventually got a publishing deal with WBI. Did it stop being an indie game when the publishing deal was signed? Perhaps.
As Giaddon mentions, I think of indie as more of an aesthetic than a meaningful description of how a game is developed. Perhaps we should start talking about arthouse games, but that's a movie term that might not really apply to gaming.
Suffice to say it was way more negative than the review Gamespot eventually ran. :) I was going to link to it, since I posted the review here on Qt3. But it looks like it's buried somewhere in our old content.
Well, they got the publishing deal late in the process, and is necessary to release a XBLA game. It was self-funded, made by a small team working from a home office. The "indie" term is dubious in general, too.
Good call! Although I suspect the wave of Metacritic/N4G curious has come and gone by now.
Hi Tom,
Your opinions of games seldom match my own (and are often quite the contrary) but I love reading your reviews and thoroughly enjoy your writing. Thank you.
Hi Tom,
Your opinions of games seldom match my own (and are often quite the contrary) but I love reading your reviews and thoroughly enjoy your writing. Thank you.
Tom, just stop acknowledging these people. There's a huge chunk of people on the internets who actually don't care about reviews - they just want to see their opinion validated. They are on Team Journey and don't care about reading dissenting opinions. They, as members of Team Journey, just need to reflexively defend the game and take any difference of opinion not as a difference of opinion, but as a personal insult.
You don't write for these people. Unfortunately, most of the game reviewing sites do, so that's what they are used to. They don't know anything different.
So my question is, any more Tom vs. Bruce? Also, suck a dick, fag.
I kinda found it funny myself. Half the comments were accusing Tom of trolling, when he clearly wasn't (literacy people, read more than the scores you igno*AHEM*). I saw that as Tom actually trolling those people intentionally, or surpassing them to their own kind.
Either works really, we don't need that kind of moronic bluster here.
The problem of that review is that it's not really articulate at all.
It doesn't really explain what the game consists of to begin with, what the issues are beyond a generic "there's no gameplay and no challenge", and lacks screenshots.
About the multiplayer, it doesn't really explain how it works, what "pulling your switches" means, etc.
I'm sure that someone who has played the game would understand it more, but reviews are primarily supposed to be read by those who haven't played it.