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But I already addressed that.

they should acknowledge and rebut the best arguments in favor of it being good.

The best arguments. Not any and all fanboy arguments.

Like, if someone wanted to negatively review Super Mario 64, they would have to acknowledge that most of their readers would think that that game was at least revolutionary. You can't just treat it like any other game and talk about whether or not it's fun or has good control; you have to address the revolutionary angle. Then you'd have a few options. You could try "giving credit where credit was due" and say the game might be overrated but was still important historically. You wouldn't be able to be all that negative in that case. Or you could give a totally negative review and say the game might be influential, but its influence was to ruin videogames.


Another way to think about it, which is maybe better, is to think in terms of what the designers were going for. Fanboys might say Katamari Damacy is creative. I would say "not really". BUT I have a feeling the designers also thought it was creative. So, that makes it little easier to work in how I thought the creativity was actually shallow and facile.


For a contrary example, I have no idea what cogent arguments exist that Halo is a great game. I think a negative review of that game could treat it like any other game. I've heard a few things, like that the story is good (it plainly is not), or that the AI is good (but it doesn't "demonstrate itself"). Or that it's a 16-player game (useless to people who just like to play single player games).


Lunar: SSC is a tricky case. I've thought about that a lot over the years. I don't think I'd have to address any fanboy claims to review that. I once saw a fanboy say the game was good because it was "lighthearted" in a time when moody games like Final Fantasy 8 were the norm. Addressing that would not be necessary. (It's not enough for a game to be lighthearted; that's like saying a game is good if it's "innocent". Super Mario RPG was light-hearted but had a lot more to it than that)

However, saying it's tedious might not be convincing on its own, because the truth is that it's probably not obvious why people put up with a lot of the stuff they put up with for RPGs anyway (and how Lunar is worse). I think it would be necessary to address that issue.

I got this from Wikipedia's article on Punch-Out Wii. It's a quote from the Nintendo Power review.

The folks at Next Level Games have created an amazing title that has made the 15 years since Super Punch-Out!! quite worthwhile.

What the heck does that mean? This guy realizes that this game hasn't been in development for the past 15 years, right? Or what it literally sounds like he's saying is that life is not worthwhile in the ensuing years after a Punch-Out!! game, unless the next Punch-Out!! game makes them retroactively worthwhile.

I guess what he was trying to say was that the game was "worth the wait" but mangled it horribly.

Going back, I can kind of understand calling the J Geils Band a one-hit wonder. Yeah, Love Stinks was referenced on The Simpsons, but I don't think I ever heard it on the radio.

The most ridiculous "one hit wonder" designation I saw was when it was applied to Jimi Hendrix. (Wikipedia's article on one hit wonders mentioned it). He technically qualified by only having one song of his crack the top 40 when he was alive. Yeah, but his albums were all hits.

Okay, I've heard Freeze Frame, but the Googlevideo of Musta Got Lost doesn't sound familiar. FO said it's because it's a different (live) version, and if I heard the version on the radio I'd recognize it.

I also read the 1up review of Punchout Wii. They said it was better than the original. I think they might be writing checks they can't cash.

One thing that sounds like it would annoy me personally is that you have to play through the entire game (all the fighters) to unlock the later mode.

Bleh. That's something I might have been able to tolerate the first few times it was done, when it was done right (and in, say, Super Mario Kart, you couldn't beat the WHOLE game on 50CC), but now I just can't / don't want to deal with that anymore.

I think that's sarcastic, so it's not a misuse, but it is sort of a cliche. There was a similar "joke" in the Earthworm Jim 2 manual.

It might not be that related, but it reminds me of Seanbaby making a complaint that when he wrote in EGM something about the "old days", an editor changed it to "ye olden days".

That's about the EXACT OPPOSITE of what a good editor is supposed to do.

I'd say an editor is supposed help a writer make their writing easier to understand. An editor is NOT supposed to add a phoney-baloney "cute" style to a writer's voice that was not originally there.


Here's a sample from On Writing



I am pretty sure that some online humor sites do the same thing EGM did, to try to enforce some sort of "character".