Quote:
Originally Posted by Roper Klacks
I agree. I'm not really afraid of the Xbox 360 gamers (because no one will buy it, i'm joking but really... it will sell close to nothing on Xbox) but the mainstrem reviewers. They will tear it apart (i dont blame them really, they are used to technical wonders like Mass Effect 2, Halo's and so on) simply because Gray Matter will be a very flawed game based around ancient mechanics that mainstream games don't use anymore.
The niche adventure reviewers are a lot more tolerant to that, but i expect the Xbox version to have a very low metacritic score, and that will generate bad publicity and even lower sales.
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While this might be true to a degree, one does have to wonder who's expectations are more skewed here. On the one hand the 360 audience is used to games like Gears, Reach, Bioshock, Mass Effect and other titles that have significantly pushed technology forward. But simultaneously look at the shmup genre (old school style 2D shooters). It's a very niche market but in this generation it's come to reside almost solely on the 360. Games like Raiden Fighters, Raiden 4, Mushihime, Death Smiles, ESP, Guwange, Dodonpachi and even Ikaruga have a minuscule market compared to how this genre flourished in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Developed almost exclusively by Japanese studios the genre is nevertheless enjoying a bit of a resurgence over the last year and a half which has included Cave's first ever US release earlier this year (Death Smiles). I bring this up because this is, in the modern gaming scene, a very obscure genre that's alive almost exclusively on the 360. Are these games unfairly reviewed by "mainstream" press? Ask any shmupper that question and you'll get an "absolutely", likely followed by a series of expletives deriding games like Gears and Halo. Usually these games are wrongly criticized for being too dated, lacking in replayability, and that they'd have been better off as a $10 downloadable title and are too expensive as retail titles....which is completely ignorant of the genre but is the typical common response from the mainstream press....notice any parallels here? Yet in spite of this, the shmup genre is going through a huge (for it's size) resurgence right now. Now by no measure am I arguing that Grey Matter is going to cause a huge resurgence for adventure gaming because it's on the 360 also. My point is simply that just because the mainstream press criticizes something they don't understand doesn't mean that it won't still find a market.
Alternately let's pause to consider some of what these evil mainstreamers are going to say about Grey Matter. Undoubtedly they'll criticize the animations, the point & click style gameplay, the puzzles, etc. But in some ways don't they have a right to? The original Resident Evil had animations of this quality....in 1996! Here we are 14 years later and we have a character doing the tank-stomp around the screen. Isn't it fair to take issue with that (as many in this thread already have)? At what point should we, as discerning adventure gamers, stop making excuses and simply say "this isn't acceptable"? Personally I love good puzzle solving, and when I look at how a series like Resident Evil has moved away entirely from including puzzle solving as it did in the early years to simply being an action shooter I'm disappointed. But unless the experience of solving puzzles evolves there's arguable reason for many games to move away from them. Does Grey Matter do anything to innovate puzzle solving? Are the puzzles there to advance the story in an intelligent and interesting manner? Or are they simply there because it's a genre standard? And doesn't merely resting on standards invite criticism?
I'm still super excited for this game but maybe I shouldn't cut it slack just because it's an AG and the genre is now more obscure? Maybe the devs should be expected to produce a higher quality product given the plethora of development tools an engines readily available for use? While it's predictable that the mainstream will be "unfair" to Grey Matter maybe we're being "too fair" in overlooking qualities that might hold this game back from achieving the quality that comes to mind when we think of Gabriel Knight and other such classics? We're games like Gabriel Knight 2 and Phantasmagoria revolutionary for their time? Didn't they do new things that pushed technology forward? Maybe we should be expecting at least human-like animations from the characters in Grey Matter given it's pedigree....maybe even the "mainstream" have legitimate reasons for their expectations.
