Videogame reviews ought to be more “context sensitive”. Look, it’s pretty strange that so diverse type of genres as puzzles and action adventures are reviewed using the same kind of categorical framework. I mean, it’s not crazy, and it’s probably not even lazy, it’s just something that has been overlooked in my opinion. This practice of reviewing subcategories and then giving a final score is far from used on every videogame site, but some sites use this method, such as IGN. Their categories are: presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal. And those categories are written in stone, meaning, they don’t apply other more appropriate subcategories for different kinds of games, instead, every game reviewed on the site gets the same treatment. What this results in is categories that are pretty blurry, if a game contains an element that can’t really be placed in any of these categories the reviewer often mentions that specific element in the actual review text and maybe tries and sneaks it in in the category that’s the most appropriate. It’s a system that in itself demands a pretty high level of creative thinking from the reviewer, but obviously we can all come to the conclusion that this also means that the people responsible for the site explains how it works whenever a new gaming journalist starts working. The strange thing is when a subcategory doesn’t apply at all to a certain game, I’m not going to write which game this quote is taken from, but there’s an adventure game that’s reviewed on IGN and the reviewer writes under the category Lasting Appeal:

Lasting Appeal
6.0 Er, not so much. While you’ll get plenty of play your first time through, there’s no real reason to break this one back out when you’re done. Still, that’s the nature of the genre.

Okey, that’s fine of course, the guy in essence states that for this particular genre the subcategory doesn’t apply, and even though he gave it a measly 6.0 on this subcategory it sure didn’t seem to affect the final score, which was a very high 9.4. Lasting Appeal for the adventure-game genre is mostly used to determine if the actual length of the game is appropriate for its price, so you get your money’s worth.
I looked at a review for a relatively new RPG with supposedly strong story elements, when breaking down the review in subcategories the story got mentioned in the presentation category (in the previous example it was only mentioned in the actual review text). It said:

A new high mark for storytelling in games. Gameplay can be confusing at first due to a lack of good tutorials.

So obviously the presentation subcategory should be used if mentioning anything about a games story anywhere in the review breakdown; so one sentence in the review breakdown to summarize the story, and it didn’t really even mention anything about the story. For this game the reviewer really should have had a whole subcategory for story.
The omission of a story subcategory for adventure/RPG games, or any kind of storydriven game, is pretty strange. What it does, in some cases, is that it makes the addition of a really good story in an action adventure game seem like an added bonus, and the lack of any prominent story a minor issue. In the game Killzone 2 that was released for the PS3 not long ago the reviewer mentions the story in his text, this is what he has to say about it:

“[…] the voice acting is, for the most part, pretty bad. While Brian Cox does an excellent Emperor Visari and Radec projects menace as the Emperor’s lapdog, the rest of the dialogue that’s delivered feels somewhat forced. Part of it could be the overabundant use of profanity that just feels as though it was thrown in as filler instead of being delivered naturally. In many ways, some of the more profane lines almost feel as though a group of kids that are just experimenting with cursing are reciting dialogue.“

This game received a 9.4. And although I doubt any sane person would really expect a game called Killzone 2 to deliver a truly engaging story, it’s still pretty sad. I mean, the presentation is flat out amazing, and strangely enough some of the people behind the game have told before the game was released that they didn’t have the black and white feel to the characters that so many American developers have.

In a way these strange omissions in the subcategory have an influence on what the actual reviewers feel are important as well, and this leads to a kind of inflation in the final scores for a lot of these action adventure games, leading to a fiddling with the finer nuances of a 9.0 and 9.4. Since what they really review is the graphics engine, art style and general gameplay mechanics. The story holds no real value unless it’s a pure adventure game. If you stick with a certain formula, and pour enough resources on it you’ll end up with a game that gets somewhere between 9.0 and 9.5. Of course, I can’t write this article without mentioning GTA 4. I haven’t played it, but apparently IGN gave it a 10, and in the presentation subcategory the story got mentioned: The story is Oscar quality. Now, I have my problems with a game like GTA 4, but I wont mention them here.

Before I end this, I’d just like to say that a game such as Killzone 2 didn’t get that high of a score simply because they stuck with a specific formula. It got that high score because the gameplay probably worked really well, and from what I’ve heard they implemented a lot of truly original design decisions, such as a kind of combination of a ragdoll / animation system; truly original stuff.

I think a lot of gaming sites are hung up on the actual word game in videogame, since it’s called games then that means it’s really just a variation of chess, and story isn’t that necessary even for action adventure games, it’s an added bonus.
It’s time for sites like IGN to move on–or maybe spearhead is a better word–spearhead the movement towards more story, and good story in games that are meant to have a pretty strong base in story and not just “include” them as an added bonus. Now this article isn’t just about story, it’s about the fact that its vital for these kind of sites to use a more context sensitive review breakdown if they want to function better; but it’s easy for me to say, I wouldn’t be the one that had to rearrange and restructure the whole site.