ONM Remembered – #176
“Jim, Jim, what were you thinking? It’s like Elvis joining the Monkees. Stay solo, Jim, and keep your integrity.”
from N64 Magazine issue 9 (December 1997)
For all my immature cracks about gaming journalism, I don’t really follow it much. Heck, a majority of the things I’ve joked about I’ve never experienced. I once made a Random Action Hour update with a Gurren Lagann reference (in, what, 2008?), and I only watched a bit of it last year. I wasn’t that fussed on it!
I think what I was trying to say was scores and percentages are a funny ol’ business. Haven’t gaming reviewers claimed that comically low scores devalue the purpose of scores in the first place? N64 Magazine clearly gave no damns about scores, what with Clay Fighter 63â…“‘s score of 24%. That means it’s nearly three times better than Mortal Kombat Mythologies! If you did not experience nearly three times the enjoyment out of this compared to Mythologies, then I believe you’re entitled to whine to the magazine and suggest they make it 24.8%.
(… has anyone even read that controversial 8.8 Twilight Princess review? I can’t say I have, but Jesus, people, it’s a fucking number)
(… I’m angry today, apparently!)
Clay Figher 63.333 is on my crap-list, too (though I guess it’s my own fault). It’s a long and boring story, but basically, because of reading about CF63.333’s Santa Claus character somewhere on the web, I thought he was in Clayfighter 2 (one of the several beat-em-ups I bought to collect but couldn’t be bothered to play), and thought I had 4 games with sufficiently Santa-like content to do an Xmas Month at GameWTFs.
It turns out he’s not (and horrifying “tough jailbird toddlers” are, the horror), so I had to do a lot of re-planning at the last minute :P
Also back on topic — “comically low scores devalue the purpose of scores?” I’m with you; if Game Reviewers can’t give a score that says “this game is bad”, what the hell are they there for? I mean, look at the A-F grading system: D covers 69% to 60%, then “F” covers 59% all the way through 0%
Fiddlesticks, now I’M angry. Thank goodness N64 Magazine is there to sock it to the crap games :D