This infuriates me to no end because the Danger Close team were not a bad team of developers and they did not put out a shoddy game. They put out a decent game that unfortunately had to take the hit for the modern military shooter subgenre. Sure, the first-person shooter genre is flooded with military shooters but that did not make it fair for Warfighter to take all the criticism that could've rightly gone to Modern Warfare 3, released the year before and was seriously a re-hash of the previous games in the Call of Duty series. At the end of the day, because a few "journalists" decided to trash a game as an example rather than because it was a poor game, a lot of people lost their jobs and a great series has been put on ice, perhaps even killed off. Look, I'm sure there are a lot of detractors out there who would disagree with me, saying that reviewers were right for calling the game a buggy, unfinished piece of trash. To those people, I say they're entitled to their opinion but they should recognise that at the end of the day, it is an opinion. Sure, Warfighter had its fair share of bugs but what game doesn't? In addition to that, I can think of a few examples of games with fairly massive flaws that got ignored because the reviewers like the game so much (e.g. Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Skyrim, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops for the first week or so on the PS3 etc.). I don't know about you but that seems like a huge double-standard to me. The point is, all the reviews for Warfighter were just opinions. Understandably, the general consensus that the game was bad would turn any sane person away from purchasing the game but unfortunately, reviewers aren't always right.
I've always recognised that reviews are opinions and they should be taken with a grain of salt, but the problem is, most people don't see it that way. I'm not going to claim that reviewers should receive all the blame for Warfighter's dismal sales but if you read the comments or are even remotely tuned in to the internet at large, many people basically decided not to pick up the game because of the poor reviews it got. Fair enough, people want to spend their money wisely and a poorly-rated game across the board seems like a pretty risky purchase. I get that. The problem is, reviewers are stating opinions as fact and people actually believe that. Not that I blame them. Reviewers or video game "journalists" have been trying to convince people that they are actual journalists for a long time. There are definitely a few actual journalists in the field but unfortunately, their work isn't as popular or widespread as their more populist tabloid-y counterparts who work for the major gaming networks. These people are not journalists just because they are paid to report on gaming news. They are basically glorified bloggers with fancy job titles. Now don't get me wrong, not everyone in the business of reporting gaming-related news is a pretentious or elitist snob. On the contrary, I'm sure a lot of the people in the business are passionate and dedicated writers trying to improve their craft. The problem is, they work in an industry that keeps trying to convince itself that it is a serious business that people should take seriously. This isn't a negative thing. As an Arts student, I completely understand the need to justify your choices and your work because people don't take you seriously. My problem is that these people fail to fulfil the basic requirements needed to be a journalist. Many cannot spell properly and have terrible grammar and even worse prose making it somewhat difficult for me to take them seriously as journalists. Furthermore, there is a disturbing lack of ethics particularly when certain sites advertise the games they are supposed to be impartially reviewing and receive special gifts or trips from companies publishing said games. On the subject of impartiality, there lies the biggest problem I have with video game "journalists". They seem to have none although they try to portray themselves as experts reporting facts to the public. If they really are professionals who are reporting facts then they shouldn't be accepting special press trips or gifts from publishers. Even if they have the utmost integrity, it is completely unacceptable for a journalist to be getting preferential treatment. And on the flipside, journalists should thus not throw a hissy fit because they failed to get a copy of a game early from a publisher especially one that is notorious for not handing out early copies. This was the case with Warfighter when reviewers flat-out accused EA for withholding early copies because it was an unfinished product that they didn't want the public to see. Or perhaps it was because EA is wary of reviewers who give their competitors higher scores because they get showered with special events, previews and gifts way in advance of the game being released.
Back on the subject of Warfighter, the reviewers/"journalists" demonstrated an epic misunderstanding of what their job involves by nitpicking on small things rather than focusing on the whole package. As a fan of the game, I'm more than willing to admit that Warfighter had its shortcomings but it was a genuinely decent game. It had problems and there were some things it got wrong but there were so many things that it did get right that none of the reviewers noticed or bothered to point out. First of all, the graphics were, on the whole, excellent. Sure it's not up to the same level as Battlefield 3 even though both games use the same engine but you have to give Danger Close some props, this was the first time they were working with the Frostbite engine and they managed to get quite a lot out of it with so little experience working with it. Furthermore, the game had a nice degree of realism to it with realistic weapons, gear and equipment and if the advertising is to be believed, even fairly realistic recounting of real-life events. I mean, come on, they even bothered to actually put in and animate the fire-mode selector so that it actually moves to the correct position when selecting various fire modes! I think the problem in this respect was that the realism was in the details rather than the big picture. The way the weapons were handled, the camouflage used, the types of gloves the operators wore, the weapons and equipment they used as well as the realistic dialogue were all things I noticed because I'm an avid military enthusiast. I'm not suggesting that all the reviewers should have known this but with realism being the major marketing point used by EA, it probably would've paid off if they did their research and see if the claims of realism were right. Keeping on the theme of realism and details, the developers definitely put a lot of work into the weapons and attachments, allowing a vast array of customisation that actually affects the performance of the weapon based on whatever accessories were equipped unlike another big-name competitor where the balance is so fine-tuned that attachments barely do anything and occasionally aren't even modelled correctly (Long Barrel, anyone?). Furthermore, the sound design was brilliant with some of the best audio I've heard in a game since Battlefield 3 or ARMA II with the guns actually sounding like guns, the suppressors actually working like suppressors rather than magic silencers and the various sounds made when a bullet hit various surfaces.
I suppose Warfighter's downfall can be partly attributed to their focus on the nitty-gritty and putting the devil in the details while failing to account for how people might perceive the big picture. At the same time, these people reviewing it are supposed to be and often call themselves professionals. If this were the case, they would've done their research and actually tried their best to present an impartial case when reviewing any game. If they keep reviewing games as they do now though, that's perfectly fine but it'd be nice if they acknowledged that their reviews are simply opinion and not fact as they lead people to believe and people do actually sometimes believe, a misunderstanding that I find is still prevalent. On the specific subject of the Warfighter reviews, I was extremely disappointed by most of the reviewers who had a need to trash the game because they didn't get an early copy (only a smattering raised this point) or because they were burned out by the genre (a majority of reviewers). If they wanted to express their disappointment with the military shooter genre, then write a god-damn opinion piece on why the market is saturated with military shooters and how much of a disaster it is, not attack a fairly decent game because you want to make an example. The absolute best part is, when Black Ops II came out, apparently everyone got over their disillusionment with the modern military shooter and praised an old game with a few small tweaks sold as revolutionary and innovative.
In short, I have two main points:
- Reviewers should try and act with some semblance of impartiality if they want to present themselves as experts in the field that offer recommendations and advice, if not, stop pretending like they are more qualified than anyone else and mention that their reviews are merely opinion, not fact.
- Cut Warfighter some slack. It got a bad rap because of an unfortunate series of events which led to it taking the fall for the modern military first-person shooter as well as some poor reviewing on the part of a majority of the major sites. Gamespot, in my opinion was the only major site that gave a fair score, the rest sort of gave scores that don't seem to match the descriptions of their scoring system. I mean, a score in the 30s or 40s would mean some pretty serious problems and somehow, Skyrim for PS3 which had A LOT of issues, including freezing and massive lag, but was nonetheless a good game got scores in the 80s and 90s.
Good read. Thank you for writing this now I am off to play more warfighter!
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