Since this blog isn't a proper gaming web site (with the nice data mining tools that would entail), I thought I'd go through my old reviews (the ones I gave scores to, anyway) and compile them by hand.
Here's the spreadsheet.
The first thing that caught my eye is that I don't review games anymore. I've reviewed one game this year. I've only reviewed eleven games in the last eleven months, compared to forty reviews in the ten months prior to that.
Why is that?
- I went through the GameTap games I cared about in late 2007 and early 2008. GameTap hasn't been adding interesting games for a while, and I really should cancel my subscription.
- I got a new PC in early 2008 and had a backlog of games built up.
- I was given an original Xbox in April 2008 and immediately yoinked a bunch of games out of the bargain bin.
- I've been replaying a lot of games lately. GTA San Andreas and Heart of Evil probably each consumed well over a month of my playing time. Plus I played through BioShock. I'm currently playing through Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. The list goes on.
- I feel like I've done the review thing. Sure, I could have given Lost Planet a score, but I feel like I've written that review many times already.
Also of note is how much of a PC gamer I am. I've reviewed thirty three PC games, and eighteen other games over all other platforms combined. I like to think of myself as platform agnostic, but that's obviously not true.
Why is that?
- I haven't kept up with current consoles.
- Games are generally cheaper on PC.
- My favorite genre (first person shooter) I prefer on PC.
Oh, and FPS isn't my favorite genre. I only played eighteen FPS games (and that's using a pretty loose definition that includes games like Condemned (which has very little shooting) and Brothers in Arms (which is more strategic)). I played twenty four third person action games.
Why is that?
- They don't make enough first person shooters.
That's mostly a joke. People often complain that there are too many FPS games on the market. But like most jokes, there is a kernel of truth there, the kernel being that third person games are more plentiful than first person games.
Looking at Giant Bomb's list for releases this month, I see three first person games (Riddick, Cryostasis, and Zeno Clash) and ten third person games (Godfather 2, Ninja Blade, Velvet Assassin, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, Dynasty Warriors: Strike Force, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Bionic Commando, Damnation, Secret Agent Clank, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood). When you also consider that Riddick is half rerelease and the other two first person games are indie efforts from relatively tiny developers, FPS does not seem like the saturated genre. I think it just feels that way because people who play them multiplayer will play one game for months or even years, so they don't need more than two good ones a year.
Or maybe it's just because they're all the same game. :)
Last, but not least, most of my reviews are threes (29), with a fair amount of fours (12), some twos (9), and a couple fives (2. Yes I wrote the number anyway). And of course there are no ones.
Why is that?
- If I truly hate it, I drop it early.
- I like action games, which are largely good, but not frequently great. They're shooting low to begin with, generally only incrementally improving over past action games.
And there you have it, me making an attempt to rationalize an irrational process. Data mining is fun. It kind of makes me wish I kept other types of data. But I didn't. Tomorrow I'll start slicing and dicing the data a bit. There's definitely more to learn here.
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