I feel like its a thing for youtube reviews, even among good ones, to kinda view being negative as more intellectual and have a tendency to define games by their shortcomings rather than anything they did well
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Isn't that just a deeper human logic flaw? That you feel a bit higher about yourself when you find something to criticise? Like, we just convince ourselves we "invented" way to improve something. However wrong that feeling actually is.
aka skillup. He used to thrive on looking at what a game was trying to be. Celebrate its strengths, point out the weaknesses. Now he seems to just try to be highbrow negative
there's a weird mindset people have where it's important to be critical of everything you like because if you're positive then it means you're a fanatic who has an unhealthy relationship with the things you enjoy
The fixation on the perceived negatives hold a more semantic weight rhetorically in terms of argument I think at least from a western cultural standpoint. Nuanced open ended appreciation is difficult to articulate as it would require viewing the work as equal footing or greater than yourself.
I think even just the entry level of 'meeting the work where its at' is a big ask for a lot of folks when it comes to analyzing media as its easier to flatten it into a particular cringeful archetype than engage with it as presented.
Most contentious video game that I've ever played to me was Knuckle Sandwich. Brilliant art direction and vibes, but the narrative as presented is just really bad in that fundamental structural way. Its hard to love the game when it feels like it struggles to even just 'say something'.
As a writer I can say it's easier to point out negatives than positives. It's also easy to make you look intelligent by pointing out bad points. It gives off like a criticism to their art type of feeling that makes it feel like their perspective is way more textured than what they actually have.
Yeah I stopped watching those a bit ago. Those people don't love games, and it gets depressing.
If I had the energy, funds and time I'd talk about everything great about a game and leaving a constructive criticism portion for the end of the video.
I don’t think it’s talked enough how much so many ppl really wanted to be like a YouTuber back in the day. I still remember reading (I think) the IGN Sonic Unleashed review from back in the day and the way they dissed the franchise and everything just screamed Angry YouTube Critic persona 😭
been watching some Zelda reviews a common refrain is "Wind Waker had its development cut short, unlike OoT where nothing bad happened in its development"
and that just feels more than a little overly simplistic
I had the same thought! And even beyond that wind waker is one of my faves because of that third "dungeon." it broke Zelda convention by having us explore the world a bit more, and it gave a narrative that allowed us to return to outset and see the little changes since we left.
Wind Waker was the first time I independently recognized something got cut; Banjo-Tooie introduced me to the idea that could even happen, but Wind Waker was the first time I could tell.
I don't remember seeing it as a bad thing, though, it was just 'huh, this was probably a dungeon once'.
its one of those things that I feel like people learned it a long time ago and haven't realyl updated their understanding to a more modern view of like
Call of Duty tends to do the same things well while getting worse in new and awful ways since '19. Zelda has done the same things well, while also being a nearly 40-year-old glass ceiling for its own apparent main character. Both situations, the negatives matter more in the broader contexts.
Beyond the whole "our brains focus more on the negative than the positive" nitpicking makes it easier to have a long, extensive list of faults whole discussing positives in the same way comes off as gushing (bad).
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negativity is also just plain easier, you can sound smarter easier by finding flaws vs explaining why something is good to someone else
If I had the energy, funds and time I'd talk about everything great about a game and leaving a constructive criticism portion for the end of the video.
But they can concoct a good word stew from a list of general complaints.
(Sometimes, they're entertaining, but people put too much stock into them over the positive stuff.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
and that just feels more than a little overly simplistic
I don't remember seeing it as a bad thing, though, it was just 'huh, this was probably a dungeon once'.
yeah that's just normal game development