Friday 17 June 2011

I've lost my faith in games journalism.

The last two games I've played were L.A. Noire and Duke Nukem Forever.

L.A. Noire was a boring, repetitive drag through a nonexistent plot filled with ambitious game mechanics that just didn't work. Fair enough, it tried to do something revolutionary, but it just failed to pull it off to it's potential. And the bits that were done before, the running, shooting, fighting and driving felt like how GTA IV would have felt if Niko had lost a limb or something, awkward and off-balance. And yet it got an average score of 89, with it's highest score being 100 and the lowest being 65.

Duke Nukem on the other hand, I know it isn't the best game as far as sheer gameplay goes, but it's exciting, funny, nostalgic and challenging. I actually wanted to play it, without forcing myself to to justify the £40 I'd spent, and Duke's personality (a pastiche of action film heroes, chiefly Arnie) blew away L.A. Noire's endless army of identical trilby-wearing white males. Not to mention the cheeky lampooning of games such as Halo, Half-Life, Gears of War and Modern Warfare, which always brought a smile to my face. Average score? 49, with highs and lows of 78 and (get this) 0 respectively.