Ever had someone close to you, like your mom, spouse, partner, friend, teacher, or even your dog, caution you about overusing words like “love” and “hate”? My wife, Becca, constantly checks me with, “You don’t really hate that!” or “Do you really love that?” And yeah, I get it. But as game reviews (and reviews in general) turn into dumpster fires (looking at you, Amazon), it feels like everything is either LOVED TO THE MOON or HATED WITH THE PASSION OF A THOUSAND SUNS. Middle ground? DEAD! It’s like no one remembers how to say, “This part was great, but that part sucked.”
Is this what’s driving the insanity in gaming publication headlines, or are they just incredibly lazy and tossing out clickbait? Even if a headline hooks me – nine times out of ten, the article has nothing to do with the title at all. It’s frustrating! (And it makes me avoid everything they post. ) Honestly, these days, I rely on my RSS feeder to catch interesting shit, then Googlefu my way to the real info.
(Seriously, though – when everyone is INNOVATIVE, UNIQUE, AND REVOLUTIONARY, maybe none of them are?)
The survival tag has turned into a free-for-all. At this point, I half expect Candy Crush to rebrand itself as “mobile survival” just to ride the wave. And don’t even get me started on the ridiculous headlines for games that don’t belong under the survival umbrella!!!11 (Emphasis only slightly exaggerated.) Would we let it slide if it was a pizza joint offering a teriyaki chicken pizza and the local news blasted out “LOCAL PIZZA JOINT REVOLUTIONIZES CHINESE FOOD!!111”
Seriously, people, sit on it and spin. These games would do just fine in the action, adventure, and RPG categories where they belong.
They don’t need to hijack the survival genre’s bandwagon.
(Quick footnote: this is so amazing.)
