Avowed | Review Thread

The thing to understand is that reviews are inherently subjective. Decade(...s?) ago, Kieron Gillen wrote a pretty famous manifesto where he basically compared game reviewing to travel writing.

When you are booking a holiday, you don't care how many grains of sand are on the beach. You probably don't care too much about the average flow rate of cars on the highway during rush hour. What you care about is whether you will enjoy it.

For some? That means there being plenty of museums. For others it is beaches with accessible parking so that you can leave your crap in a rental car. For others still it is nightlife.

And that applies to "friction" as well. Because let's take a different example. Many people (myself included) criticized Elden Ring for having a grace outside of basically every single boss room. We half joke that people would lose their god damned minds if they had to play Dark Souls 2 where one of the hardest bosses in the game involves fighting your way through a solid wall of Black Knight level enemies every single time. Others think we are fucking stupid for liking Dark Souls 2 (... they are probably right) and that this lets you focus solely on the boss and not memorizing what a weeb in armor is going to do... before you fight the other weeb in armor. And others still will point out that having to run past those enemies or fight one or two helps to "reset" the mind between attempts and avoids being on tilt against a boss.

Just like some people want a beach where everyone is in a bikini and dehydrated like Hugh Jackman on a film set. And others still want somewhere they can relax and maybe surf for a bit.

Which... mostly speaks to Grubb's problems as a reviewer. As a "game leaks" guy, he is amazing. I think he lacks the drive to be a full on game journo but that is also a function of him working for the company that steals the work of the rest of games media on the regular (Fandom). But he has a VERY long history of giving "spicy takes" where he has a rudimentary understanding of a topic but still feels the need to shit on others unnecessarily. He isn't the only one but I am increasingly at the point where I can't tell if that is engagement farming or "Just Jeff Grubb".

Ooo, I loved Veilguard, so maybe I'll love this, too.