The Wonkiness of Bias

I'm probably among the biggest culprits of being biased. You can probably see it all over my blog. I think. Why I am biased: I spare no popular game I don't like serious criticism. Final Fantasy XII is a good example. I hate the game. I have no idea how it earned so many honours by doing NOTHING well. It wasn't fun, the story was bad, and it was draggily long. I couldn't even go past five hours on it. That being said, I could easily and happily play what most review sites call an 'average' game - .hack//G.U. I can spend hours on Dynasty Warriors and Ninety-Nine Nights just because I find it fun.

I cannot for the life of me see why people like Zelda. It still hasn't clicked, and probably never will. Why is it fun? I don't know. There's just obviously something I'm just grandly missing. I think I just have this dislike for platformers. Okami didn't charm me, and neither did Super Mario Galaxy. I know they were good, but not that good. Maybe I'm just too much of an old-school gamer.

Why I might not be as biased: Even consoles I own don't escape criticism. I hold no true favouritism over any console just because I own them. I badly want the Wii to crash and burn. I like my PS3 over the XBox 360 because I can run Linux on it. The PSP just beats the DS because the PSP is just that much better of a handheld device. I switched to Windows Mobile because Palm OS was just too archaic for my liking. Just because I own the console doesn't mean I have any interest in it being successful. It just means I have an interest in games that are already out for it - the GameCube is a good example.

Graphics are nothing to me if there's no gameplay. Even if I could play Crysis at maximum settings, I'd still give it a 6, at most. Crysis' level design was poor and the ease at which one could lose their way despite having a minimap was appalling (don't even get me started on the interface and gameplay). I'll happily trod through Disgaea and Atelier Iris, and shelf away any of the PS2 Final Fantasy games. I'd play Ninja Gaiden Black while immersing myself in Folklore. Command and Conquer: Red Alert is still fun despite everything looking like sad blocks of pixels now.

Why I might be biased: Graphics still do matter. Now that UT3 nearly matches the pace I'm used to from Quake 3, it's probably no turning back. While gameplay occasionally does trump graphics, it's difficult for me to see myself going back to playing Freecell XP after playing Freecell Vista or Dynasty Warriors 5 after Dynasty Warriors 6.

(I wanted to say more. But writer's block hit again. Dammit.)