Game Tunnel: May Round-up

By: Derek Yu

On: May 23rd, 2007

Game Tunnel’s latest monthly round-up has been rounded up, and as usual, it’s an entertaining read. Great to see Chocolate Castle get the number one spot! ’Tis a deserving game.

But man, oh man, I just need to get something off my chest. William Usher, what planet are you from that Civil Disturbance is a 9 (scored 4, 4, and 2 by the other reviewers), Hard Time is a frickin’ 10 (I think Hard Time is fun, actually, but a 10?!), and Cave Story gets a minus for graphics and a “try” recommendation? Sir, you are entitled to your opinion, but straight up… your opinions are terrible. And that’s a fact.

Which would be fine, except for the fact that Game Tunnel is a fairly widely read website, and is one of the more prominent representatives of the independent game community.

I’ve never been a huge fan of giving number ratings to games, and I’m even less fond of the practice of creating arbitrary “awards” on the internet to hand out, but if you’re going to do it, then the numbers and awards should mean something, there should be a consistent idea of what the ratings represent. If it’s just going to be a bunch of guys giving their opinion, then let’s just leave it at that, and that’s great! Why do we have to tack a number to it? And then tack an award onto the numbers?

I dunno, the whole “Game of the Month” thing has struck me as odd, because there seems to be no regard to which games are chosen each month. So what does “Game of the Month” really mean? It means a game has scored the highest out of a random selection of 10 games, using a completely arbitrary rating system. In the end, it just feels like “it’s just one of those things” that indie people do, without giving any consideration to how or why.

I actually really enjoy reading the round-up. I like seeing new games, and I like reading the reviews. Overall, I think it’s a great thing to have. But there seems to be a certain amount of thoughtlessness to how things are handled that I would love to see changed. And Mr. Usher should not be a part of the process in the future, but that’s just my opinion.