Games I Can't Review

Opinion from Matt - Tuesday, 05 April 2011 @ 10:20pm

Twice recently I've picked up a game to review - in both cases DLC Reviews on the iPhone. And in both cases they've lain fallow while I tried to figure out what the hell to do with them.

You see, there may or may not be something wrong with them, some hideous flaw that says they need to be torn to shreds with my razor sharp insight, their diseased entrails revealed to the shrivelling light of the sun.

But there's a problem with that - the flaw only affects me.

Well, me and my people.

You see, like around 10 percent of men, I'm colour blind, or more specifically red/green colour deficient. I've written a whole article about being a colour blind gamer, so I won't really go into too much detail. Read that article if you're interested, mostly because it's funnier than this one.

But lately I've been stuck with what to do about games that I cannot play or cannot play properly because of my colour vision. I have to admit I do often simply skip games because I'm fore-warned that the game won't be playable to a colourtard such as myself. "Join three or more of the same coloured gems? Pass." But sometimes it sneaks up on me and I don't know what to do about it.

The first of these was Burn The Rope.

I got Burn the Rope purely because it was recommended by the App Store and we must always do what Master says. Burn The Rope is nothing like the similar sounding and hugely successful (and awesome) Cut the Rope. It also shouldn't be confused with the flash title You Have To Burn The Rope in which... well, the goal is mysterious and vague. Burn the Rope isn't that much like either of those games. In particular it's nothing like Cut the Rope, despite the similarity of name and the overall theme of hemp destruction. In the iphone, Burn the Rope reminds me a little more of Zen Bound than anything else I've played.

The principle is simple. Set a fire on a rope pattern. Fire burns up, expect it to travel down a rope and it will sputter and die out. You need to tilt the iPhone to allow the fire to keep finding its way up, and it can be spun around or slowed down, the fire can split at a junction, etc. Later puzzles include ants, which crawl on the rope and burning them changes the flame's colour, meaning it can burn rope that's that colour now.

I don't mind the idea except... I don't really know how to say this. I like fire. A lot. Things burn and it's awesome. I used to be a pyro as a kid and often burned myself quite badly. (One thing I learned is never burn balloons. Seriously, that shit NEVER cools down, and it sticks like a bitch.) So yeah. I like fire, and I like burning things. But I found this quite dull. Watching the little fire crawl around in a circle or over various rope shape objects is not particularly thrilling, and there isn't any sense of "have to get the gold" for me. Maybe other people find it more satisfying, but I'm supposed to review based on MY experiences. And it's here that the ragequit comes.

See the above? See that one rope is green and the other brown?

Because I can't.

At this point the game put a major roadblock in my way and I can no longer play it. I simply stopped. I've been meaning to finish the review, but I don't quite know how to handle it.

The next is a very recent title. It was recommended to me by the publisher and I thought I'd give it a bit of a look-see. It's called "hungry monstR".

Ignoring the strange spelling there it's a pretty simple game, reminding me a bit of a title called GeoSwarm, or in some ways Flick Buddies. An icecream stand sits in the middle of the screen. Monsters (or perhaps monstRs) wander into the screen and go straight for their favourite cooling treat. Naturally the player is an asshole and instead of sharing his bounty of dairy delights decides to throw the poor creatures into bins. The bins or tubes or whatever they represent are coloured to suit the various monstRs and the gameplay consists of tossing them into the correct bins.

Which is a fine idea unless you're a freak like me and have to spend 20 minutes deliberating on the colour of each monstRr pre-throw. I literally can't play this game.

So how do I review it?

There are two ways of looking at this. One is that it's not the games fault I'm defective. That 10% of the male population is not that big a deal and that we shouldn't be pandered to, it's just too bad that we can't experience the game because of our own flaws, and that it's exactly that: a flaw in us, not in the game.

The other view is frankly the one I hold. If one in ten male reviewers is unable to play the game, surely that minority has every right to criticise and condemn the game based on that subjective experience? If one in twenty players (assuming equal gender representation) can't play the damn game, then surely one in twenty reviews should mention that fact and treat the game accordingly?

This should be the point where an actual journalist would write a neat conclusion that wraps up the whole article, but I'd hope by now we've gotten past that sort of expectation. What I really wanted to do was start a conversation. What should I do? What's fair in this sort of situation? Is it reasonable to criticise a game because I can't play it? is the flaw in me, or is the flaw in the game?