Killzone 2 is coming out soon for the Playstation 3. This much-hyped tentpole release from Sony and Guerilla is aiming to set the standard for technical excellence and polish for the HD-generation of consoles. I have yet to play either demo or game, but judging by the numerous reviews it’s definitely no slouch. And by in large most critics have agreed with near-unanimous acclaim and good reviews.
Let me repeat that before we continue. Killzone 2 has gotten good reviews everywhere. It’s current MetaCritic score (for what it’s worth) is a 92. Many publications has bestowed upon it their highest possible rating. There are no negative reviews out there. No one has yet to say anything poor about Killzone 2.
So you think with all this good press no one would be complaining right? A good game for people to enjoy might create a lot of discussion, but shouldn’t create rancorous debate. Well, you would be wrong. Killzone 2 perversely has become one of the hottest topics in games.
Apparently a series of perfect scores and universal praise is not enough to satiate the Sony fanboys out there. One only needs to look at their responses to Edge Magazine’s review which game Killzone 2 a 7 out of 10 (which is still a “good game”). Or the complaints about IGN’s 9.4 review for the game. Even Adam Sessler has been under siege over X-Play’s 5/5 review of the game.
Fans are attacking a show because their perfect score wasn’t good enough for them. A perfect score was not nearly enough adoration for Killzone 2.
Console fanboyism is par for course in games. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo fanboys have been duking it out for as long as each respective company has been invested in games (and Sega fanboys before them and so on and so forth). But the level of vitriol is so high for Killzone 2 that even observers normally immune to such outbursts are taking notice on the sheer insanity of the rants.
Killzone 2 is the recipe for the perfect storm of fanboyism. It’s a huge blockbuster title for a languishing console whose fans have had little to cheer about in recent months. The game has been on a rollercoaster of hype for over a year. The quality of the title is high enough that fanboys feel justified in belching out their raves. So the fanboy pride wasn’t unexpected entirely. What was unexpected is the way they’ve turned on the people who are supposedly on their side. The Edge review was low enough that the backlash could have been anticipated. But arguing IGN or GameTrailers or X-Play’s overwhelmingly positive reviews?
These people shouldn’t be taken seriously regardless and there’s no doubt they represent a small, but very vocal minority of actual readers and viewers of these various publications. But reactions like this don’t exist within a vacuum. Too many sites and publications foster this sense of separation within the games community. PS3 gamers are separate from 360 gamers are separate from Wii gamers are separate from PC gamers. These divisions are not built on similar interests, but just ownership of a particular piece of hardware as if that fact had some meaningful distinction. Implicitly they shift the debate within games. If I had my way, I would be arguing that Killzone 2 for all its polish and technical excellence doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything new or original. The actual debate should be focused on whether we as an industry reward canned polish too much. But because of the brouhaha over these reviews hardly anyone can mention such issues without being branded as biased due to singling out Killzone 2 as if he or she had some vendetta against the Playstation 3.
I don’t know if we’ve reached a tipping point when it comes to hyperbolic overreaction amongst fanboys. That’s something we’ll need to judge after the Killzone 2 wave has passed. And while the PS3 has a couple of heavy-hitters left in their lineup this year (Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2) I wonder if anything can get the fanboys as rabid as Killzone 2 has. And thankfully for the most part the reaction has been shock and indignation from various observers, the responses from the fanboys are pretty much self-parody.
And thankfully, my blog is inconsequential enough that I should be immune from fanboy criticism.
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