Welcome to RGR!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to the Real Gaming Review.  This blog was designed with the intention of reviewing games as fairly, critically, and objectively as possible.  Myself, DR Moniz, and co-creator Scott Whitehurst, came up with the idea of forming a rigorously stated review constitution (see right panel) which reviewers must conform to.  If we can get multiple people to review games and release similar ratings, or perhaps different ratings with clearly stated biases, then we've done our job.

This idea came up when I began to try to review StarCraft II.  I had a large number of preconceptions of what the game would be like ahead of time; I'd talked to people who had played in the extensive beta testing, read releases, and listened to general excitement.  While I wasn't planning on getting the game, as an RTS fan I felt I had a duty.  And maybe I could have some fun while I was at it.  Scott bought the game, and this pushed me over the edge to buy it as well.

We began exchanging comments about what's good and bad about the game, and we came to a realization: this game simply cannot be measured with traditional reviewing standards.  It is, for the most part, an anomaly in the world of gaming.  The reason is this: Blizzard released an utterly polished, competitively played game that could have been released 10 years ago.

What's so different about this?  I'd say that the RTS genre is a progressive one in general, and by looking at games like Total Annihilation (1997), Homeworld (1999), the Total War series, beginning with Shogun: Total War (2000, combining TBS with RTT to get a sort of RTS and one hell of a game), Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (2004), Company of Heroes (2006), and Supreme Commander (2007), we can see that the sub-genre of RTS became a full genre, and spawned branches of RTS which focus on different aspects of strategy.

StarCraft II is not a a progressive game.  It is essentially a patched version of StarCraft I, with much better graphics, a superbly designed online system, and Blizzard has polished what was already there to a shine.  And yet, this game is incredibly popular.  Blizzard has deemed it the fastest ever selling PC strategy game.  So maybe taking an old formula and reusing it isn't such a bad thing, because this game is still FUN.  That has to mean that it's a good game!

And yet, styling myself as a connoisseur of the genre, I couldn't help but be bothered by the fact that they'd largely ignored many of the successes developed in other games.  The largest of these for me is failing to incorporate what Chris Taylor deems a Strategic Zoom, which is simply being able to fluidly zoom in and out of the battlefield at any time, focusing the screen on the exact theatre of war desired.  Mr. Whitehurst and moi found ourselves developing a new method of rating games, which can be applied to all games anywhere, but especially to those games which take old concepts and essentially re-release them.

You can feel free to take a look at the Review Constitution in the right panel of this page.  In short, however, the idea is that we rate the game on its own, comparing it to no other games.  We simply decide how much fun the game is, how long the game is fun for, etc., and provide it with the first rating.  We then compare the game to other games in the genre, and perhaps other games that have similarities but are in different genres.  This is a test as to how progressive the game is; are we getting anything new with this $50-$60 release?  We then simply average the two ratings, provide some closing remarks, and decide whether or not to recommend the game, and who should consider purchasing it.

The Real Gaming Review is a very simple concept, but surely an underused one.  We hope to stimulate others into thinking about games critically and fairly, and for those to ask not just what the game brings to the genre that we haven't seen before (some would call that elitist), but ask: how much fun is this game?  Why should it matter when the technology was available if I'm enjoying it now?

The StarCraft II review will be released as soon as Scotty and myself can properly gather thoughts on all of its aspects of play, and when one of us bothers to write all of that down.  In the meantime, I hope to post some other topics that may interest gamers, in hopes of generating some discussion.

- Daniel R Moniz