原文作者：Chris Plante 译者：Megan Shieh

“你为什么讨厌游戏？”作为一个游戏评论家，我最常被问到这个问题。没有一个游戏评论家是不喜欢游戏的，正是因为出于对游戏的喜爱——一种深不可测的、挑剔的、毫不妥协的爱，我们这些人才选择成为专业的电子游戏评论家。有许多其他的工作薪水更高，耗时更少，而且工作描述中也不包括‘会在Twitter上被陌生人骂’。

与一般人相比，我玩过的游戏可以说是数不胜数，因此平均数定律不可避免地开始生效。玩过的游戏越多，眼光就变得越挑剔，游戏中总是有那么一两个点会将我从沉浸感中拉出来，这些点可能是角色、剧情、玩法概念，也可能是发行商强行带入游戏的乏味微交易。

比起千篇一律的人设和背景故事，我更喜欢那些颠覆前作假设的人物和故事。我希望游戏中的暴力是带有目的性的。我欣赏那些珍视我的时间和金钱的游戏。

一般人会根据自己的喜好选择游戏；而我选择游戏则是因为它们出现在了我的谷歌日历上（“选择”这个词对我来说不适用，准确地说是“我被分配了游戏”）。

每年都会出现几款真心好玩的游戏；许多游戏都不错；大部分都过得去；有些不好玩；其他的呢…一转眼就忘了。我试着不带偏见地去玩每一款游戏。

由于职责所在，因此玩游戏的时候我必须对自己诚实，然后和读者交流我的真实感受。我的意见本身无关紧要；重要的是，我用一种可以给读者提供价值的方式来分享这些观点。也就是说玩游戏时，我以自己的角度出发；写作时，我以读者的角度出发。

游戏评论家就像是在寻找黄金的矿工。有时候艺术是有生命的、充满活力的，在地表上等待着，渴望被找到；其他时候它是死的，已经被埋葬了的，不过如果有人有足够的耐心愿意去挖掘，他们就能找到一些微小的线索，从而找到那些随着电子游戏业的发展而被埋葬了的艺术品。

没有任何一家开发商会故意投入多年的时间来制作一款不完整的、不好玩的、毫无创意的游戏；就像没有游戏评论家会为了写出一篇连自己都看不下去的800字文章，而投入一周的时间去玩一款二流的冒险游戏一样。开发商和评论家渴望的东西是一样的——与众不同。

有些人会问我：“既然游戏不好玩又没亮点，那为什么还要坚持玩下去？”因为我总觉得我会找到一些东西，一些能够表达开发者的梦想、雄心和信仰的东西。我想要找到这些东西来和你们分享，这样如果你们也选择去玩这款游戏的话，就能知道如何更有效地利用你的时间。

有时候很难找到这些微小的黄金矿脉；有的时候连找都找不到；有时候花费了大量的时间，最终找到的只是一个冰凉的，毫无乐趣的核心；但根据我的经验，一般的游戏都是带着少许黄金的不完美矿脉。

paper_fox_crop（from gamasutra.com）

对这些不完美游戏的热爱多年来一直伴随着我。我也欣赏像《塞尔达》还有《辐射》这类的巨作，它们的制作团队拥有大量的时间、才能和金钱，但它们不是我最喜爱的游戏类型。

相反，我更喜欢的是《武士道之刃》和《武士道之刃 2》，开发商用血条和连击这两种机制弥补了操作不流畅的缺陷；还有《地球防卫军2017》，一个坚持了10年的、充满了bug的开放世界游戏，它的规模感至今尚未被超越；《重力眩晕 2》是一个现代AAA级游戏，主角是一个年轻的超级英雄，他在不使用枪支的情况下对抗收入不平等（income inequality）；《美国职业摔跤全明星》是少数认识到摔跤运动的欢乐和幽默的职业摔跤游戏，它用讽刺性动画代替了传统的逼真模拟呈现形式；《凯瑟琳》可能是我的最爱，它既性感又顽皮，最出乎意料的是，它是过去十年里最好玩的益智游戏之一，同时也是对男性不安全感和自私的一种敏锐而真诚的探索。这些游戏对我来说弥足珍贵，但它们都有缺陷，有些缺陷非常明显。

如果说评论家的工作有一半类似于矿工，那么另一半就像是一个在不稳定的地形上航行的导游。评论家不仅会告诉你要避免什么，而且还会帮你找出解决办法。大多数糟糕的决定都有一个很好的意图来源。为什么这个新的射击游戏感觉这么奇怪？也许是因为发行商将它指派给了一个以前只做过赛车游戏的开发人员。在别的游戏里把对手爆头的感觉很赞，但是在这个射击游戏里总觉得缺了些什么——一个好的评论家在评论的同时也会寻找游戏缺失的东西。

“评论家们发表的评论可以提升我的体验，他们会引导我去尝试那些我平常不会去接触的游戏，然后以我可以理解的方式将它们的优点指出来。”

这就是我在评论游戏时渴望做到的事情。

我热爱电子游戏，但我更喜欢的是在过去的十年里与其他人分享这些不完美游戏的机会——那些如果我不推荐的话，人们估计就会错过的不完美游戏。我也喜欢在世界级的大游戏中找到好东西，但我认为他们对规模和润色的期望太大，以至于许多游戏都无法与之匹敌。我评论游戏是为了为玩家设定期望，提供内容，调查游戏的缺点，同时也保证优点能够绽放光芒。

我离开游戏评论界已经好几年了，所以可能需要一段时间来重新学习一些技能，找到我的肌肉记忆。但是我保证，即使我发表的评论感觉可能像是在抱怨，或是贬低游戏；我的最终目的始终是寻找美好的东西和真相。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Why do you hate games?”

That’s the question I’ve received the most as a video game critic. Of course, no video game critic hates games. If not for a love of games, a bottomless, nagging, nonnegotiable sort of love, no one would become a professional video game critic — or any critic, for that matter. Plenty of other jobs pay better, consume less time and don’t include in the job description, “Must be comfortable eating shit from strangers on Twitter.”

I do play more games than the average person, a lot more. Inevitably the law of averages kicks in. The more games I play, the more likely I’ll come across something that doesn’t click, be it a character, a story, a gameplay concept or maybe a method with which the game’s publisher tries to milk each player for cash through tasteless microtransactions.

I like characters and stories that challenge the assumptions of the previous generation of games, that don’t default to the agony and ecstasy of being a 30-something dude with a knack for headshots. I expect violence to have a purpose. I appreciate games that value my money and my time. Those are a few components of my tastes.

Where the average person chooses games based on taste, and perhaps a passing consideration of reviews, I pick games — “pick” isn’t the right word; let’s say “I’m assigned games” — because they appear on a Google Calendar crowded with upcoming releases. A few games every year are truly excellent. Many are good. Most are fine. Some are bad. Others, forgettable. I try to approach every game without prejudice.

As I play a game, my obligation is to be honest with myself, and then to communicate to the reader what personal truth I uncover. My opinion doesn’t matter on its own. What matters is my capacity to share that opinion in a fashion that provides a value to the reader. Which is to say that when I play, I have myself in mind; when I write, I have the reader in mind.

Criticizing games, at its best, is akin to working as a field researcher. Sometimes the artistry is living and vibrant, waiting right on the surface, eager to be studied. Other times, it’s dead and buried, but if one’s patient and willing to dig, they can find tiny clues of a righteous thing that, due to whatever cataclysmic event of video game development, had the life squashed from it.

No developer spends years developing a game because they want to create broken, incomplete, joyless, creatively bankrupt things, just like critics don’t want to spend a week playing a middling adventure just so they can write 800 words on something that didn’t move them. Both creators and critics hunger for distinction.

When people ask why I hate one game or another, I want to hold up the handful of fossils I worked diligently to loose from the game. “I pushed through 20 hours of another forgettable shooter,” I wish to say, “because I knew I’d find something, somewhere that spoke to its creators’ dreams, ambitions and beliefs. And I hope that knowing it exists, knowing how to look for it and where to find it, will make your time richer should you choose to play too.”

Sometimes it’s tough to uncover these little veins of gold. Sometimes I fail. And sometimes a game is made from a place of such corporate cynicism that hours of searching uncovers a cold, joyless core. But in my experience, the average game is an imperfect vessel for a nugget of greatness.

A love for these imperfect games has stuck with me over the years. I respect games like Zelda and Fallout that come from teams that have time, talent and money, but they don’t sit on the top of my shelf.

Instead, I have Bushido Blade andBushido Blade 2, the awkward-to-control fighting game pairing that did away with health meters and combos. There’s Earth Defense Force 2017, a decade-old bug-riddled open-world game with a sense of scale that still hasn’t been bested.Gravity Rush 2 is a modern AAA game starring a young superheroine who fights income inequality without using a gun. WWE All Stars is one of the few pro wrestling games to recognize the joy and playfulness of the sport, trading hyper-realistic simulation for a satirical cartoon. And Catherine is my Number One problematic fave, but it’s sexy and mischievous and, most unexpectedly, one of the best puzzle games of the past decade, while also doubling as a shrewd but sincere exploration of male insecurity and selfishness.

These games are precious to me, but they are all flawed, a few deeply so. Video games are a young and awkward medium, a volatile mix of the humanities (game designers, musicians, filmmakers, actors, writers) with big business (publicity, marketing, social engineering experts, economists, publicly traded publishers). In development, there is endless room for error, if not outright interference. Each time I learn more about the notoriously secret nature of video game development, particularly on big budget blockbusters, I’m impressed so many games achieve technical competence, let alone any higher function of art.

If half of a critic’s job is akin to a miner in search of gold, the other half is like a tour guide navigating unstable terrain. A critic shows you not merely what to avoid, but frames the problem. Most bad decisions have a well-intending (or at the least fascinating) origin. Why does a new shooter feel so strange? Perhaps because it was assigned by a publisher to a developer that had previously only made racing games. Maybe popping zombie heads feels good in other games, but this shooter is lacking that oomph — a good critic is also looking for the absence of a thing.

I appreciate when a critic elevates my experience with a piece of art: when they can guide me through what would otherwise turn me away, and then frame greatness in a way I can understand. That’s what I aspire to do whenever I write or speak about a game.

I love video games, but what I might love more is the opportunity I’ve had over the last decade to share the imperfect games with other people, people who might have otherwise passed them on their occasional visit to GameStop in search of Madden or Destiny, Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty. I like finding greatness in the world’s biggest games, too, but I recognize they set an expectation of polish and scope that so many games can’t match. When I criticize a game, I do so to set expectations, to provide context, to interrogate what doesn’t work and to shine a light on what does.

I’ve been away from video game criticism for a couple of years, so it may take me a while to relearn some skills and find my muscle memory. But I promise, even when I appear grumpy and downtrodden, that I’m always searching for beauty and truth. I can’t wait to share it with you.（Source: polygon.com ）