So I’m currently playing The Conduit so that I can review it and like I do with most games, I check out the reviews that come out while I’m spending time with the game.  I’m sure this is a bad idea as you don’t want the opinions of others to impact your own review, but I can’t help it.  Part of this is just curiosity, to see if the impressions of others jive with my own.  Sometimes it’s anticipation; I’m excited for a game I don’t have yet, but will be reviewing, and I want to know if it’s any good.  I’m sure none of those reasons are sufficient for poisoning my well of opinions, but if I don’t read game reviews I may actually have to do my job and that ain’t happening any time soon.

On occasion I’ll read reviews that fly directly in the face of what I’m seeing when I’m playing a game.  In a lot of these cases, the differences are technical: they connected to multiplayer fine and I didn’t, they knock a game’s controls without seeing that you can change them, while I checked out the options, things like that.  With The Conduit, though, the differences of opinion have to do with the single player mode.  A good number of the reviewers find it bland and uninspiring, while I’m having a great deal of fun with it.

This brings me to the problem, that three little word: fun.  Fun is one of those words you’re supposed to shy away from in reviews because it’s completely arbitrary.  Granted, a lot of opinions put forth in game reviews are commenting on arbitrary things, but at the same time, if you have a 360 game that looks like an SNES game, even allowing for differences in opinions in regards to graphics, most people will agree that those graphics aren’t up to par.  Tom Chick, who is one of the best video game reviewers on the planet as well as an incredibly nice guy, never uses the word “fun” in his reviews as it’s unimportant.   What is important is if the game is designed well, does it do the right things and do them well.  It makes sense, as things that I find fun, say grinding for achievements, others may find stultifying.

The problem with this is that, in the case of The Conduit, I can see the points of the reviewers in regards to the single player story, however I’m having a great deal of fun with the game so those problems don’t matter to me.  So then I have a hard time reconciling if these problems are actually problems or the other reviewers didn’t have as much fun with the game so the flaws become much more apparent. I have no idea.

Now, arguably, I don’t play a lot of shooters as, for the most part, I find them boring.  Left 4 Dead had the co-op hook, but without it, it was just moving from one room full of zombies to another.  Playing those campaigns by yourself was not at all entertaining.  BioShock had the powers/weapons combination as well as a great setting.  I’ve heard that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and World at War are great games, but honestly, military shooters bore the piss out of me, so I haven’t played them.  When I play a shooter, I’m not asking a lot from it, probably because shooters have, historically, just been about moving from room A to room B and killing everything you come across.  I want good controls, varied, effective weapons, decent enemy AI and a story that has enough to it to keep me motivated.  The Conduit has all of these things.  I’m not sure what else others would want from it.

In the end, I’m having fun with the game. When I have to put the Wiimote down at the end of the evening and go spend time with the wife, I don’t want to put it down.  I want to keep playing.  I want to see what the next alien enemy is.  I want to find the next experimental weapon.  I want to move from room A to room B and kill everything I come across.  I am having fun and I don’t want the fun to stop.  I just can’t say that in the review.

I’m hoping that by figuring out how to take “fun” out of the equation I can lay bare the design choices that make a game good or bad, but I’m not sure I’m talented enough to do that. There’s always the concern that if I take fun out of things, I may end up shortchanging a game.  Some games are repetitive and derivative and fun as hell any way.  Treating a game like that with more of a clinical eye may do that game, and those that might miss out on it a disservice.

I don’t know.  Maybe I need to stop reading the reviews of others so that I don’t overanalyze things.  In the meantime, you should totally play The Conduit.  It’s a lot of fun.