The crate game review system is ingenious
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 10:00am by Blake
Infendo likes to criticize the standard 10-point game review system for taking itself too seriously. Is a game exceptional, good, average, or poor — that’s all what we really want to know.
But Old Man Murray devised a great way to critique video games — by how long it takes before the player encounters an uninspired power-up crate or barrel.
All games contain crates, therefore all games can be judged empirically on those crates. Once we came up with that insight, the actual formula for the world’s first completely unbiased review methodology was a trivial matter of applying our many hours spent watching actors portray scientists on television to our hatred of crates. Games can be rated and compared based on the shortest amount of time it takes a player to reach the first crate, which represents the point where the developers ran out of ideas.
We laugh because it’s funny, and we laugh because it’s true.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:15 am
dude thats stupid and idiotic. but in a way true!!!
November 28th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Super Mario Galaxy, the
highest rankedsecond highest ranked game of all time has cratesNovember 28th, 2007 at 10:41 am
jack why not highest ranked?
November 28th, 2007 at 11:16 am
That’s funny… I just watched a documentary from Bungie on how the artists always are in conflict with the engineers when developing a video game because the artists create these sumptous spaces depicting ingenious and beautiful architectural structures… then the engineers just dump boxes in them because they want a specific motion flow for the player. The artists struggle with ideas on how to make these boxes blend with their surroundings, but in many cases they can’t get around making it a crate. And all they can do is print nice messages and logos on them!
The most ingenious and funny “make up” for crates, I think, it’s in Portal, where there is a level that asks you to keep your crate close to you and protect it (it even has a little heart printed on every side), and then jokes that you are falling in love with the crate. Then you have to “kill” it!
November 28th, 2007 at 11:25 am
“The most ingenious and funny “make up” for crates, I think, it’s in Portal, where there is a level that asks you to keep your crate close to you and protect it (it even has a little heart printed on every side), and then jokes that you are falling in love with the crate. Then you have to “kill” it!”
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!1!!!!
November 28th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Like the Spoiler alert AFTER the spoiler. Way to go IM. While we are at it, the cake is a lie. LOL
That rating system is ingenious. I am off to rate games. StC of Course.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Jack: actually the highest ranked game of all time also has crates
November 28th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Sorry!
But that is a very early level in the game… and the in-game joke about boxes and crates is kind of obvious from the start.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
fire emblem has crates on the first chapter!
November 28th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
man smash bros is gonna fail in like a second.
November 28th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
“man smash bros is gonna fail in like a second.”
Nice! Lol.
November 28th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Does this mean that Mercenaries phayulz within the first five seconds of gameplay? ‘Cause even the intro movie features crates… hmm…
November 29th, 2007 at 9:57 am
And so does Mario 64, Mario Kart DS, and almost every game I like…
November 30th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Also, I read not long ago that when creating Half-Life 2, Valve tried hard to abide by that OMM criterion… until in the end they gave up and decided to have a crate right there at the start of a game as one of the first things the player has to operate
December 1st, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Heh, clever. Though I was kind of hoping the review system was based on how many hours a person could endure being locked in a crate with only the game in question…
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:46 am
Wow, you’re right! ALL games are first-person and third-person shooters, so therefore ALL games MUST contain crates!