on classics compilations

It's really awesome when you look through the listings at Gamerankings and come across something like this. Man, who's the asshole who gave that game a 2 out of 5?

Oh.

I'm surprised that everyone else gave the game 70% or above, though, because some of those reviews are just as critical as mine. I can pretty much agree with everything this guy says, for example, up until his last paragraph anyway. According to him, some of the games in the compilation are repetitive and boring (Knights of the Round, King of Dragons), some are terrible and have no reason to waste space on the disc (Avengers, Street Fighter), and at least one is just plain unplayable because of twitchy controls (Block Block).

By my count, he says that 11 of the 20 games in the collection are either bad, boring, unplayable, or "nothing special", which for all practical purposes translates into "most people are going to play this for three minutes and then never touch it again."

So why did he give it a score of 7.5?

Game selection isn't the only issue with Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 -- the bonus extras are lame, the setup screens glitch out sometimes, and Strider uses a bad romset so half the music never plays -- but why would you recommend a collection when you hate half of its games? Sure, Strider and Black Tiger are awesome, but when you're paying $20 for a problematic emulator on a disc, I expect more actual good games than barely-playable filler.

Inflated scores have been a problem with classic compilation reviews in the past, but the issue has never been so prominent as it is with CCC2. The same thing is currently happening with the Sega Genesis Collection, which in spite of having some really glaring emulation issues, is getting mostly positive scores from critics who claim that the included games are all "perfectly emulated," and "100% faithful to the originals."

What I think is happening is that these games are consistently being assigned to people who are unfamiliar with the source material. It's not like you can blame them when these collections are full of smash hits like Block Block and Avengers, but if you've never played the original versions of these games, how are you going to know which ones are emulated properly? For that matter, how would you know which ones are genuine classics, as opposed to filler?

When you assign these reviews to people who are unfamiliar with the original games and the gaming culture of the time, the result is going to be a 7 or 8 out of 10 every single time. These people do not care about emulation accuracy, nor apparently do they care if half the collection is garbage. They see a $20 price tag, a few good games, and several "forgotten classics"...which, in other words, are titles that they absolutely hate, but dare not criticize lest they appear ignorant for slandering something popular.

This is not to say that every 7 or 8-out-of-10 CCC2 review on Gamerankings is bad -- I agree with a lot of their points, and the collection could be worth $20 if you REALLY like a few of the games it includes. I'd just like to see more informed reviews of these collections, is all. I want to see these reviews written by people who have played at least some of the included games on their original hardware, or at least have experience with playing them on more accurate freeware emulators. I want to hear from people who are not afraid to call a 15-year-old game "bad" as opposed to a "forgotten classic."

It'd be nice for critics to offer some actual criticism, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It'd keep me from looking like such an asshole all the time.