Opinion: The Acclaim game

Posted on 12 Oct 2009 at 11:11

I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum.

It's undoubtedly excellent, and anyone keen on Batman - or on any kind of action game with fisticuffs, gadgets, stealth and high production values - should immediately rush out and buy a copy.

In fact, the excellence of this game was brought to my attention by no less than the Guinness Book of Records. It had been awarded the world record for 'Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever' - an announcement that generated no little amusement, confusion and even outrage in the Shopper office.

I think of the Guinness Book of Records primarily through its TV incarnation of Record Breakers. Based on that, I thought that records should be measurable, such as the fastest man, tallest mammal or longest period spent sat in a bath of baked beans. These are facts, as far as the limits of human knowledge understand them. Such records are informative, interesting and entertaining. As are the lengths that some, possibly eccentric, individuals would go to break them and get their name in the book.

I'm not saying that video games don't belong in the Guinness Book of Records. High scores for classic arcade titles are a good example of why Guinness has taken a strong interest in games in recent years - as evidenced by the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition (see http://gamers.guinness worldrecords.com).

However, I can't accept the use of review scores as some kind of tangible fact. Reviews are the opinions of individuals or the combined opinions of those working for a publication such as Shopper; they aren't facts and so shouldn't be used for the basis of a world record. The actual scores are factual, but fairly meaningless without the reviewer's thoughts to support them. For example, just because a product wins a Best Buy award in Shopper doesn't mean it's ideal for everyone; it might not be suitable for your needs, or in this case it might be too violent, too difficult, or you may just dislike Batman (though you'd be wrong on this last count).

Guinness has decided upon this record as Batman: Arkham Asylum has the highest score for a superhero game on review aggregation site Metacritic (www.metacritic.com). This site and other aggregators, such as film site Rotten Tomatoes, take a selection of review scores from the web and average them using a variety of methods to give one overall score. It's a useful way to get some idea of critical opinion at a glance, but the number generated is a very rough guide to quality, and doesn't belong in the Guinness Book of Records any more than my personal choice of favourite film does.

The whole thing is one of the most cynical marketing stunts I've seen for some time, designed to benefit both Eidos and Guinness, but meaning very little in the whole scale of things, and only really succeeding in putting a black mark in Guinness's own record book.

Author: Seth Barton