Look, I ain’t here to attack Dean Takahashi as a person. I don’t know him personally and for all I know, he could be an amazing human being. However, we gotta talk about that Doom Eternal gameplay. First we had that abysmal Cuphead gameplay, we kinda let that slide, but this, nah we gotta talk about who we let speak on about games.
I’m saying this because people like Dean Takahashi who’ve being a tech journalist for more than 28 years, and has covered games for 21 years, will likely have immersive influence in the gaming industry. Game developers may even alter their games based on what someone like Dean would say about their games.
When you think about how our games have started to become more easier and have tendency to hold your hand so to speak as you play, as a result from past reviews that have bashed their challenging aspects, you’ll start to see the problem in this pattern. Now let me be clear that I have no problem with newer games trying to be more inclusive for those not looking for a challenge, which varies from game to game, but it shouldn’t result is complete shift this drastic.
When you have someone like Dean, who boast a 21 years coverage in gaming, there’s no excuse for them being this abysmal at games. Gamers after a few months develop a sense of muscle & cognitive memory, basically instinctively knowing the bare minimum of any genre they’ve played in the past. If he really is a game journalist as his reputation claims, the something like Doom, the hallmark of generic shooters shouldn’t pose that much of a problem for him. I don’t care if he can’t pull off a 360 no-scope triple demon headshot, it’s not necessary to review a game, but if he can’t even traverse through simple platforming, my friend that’s a problem.
I spoke about this a long time ago in Are Gaming Journalist Expected To Be Moderately Good At Video Games? blog, in which I discussed the importance that anyone reviewing any games, need to be competent enough to play those game. Knowledge alone in not sufficient to be a reviewer when it comes to gaming. That’s my take on this, let me know what you think about all of this. Here’s the game in question if you’d like to judge for yourself.
