Saturday, January 28, 2006

would have broken both of her arms

I think the title of this short review says it all: "Marble Blast Ultra Fun, But Not Addictive".

I don't know about anyone else, but I just cring in dismay and, may I say, loathing upon this title. My opinions on "Addictive" are documented elsewhere, and while I'm no Tom Chick, I quite agree with his aversion to games being rated on the "fun" level. (In a nutshell, "fun" is a completely subjective element which has no similar meanings with any two different human beings. One sees fun in micro managing the Nth unit out of another gazillion ones, while the other sees fun in playing solitaire. Not that I have anything against subjectiveness in reviews (which are, after all, opinions), but saying that "Game X is fun" tells me nothing about it, unlike saying "Game X is a RTS with some heavy micro-management needed" or "Game X is a simple puzzle game like Tetris".
Fun is not a way to describe games, or anything else. It's simply not a description.

Try this as a test, supposed your friend/family/coworker comes back from the weekend and you ask him/her "what did you do on the weekend", to which comes the answer "we had fun". I believe this settles it, but just for the sake of the joke, let's continue the discussion: "Yes, but which kind of fun?" "There's only one kind of fun." And so on. That kind of discussion is no fun. At least in my opinion.

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