Memes

There was a point I used to turn down SFX because I wanted to listen to the music. At some pointed I started to turn down the music so SFX was more punchy like it used to be.

5.1 and 7.1 systems aren't all that widespread, even in the music industry. Surround kinda sits in the same place vr does for me. It's immensely cool, but it'll never become standard due to hassle and lack of support.

Most of the recent innovation in sound has been trickled down from the music and film industries. Just a general increase in the capabilities of soft synths and a better understanding of foley, alongside dedicated in house recording studios have raised the bar of audio.

To be honest I agree with you that sound is overlooked, sound engineers truly are unsung heroes. I mean even when people point out the sound in a game, it's usually directed at the composer.

If the game requires you to use the volume sliders to have a decent sound design, then it's kind of a "mix it yourself" game.

I hate how every AAA game has to be an open world sandbox with loads of extra features. I just want a good story and strong core gameplay.

And all of these things, including the fun were definitely mentioned in all the reviews. Meme doesn't make any sense.

Indeed.

Graphics will always be less important

The popularity of various "ugly" games is proof of that

undertale

Rimworld

Dwarf fortress

Minecraft

Diablo 2 (not resurrected)

Probably many many more

The reviews still have a strong focus on graphics, but based on the hardware limitations of the Switch.

Graphics are like, one of the last things I give a shit about as long as they're not hampering the game. I don't care if I'm playing Wolfenstein 3D or the latest triple-A graphics splurgefest so long as it's a fun game, but stuff like Cruelty Squad is an absolute no-go because of the dogshit HUD that serves only to distract the player and make it feel claustrophobic.

Same. Love playing a beautiful game, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but I also love Rimworld. Like more hours in RW than any other title, by a wide margin. And it's top down goofy 2D graphics and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Personally I've stopped watching reviews for that reason. Too much of his review depend on whether he actually had fun with the game or not. If it's a game he didn't enjoy he's going to review it much harshly while finding whatever positives to justify recommending a game he enjoyed.

For instance he didn't enjoy the Outriders expansion and one of his big points of criticisms was that it's too hard to play solo. Which is a pretty dumb criticism to have when the game has a world tier system with the sole purpose of letting you set the difficulty. It climbs with XP but you can always set it to a lower difficulty if something is too hard. He could've easily set it to world tier one and just shred through the game, he simply stubbornly chose to be on the highest difficulty that was unlocked for him. And he was at the difficulty level where builds start to matter, except from the video it's pretty clear he doesn't have an actual build in mind. His criticism was the equivalent of playing master difficulty (or beyond) in Diablo 3 as a monk without any consistent spirit generation, and then saying Diablo 3 is too hard. Anyone who has played Diablo 3 knows statement like that is complete BS but anyone trying to understand whether they'd actually want to play Diablo would instantly be dissuaded from giving it a shot.

And the flipside is Destiny's Lightfall expansion review where he just decides to add everything "free" into the same expansion review pile because he loves Destiny. And of course then proceeds to downplay every glaring negative point about it such as "No new pvp maps. You shouldn't expect it because Bungie isn't focusing on PvP either" and "Nothing new about gambit, the players don't care about gambit either." or "One new strike and no real improvements to that core gameplay loop. Game development is hard you guys". To give the expansion context, it's the weakest expansion after Y1 (which was the lowest point of the entire series) and is complete filler in terms of the story. Yet Skillup still felt it was good enough to recommend it to people.

For me his reviews have become mostly worthless because I first have to intuit his experience with the game to understand which way his bias has swung, so that I could get context of his final verdict.

IGN's review of Starfield has zero mention of the music, same with its Fallout 4 review.

Just checked The Verge - also not mentioning the music of Starfield at all.

In my opinion, music is what turns a good game into a great game.

Unless you're an Indie studio, then games aren't meant to make money until the bills start piling up.