Imagine youâve only got one word to describe Mass Effect 3, a game that hundreds of thousands of people have been waiting for. Tough decision, huh? Well, on one new website, most people are using the word âshitâ to describe Biowareâs sci-fi threequel. Which one would you use?
Itâs pretty clear that One Word Reviews is the work of just a few people, if not one man. But whatâs more interesting than the mystery mind behind it is the portrait that emerges of who might be going there and why.
It can be hard to encapsulate the qualities of a video game in a bunch of paragraphs or on a 10-point scale. The About section of One Word Reviews says that the âsite is intended to be a middle ground between the longform review and the very shortform ratings system.â Users can search the siteâs database for games that theyâre looking for, click on words already tethered to the game and add their own adjectives if they want. Stars and numbers have no place here.
As with anything crowd-sourced, traces of fan and hater agendas pop up in the words attached to various games. So, the most popular descriptor for Mass Effect 3 is âshit,â followed by âbadâ and âmeh.â Itâs telling that visitors took the time to call Metroid: Other M âmisogynistâ while Metal Gear Solid 4 gets tagged as âgeriatric.â OWReview users think Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is âshit,â too, despite the fact that the Ubisoft shooter isnât even out yet.
Part of the fun of clicking through the siteâs pages is the surprise of an unexpected word choice. Itâs not unexpected that a widely loved game like Shadow of the Colossus has the word âmasterpieceâ next to it. But pegging League of Legends as âBrazilianâ or Trine 2 as âsweatyâ hints at a furtive language that only those initiated into the mysteries of secret communities can understand. Portal, however, gets âtriumphâ and thatâs a single-word review thatâs just perfect in more ways than one.
Since the site is new-ish and relatively low-profile, itâs not clear just how many votes or words it takes to swing the opinion on a particular game. Maybe it was only five people who deemed the 1994 SNES Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World âracistâ but itâs still enough to beat out those who think itâs âawesomeâ.
Browsing a site like One Word Reviews is like looking at the collective psyche of hardcore gamers. Passions run hot and thereâs a fever to either canonize or demonize the games that people love. Glimpsing through only a few entries illustrates how the word âcasualâ gets lobbed as a hand grenade at various games. Donât like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Dark Souls? Click on âcasualâ to give it an upvote in each gameâs entry. âOverratedâ holds a similar damning cachet, undercutting the âgroundbreakingâ and âgreatâ attached to Half-Life 2 and Fallout 3 respectively.
The activity on One Word Reviews isnât like that on Metacritic, though, where the bombing of a gameâs Metascore gets done in retaliation of some professional judgment that users disagree with, as happened with Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3. Folks on One Word Review donât have media outlets opinions to buck up against. Theyâre only jostling against each other. The result of all the terse wordplay areâto quote the leading term for last yearâs cult hit Catherineââcaptivating.â
