In any discussion of online media, there is merit in thinking about the differences between news-related blog posts and traditional news sources. One very impotant difference lies in audience: blog writers pander to an audience that is frustrated with the lengthy (though perhaps poorly written) dissertations of The New York Times. Even in gaming, we see this shift in focus: the maximum amount of content is delivered with a minimum of fuss and wordiness. This difference is very clearly seen when we line up IGN.com’s and Video Gaming Blog’s review of Metroid Prime 3. Their first paragraphs alone are revealing:
If you’re thinking that the new Wii controls equate to a dumbed-down or shooter-emphasized Metroid experience, don’t worry. Sure, you can more easily target and dispose of enemies while on the run, but you gain this benefit without any sacrifices. The bulk of Prime 3 is spent exploring and trying to discover how to reach specific points that you can see, as always. There are some spectacular environmental puzzles that make great use of the morphball, of the screw attack and of the spiderball. There are hidden items and locations that can only be seen with the X-ray Visor and sensor points that can only be shot with the Nova Beam. There are areas that can only be crossed with the Grapple Lasso, or blockades that can only be passed in Hyper Mode. Discovering how to solve these challenges is what makes the Metroid games fun, and Corruption retains that experience in full. On the other hand, the action is increased over previous affairs, too. Certain enemies require precision gunfire and you’ll need to be quick on the trigger with your Wii remote to best them. Meanwhile, the boss fights in the game come in both mini and major sizes and are incredibly epic and engaging. Our only complaint about the bosses, in fact, is that the final one isn’t quite as challenging as some of the others.
-IGN.com
Action heroine Samus gets to face her evil twin in “Metroid Prime 3: Corruption,” the final game in the science-fiction trilogy and the first for Nintendo’s Wii.
-Video Gaming Blog
Each paragraph on the blog is an average of 1-2 sentences long. On IGN, they tend to run over ten or eleven. This is an important difference: readers of blogs seem less interested in details and more interested in getting the barebones facts.
Both articles present the exact same information; IGN simply goes into more detail. These details are not necessary to understand what is being said, but they lend credence to the article. So, at heart, both articles are really the same thing. |
~ by shinyaryart on September 6, 2007.
Posted in Assignments
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