Totally Objective Review: Veil of Darkness

[@ThoseAsteroidBlues]

Clearly the second best review of this game after Ross Scott's

[@MinecraftMartin]

You forgot to do the review part

[@TotallyObjectiveReviews]

These are Totally Objective Reviews. If you want people's opinions, you're going to have to look elsewhere.

[@MinecraftMartin]

@@TotallyObjectiveReviews I didn't comment about opinions and wasn't expecting any since you have the word 'objective' in the title of the video and your channel name. What's your definition of review? You simply listed 4 high-level data points and somehow scored 10 out of 10, which makes for a confusing presentation. Are you going for dry humor? Honest question

[@HOGuru]

@@MinecraftMartin The goal of this project is to present a review of games (information + score) without any bias whatsoever - this format is the result of 15+ years of study on how to strip everything but the facts out of a review to leave the most impartial, evidence-based review possible. I know it's not for everyone - it's certainly possible that it's not for anyone - but I think it's important to have a place on the internet that people can point to and say 'this is what a truly objective review looks like' so that there isn't any confusion about that going forwards.

[@MinecraftMartin]

​@@HOGuru It's odd that you leave out the helpful facts, such as genre, story summary, expected playtime if available by the developer. No explanation of the score at the end. I applaud the intent to provide unbiased information, but this is so extreme that it falls flat miles before it could be helpful. Could you describe the audience you're envisioning who'd benefit from this information? You recited the name, developer, publisher, release date, current availability and hard drive space. Who do you envision resorting to KZbin for these data points?

[@TotallyObjectiveReviews]

See how fast you get away from objectivity when you start adding new criteria for consideration. Genre, for example, is a subjective classification that has been widely accepted to the point where it seems almost like an objective statement, but the existence of increasingly detailed subgenres proves that such classification is an attempt by people to explain their personal experience with the game in relation to other games they've played. Story summaries are even more iffy, because by including one I'd be making the statement that story is a part of the game worth discussing - which is, at its core, a subjective judgement that would defeat the whole point of the exercise. Likewise the whole 'expected playtime' is an utterly fuzzy number with no clear methodology for how it's reach - and tends to be little more than advertising copy. I would think that the score is self-explanatory - objectively speaking, is it a video game? If so, 10/10, if not, 0/10. Except for Reventure, which is obviously an 11/10. As I've said, I don't know if these are 'useful' as anything other than a clear example of what objectivity in games journalism looks like - think of this channel as the 'standardized gram' - if someone tries to claim that they offer objective reviews, check their product against the reviews here, and you'll have your answer about whether they're telling the truth. If you'd like to discuss review theory further, feel free to drop by one of my nightly streams on the Hidden Object Guru channel, where I'll be happy to answer any questions you have! (starts 9PM Eastern Standard Time weeknights)