Why is interactive media so much harder to review than static media?
On the grounds of wanting to praise art that takes advantage of its own medium.
A book, movie, tv series, song, obviously any of these kinds of fiction are able to break the 4th wall, recognizing it has an audience as a means to deepen its own message, whatever that might be. But you can also just not.
And judging a work of art, in my experience, is so much easier when you only have to worry about things like "narrative cohesion, is it saying something few/none else currently are, technical expertise in production".
While each medium has its own strengths and weaknesses to play around, they're pretty simple to understand based on their inherent limitations. "Use visuals good in a visual medium. Use words good in a words-only medium". Groundbreaking /facetious
But then there's interactive fiction which basically have a 4th dimensional wall in the place of a 4th wall. Admittedly this can apply to things like live theatrical plays, but I'll basically just be focusing on video games.
Your "Push X to jump", Player. Watch your HP bar, Player" is so fundamental that it doesn't even register as breaking the 4th wall because the art can't "exist" in its full state without You. It was part of the unspoken contract you signed before hitting Start. There was no "4th wall" to begin with, in the typical sense. It only becomes a 4th-D wall-break when the narrative, not just the mechanics, attempt to grapple with your involvement. Your relationship to each other. Books don't gotta teach you how to read or turn a page, TV don't gotta tell you how to keep your eyes open.
(Smth smth "C'mon kids, clap to bring Tinkerbell back to life" is technically far more respectable for using its own medium, the fact it has a live audience, to its merit over ANY other play that can easily be turned into a Netflix production with no story cuts needed)
Maybe I'm just rambling here but I've felt for a while that "video games" is too broad a term for everything they can be with the questionably infinite capabilities of computers.
I don't believe that games like Tetris, Ubisoft's Uno, maybe most rhythm games, even visual novels with choices, really "fit" under the same category of "same art medium" as cases like Deltarune, Dark Souls, Tunic, experiences that genuinely can't be in another medium due to how they handle intrinsic mechanics like choice, hard-coded limits, the rate of information given, at their artistic cores. You can't just rip their hearts out and have anything left to adapt into another medium.
Some of the former feel closer to "video toys" than "video games", but also obviously they're games. They are For Play. Uno's a card game, even if the word changes, the thing it is that we call a "game" is what it will still be.
But calling the other group something like "video experiences" to try umbrella-terming the wide range of potential they have for mechanically-dependant storytelling just feels wrong and simpleminded. Definitionally, a movie/tv series would fit the name just as well, while requiring zero audience input.
A game well-adapted into the medium VS a game that can't exist outside of it. One might think the latter easily clears the other, but it just feels weird and wrong that we're even forced to compare them in the first place rather than sectioning them off.
I recognize there's a spectrum where lines become grey, but I'm trying to not about to be the person who praises Deltarune or Tunic as being literal 10/10 Perfect experiences that understand and elevate the standards of their entire medium, with a dozen more paragraphs each, and then turn around and also go "Oh yeah Tetris is obviously one of the best games of all time too, 10/10. It's fun." with nothing left to say anywhere near the same level.
There's no even playing field for judging criteria. Video games are the only medium I can think of where reviewing the works within are way more "vibes-based" than any other medium, where it's at least possible to come up with some kind of Objective Ranking System around, even while still recognizing personal enjoyment.
And that's not even the full of it. There's only so un-written the pages of a book can be or how out-of-focus a movie can be before they stop being what they are. "That's not an actual book, that's an unfinished draft. That's not an actual movie, that's some cutting room floor footage that accidentally leaked".
Meanwhile games can release in barely playable, possibly even virtually hostile states and still get consensus reviews from Somewhat Negative to Mixed to whatever the hell Cyberpunk 2077 is currently sitting at on Steam, but none of those labels actually tell you actually useful information, because fully functional, well-programmed video games can wind up in the exact same tiers.
It's all based on "vibes". And as an autistic System who loves my autism-fueled systems, I'd like if we could have just a bit more structure in this, one of the largest artistic mediums on the fucking planet!
