The Best App Of The Year: Through The Eyes of Armond White
It's been a week since we concluded our App of the Year contest here at AppAdvice, and we thoroughly appreciate all of the input and effort so many of you put into this contest. However, I feel that it is my responsibility to share with you that you were all in fact quite mistaken with your choices. This is not merely a hasty contrarian opinion, but rather a scientific fact born out of intense research and peer review. Your vote for Rolando 2 as the best app of the year was both a travesty of the democratic process of awards in general, as well as a shameful display of the power of quality content over its cheaper, less impressive counterparts.
The facts are these:
Rolando 2 contains colorful, humorous, and highly variable characters. I mean, I cannot for the life of me think of anyone who is looking for that in a game. Who wants to actually laugh at the cleverly divised witticsisms, and marvel at the unique art design of their circular avatars? Nobody. When playing a game such as this, it is much better to have a character that is drab, humorless and one-dimensional…so that you can focus solely on the gameplay…
And this gameplay has depth. Good lord does the gameplay have depth, in much the same way that bottomless pits have depth. Playing straight through will probably take you over 15 hours, not to mention all of the power ups and stuff you have to collect when you come back later. Nobody has time for that; A better game is one with a more shallow story and gameplay which allows for quick immersion into the game without the unnecessary caveats of problem solving and exploration.
The design at work here is flawless. You can clearly tell that a lot of work went into this game… and what for? Why should we settle for one game per year of this superior quality when we could have 5 or 6 games of highly suspect quality in the same time span for a cheaper price (coincidentally this is also the business plan for Dreamworks animation)?
One of the worst things this game has going for it is it’s originality. Have you been to a movie theater lately? Sequels, prequels, spin-offs, adaptations, and more sequels; basically anything that is rehashed or derivative. This is what people want out of their entertainment right now…I mean, that has to be the reason….right? Original music, story, and all the rest just doesn’t sit well with audiences anymore…For example who hasn’t secretly wished in their hearts that there were more match 3 and tower defense games in the app store?
I imagine that the discerning reader has managed to sift through my not so cleverly disguised sarcasm, and discovered that there is something awry here. In the title I used the name of Armond White, a critic familiar in movie circles as being especially contrarian to the views of popular culture as well as most other critics. Now, if you are fond of reviews (and if you are a frequent visitor to this site then I suspect that you are), then you know that you can almost always expect there to be an opposing voice among all the adoring fans. Why do they do this? To be different? For attention? Because not all things appeal to all people at all times…nah, that can’t be it.
What is immediately apparent is that doing this (at least in principle, if not so well in practice) is pretty dang easy, even for a game of this quality. Anyone could try and nitpick problems out of a game, even if they are largely exaggerated for dramatic effect. Now, this isn’t to say that I think everyone should rain flower petals on every decent game in the app store, in fact I am quite fond of the rating system. Not only does it help me to pick out apps that I may otherwise be on the fence about, but it helps me to see if there are any bugs that may need working out. I guess this is mostly for those customers writing reviews out there with such trivial and banal phrases like-“It sucks.” Please, if you are going to tread on our dreams then at least try and provide some decent reasoning to help the criticism go down easier.
What do you guys think? Ever been out of sync with what everyone else thought about something?
