Some games should challenge us, whether it’s in terms of gameplay or story or structure. Just as you can’t eat pizza for every meal, you can’t play pretty good games and nothing but. But it’s lifted my spirits when a deeper, weightier game would probably have me feeling more pensive and introspective. It’s probably too highfalutin to say that the game is medicinal. But it is putting a smile on my face when real life is getting me down. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a great game Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a pretty good game.ĭragon Ball Z: Kakarot isn’t broadening my cultural horizons, or interrogating my sensibilities, or showing me something I’ve never seen in a video game before. Elden Ring is a great game Mad Max is a pretty good game. Age of Empires IV is a great game SpellForce III is a pretty good game. They’re “video game-y” video games, for lack of a better term, whose sole job is to keep you entertained while you’re playing them. But I think most people will know one when they see one. Just as there’s no universal definition of a great game, there’s no universal definition of a pretty good game. They’re the video game equivalent of pizza: good, satisfying fare that doesn’t challenge your tastes in any way, but also almost never leaves you disappointed. You don’t have to think deeply about them while the controller is in your hand. No one uses them to justify a pointless console war. They’re not a huge part of the critical discourse, and fans don’t argue endlessly over whether they’re true masterpieces or overrated fad fodder. Pretty good games, he argued, don’t have any expectations to live up to. He replied that I’d chosen a pretty good game, and that those were often the best kind of games.
It wasn’t the best game available at the time heck, it wasn’t even the best Dragon Ball game. No, I replied sheepishly I was playing Dragon Ball Xenoverse, another lightweight action/RPG that exists primarily for fanservice purposes. Was I playing God of War? Or Read Dead Redemption 2? Or Spider-Man? Or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey? Or Shadow of the Tomb Raider? This was late in the year, so we had an absolute glut of amazing titles to choose from. (Image credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.)īack in 2018, I found myself talking with a friend of mine about what games we were playing.
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