A single game could have more soundtracks than some artist makes songs in their lifetime.
Just an example of the music of the BEST games I've played:
If you only judge Golden Sun and the Golden Sun Lost Age by it's gameplay... or even dumber reason, the fact your characters cancel attack if their target is destroyed, rather than switch target... you're doing yourself, and everyone else a massive disservice, and you fail to appreciate everything the game has to offer. I used to plug my Gameboy Advance on gigantic TV speakers just to play this game on high quality audio. I used to search every little spot in the map multiple times to hunt down Djinns just to get the ultimate summons. Perhaps
one of the greatest games I've ever played despite it's flaws... How the hell could have anyone given that game
negative score just amazes me.
Similarly, in many other aspects, games like Cyberpunk 2077 combines music, art and story telling of books into something that is far greater even in each category.
This game has music crafted only for this game alone, nobody can doubt the battle themes from Heist or Maelstrom are 11/10.
There's is gigabytes worth of street art drawings.
Every single dialogue voice acted.
There's racing, combat, stealth, hacking, inventory systems, all the systems to make gameplay interesting.
TV commercials and shows to watch, plentiful of interesting side stories and characters to become friends with.
And this game was basically judged by "cops spawn behind you" like those exact critics who were against companies creating repetitive content with little updates, those exact critics who praised games for being a form of art against those people who were completely out of touch what games can do. (Granted the police system is still vital area of the game's immersion to the world and should have been on working condition on launch.)
I still got to applaud the people who make the game 10/10 for art, music and TV shows, everything that you managed to cram into the game.
So why was Cyberpunk judged ONLY as a GAME when it's more than that. It's an EXPERIENCE, a story that is very hard if not impossible to describe on a book format. The feeling of hopelessness in the face of certain death. Something that is NEVER even talked about. Story that is so exceptional... that people HATED the game for it?
The greatest irony is that the many people who hated the game for it's ending are the very same people that are staunch defenders of video games for it's ability to portray art.
I got inspired to talk about this after Watching
"Hello Future Me" channel's video about Cyberpunk. Originally I meant to post longer wall of text with Fallout 1 pixel art and many other classics throughout the years... but I hope you can see what I mean without posting 10 different images and a wall of text.
Big triple A games need to be judged on more categories than "there's a bug, there's a bug!", it's so shameful to be a long time fan of these people who turn out to be soulless clickbaiters running after easy controversy.
I think best way to remedy this would be having the gaming community police itself, having critics commenting on each others content and pointing out the flaws of the reviewers, than letting these people basically stay unchecked through their career. Just an example I can't find a single person in YouTube criticizing Angry Joe for his shortcomings as an angry critic, and what makes his content good or bad. In gaming community we only mostly see this gigantic circle jerk of critics praising others reviews and stances and everyone in the independent media hating on the big guys at IGN. It's actually rather pathetic and sad how easily this type of power has left unchecked for so long while influencing so many people's purchasing decisions.