You know, I loved Ocarina of Time. Didn't you? Didn't everybody? Didn't, for it's time, have the best graphics? Didn't it have the best puzzles? Wasn't it highly accessable? Wasn't there some innovative design choices? Didn't it have some mechanics from other games that were perfected?

If you answered no to any of those, then you're wrong. "But it's my opinion!" I don't care. Opinions can be wrong.

There's something wrong with gaming today. Now, what I just said may seem kind of harsh and discounts personal preference, but I am not saying you have to like OOT! NOBODY HAS TO LIKE IT! But you have to realize that when it was created, it was the best game for a while. It defined gaming, it shaped the future of gaming, it was an amazing and brilliant title. It had everything anybody needed to have fun. If you didn't have fun with it and disliked it, that's you. But just because you dislike it doesn't make it bad, because I doubt anybody could bring forward any huge legitimate complaints as to how OOT plays badly or was badly made.

I like Samurai Warriors 2. I have a ton of fun with it. I still realize it is a dreadful game. It's a sequel to a sequel to a sequel, but all those games might as well be the exact same game. The titles are nowhere near fresh or innovative. But to me, they are still fun. I'll play one or two Warriors games a year, and I will enjoy them a lot, and I will never pick them up again. It's still a horrible game. Just because I like it doesn't make it good.

The point I am trying to make here is, games you like and games that are good are not the same thing. You can dislike a good game and you can like a bad game. That is what personal preference does. You cannot, however, call a game bad because you dislike it with no legitimate points. That is a disturbing trend amoung gamers.

It seems like, now, nobody has the ability to look at a game objectively. Whether or not they like it decides the fate of the game. Each game has qualities that can be gauged and decide how good or bad the game is, and these are not up for debate. How good or bad a game is is not subjective. It is fact. Features exist in genres that are good or bad, and you can feel free to dislike them, but if they are genre staples, then they're good.

It's like when people reviewed Enchanted Arms (which I think is bad, by the way, but enjoyed to an extent) they bashed it simply because it was an turn based RPG. Not because it was a bad one. Which is stupid. It had turn based stratigic combat. That's what some JRPGs have. And just because you don't like that doesn't make it a bad mechanic. However, the stratigic combat was boring and the golems were stupid and stat calculation didn't make sense and there were a million other problems with the game, the biggest of which that it was just incredibly unoriginal.

If you dislike lettuce, and then eat a salad and call it a bad dish, you would be wrong. It's just because you don't like lettuce. The solution isn't to tell all your friends to stop eating salad, it is for you to stop eating salad and shut up.

Anyway, the biggest and most recognizable case of gamers confusing their opinion for a legitimate "good or bad" virdict of a game is with Gears of War. Oh, and let me count the ways. Now first, there are the people who just run around hating Gears of War. They say nothing as to why it is bad, and tell everybody who thinks it is good that they are wrong. Then there are the ones who love to compair it with Rainbow Six Vegas. Their opinions have a little more merit, because at least what they are saying makes sense to an extent and they're not hating Gears just to hate it. But they hate Gears because they hate lettuce, and they're eating the salad for the tomato. Rainbow Six Vegas is just one big tomato. Meaning... Rainbow Six is a tactical shooter, and they like tactical shooters, and dislike the arcade-y kind, which is what Gears of War is more like.

Now, I will explain why Gears of War is A GOOD GAME, if you guys missed the memo. First, it's not a tactical shooter, so you can stop compairing it to Rainbow Six Vegas.

Gears of War is innovative in that it has active reload. It's a great new feature, and it brings fast paced and exciting action to someplace nobody thought it could be, reloading.

Gears of War's story has a lot of potential, and the interactions between Alpha Squad can range anywhere between funny, incredibly cool, or even the occasional emotional exchange.

Gears of War has incredible graphics, however these are just the icing on the cake.

Every aspect of Gears of War is designed with care and feels like the developers knew and cared about what they were doing. It takes things from old games and does them better. It has great hit detection (why are people saying it doesn't?). It has great pacing. It's cinematic. It has consistant (and in my opinion, good looking) art design that actually puts you into the world. It has a campaign that is a lot of fun and puts you in a lot of diverse locations, the fact that it is short doesn't make it bad, it depends on whether you like short or long games. It's just a fact that's there to consider. Not to mention the brilliant co-op.

Also, it has multiplayer, with lots of different modes and impending downloadable content, so the replay value is infinite.

And I think the biggest thing that makes it a better game than R6V is that it is more accessable. Yes, essentially every design choice and mechanic in GoW is a LITTLE bit better than R6V, but it's the accessability that GoW has on R6V. On it's easiest difficult, Gears is easier than R6V and on insane, it's just as hard, if not harder.

Just because you dislike Gears of War doesn't mean it is a bad game. 

Just because you like Rainbow Six Vegas better than Gears of War doesn't mean it's a bad game.

Now I realise I have sort of gotten off topic with this Gears thing, but I just wanted to bring out a well known example of the disturbing inability for gamers to look at a game objectively, to really look at it's merits and examine the game, beyond whether they personally like it or not.

Good game =/= a game you like. Not all the time, anyway.

Thanks for reading.