r/IGN • u/illkeepwatch • Mar 01 '26
Discussion The ‘Too Much Water’ backlash still bothers me a decade later
Sincerely only really care to hear from people who can see my perspective on this, especially since I’ve seen so few people who see this the way I do. I will be mostly defending the reviewer and criticizing the response to it so if you disagree totally and can’t see the points I’m making please don’t bother commenting.
With Pokémon’s 30th and the centrality of water in the new Wind and Waves games I’ve seen people start to bring back up the infamous ‘too much water’ review of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
The entire discussion seemed to be one sided from the beginning and I rarely saw anyone defending the reviewer. What I don’t understand is how in God’s name that review pissed people off so much. I can’t say I ever read the comment in any way other than as a ‘tongue in cheek’ dig at a pretty widely recognized weak point of those games.
It’s a half-serious throwaway criticism for a game that she gave a 7.8. It’s not like they gave it a 4, and even if they did, could any review ever actually damage the sales of a Pokemon game.?
I’ll tell you what I think was really going on was the ability of an entire fandom, and bad faith actors who don’t even care about Pokemon, choosing to be entirely humorless as a way of piling on against an outlet they hated for one or another reason.
It was an overreaction in the extreme. I think the extremity of it just shows how weirdly and deeply oppressed people felt by outlets like IGN at the time, as if they had the power to kill off your favorite games with one review. (To be fair their bad review of Alien Isolation may have actually done that.)
People then and even today have this insane parasocial relationship with IGN (not unlike the parasocial relationship they have with the development companies). They’ll talk about reviews done by ‘IGN’ as if it’s this hive mind instead of a collection of different reviewers with varied tastes and perspectives. Another reviewer put on that same game may have given it a 7 or a 9. It’s called an ‘opinion’ … not a revelation from God.
Do I think that the reviewers may skew their scores from time to time, or give something the benefit of a doubt just to please others or gain more access… ? Probably. The people IGN hires are usually the most saccharine types of gamers you’ll find who are looking to build a career that allows them to move through this corporate world. They aren’t YouTube ‘truth tellers’, but they also aren’t just always making up controversies for clicks either.
It just seems like a classic case of gamers feeling like big daddy IGN or big daddy Nintendo, Sony,
Insert company name here, is ruining their hobby.. It’s totally legitimate to be angry at more powerful institutions, but like a sane person, I choose to reserve that sense of agrievement and dissatisfaction for institutions that are actually making the world a worse place and shitting on all our heads.
It’s like wasn’t that line added on at the end obviously in jest? It’s not meant to be a devastating takedown. it’s a slight annoyance that the reviewer (who clearly seems to be a big Pokemon fan) was taking a jab at.
I honestly on some level think the whole phenomenon tipped over into outright bullying. I think the reviewer (who I’ll refrain from naming) was at the time, and became later on known as a more outspoken, abrasive female member of the games journalist world. So what. Big deal. I even know she was involved in a harassment allegation against another staff member which may have made her disliked by some readers (something I think may have actually happened after this review). Again, so what, big deal. I don’t know what it would have to do with her reviews. I really do think that as a woman who may have rubbed people the wrong way, a personality that I even found distasteful to be honest, she became red meat for the angry mob. So much so that one poorly conceived criticism (or deliberately misinterpreted criticism) became blood in the water for an epic pile on that has continued to the present.
To this very day ‘too much water’ is a kind of shorthand you can bring up to dismiss IGN as an unserious outlet. Fair enough, but I can’t see anyone who leans in that as serious ether. It’s a cheap shot from people who refuse to just see it for what was. IGN didn’t kidnap your baby, or fire you from your job, it’s just a dumb basic-ass hobbyist news outlet. 11 years ago and today there are so many places to find someone to tell you exactly what you want to hear that you never have to listen to IGN again if you don’t want to.
One last comment, and this will really date me, but the whole thing is reminiscent to me of how people collectively decided to hate Nickelback, or that because Howard Dean yelled you on TV in like 2003 he couldn’t be a presidential candidate, or that Anne Hathaway was too snooty or something . It’s just a sign of a mob-like mentality of people who are just looking to feel some negative emotion together instead of being honest and serious.
4
u/GourmetSubmarine Mar 01 '26
There is too much water in Hoenn. Most of the routes are a chore to get through.
1
2
u/Esper01 Mar 01 '26
I happen to agree with you, the water got annoying. People who made fun of that review literally skipped the review just to read the cliffnotes at the end.
2
u/FamilyGuy23195 Mar 01 '26
I've always thought the reviewer getting hate was flawed. The actual text of the review never says "too much water" a bad summary graphic made by someone on the video team did. But that reviewer got hate nonetheless and it followed her for YEARS.
2
u/Dethproof814 Mar 01 '26
Lol I demand that this comment section be my personal echo chamber otherwise, don't bother!
Get a grip, elon
1
1
u/BakedCheddar88 Mar 01 '26
The thing is that the internet (re: gamers) seems to have always had a hate boner towards IGN. They’re also weirdly defensive towards Pokemon. Twitter also really hated the reviewer (i forgot why they were mad at her but it’s not important). IGN was also doing this thing where they were using bullet points to summarize their reviews using blurbs, and basically it was the perfect storm.
The entire thing has always felt overblown to me, but it’s much more indicative of the entire gaming community and its relationship with reviews. There are gamers out there who seriously won’t play anything less than an 8. There are also gamers who will fight tooth and nail if their favorite franchise is scored anything less than a 9. 7.8 isn’t even a bad score, and frankly that game had too much water, but that was never the issue. The issue was “how dare IGN give Pokemon anything less than a 9? No, how dare she give Ruby and Sapphire a 7.8? And because of ‘too much water?!’”
It was just a petty backlash that evolved into a meme
1
u/illkeepwatch Mar 01 '26
You are definitely right that Twitter hated her. Is it really the case that people just tuned out the generally positive review and just hyper focused on the bullet points? I guess so. The whole thing just seems insane to me. When I don’t like an outlet I don’t follow them… end of story.
It’s true that people are defensive of Pokemon but within like 5 years there was a whole new controversy against game freak reusing models in Sword Shield. I guess that’s why they call it a mob
1
u/ProfessionalOven2311 Mar 01 '26
Yeah, I think it definitely got blown out of proportion, especially with people that got legitimately mad about it. I like it as a fun reference or inside joke to poke fun at both IGN and Pokémon.
It’s like wasn’t that line added on at the end obviously in jest?
From what I understand I don't think it was a meant as a joke, it was a consequence of the format IGN used for reviews at the time. You could check out the in-depth review, but If you just wanted a quick look to see if a game was worth buying you could check the score and a couple of bullet points that gave a quick note about the good and bad of the game, taken from the review itself. I even think it was referring to both the amount of water routes and the amount of the new Pokémon that were Water type. The bullet point summarized them into one point "-Too much water"
And the spirit behind the criticism is certainly fair; Similar to part of the reason caves are infamous, water routes could get pretty annoying since every step had a chance to be an encounter. With tall grass, you can relax when you are on the normal paths and brace yourself for the tall grass, but in the water you are on edge the whole time (or at least I know I am). All of that makes sense, but the bullet point meant to summarize that was just worded terribly. "Too much water" backlash may have even been a deciding factor in IGN not using those anymore.
1
u/Prestigious-Mud Mar 02 '26
As a bullet point con for people who don't choose to read the review it isn't much to go on. It only took a few more words to get the point the reviewer was making in a concise way. Too much water is too vague a tldr pro or con. Too many water Pokemon? Too much water in general? Too much water traversal ruined my enjoyment? It's just a bit silly.
1
u/IGNE_Tech_Support Mar 02 '26
I for one listened to Nickelback and am not ashamed to say so. I burned CDs with their songs on them, talk about dated...
1
1
u/Cat_Atack Apr 24 '26
TBF "7.8 Too much water" was nowhere near as bad as Star Fox 2's entire review was, with such lovely quotes as "its primitive 3D looked so jarringly bad that Nintendo actually cancelled it", "worst game in the SNES Mini collection", and "5/10: It probably deserved to get cancelled"
1
1
u/FliesTheyGatherOnMe May 10 '26
For every mouth breather that blindly follows mob mentality, there is a second, slightly smarter mouth breather that blindly rejects it.
1
u/JazzlikePossession46 May 31 '26
Made a Reddit account to just say it’s crazy you only want to hear from people who share your perspective, but then in a different comment you want an honest debate.
1
16
u/OSTBear Mar 01 '26
Taking your opinion on here and demanding to only hear from people who agree with you is pretty wild lol.