Couldn't find much coverage, but I included two sites it can be purchased from

Syberia Complete Collection
PS3

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00ICWO2SY/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1503218690&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=syberia+ps3&dpPl=1&dpID=510PbHi-JUL&ref=plSrch

https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/syberia-collection/cid=UP4389-NPUB50284_00-B000000000001561

Added.

I've added both holdovers to my RotW template (which also includes removing all traces of the previous topic). Pretty soon, you're going to be calling me Perfect Jerec "No Mistakes" Jerecson.

Now Jerec, you don't want to pull a Rob, do you? I have a review held over from the week I did for your week. Shelterra the Skyworld. Another Kemco one. I'm sure you're thrilled!

This is quite the pickle. Quite the pickle, indeed.

First off, let me decree that from this day forth, OD's full title will for Forgetful Rob "Rob" Robington.

Secondly, as any choice I make in life is entirely motivated by spite (and because having 2x second places will screw up the ludicrously over complex scoring method I've used thus far for the Site King score), Nightfire is now eligible for Jerec's rota. Who will not get away with having just one review to read (but may very well get away with only having two).

So it shall be.

I'm up next week, so the powers that be should let me know.

I'll try not to make a botch of it. So far there's just one review by Pickhut, so you have until the end of the 20th if you want some of that sweet, sweet Jerec judgement.

Please add these ones, if you would be so kind:

Game: 20XX
Platform: Steam/PC (Windows)
Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/322110/

Added.

Game: Half Life 2: Lost Coast
Platform: Steam/PC (Windows/Linux/Mac)
Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/340/

Added.

Thank you. :)

Very interesting critique. In the first draft of my review, the details about how the game wasn't finished actually comprised the second paragraph. I can't remember why I moved it to the end, but it just worked out that way. I guess it goes to show that our first instincts about something usually tend to be correct, eh?

Thanks for the inclusion. I'd be fine getting critiqued twice, though I'm good with whatever you guys decide.

All in all, a great week with great submissions.

Okay, I did a revision, but if EmP wants to save Nightfire's review I forgot about until next week, so we don't have annoying things like ties for second place, I'll understand. And that way, he'll get an unprecedented TWO critiques, in all likelihood.

Zyd:
Yeah, I get that idea. It definitely seemed you had a lot to say and it didn't get tiresome. While I'm not a MMORPG person, I've played my share of super-vast RPGs and, when reviewing them, I have to stop myself from going completely crazy about how many details get mentioned. It's a struggle writing for those games a lot of the time because I have to decide what is really important and what was expendable.

Joe:

No, but I did forget to check about last week, when Nightfire had one that became eligible for this week. So there MAY be an edit!

MMO's are really easy to make long reviews out of. Protip!

Sonic Mania
PS4, Xbox One, Switch
http://m.ign.com/articles/2017/08/14/sonic-mania-review

Added Xbox One and PS4 listings. A Switch listing already existed.

XD

Hey, at least you didn't forget one of EmP's reviews for ROTW or accidentally delete multiple forum/chatter posts.

Curse me and my lack of attention to what changes I need to make from month to month to my template when I do these things!

Apparently I'm Zydrate now. Thanks for the win and I'm glad you enjoyed the review. Grats as well to our placers.

This is a bigger week than I had previously and than I think most of us loyal RotWers have had in a while. Eight reviews minus one (my latest Kemco review, yo!) equals seven for me to read through and arrogantly dismiss…I mean, praise to the heavens and beyond!

In the theme of that bizarre concept of praising others, I'll give a bit of mention to Venter and Zydrate. Jason did the smart thing when reviewing Namco Collection #573407643890820483986347903285684903248286 (I mean, there are more Namco Collections than ports of Final Fantasy…and I thought no one whored themselves like Square) and focused the brunt of his review on the one game that isn't in every other one of those collections, focusing on how it's fun, but a bit of an inconvenience to actually play due to needing multiple Switches. Zydrate gave a super in-depth look at some MMORPG that was crazy long, but gave a lot of good information about all the myriad ways in which that game was loaded with so many minor inconveniences to become a major hassle to actually play. Not knowing what you're supposed to be doing combined with it being tricky to do anything -- a real winning combination, that!

EDIT: So, after this was done, Nightfire brought to my attention that he'd done a review during his week that was supposed to be included in this week, but my dumb ass forgot to even look, even though I've looked every single time I've done one of these things. So, we have two options here.

1. I'm including my critique of it, while tying him for a place (as it's not really fair to take away a person's place due to a mistake that was 100% me) and EmP can figure out how to make that fit into his overall points total deal.

2. EmP can summarily ignore #1 and determine that NF's review gets moved up to next week's judging in order to not disrupt the system as it is.

Either way, this one's on me for being careless while putting this together.

THIRD PLACE

Eric Kelly's Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star (Switch)

First off, thank you for including a summary of the franchise. This week also had a BlazBlue review that fell a bit short of glory in my eyes, particularly because I had no clue what BlazBlue was and, while the review had a good technical description of it, I was still clueless as to the backstory, characters (other than some names) and motivation for why everyone was fighting. Your summary got me, a guy who knows nothing about Fate/Extella into things. After that, you gave a strong review of the game, pointing out similarities to Dynasty Warriors to give me a comparison point as far as gameplay goes, and then describing the flaws concisely. Good review that helps out people like me who don't have an inherent knowledge of the subject matter.

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SECOND PLACE

EmP's Expeditions: Viking (PC)

I dug this review a lot. If one wanted to really break down this week, there was a spirited multi-review battle for third place and a two-man bout of fisticuffs for first. This was a strong and comprehensive review to what seems a complex game, which worked for and against you a bit. It worked for you because you said a lot in a fairly short review (I think you used fewer words to describe this complex game than I did for my latest review of a simple 15-hour Kemco one) and it was an engaging read. On the less positive side, that led to it feeling like you were jumping from point to point incredibly quick, so compared to Joe's review, I felt my head spinning while trying to process all the information. The sort of thing where I think the review could benefit from being a bit longer, giving you more time to expand on a few things. Like, take the next-to-last paragraph as an example. You go from passive battle skills to passive camping skills to needing scouts, cooks, blacksmiths, etc. because you might be paying through the nose if you use merchant-types in town. Not to sound negative, as this is a very good review; I just wanted more of it and felt it could have been lengthened a bit in order to expand on some of these functions without coming close to being overly-wordy.

AND

Nightfires's Woolfe: The Red House Diaries (PC)

This was a pretty kicking review that I got into and was easy to read. You do a good job of explaining the premise of this game, humorously mentioning how the fairy tale got turned into something completely different in translation. While I can understand the annoyance of how the villain has no motivation other than "evil guy whose actions get Red to take action", overall, I thought this seemed to be a pretty fun game until I got to the end and pretty quickly understood why you only gave a 2/5. It is kind of a shame, isn't it? You have a game that should have been pretty good, but due to lack of finances, it wound up being incomplete and the developers went bankrupt. If I have a qualm about this (and since EmP got a nice long spiel about my qualm about his review, you aren't getting off easy!), it's that I might want to emphasize that issue early on, as it's the biggest flaw of a low-rated game that, in comparison, the early-review complaints about the flat story and meh dialogue sort of pale when compared to. Maybe that's just my personal preference, but it seems the most important part of the review got saved for the very end.

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REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

Joe's The Guest (PC)

EmP might have delved into the epic Nordicness that all good metalheads base their lives around, but this review got me just a wee bit more. It just read so smooth and focused. Starting off with the premise and the unreliable narrator style of the protagonist with his hallucination issues, then going into the puzzles, then mentioning that some of them are the derivative stuff that you get in ever puzzle game, then finishing by mentioning how this game is a bit too short to actually be memorable, as longer and better games have pretty much anything that's good in this game. It was just a short, easy read that kept my attention. And considering I tend to never play point-and-click sorts of games and, frankly, get pissed off when a game I'm playing tosses in elements of them, the fact I dug this review enough to give it the gold says a lot about the writing.

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And back to a time-consuming work project. Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!! Those are so much fun!!!! So! Much! Fucking! Fun!

Not sure EmP was too picky. Believe it or not, these older Steam reviews were some of my more interesting ones. I have a few single-paragraphers that didn't even warrant a submission.

That said, I do have AC: Rogue (A little short but a decent read) and Rebuild 3 (Also short as it's basically a glorified flash game) coming up.

Seven reviews, penned by five different authors, suddenly showed up on the site simultaneously at the eleventh hour on Sunday (not including mine). I imagine that a staff member - probably EmP - realized that I would have nothing to do this week, so he scrambled to find or approve any reviews that might've been sitting around in the submission queue or otherwise. For example, the three Zydrate reviews that showed up seem to be harvested from her Steam review archive, ranging from eight months to two years old. Curious.

And here I was ready to write a joke article where I was judging non-existent reviews from fake authors about games that don't exist. Ruin my fun, will you?

Anyway, here are the rankings:

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Third place: truck_101's Bangai-O review (Dreamcast)

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Fruit contraband is srs bsns apparently, and Mr. Truck does an admirable job of telling us why this is so. He also puts a tremendous effort into selling us on this game. In fact, his level of enthusiasm might even be a little over the top. But, we're all being honest here, as this is HONESTgamers after all, and he's here to tell you that this game is the best, it's the absolute BEST, that he enjoyed it a lot, a WHOLE LOT, and... I dunno, maybe he's right. Maybe Bangai-O is the greatest thing since sliced bread, though it kinda just looks like a run-of-the-mill bullet hell shooter to me. Then again, I haven't played it, and he has, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

All in all, this is a pretty easy read, and it doesn't get bogged down in details too much, although some of the descriptions of mechanics made my eyes cross a bit. It is also pretty solid on a technical level, aside from a few small issues (such as that mysterious hanging "0" at the end of the fourth paragraph).

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Second place: Zydrate's Of Guards and Thieves review (PC)

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Of the three Zydrate reviews submitted this week, this one is the strongest. It gives us the clearest overall picture of what this game is about, and reads more like a full review rather than a quick Steam blurb commenting on whether the game is recommended or not.

However, it also demonstrates some of her old bad writing habits, such as capitalizing words after semicolons, and her tendency for weird paragraphing (it only happened once in this review, though).

These small gripes aside, it is a good piece and easy enough to read. I wonder if EmP or whoever approved this article let her have a chance to edit it beforehand. I'm guessing not. Still, it gives us a concise view of everything we need to know about this game, and that can hardly be criticized.

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First place: vcg2000's Pac-Man review (Atari 5200)

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vcg2000 has a track record of submitting excellent reviews that are unfortunately bogged down by technical problems. For example, I thoroughly enjoyed - and distinctly remember - his Escape From Monster Manor review that he submitted last year, a brilliant snark piece that made me chuckle. He has a distinct conversational style, and it's a good one. He just needs to lay off the run-on sentences and insert more commas where appropriate. While his Pac-Man review still exhibits some of these same problems, he seems to be learning from his mistakes a bit, and as a result this one is much easier to read.

However, technical considerations aside, the content of the review is why he won this week. He thankfully spares us from going into details about how Pac-Man is played - I'm pretty sure that no gamer on Earth needs a recap of that - And instead focuses on the greater context of this cartridge's place in gaming history, how it holds up to the previous Atari 2600 release, and even gives us some hardware recommendations about the best way to play it. This is a man who knows his consoles. All in all, it was very thorough and informative, while managing to be packed neatly into a 500-word package. Nice job, man. Go pick a prize, if you feel like it.

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And that's all for me. I'm going to go find a towel. I got words all over me.

There's a PC listing, but I need a PS4 page for this game.

Title: Dead by Daylight
Platform: PS4
Genre: Action
Developer: ???
Publisher: 505 Games (US)
Release date: 06/20/17 (US)

Added.

Thanks.

I've got a review ready for:

Epoch (PC/Steam)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/270510/EPOCH/

Guess this means I'm back from my hiatus.

Added.

Thank you. :)

I liked the Honest Poll, too, but I don't think it makes sense to bring it back right now. At least we can both agree that the PS Triple was awesome!