Agh, I can't find a straight answer on the Internet for the proper way to write the game's full name...

Title: Cyber Police ESWAT (in smaller text, Cyber Police is placed on top ESWAT at the title screen and on the arcade cabinet) or ESWAT Cyber Police
Platform: Arcade
Genre: Action (similar to games like Shinobi)
Developer: SEGA
Publisher: SEGA
Release date: 1989

Always nice to get feedback from you, Joe. Thanks a lot! This review definitely is longer than is standard for me, but I'm glad my approach as a massive admirer of 2033 seems to have paid off. Kudos to Holdthephone and AlphaNerd.

Thanks for doing this quickly, and congrats to those who placed. The Zeno Clash II and Metro: Last Light reviews have both been updated to "Featured."

Sorry to keep this short. I intend to go to bed early tonight, so I'd like to get this out (hell, I'm not even going to proofread it). I do want to say that my Zeno Clash II review hasn't been upgraded to featured yet.

Before I start, I want to say welcome to Sol1dus. He contributed two reviews this week, one of which was a solid praise review for Super Mario Land 2. Go, read it.


THIRD PLACE
Kick Master - NES - AlphaNerd
A very solid review for an overlooked action game. You cover the points very well and illustrate just why the game is lesser known. I also liked the "Kick Apprentice" bit. I got a good laugh out of that. :)


SECOND PLACE
Final Fantasy V - Super Nintendo - holdthephone
Another well written article by HTP. What makes this such an engaging read is the great, enthusiastic descriptions you gave for the game's various jobs. I think my rating of the game is roughly the same. I love the battle system and jobs, but I found the story kind of boring.


REVIEW OF THE WEEK
Metro: Last Light - PC - Suskie
Once again, you deliver a fantastic review. I don't know if it was me, but this one seemed a bit bulkier than your other articles. If that's the case, then I will say that the content was worthwhile for the length. It seems to me that you dissected this game, took it apart, and showed us its grimmest details. Best of all, it seemed to me that you did this as a fan. You took the game apart because you really enjoy the franchise, and it shows in your writing. This is a superb review that shows why Last Light is worth checking out, and has convinced me that I need to pick up 2033 when I get a chance (it's been on my Steam wishlist for a while).

---

There you have it...

RE: Metal Man -- I did make an early go at it, but that was a fail. Think I made it to him on my last life, which gave me no real time to learn/re-remember how he fights, so I died pretty quickly. One of those things about playing these games -- if you're not used to them, you will struggle with their variety of intensive platforming challenges, whether it be the conveyor belts, disappearing blocks, slippery floor levels, underwater/in space weird gravity and so on. And my go at MM's stage was among the first things I did.

You also can have trouble with these games no matter what, depending on what sort of vibe you're in that day. Yesterday, I was all hung over and in pure couch potato mode. This lead to all sorts of troubles, such as me playing MM 2-8 and only actually completing one stage in MM 3.

In short: MM2 - now that I have Item 2, I went back to Heat Man's stage...and found myself to be utterly inept at stuff I'd cleared fairly easily the last time I played it. My five lives didn't even quite get me to the Item 2 area. Blah.

MM3 - did Spark Man's stage. A fun, easy one in the grand scheme of things. If you're reasonably aggressive and avoid collision damage from running into him, Spark Man is simplicity itself.

MM4 - My go at Bright Man's stage was pretty weak. Crap, I barely remember anything beyond the first room.

MM5 - Stone Man's stage is easy. I don't know that Stone Man himself is that difficult, but I just couldn't get timing down to hit him during those points when he actually in vulnerable, leading to me getting stupid and him jumping into me a lot of time.

MM6 - Dive Man's in this game, right? I think I worked on his stage, but apparently that didn't go too well. I don't really remember anything about that stage.

MM7 - Worked on Burst Man's stage. Struggled. I beat the mini-boss, but died shortly afterward during the forced upward ascent through water.

MM8 - Made it to Grenade Man in his stage, but was pretty weakened and on my last life. For the lulz, I tried Clown Man's stage. WTF? Most annoying level ever in a Mega Man game? All kinds of distracting clutter and after the mini-boss, you have to deal with way too much crap with trick floors.

it says quite a bit about the metal blades when you fight metal man again with them he is taken out in one hit.

I believe I started with Metal Man, which made Mega Man 2 a lot more manageable, because Metal Blades. Also, I don't know why you wouldn't go get those blades first. They are maybe the most fun weapon in the whole series. Spend as much time with them as you can.

I don't know that I've ever done anything but start with Flash Man, since he's so easy to beat with just the arm cannon. Bubble Man goes down without putting up much of a fight, as well. I usually save Heat Man and Quick Man for last, because their weapons aren't all that useful. Metal Man I'll tackle third or fourth, usually. I do agree that his blades are wicked cool, though!

My strategy in mega man 2 is to always start with metal man, his metal blades almost break the game because they are so powerful. I know you have issues with that, but my cardinal rule is to leave quick man and heat man to the very last, that disappearing block bit in Heat man's stage require's item-2 and quick man's stage is just a nightmare at the best of times.

The part of the game that annoys me most is the boss of either the 2nd or 3rd wily stage. It requires the crash bombs, but you can't hold enough ammo to wipe out all of the enemies AND the shields protecting them that only the crash bombs can destroy. you pretty much have to lose a life.

Thanks for the mention + constructive criticism. I'm trying to improve on my writing skills using these reviews. I don't know if I'm improving all that much but I'll try to keep going and improving as best I can.

The punctuation thing is probably due to the way my brain works, I'm actually a voracious reader but I have an... unusual brain. I can read many times faster than most people and gather the same info but I rarely pick up on the punctuation. It's probably got something to do with it.

Over recent times, I've bought for the PS2 both the Mega Man Anniversary Collection (1-6 NES, 7 SNES, 8 PS1) and Mega Man X Collection (1-3 SNES, 4-6 PS1), as well as the PS2 RPG Mega Man X Command Mission.

Here, in part inspired by Zipp telling me to, since he did these really in-depth stage-by-stage reviews of at least a number of the original series' games, I'm offering my general input on these games. As a note, with the Anniversary collection, I'm using Navi mode for the lulz and also increased lives per game from 3 to 5, in an attempt to make up for any diminishment of skills over the decade since I last played any of these games.

AS OF NOW:
Mega Man: A big part of why this game must be considered tougher than the average MM game is because there are no passwords. You have to play the game in one sitting. With Anniversary mode, you autosave after every stage and I have to say that for the most part, when you play under the same rules as other games, this one actually seems somewhat easier than the norm. I've done Bomb Man, Guts Man, Cut Man and Elec Man and the only area that gave me trouble was the platforming bit with the moving lifts early in Guts Man's stage.

Well, until last night, when I started Ice Man's stage. Up to the checkpoint is easy. Then you have to do a fairly simple disappearing block room followed by a tricky disappearing block room, followed by the first of the game's two infamous "randomly moving lifts that also shoot at you". And if you die, you go back to the first of those disappearing block rooms, likely sapped of all desire to go on. And, if you're like me, you're short on Magnet Beam charges, too.

The problem with this game is just that the sparse background decoration makes the levels kind of blend together where the differences are things like, "yeah, Guts Man has a rocky look" or "Elec Man has all those electric shock beams you have to dodge", as opposed to anything significant. Makes it kind of boring at times. No large, pretty mini-bosses. Boring looking stages. Cool, but not great.

Mega Man 2 - Looking online, it's kind of funny. You'd think with these games that there would be, for the most part, an agreed-upon best order. But if you look up guides, virtually each one espouses some sort of different order where I've seen Air Man, Bubble Man, Flash Man and Metal Man all considered perfectly good guys to start with. After failing at Flash and Metal, I did Bubble, which sets up a problem. Mainly that without Item 2 (which you get from Air), you have to deal with a huge disappearing block area in Heat (the dude weak to Bubble). So I did Air last night, which means I'm likely close to breaking through this one. With one exception. Quick Man's stage, which will likely take me about 500 lives.

Mega Man 3 - Kind of like 2 in that I've seen Magnet Man, Top Man and Spark Man all listed as good first choices. The difference being that I've failed once at all three. To me, so far, I'm thinking the big reason is that the platforming is tougher here than in previous games on average. Magnet has disappearing blocks over pits, Top has rising and falling top platforms where you have to learn the pattern (and the first cat mini-boss is a real bitch), Spark has those platforms which rise quickly towards spikes so you have to move quick. All of them took a few lives to get through, although in future attempts, it shouldn't be as bad.

Mega Man 4 - I've done Toad Man's stage, as starting here, I think the best order started getting more unanimous (as in, I don't know if everyone espouses the same thing, but it's possible to pick 2-4 faqs and see them all start with the same guy). Generally easy stage except for the second snail, due to the whole "water will drag you off the ledge" part. At least until you get the hang of it. Like the second cat in 3's Top Man stage, I noticed that after a couple tries, I got really good at beating it without taking much damage.

Haven't done anything of note in 5 or 6 and have just done the intro stages in 7 and 8. As well as the intro stage in X1, but I probably won't mess with that disc until I've gotten my fill of the classic series.

Yay! Thank you, not only for the win but for covering this ROTW. Also congrats to OD and space_dust for your placements.

I have wanted to get into more weird franchises like Cho Aniki and Ninja Baseball Bat Man. Maybe it's time I did so...

As for my Kirby review, I did eventually bump the grade up to a 5 from a 3 because I felt the rating was too harsh. Jason did bring up some good points that also got me thinking about the rating.

Much thanks for the placement, man! There were some solid reviews this week, so glad to see I placed.

So, firstly, Matthew Jay's Deadly Premonition review, while certainly thorough (it's over 1800 words, for christ's sake), seemed very ranty and unedited for a staff review. "No one likes QTEs." I mean, really? This piece just left me in a bad mood, which is why I'm being a wee bit more critical this week. But hopefully I say something useful.

Other than that this week's batch was solid, but I felt that people might have just been going through the motions. Roto, you had a very funny looking game that you gave a high score to, but much of your explanation seemed devoted to only the layout of the game. When you came to your conclusion I was sort of lost as to what made the game fun in the first place. Vague feedback, I know, sorry!

Maboroshi, good to see new content from you. Your review of Gauntlet II was made plenty of good points, but you really need to discipline yourself on that punctuation. Those commas were driving me nuts! I have similar problems with my own writing, a dead giveaway that I did not major in English, or read books.

Regarding Joe’s Kirby Dreamland write up, Jason brought up a good point in his comment and something I was a bit uneasy about when reading this review. Lack of challenge isn’t an inherently bad thing, but I completely understood Joe’s point, regardless of the terms used. I mean, if you can literally float past an entire level’s design, then something is very wrong. You rip into the pointlessness of the game well, it really doesn’t sound engaging in any way. Jason may be right about its merits as a kid’s game, but kids enjoy just about anything.


So, the placements:

Third Place - Overdrive's Vay

Nothing ruins a JRPG faster than status ailments, it seems, but I guess they have to be there to keep us honest.

Really liked the intro, here. Your points made about the frustrating progression were relatable, though a number of sentences felt a bit roundabout in the paragraphs that followed. You managed to bring it around again when talking about the game’s inconsistencies. Funny stuff. Was happy to read your official thoughts on a game I so often hear about in HG chatter.

Second Place - David’s Commando

Smartly written with a surprising amount of depth given the subject matter. You kind of just throw in comments about the music and graphics towards the end, but overall this was very informative and you seem well versed in the design goals of the game, even if it fails to reach many of them.

First Place - Joes’ Zeno Clash II

This sort of game seemed like it would be your forte and it showed with this review. You nail the feel of the gritty close quarters combat, and address many of the concerns I’d imagine a fan of the original would have. Your appreciation of a very weird looking game was also humorous and respectful. I’d like to see you take on some of those crazy Japanese fighting games that are out there, I think your descriptions would make for a fun read.

Unless I can find five or six capable and generous people who are willing to dependably contribute 3 or 4 reviews apiece for hot new releases every month at the rates I'm able to offer for that volume--and so far, I haven't even come close--we're unlikely to ever see GameRankings link to us again.

I tried everything that I reasonably could to make that happen, but there are limits to what I can do and there are limits to what I can reasonably ask others to do also. For awhile, I paid $50/review and offered whatever review copies we could manage to obtain. Though that rate is actually very competitive (even most sites much larger than HonestGamers don't offer any better, and a number of those sites offer much less), it was not enough to attract the number of truly qualified candidates that we need in order to cover more than a few games each month. In fact, the people it attracted were as likely as not to totally flake on me, leaving me scrambling--and often failing--to find someone that could fill the gap.

If I were to offer $100 per review--which is above the going rate for any but the top 5 or 10 game sites online--I could probably get a few more people interested. However, I would then by paying $1500 a month for reviews, and the site would still be bringing in around $20 to $25/month in ad revenue. You can see how that might pose a problem, if not immediately then certainly in the long term. Besides, I don't make enough money that I can afford to spend $1500 of it on the site every month. That's unlikely to change, and in fact I'm more likely to come upon harder financial times down the road.

If I kept the rate at $50 per review and secured 15 timely reviews for hot new games, that would work out to a hefty $750/month expense for editorial... and still we would be lucky to hit $25/month in ad revenue in a typical month.

Asking people to write for free doesn't work for HonestGamers anymore the way it did in the early days when everyone was excited just to be able to talk about games online, because to a certain extent we're a victim of our own (limited) success. People look at the site and assume I can pay all kinds of money just because there are visible ads. Mostly, we would have to accept reviews of the sort that would damage our reputation that we've earned through the years--a reputation for quality that I will is worth fighting for--or I'd have to find a lot of people who are outnumbered by the number of articles available online that caution even inexperienced writers from producing content for free.

The Internet is consolidating. Companies are buying other companies before being bought out themselves. There's a network of a few sites that has a stranglehold on the sort of content that GameRankings promotes, and that stranglehold prevents the smaller players from being able to survive by producing more of the same. That's why I decided a few months ago to focus on what we do best: retro content. But we're not the only site providing retro content, and there's a lot of retro content to cover. So the way I see it, the only way HonestGamers has a real future is if it can come to be viewed as an undisputed top-5 resource for retro content, not just by people who are already familiar with all that we already offer, but by many other people who might enjoy our content but are unaware that we exist.

The meta initiative would allow us to reach that larger audience, because it would offer an incentive for content partners to wish for our success. As long as I can afford to do so, I will continue to pay freelancers and staff for quality retro reviews. For that to work in the long term and for traffic from search engines and social media to continue climbing (as it has been), though, I need to look for ways to add additional value to every possible page on the site.

I can't force anyone to believe me when I say that this move is the result of quite a few hours of careful contemplation. And as I noted in my original post, it is spurred in part by our recent de-listing from GameRankings, which was unexpected and entirely unwelcome. However, this potential move isn't part of some effort to pretend that never happened. On the contrary: it is part of the only reasonable reaction that our resources permit.

How many times does this have to fail before it's seen as the massive waste of time and effort it truely is.

A much better use of effort would be trying everything under the sun to get back on Gamerankings, which was the last really good thing this site could offer. With that gone (along with the critic links for gfaqs and gspot) traffics going to eventually half. It's not in killer shape as it is.

You should be thinking damage control, not daydreaming of the next huge timesink thats achieves a sum total of nothing.

Yeah, the goal here would be to add value to our own reviews, not subtract for it by presenting them as second rate. This would ensure that nearly every page someone might find on the site (by following a link from Twitter or a search engine or whatever) will have valuable content that justifies the click. As people feel more confident whenever they click an HonestGamers link--because they know they'll find something of value on pretty much any page--they'll find themselves exposed to more and more of our content and maybe some of them will even feel more inclined to contribute new user reviews here to boot.

I like a situation where the site can truly offer a valuable service to nearly anyone who visits, and that would this could allow. Plus I can set it up so that I approve or reject all links through email, meaning no additional work whatsoever for the rest of you staff guys, who can can continue focusing on the current user review queues... or on writing new content for the site. As I see it, this is win-win-win, and that's why I'm pushing the idea.

Sounds good to me, as long as there's no situation where a person would have to wade through external links to get to our actual reviews. Which it doesn't sound like, from this post.

Okay, I'll try to keep this brief (and everyone rolls their eyes)...

HonestGamers has recently placed significant emphasis on retro content. This has had some real benefits, because people are starting to view us as a leading source for regular coverage of old games. There's still a long way to go, but we've come a long way. However, that progress has also caused some unfortunate issues, including the deactivation of our links on GameRankings (which I just found out about today) due to the low volume of reviews that we are pushing live for games that GameRankings actually features on its site.

That change was a reminder to me that although there are a few high-quality meta sites (including GameRankings and Metacritics, neither of which lists us now), there aren't a lot of meta sites that cater to our audience. I was thinking that now would be a good time to make another stab at providing that service to gamers who like to read a variety of opinions for older games. And by "now," I most likely mean "a few weeks from now."

As you might have noticed, I've recently been spending a LOT of time--dozens and dozens of hours--in the database. As a result, our listings for retro games are now pretty close to where I've wanted to have them for years. In a few more weeks, we'll perhaps be all the way there. That of course means a lot of listings are available for games we haven't yet covered (and populated with new data), but I think there can still be value on those pages if we link to content from other sites. We can become the first reasonable stop for nearly all retro review content on the Internet, and that would be a huge win, especially since retro content seems to be enjoying an upswing in popularity.

The site wouldn't have to change much at all to accommodate such a change. Pages would still function as they do now, with staff reviews at the top, then user reviews. The difference is that now we would include links to external reviews below any available on-site reviews, just above the Disqus comments field. If there is no content on HG at the moment, then those reviews would of course appear nearer to the top of the page... and I will of course continue to work to make sure that we're posting a bunch of great new content related to important old games. This change would increase the value of many, many pages on the site and would also help all pages to perform better on search engines in the long term. Most importantly, it would help to contribute to HG's image as a high-quality, comprehensive site for retro information.

Anyway, I'm thinking this is a great idea and that now is the time to add that value. Now that we've stripped the site down to its core functions, I'm being very picky about adding any new features because I want to make sure that everything we do on every page contributes to that specific page's goal. This update would definitely qualify.

Anyway, I welcome discussion from each of you, and I'm happy to provide additional details about why I think this is a good idea (mostly it's boring SEO stuff, which is why I haven't already gone into more depth) if any of you need that.

Thanks for all of your contributions to the site thus far, everyone, and for your continued support as we work harder than ever to become the dominant portal to retro game coverage!

I'll get around to it.