Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW for 4/5 to 4/11, 2009: An alternative to HGWars

Greetings, friends. Tear yourselves away from HGWars for a few minutes and READ THIS!!!! It's my all-important RotW for the previous week. This is the part of this site where I judge your writing and deems three of you as being worth my time, leading to me spending time whispering sweet nothings into your ears. Or something less disturbing to visualize.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the rules. Staff people are ineligible. Mere mortals are eligible......but only one review by any one person can make the top three. You all can learn a lot from reading my words. The main thing you've learned from HGWars is that it's fun to mock and kill EmP for horribly building up his beast character to be slightly weaker than soggy generic toilet paper. Which is useful info, but not as practical as this. So get to reading!

---

THIRD PLACE: Crystalis (NES) by randxian

To start with the negative, you really could work on your flow a bit. It seems so many paragraphs start with something like "Game play itself is....", "Challenge progression is....", "Graphically, this game is...." and "The soundtrack is...."; making it seem like a sectioned review without headers at times. A little work to segue from one topic to another instead of just abruptly going from one topic to the next would do a world of good. As someone who has played Crystalis a couple of times, though, I do have to say that you did a great job of giving a very in-depth review of the game where you said pretty much everything I'd want and expect to read. To the point where I was a bit disappointed you didn't wax poetic on how awesome the sad tune that plays while you're in that one late-game dungeon (pyramid, I think) is. Basically I'd call this a great review that's just presented in a somewhat clunky fashion.

SECOND PLACE: F1 Challenge (Saturn) by pickhut

Very nice use of brevity in a review. This sounds like the sort of game that you really can't talk about too much without bloating things and you definitely didn't fall into that trap. I really liked how you started out by mentioning some very intriguing aspects of this game that, on the surface, make it seem far deeper than the average arcade-style racer; but then bring up how things like how much fuel you can have and when to take pitstops are really things that you simply learn after playing for a bit, which basically turns it into a typical arcade racer where you do one or two more things. Good show.

OVERDRIVE PLACE: Harry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (DS) by disco

This was a really nice look at one of those delightfully quirky games that just seems destined to obscurity. The kind of thing casual gamers will never hear of, but the more hardcore kinds will treasure as a hidden gem. And the reason I have that impression of this game is solely because of the great job you did in reviewing it. You usually have more of a dry, by-the-books style than the average reviewer here and, for this game, that works out perfectly. This game seems to be a challenging game with a strong dose of off-the-wall humor included and your style helped to perfectly take note of that, while not getting carried away in the moment. That gives us a very informative review where you mention some of the nutty things (like Tea Time and the simple fact a dude is named Leopold Charles Anthony Weaslby the Third) and let our imagination do the work as to how nutty things are instead of overplaying the humor card. I really liked this review, if you can't tell.

---

Okay, now that you've read this, you can go back to killing each other and mocking EmP's character on HGWars. We're doing RotW spring re-organizing here, so I don't know exactly who's doing next week.......but if you're lucky, you'll get a double-dose of me! Which would only be fair to all of you, as you were stuck with two straight weeks of EmP.

Hmmm.....I'm raising my game here. I usually only take one cheap shot at EmP per RotW, but this week, I've put three in. Good for me! Now I'm off to work on a super-duper top secret review.

---

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

I agree with this week's ROTW. EmP does indeed suck ^_^

I really should throw in another user review. I miss winning these things ^_^

---

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

I'm surprised I managed to make second place, thanks for the comments on the review! It really was hard to make this anything other than a standard review, because it's just a simple arcade racer, basically.

Good job on randxian on his placement, and congrats to disco!

---

I head spaceshit noises

As with everything that matters, things matter only when EmP is involved. So blame OD not for needing to shoehorn my mention in here -- one day he'll fly on his own, but that day is not now.

Congrats to everyone, just for being who you are, you crazy savages.

---

For us. For them. For you.

Congrats to the winners. Again, some good stuff in here that gives me ideas of what I should be doing/want to do. I'd think HGWars might make people submit more stuff, because we need a few points to get a level boost...or maybe we are all preparing well in advance for the Pretentious Bastards competition.

---

My principal said, 'Emo, Emo, Emo.'
I said 'I'm the one in the middle, you lousy drunk!'
-- Emo Phillips

Schultz
I actually was planning to put this in the RotW post, but got caught up in some actual work I needed to do at work (imagine that!) and wound up forgetting about it.

On a structural level, your reviews are very sound and are very informative, but I think in some ways, your extensive history of FAQ-writing works against you at some time. In these reviews, I get a certain sense of how you're able to describe the nuts-and-bolts of a game, but you don't put much of anything in that keys me into your actual opinion of it. Take Champions of Krynn, for example, as it was my favorite of the four (probably due to how I have a bit of experience with it). You describe how the game works well, but I was a bit surprised by the subpar rating, as your review's tone seemed to be along the lines of, "It's a Gold Box game much like the other ones where you kill stuff, explore dungeons and improve your party until you've won." Not a glowing endorsement, necessarily, but nothing I would have taken as a somewhat negative assessment, which made me think your review would have been better served if you'd gone into a bit more detail as to why you found aspects of the game to be tedious and/or sub-par.

---

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

Thanks, overdrive. This was a sort of legacy review in a way--maybe it's the software tester in me that looks for mistakes, but sometimes I forget the parts that were actually fun, and while I take guide notes during a game, I realized I -don't- take review notes. Which is too bad. I should. If I like something, I'll sort it out later.

I do approach reviews a lot differently than most people, and it helps for people to point out what they'd like to hear more of. FAQ writing doesn't have to work against me, but I think I rely on it too much as a default.

I've managed to create text files that sort out my general writing notes, and I think taking a few minutes to do this for reviews would be a big help, too. I think I see how to do this.

Thanks very much for the tips. I appreciate your comments and hopefully I can work through the other two Krynn games with something more constructive!

---

My principal said, 'Emo, Emo, Emo.'
I said 'I'm the one in the middle, you lousy drunk!'
-- Emo Phillips

Sweet, it's been a while since I've won one of these. Thanks! I'm glad you liked the review, OD. And yeah, more people need to play Henry Hatsworth. Good luck to next week's contenders!

---

Is there another word for synonym?

Wow. Amazed Crystalis finished third this week since I don't consider it to be one of my better works.

---

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?