Forums > Contributor Zone > BRACKET: ROUND ONE STAGE ONE

Disco vs. DoI

I remember really liking DOI's review when he used it in last year's TT, and nothing has changed about that feeling since then. I could reiterate what everyone else has said about the subject material of Disco's, but I'm not going to. I found DoI's to be a more solid, more convincing, and more entertaining read.

DoI > Disco

OD vs BELISARIOS

I really liked both of these reviews. Being a huge RPG gamer, it should come as no surprise that I've played through OD's choice and could relate to it better, while BELISARIOS' review, though well-written, seemed to sort of lose me. Despite this, BELISARIOS' review was much more entertaining and made me want to download a ROM of it to try it out just for the lulz.

BELISARIOS > OD

Genj vs. VM

This one was a pretty tough call, being as I'm familiar with both The Bouncer and Nethack. I think I have to give the edge to Genj though, since although both reviews were convincing and entertaining, Genj's also has the laugh-out-loud factor that comes from his excellent humour in his writing style.

Genj > WM

Your girlfriend's name ends in .jpg

I find myself agreeing with Janus' assessments almost completely and don't really want to find other ways to word the exact same things, so here you go: DoI, OD, Veems. I may edit in actual text later, but it would be a formality--just read JANUS2's post.

Cairo: no, but not many games appear to have been designed under the influence of so much LSD.

boo: jus cause there's a russian woman in a cyborg ninja costume that looks just like a cyborg ninja you fought before that was secretly a man you killed in a minefield in the middle east instead of a person whose baby was kidnapped by a mysterious shadow organizations the patriots that formed as a sort of raw consciousness in the primordial soup underneath the white house and wants a metrosexual tranny to have a swordfight with a dude with another ninja suit on top of federal hall

boo: jesus, pick-y

Will judge OD/Beli later, but I don't know when this voting closes, so I wanted to get something in.

DoI d. disco- Generally, half of tournament competition is picking the right material. Windows pack-ins usually don't work too well and neither do pinball games; the fact is there's just not a lot of room expand unless you're a really talented writer. Disco's Space Cadet Pinball isn't bad... it starts with a lot of promise. It -should- be a lot duller than this, but for some reason I felt immediately open to hearing his argument. But by the end it starts to fall into very basic descriptions of the game that do very little, and it becomes fairly dull. And it's easy to fall into that trap when you pick a game like this. DoI countered with a simple game also -- Within a Deep Forest -- but makes it feel beautiful and elegant and worth playing. It doesn't fall into the trap of explaining its simplicity; it's simplicity is understood, and the review goes beyond to show the emotion that simplicity captures. Or something. Overall, there's a lot more substance to DoI's as far as perspective even if the games are almost equally simple. A good match to learn from.

Mint d Genj - Genj's review is uneven, at least from my point of view, because it represents him at his best, his mediocre and his worst. The beginning wonderfully introduces this goofy game, mockingly describing the main character without immediately condemning the title. The sarcasm here works great. It treads into meh, generic descriptions of the combat; it works, but I think a lot of this has been dully noted before, and similarly to boot. And then it sort of falls apart into a rambling slew of fucks and gay jokes and poorly built comparisons (The Bouncer is compared to MGS, three Final Fantasies, two arcade beat 'em ups, an FMV game and two brawler series... and few of these name drops accomplish much). This kind of stuff probably makes for humorous AIM conversations, but I don't like it's translation into a review. The yaoi tangent is "hip internet culture columnist" shenanigans when the review could be taking the time to better show Final Fight has more substance than The Bouncer, a glancing point that I just didn't buy after reading this. And I love Final Fight. Following in the DoI/disco approach, Mint takes a very simple game and attaches emotion. It's a very convincing argument, grabbing examples as necessary to make its points and ultimately selling an incredibly tough sell, a dungeon crawling MS-DOS relic. The review is trying to do more and does more; it not only has to convince me to play the game, but it has a greater uphill battle to paint a picture of what the game actually is. I think it does that and I would have loved to see this matched up directly against DoI's.

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Overdrive d. Beliaros - I think I can keep this one short and sweet. Beliaros' review is summarily summed up by one line within it: "The combat consists of ruthless, unfair engagements confounded by stiff play control and crazy amounts of poking." And the rest of review consist of 1) establishing this point (fairly easy to believe) and 2) adding quite a bit of fluff (like the whole first two paragraphs, largely). I like the fluff. It's entertaining, and Beliaros wrote a smoother piece. But there's not a lot of depth to any of this so it doesn't make the ideal competition review. Overdrive has written a lot of better RPG reviews. This was a very average one, taking a very tried and true approach (here is the plot, here is my analysis of it, with neither intertwined). It's just a solid review but a more ambitious effort by a country mile, and no amount of slickness on Beliaros' part can really out-do that.

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I decided to take the liberty of tallying up all the votes for all the posts above this one. Here are the current standings, according to my counting.

Disco1960 vs. DOI
Disco1960: 1
DOI: 12

BELISARIOS vs. Overdrive
BELISARIOS: 6
OD: 5

Genjuro vs. VM
Genjuro: 5
VM: 6

I don't have to boost my review resume because I have a real resume.

Disco vs. DoI

EmP said that this contest is all about laziness, so I just skipped this match.

Winner: Lethargy

Beli vs. OD

I have to say, at first glance the screenshots in Beli's review turned me off to it quite a bit. It seemed almost too intrusive and overbearing. But the rest of the review is so charming and the last screen shot ties it all together so well that by the time I finished it I didn't mind. Major points for overturning a first impression like that. OD's review is solid, I came out of it convinced that this particular entry in the Lufia series trips over itself in a lot of ways. However, for every well made point that I nodded my head to in OD's review, I grinned in Beli's. That's gotta mean something.

Winner: Beli

VM vs. Genj

I'm trying to figure out how to say this without being too derivative, and failing. Genj's review is more amusing, to be sure. VM's is more 'solid'. Everyone's already said this. Genj's review seems to fall apart near the end. It starts off very well. It maintains its steam through the middle, and then just drops the ball at the end. I wouldn't say it ever got bad, really. But I think that by the time it descends into talk about yaoi, the point was lost. VM's review is much more consistent. It's strong throughout and solidly displays love for a game. Even a strange one. At the end of the day, Genj's review makes me convinced that I was right to not buy a bad game, and it does so in a mostly entertaining fashion. That's wonderful in its own way. VM's review, on the other hand, makes me want to play a game that I've played before, but given up on. Suddenly, falling down a random pit onto a cocatrice corpse sounds almost pleasant, instead of something that makes me want to snap my keyboard over my knee.

Winner: VM

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ROUND CLOSED

DoI DEFEATS Disco1960 12 votes to 1.
BELISARIOS INCHES PAST OD 7 votes to 5
Viridian Moon ROCKS A COMEBACK to pip Genj 7 votes to 5.

DoI, Beli and VM advance.

For us. For them. For you.