Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: Sept. 14-20, 2008

I have to say, this was one hella week to be judging as it was really tough to only pick three reviews here, as everyone who submitted kicked a few different kinds of ass. So, you know who you are.....give yourselves a hearty bit of congratulations!

And now sit through my umpteenth lame attempt to cleverly tell you the rules that likely will include at least one uncreative attempt to mock EmP!

Only one review per user can make the top three. Since two people had multiple reviews this week, this rule MAY have come into play! If you wrote a staff review (even if you're not pure staff) those reviews are not counted. Jason made that rule to placate EmP, who was getting disgruntled at never getting recognition.....so he told him that staffers were ineligible and now the rest of us suffer to maintain that veil of deception....

Alright, rules are explained. Uncreative attempt to mock EmP in place (and from re-reading it, I really have to work on new, better material....). Now, it's time for YOU!

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Review of the Week: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (PS2) by dagoss

If I wanted to be overdramatic, I'd say your review clinched my decision to take a road trip to the nearest gaming store today to buy this game and Rogue Galaxy, but I'd have done that anyway. Still, your review did a great job of reaffirming anything good I'd heard about this game in an engaging manner. One thing I thought was a bit amusing was late in your review when you finally get back to the dungeon a bit (with the "remember the dungeon" line), I had to scroll back through to make sure you hadn't been really talking about it profusely. Your review just flowed that well and did such a good job explaining how the many elements of this melded together so well that the dungeon just seems like another piece of the pie, instead of this huge thing everything else revolves around.

First Runner Up: Doom 3 (PC) by bloomer

I think the thing I liked the most about this review was how, as a Doom/Doom 2 fan, this one seems to speak directly to me. You mention these things which I take for granted in those games and many fan-made levels and then cut my feet out from under me by telling me how those elements aren't present or are neutered in Doom 3. Very effective review that reaffirmed my desire to not play this game ever.

Second Runner Up: Hacker (C64) by sashanan

It was a WAR for the third spot between this review and blah or blah's very effective review of Spore. In the end, you might have snared the spot by giving me a bit of nostalgia, Sash. Not of this game — I never played it. But of how important packaging was back in the day. I remember all the goodies packaged with those Infocom games or how Thomas Disch's Amnesia came with a map of Manhatten so you could find your way around those city streets in an attempt to find your identity. And you do a great job of explaining how this game's packaging played into the sense of mystery. You have no idea what's going on right from the beginning and you won't until you've gotten through the game. Utterly brilliant and you do a great job of bringing out that aspect of the game.

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Good week. Now I have games to play and rum to drink. Until the next time, folks!

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

Excellent. I fully endorse dagoss's victory; truly an amazing review.

Congratulations to the runner-ups, too. Good week all around.

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What espiga does in his free time
[Eating EmP's brain] probably isn't a good idea. I mean... He's British, which means his brain's wired for PAL and your eyes are NTSC. - Will

Great picks, I enjoyed dagoss' and bloomer's reviews a lot. And thanks for the heads up, of course. Sounds like my review hit precisely the note I had in mind for it, and I once again got away with not mentioning some of the mainstays (graphics, audio) whatsoever.

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''Yes, yes...but apart from all that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?''

I hope that I didn't compel you to buy Rogue Galaxy, because if I did, then I owe you an apology.

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Yeah, definitely an excellent review by Dagoss. It's of an RPG strand that's pretty foreign to me, but the review is able to create the context so I can still understand that world, which is no mean feat.

Re: the old boxes... I do miss them. The main thing was, the box was absolutely all you had to go on to find out about the game. In the early 80s you could read about 3 game reviews once a month in a magazine like Creative Computing. Everything else was down to the box, when you dragged your dad to the shop at birthday time to pick a new game (which was my schtick every birthday). The back of the box was super important. I mean the front grabs your eye, but without screenshots and actually useful information on the back, you potentially didn't trust what was on the floppy inside.

Now we're just totally saturated in info. We know what game is coming half a year out and have seen and heard an insane amount of stuff about it before we even get near it. And as such the box decoration has become depressingly redundant.

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