Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW for May 2-8, 2016: WHAT? ME LATE? NEVER!

A busy week. Not just for reviews to judge, but for me in real life. Therefore, this is late and will also be brief. Rest assured that I probably liked your review and would be all effusive with praise and all, but I'm trying to cram doing all of this into a space of time roughly resembling one hour. While also correcting EmP on the hazards of giving a game the wrong score in his review. He almost had to live in a world where he'd have to live in fear the rest of his days because some psycho was hunting him down because he thought EmP was sort of, kind of giving Sega 32X Doom a lukewarm recommendation.

THIRD PLACE

Nightfire's Ur-Quan Masters HD (PC)

A lot of people reviewed games (or exactly whatever the hell that Miitomo thing is, Venter) that came off as mediocre/average to them, as evidenced by all the 3/5 scores I went through this week. This makes me so damn happy to see a pure, unabashed 5/5 proclaiming a game as awesome! If I were to make any complaints, it's that there isn't so much information as to exactly what you're doing in this game. You explore the galaxy, getting resources and encountering alien species, while trying to figure out what's going on. And fighting. Of course, fighting. But while I might have wanted a bit more detail, what you gave did do its job in attracting my attention. You definitely gave enough detail to discussing those alien species and how they're actually well-written and, well, ALIEN.

In the end, you wrote a very strong praise review that got me interested in this game. Not that I have the time to be interested in the sort of time-dump a game like this promises to be, what with all the massive time-dumps in my backlog, but still. This game sounds really neat and possessing of the sort of good writing that makes a game like this memorable.

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SECOND PLACE

EmP's The Walking Dead: Michonne Episode 3: What We Deserve (PC)

Look, I have no real interest in Telltale's (or anyone else's adventure games). It's a lame genre* as far as I'm concerned! But I could actually read and pay attention to this review, even if it's for an adventure game that firmly got a mediocre rating. Why is that? Probably because you really did a great job of explaining why this game really doesn't work. The brevity wouldn't have bothered me (after all, lame genre; it better go by quick), but then you mention how so many choices that should be important don't come off that way because you never got the time to learn about or even manufacture emotions about the characters you're making said choices about. With one character being a prominent character in a prominent TV series based on a well-known comic dealie, a lot of choices can fall flat because Michonne is an established character in those forms of media, so said choices may be wildly out of character for her. I understood your frustrations with this game and got into this review. Good job.

* Don't fret, adventure game fans, my comments probably should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, I'm the dude who's been spending more time with Kemco's cheap mobile RPGs than I have with legit console/PC titles that have received massive amounts of praise from most everyone. My taste may be a bit…questionable?

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REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

Pickhut's Wolfenstein: The New Order (PlayStation 4)

Another really good review of a blah game that does a great job of explaining why a potentially good game didn't quite reach that level. To be brief, as it's getting close to 5 p.m. and I have places to be, I really liked how you took an intriguing premise and beginning to this game and then gradually chipped and chipped away at things until you let the reader know that for all that intriguing stuff, we're all left with just another random FPS that contains all the usual weapons and adversaries that a person is used to with this sort of title. The entire time I was reading this review, I could really tell you wanted to really dig this game, but every time you were led to believe it was going to do something special, it pulled back and you were left with something generic, with that super-cool stuff just being in the background, never to actually appear in its glory.

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FINISHED!!!! Just about in time to drink this week away because next week will be more fun. Mainly because of the three-day concert-dealie where I'll be having a grand old time. Just have to survive the days leading up to that...

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

Thanks for taking care of this topic! I'm happy that RotW seems to be happening regularly again, but also vaguely displeased because I have yet to even place in the top three since its return. All things considered, though, it's still good news and this topic was fun to read. Congrats to the winners!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

Thanks for the nomination!

I'm surprised you guys haven't heard of Star Control 2, it's kind of a legendary PC title. Though its release was strictly limited to PC and 3DO, so I guess if you were exclusively a console gamer back in the 90's you probably wouldn't have ever played it.

Anyway, I tried to hold back on spoiling too much of the game's story just in case anybody actually wanted to play it. The process of discovery in that game is part of what makes it great.

placid like acid

Hey, thanks for the Overdrive Place. Glad my dissatisfaction with the game translated well within the review. I wanted to play the game since 2014, so when I finally got around to it and realized what it was turning into with each passing chapter, I was like, "Oh... Oh, no."

Congrats to Nightfire and Emp, too!

Speaking of Star Control 2/Ur-Quan, my first experience with the game was back in 2010. I was watching a stream of someone playing the just-released Mass Effect 2, and the streamer just kept bringing up how there were certain similarities. He eventually threw out a download link, and I played it for just a little bit. Even with that brief experience, it felt like a very huge adventure. Everyone I spoke to had a shocking amount of dialogue and personality. I should give that game another go some time.

I... erm, thanks, OD!

I head spaceshit noises.

That 3/5 rating was my M. Night Shyamalan twist ending. I thought it was fitting because, like most of M.'s films, Doom 32X is shit.

Props to Pick and (the other, less goofy) Night - I have to admit, I went straight to the link for Light's game and bookmarked it for possible future vegging. I'm still recovering from Star Ruler 2 addiction, though, so not quite yet. And I've not played an iD game since that awful Doom 3 train-wreck, so it's kind of nice of others to point out they're still not doing that hot.

Props too to ODdy and his impeccable memory. Thank you for the kind words which I return with subtle passive aggressive digs.

Work harder, Jason Venter!

For us. For them. For you.