Forums > Contributor Zone > Review of the Week June 6 - 12: Make Your Own Maps

*ceremonial drums*

Review of the Week is now in session!

BTW, do any of you have a GOG account? You might want to check out their own summer sale. I nabbed myself Nox, System Shock Enhanced Edition, and Sir, You Are Being Hunted for under $10. This is great, because now I can give Nox a fair shake. I've always felt guilty about giving up on that game.

Anyway...

Three word warriors (ugh, I'm not going to forgive myself for that one) came to the battlefield this week, but only one will leave with the crown. I have decreed this week that instead of judging your reviews, you shall slap each other with dead fish until only one stands.

What? You don't live within close enough vicinity of each other? And none of you have a fish fit for slapping? Excuses, excuses... I guess I'll have to judge your reviews then, but only this once. Next time, bring the fish and be sure to meet in a Denny's parking lot or something.


THIRD PLACE

OgNimaeb's Tomb of the Tyrants (PC)

This review benefits from being informative and straightforward. You described the game well enough that I can visualize it and understand whether or not I'd dig it. I'll check it out!

That being said, my crits are mainly that the review reads in a choppy, list-like manner and that there's a lot of passive voice throughout. Writing in active voice isn't necessary 100% of the time, but it's preferable because it expresses authority. All in all, though, it's a good write up.

SECOND PLACE

honestgamer's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan (PS4)

You know, this game sounds an awful lot like Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, except tolerable. You did a great job balancing your arguments and using clear examples to back up your claims. It's also a very easy, breezy read, made possible by excellent word choice. Unfortunately, the middlin' game curse rears its ugly head. It's a good review, but the game sounds like it's plagued woes seen in every meh license title, and thus there isn't much fresh or interesting material to cover. Just the same, I enjoyed the review enough to give it a Facebook like.


REVIEW OF THE WEEK

Nightfire's Obitus (PC)

I dig your casual writing style. This review flowed very well and benefited from snappy descriptions. I'm also impressed that you kept a review for an RPG short. That can be difficult to execute because some of us, especially me, have a tendency to gab about RPGs we enjoy endlessly. Oh man, if I couldn't generate a 20,000 word review for Skyrim or Fallout 2...

You also rightly took the game to task for using a dating visual style and stage design. As you said, there's no reason to present the game in such a disorienting and irritating manner. I'm sure the developers thought they were programming an extremely challenging RPG, not realizing this design choice was really more of a hassle and a complete inconvenience to players. No, you don't have to hold a player's hand or wipe their butt, but don't go out of your way to piss them off, either.

Typically, I don't fuss about a game's rating, but I almost felt this read as a 2/5 instead of a 1. Pointing out that the mazes were the main attraction was what mainly sold your rating, though. I mean, good gawwwd, this game sounds boring, but you did a fine job of capturing its tedium without putting me to sleep, so you win.

Just one crit:
"There are many reasons why this game is lacking, and as you will soon see, they will comprise the main body of this review."

You could have left this sentence out. It pretty much states the obvious.

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Tune in next week when EmP actually has a review submitted or at least when the ROTW host notices a qualifying review. Or hey, maybe I'll actually have a review submitted (doubt it).

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.

Congrats to Nightfire on the win, and to OgNimaeb for writing about a less familiar title in a way that made people interested in finding out even more about it. That's a sign of a great review!

The GOG sale was pretty nice, too. I picked up System Shock for free but otherwise didn't indulge. GOG now lets you interface with your Steam account so that games you bought from that other service show up in your GOG selection, when relevant. The selection of titles with that feature is limited by GOG's own availability, but it's a neat idea that I hope will expand in the future. My Steam library has almost 600 titles now, thanks to various Humble Bundle promotions I've jumped on, but my GOG library is mostly old titles like the Ultima series that optimistic Jason says he will someday have time to play (while pessimistic Jason knows that he probably won't).

"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

SNUB!

Fine work all three. I did like that Nightfire review. Not enough to play the game -- never that -- but he's picking out some really interesting old-school titles recently and I'm enjoying that. Good stuff.

For us. For them. For you.

YAY! Thanks guys :)

Kinda disappointed that we didn't get to fight with fish-bats but I guess I'll just have to deal.

placid like acid