Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW - 3-9 October. The XL Edition

So.

Review of the Week is a thing we do weekly, concerning reviews. We read them all, we pick the top three and then we talk about why we liked them. For some people, it’s a pretty plush gig. They might only get three reviews or to so to pick through. Good for them. I have sixteen.

We’ll knock that down by one, because one of them is mine. Still, there’s a lot to go through, so I’ll cut the rambling short and get to work.

Notes:

There’s a lot of very good stuff this week, so let’s give some shout outs to those who didn’t make it – including Pick, who’s been destroying these things recently. Pick throws out a typically even-handed bash review on an awful sounding racer that would have strolled into most weeks. There’s really not much fault I can find in it. I think, in this case, he was done in by a relatively uninteresting base topic.

Team 32X’s zork86 has been a valuable mainstay of Project Horror. Some would say that his tagline for Resident Evil 3 (Only shooting S.T.A.R.S) is the cleverest tagline ever to be written. I would agree, before the unsporting admission that I wrote that tagline. It’s the only thing on his cool streak of reviews I did write, though.

Silversuriv’s first steps into horror have been fun to read as he takes on his own little Project Horror run. He’s very lucky I am enjoying his run, otherwise I might be peeved that his inconsiderate release dates have messed up the Resident Evil streak.

Attack on Titan [PS4] Zigfried

This is that time of the year where Zig shows up, drops one review and then vanishes for the rest of the year. True story; check his submission history. Rather than write something productive like a piece on an obsolete 32X flight simulator, he’s decided to pen something relevant and interesting. He’s so out of touch.

I’ve been seeing a weird chibi Titans game around Steam, so kind of assumed this was it until I, you know, read this review. And found that it wasn’t. This actually sounds and looks pretty cool, which you wrap up well by dropping the amount of hours you’ve ploughed into the game. I think it’s the games that really call to you that seem to rack up secret hours - it doesn’t feel like you’ve just sat through a four hour or so period because immersion. I can relate; Dogma took me over in a similar fashion at the start of the year.

I am left with some curiosity as to the state of the ‘dire’ titans. Are they the big stand out ones like the giant Titan or the armoured titan, or do they include the abnormal ones who look like regular titans but do weird shit? Especially in a game setting, the idea of an abnormal seems genuinely scary; the landmark titans look different enough to give you some warning, but when the ones who look the exact same as everyone else start leaping around, or running rooftops or interacting with wires, it comes out of nowhere. But, then, maybe to overall easiness of the title would bypass that. I’m rambling… Good, solid comeback review. Hope to see more of you/see you next year!

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X [PS2] Wolfqueen

I have, of course, beaten all the Res Evils – even the ones you’ve never heard of – but CV has always been a bit special to me because it’s the only one that legit kicked my arse. It was the Dreamcast version, and I found that the boss fight on the plane before I switched to Chris had used up much more of my ammo stock than I’d wanted. Despite having the vast majority of the game beat, I had to scrap it all and start again, being even more miserly with my ammo. What does this have to do with yet another comeback review? Well, I think this review does a very good job on capturing that very aspect.

CV was on the tail end of the survival horror gauntlet, before the time when the series became flat-out action. Where survival was actually a prerequisite and you could work yourself into a dead end by playing it too loose and carefree with your items. Les picks up the significantly more forgiving version of the game, but still focuses right in on this aspect as the driving force of her review. It is, in my not so humble opinion, the exact right thing to talk at length about.

Lunar: The Silver Star [MCD] Overdrive

Check out Rob and his attempts to HTML. With his perfectly centred but weirdly sized and spaced out screenshots. Awww.

I think this review could have benefited from the thing you expressly avoided; some direct comparison with the PSX port. But there’s none of that, and what we get instead is a pretty good ramble review where you walk us through an old RPG, picking away at some holes and bigging up some successes. It works. There’s a few times where it feels like you’re going to tug at some bigger threads (The port comparison; a bigger discussion on Working Design’s opinion-splitting localisation efforts) but you just ramble right through them. It’s probably for the best as your review doesn’t get bogged down in either subject and keeps its focus on the core game.

Congrats too all three, especially Robert, on a very challenging week for old judgeface here.

For us. For them. For you.

I think the funny thing about RotW is that some weeks, I think I wrote a killer review and it doesn't get picked and some weeks, I write something I think probably won't stand out from the pack in any real way and it winds up doing well.

Such as this time where I legit struggled my way through it and was left with something where I thought it was decent, but not the sort of thing that'd do good on a busy week like this.

So thanks!

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

Congrats winners! There were so many reviews this week to go through, my goodness. Thanks for the mention too, I lol'd a bit as I noticed the exact same thing about breaking up the RE streak.

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It's weird how that happens, OD. Sometimes, when you feel like you're struggling, you just try and finish and thus don't try so hard and it accidentally comes out as a more nature piece of writing. Or, sometimes, the bribe you slip an overworked judge is enough to sway them.

For us. For them. For you.

Thanks for the placement, Gary. I'm glad the review could capture the essence of the game.

I didn't know that the PS2 version was more lenient. I don't remember having too much trouble with the Tyrant fight in the airplane because I'd managed to conserve enough ammo to that point to make it possible. It certainly wasn't easy, but I never had to restart my whole playthrough, either.

[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