Forums > Submission Feedback > Zydrate's Fallout 4 review

HG Guidelines for length: Between 800 and 1,200 words, depending on the game.

This review's length: 3,059 words.

Jeez, Zy. >.<

I will get around to reading this and give some detailed feedback, but there's a lot to chew through. I do not envy Overdrive who will have to judge this for ROTW.

placid like acid

Ah, it's no big deal. Back in the olden days of GameFAQs, when we did RotD, I'd have up to 60+ reviews to do during my days sometimes. And one of the writers routinely did 2000+ word reviews. I'm used to it. I'm more concerned about how the third picture looks sort of like this recurring nightmare of mine...

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I slightly updated the guidelines just now. That was probably long overdue. I hadn't touched them for around 6 years, I don't think.

My own reviews tend to weigh in at between 1200 and 1500 words, which seems to be the common range you'll find on most game sites. If a writer needs more words, that's fine. Said writer just needs to be aware that the further north of 1500 their word count goes, the less likely it is that anyone will finish reading it (or, sadly, even start).

A minority of readers genuinely appreciate massive reviews, so it's really just a matter of choosing your audience and finding ways to reward those readers who stick with the longer pieces.

"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

I'm not the most prolific review writer on this site, but I guess my stance on the topic of review length is you should take as much time as you need to convey your points. Fallout 4 is a pretty massive game, so it seems reasonable to me that there is a lot of ground to cover, and Zydrate's writing style is pretty conversational, so I didnt feel that it was cumbersome to get through. In fact, I'd go so far to say that reading this review reminded me of conversations I used to have with a co-worker when we were both simultaneously playing the game, talking about what we liked and didn't and foreshadowing what we'd both be going up against in our respective quests as we progressed in the game differently.

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@overdrive; That's my raider character in Raider Toxic armor. She's my asshole of the bunch who regularly murders traders and settlers out in the world and eventually takes over with the Nuka World DLC.

@honestgamer and Nightfire; EmP told me that the 1200ish words was a guideline and plenty of people regularly exceed that.

But yea, I was already at 1500 before I even got around to the DLC's so I knew it was gonna be a big one.

@Fiddlesticks; I'm glad you like my review tone, it's noted by many others to flow well and be fairly casual. I'm perfectly fine with this.

Most of you spoke on the size rather than the review itself :P

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It's a good review. I do like the casual tone. There aren't a lot of technical problems this time around, though you do keep unnecessarily capitalizing things in parentheses. There are also some issues with hard returns, and I did find one spelling error ("spreay"). Otherwise, it is a pretty clean piece.

While I do wish I could speed-read like Overdrive, the length actually didn't bother me too much once I got into it because it was so easy to read. However, it is chock full of references to things that I have no idea about, so its audience appears to be people who have already played the game (I have played it, but only for a few hours). This isn't a bad thing, it's just a thing. Clearly people are enjoying your style, and overall this lengthy retrospective format seems to work for you.

placid like acid

Yea you poked me about that parenthesis thing before and I completely forgot about that being a thing. I wonder if I was literally taught that differently in school. Who knows?

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