Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: May 15-21. The earliest I've turned one of these things around. PRAISE ME!!!

Looks like, with Nightfire's review from the previous week carrying over, we only have six reviews total this week. What's up with that, you slackers? During my last RotW, Venter had that many by himself! Not that I'm complaining. I'm pretty busy at work and have multiple reviews that I'm trying to find time to type. After all, what will all of you do without getting my opinions on that last Kemco game I drudged through? That's right: You'll do nothing and be depressed about it. Alone. Forever alone.

Okay, enough of my barely-coherent rants against you all for reasons I can't even fathom myself. Let's get this judging started and concluded so I can do my own thing.

As a fun side note, when reading Venter's review of that NBA game, it reminded me A LOT of the late 80s or early 90s when I owned Double Dribble on my NES. When you played that game on the tougher difficulty level, it got frustrating as hell because the opposing team would get a steal the instant one of their players touched your guy. It's so great to see that in a roughly 30-year span, basketball game designers still fall into the trap of not having settings other than "way too easy" and "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!".

THIRD PLACE

Masters' A Hole New World (PC)

Not to nitpick or anything, but I had to chuckle a bit when I read your comment that nothing, including the enemies, looked great, distinct or memorable…and then right under that, there's a screenshot of the hero being assaulted by a giant half-fire, half-ice head. Because, in my humble opinion, that thing looks pretty bitchin', what with how the flame side has tongues of fire coming from it and all. At least it looks cool by the standards of "let's use modern software to create something that looks reasonably 8- or 16-bit" games. Anyway, you did a good job of painting this game's picture and making it seem appealing. It's easy to understand how combat works when it's simply described as Castlevania, but with only sub-weapons. Overall, you did a good job of not wasting words — this isn't a particularly long review, but you did a great job of explaining the mechanics and how the difficulty curve adds to the enjoyment by utilizing a combination of "respawn where you died" and "back to the checkpoint, pal", so a person could easily make progress through levels, but have to actually learn how to fight bosses instead of besting them via battles of attrition.

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SECOND PLACE

EmP's OVIVO (PC)

It was really tough deciding who got second and who got third this week, as you and Marc had very comparable reviews as far as how I felt about them. You got the nod essentially because you put just enough tantalizing notes into yours to really intrigue me. Marc's had the advantage in that due to reviewing a New Age Retro Game and name-dropping Castlevania in doing so. You had this little black-and-white puzzle platformer and were describing it as per what I'd expect (props for name-dropping Super Meat Boy; that made my ears perk up a bit) and then close out with a neat little talk about the game's artistic merit. It's kind of a neat touch for a simple game to have that certain sort of depth where you're playing because you're interesting in seeing if you can puzzle out a connection to link everything together. Bit of a shame that the game doesn't seem to quite live up to that, with no way to save progress, but you did a good job making things sound interesting, at least!

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REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

Nightfire''s Titanfall 2 (PC)

When you (finally, unlike me and my prompt nature) got around to doing your RotW last week, you pointed out that you were sticking me with a really long review. Didn't feel like it while I was reading it, though; it was actually a really easy and enjoyable read due to some great organization that made everything flow together smoothly. You start out with the single-player campaign, noting that it comes off as a sort of tutorial for the multiplayer backbone of the game and then use that to segue into that. You also have a remarkably even-handed review, as it seems that every positive begets a negative and so on, at times even comparing and contrasting similar example from single and multi player, such as how the AI is great on single-player, but shoddy on multi. This is really just a great example of how to do a long review, if 1000 words or whatever just doesn't do the job. It's comprehensive, but reads easy because your thoughts are all organized and one thing flows into the next. It was a struggle to pick second and third place and what order they were in; picking first was a good bit easier.

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Well, that was fun. If I have to be stuck in the office on a nice day, I might as well be doing fun stuff instead of normal stuff that actually fits my job description.

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

PRAISING YOU!!

Edit: But seriously, good job.

I head spaceshit noises.

More like praise US! :) Good job on being punctual this week, and thank you for the win. I'm glad you enjoyed the review. It's good to know that I can still churn out something first-rate even when beset by a myriad of life stressors.

Stiff competition, too. Yikes.

placid like acid

Praise the Overdrive!

Thanks for the topic, and congrats to the winners. Yes, it was another slower week in terms of total number of contributions, but we're heading into summer and that seems generally to be the way these things go. At least the competition was still fairly fierce, despite the smaller scale!

"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

That might be two consecutive weeks I've not had to remind you to do this thing. I'm sure you'll ruin the streak next time around.

Thanks for the nod; it wasn't a heavy week, but the reviews but out there were solid stuff indeed. Props to the never-ending Master Comeback Tour, and congrats to Nightfire on a little return of his own.

For us. For them. For you.

If we say "never-ending Master Comeback Tour" often enough, maybe it'll even become truth. That would be nice. It's great to see you contributing regularly again, Marc!

"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