Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW // 29th May -- 4th June //

Notes: I’ve heard of these slow weeks, but it’s nice to finally get one from a judge standpoint at least. There wasn’t as lot between the majority of the reviews, but there was a pretty clear winner.

So-close club:

Zydrate: Probably best not to start your review off by telling the reader it’s not going to be very good. However, I understand your point; I’ve been kicking around a League of Legends review in my head for about a year, but whenever I start writing all that comes out of vile rants about how the people I play with let me down or the story of that time I got a double pentakill with Teemo.

See? It’s easy to tangent aside, so your review already shows more discipline than my theoretical one I’ll probably never write. MOBA reviews are surprisingly hard, mainly because they’re very simple mechanically and most of the action is in how you mesh with teammates or against enemies, and that’s something that fluctuates wildly. I mean, DE’s usually a pretty competent sidekick, but Gangplank ADC? Really?. Point being, it’s easy to get sidetracked, and you didn’t. Good job!

Man, though, you should get some kind of award for heaviest use of abbreviations.


THIRD

For us. For them. For you.

Sweet, I got the ABRV award.

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Legit surprised I got first this week. I'm honestly more surprised it's for a Compile JRPG review. I'm humbled, and I agree with you about the performance paragraph. For some insight, I honestly never really care about performance in games. It's not a high priority for me unless it's really egregious. So I often never have a good way of working it in into a review where I want to prioritize the narrative and game systems. If you have any tips on how to improve, I'd love to hear 'em!

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My own advice is that if you don't really care about performance, don't include a whole paragraph mostly devoted to discussing it (unless, like you said, it's particularly egregious or somehow makes an impression otherwise).

I know there are some readers who will wonder if each new game runs running at 60FPS or whatever, but that's not usually important in the types of game that you personally review. If there's a frame rate drop in a turn-based RPG, for instance, how much will that impact the overall experience? Not much, I'd wager, unless it's particularly obvious.

"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