Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW // 30th October – 5th November // The Last of the Horror Reviews

October’s done, so no more daily horror reviews for us. It doesn’t show much, considering there’s still 14 reviews in this block to work through. But one of those is mine, so we’ll look forward to Rob forgetting it next week. Which means there’s 13. With both Bouchart and Zyd with the duplicates. Very well; onwards!

Team Almost:

I suspect Jason was expecting this criticism, so here we go: your review felt so bloody lopsided; a little less than half the wordcount went towards complaints and just because you spent half a paragraph telling the reader they’re not big deals does not mean that if you write a 5/5 review where half of it is negative, it doesn’t stop feeling like it has no right to be 5/5. If the game had so much more going for it, then why have you not spent more time talking about that? I know you’re invested in “people lose interest after X amount of words”, but that’s not an excuse to produce such an unbalanced review.

Of Bouchart's two reviews, I preferred Shadow: War of Succession. Not only because we should be occasionally reminded that the 3DO was a thing. It makes a big statement that it's an awful, awful game that goes about talking about it. Still, it does feel quite segmented, only enforced by "the music is" statement thrown in near the end. It's a great choice of game to write about, though.

There was a weird vibe to Overdrive’s review; I think it was that he made it a review theme that he’s desperate to find a game worthy of the Kirby name, then plays critical success, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, some seven years after release. It was a shame that this was what you launched the review with because other parts of it - the talk about Prince Fluff and the Nintendo-approved highjacking of new IPs to superglue their trademarked mascots on especially - were very well written and interesting to read.

I can find little to really fault in Joe’s P.T. review. Other than the fact that it’s a review of an interactive trailer and thus doesn’t really give him a lot to talk about. Also, I’m still mad at him for indirectly making me replay Illumination. Screw that guy.

Hasty’s Costume Quest was too late to make the Project Horror rota, but is really stiffly written. Also, who outside of really bad newspaper editors says ‘romp’? The review gets across your thoughts on the game well, but it feels very forced; like you were writing this at gunpoint. Which, ironically, is the only way Double Fine are able to generate good press exposure these days. Those kickstart scamming scoundrels.

Pickhut came especially close to breaking the top three and his picking apart of a collection title with a lame collection did about as much as it could with a collection title. Taking shots at the title for being a crap collection was a given, but some of the other shots showed a good series knowledge. Like the restrictions of freedoms once considered a Mega Man staple. But not how the collections uses the inferior PSX MM8 rather than the studly Saturn version. Boo! Boo to you.


THIRD

For us. For them. For you.

EmP is a Cut Man and Wood Man fan, confirmed.

But thanks for the comments about the collection. It was a loaded week, so it was fun seeing what the placements turned out to be. Congrats to Masters on the RotW!

I head spaceshit noises.

I guess I'm trying to find the balance between "I'm a critic, but also a person" when I've played a game I'm not invested in personally. There's no mistaking the latter are my best works. I enjoyed Firewatch far more than Virginia, but they're both of equal quality.

Ah! That's the word I'm looking for. "Quality." Thanks for the feedback.

Look, the only time I'm not wrong is when I'm right, so...

This week was a huge headache. Only a couple of hours later I'm looking at the thing and thinking "I should have put X in that place and should have never left Y out" Blurgh.

Still, my headache is the site's win. A very fine week for reviews.

For us. For them. For you.

I mention in one of my reviews (forgot which) that I am actually educated and well aware of the fact that giving disclaimers in the beginning of things is bad form. I learned this in college (that I failed) in the context of speech-giving and I've actually forgotten what the logic behind it even was. I guess you don't want to start a speech of on a negative note or say something to immediately negate some of your credibility. It makes sense, but I prefer my readers to be on the same page that I am.

But yea, thank you for the placement! I always enjoy reading commentary on my stuff and wish it happened more often, whether I place on a weekly reward rollout or not. (Hint hint people, comment on my stuff!)

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I'd say that to be fair, the amount of time it took to get to Epic Yarn had more to do with my reluctance to buy a Wii until I could get one for about $70 due to the other systems of the time having overall superior libraries combined with NOT having goofy control gimmicks like Nintendo's more modern systems with their motion controls, 3D screens and touch controls.

But after getting the Wii, it was about a year before I bought Epic Yarn and two before I played it. I blame the SNES Kirby games for that. Super Star was a collection of short games ranging from forgettable to good, while Dream Land 3 was just way too annoying to 100% with how you had to do something special in every damn level. Which put me in a position where I felt hope and anticipation on one hand, but in the other, I had nothing but that sense of knowing I'd be disappointed somehow because every Kirby game besides Adventure has done that to me to some degree.

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