Forums > Contributor Zone > Review of the Week - October 23-29 - Double Trouble!

[Reposted due to the previous topic disappearing. Hey, at least I can finally fix the spelling of October in the title!]

13 reviews were posted this week. Four writers decided to submit two reviews for my week, those troublemakers being Joe, Venter, Masters, and Midcore. The 31 Days of Horror marches on, probably accounting for seven of these reviews. We also have single submissions from five other writers. And a review from last week from Rob "I remember my own holdovers" Robbington. 14 reviews! You're killing me! 10 reviews are in the running for the top 3 places once I pick the best from each author that submitted more than one.



Truck101's Evil Twin review is a bit muddled - time is spent talking about how much you paid for the game, then a list of bugs, with the actual description of what the game is left for a couple of short paragraphs at the end.

vgc2000's Casper review doesn't really say much, but it does it in a profoundly confusing way. Reminds me of the old GameFAQs days.

Zork86's Penumbra review shows some promise, although it uses too many words to express an idea. A sentence like this "Admittedly Survival Horror and Adventure type games are among my favorite, they're very immersive and I think that may be why they're among my favorite genres" could get the same idea across by being shortened to "Survival Horror and Adventure are among my favourite genres because they're very immersive." 26 words down to 13, and it still conveys the same amount of information.

Subversionbyintroversion's Oxenfree is a decent first submission to the site, but it did kind of get lost among the multitude of submissions this week.

Midcore wrote two reviews for some very old videogames. Both reviews are exhaustive in their descriptions, although I found it a bit tough to read so much about games with such simple mechanics. The historical story of the Galaxy Game review was enjoyable - I do like reading about the history of videogames.

Masters' Clash Force review is a bit too short, so I gave the nod to the Super Arcade Boy. It looked like it was going to be a bash, the tone was more resignation than anger, which is fair enough for a Steam indie title. Masters knows how this genre works, and how this game doesn't measure up.

I wondered what eMP was doing linking this Alone in the Dark game to Blade Runner. The writing is a bit rough in places, but it's a proper bash review and there's no holding back. Ending the review with a rewrite of Roy Batty's tears in rain monologue was a nice touch. You miss out on a spot in the top 3 for typing "then" instead of "than", which I'm pretty sure I called you out on last time. Truthfully though, the Top 5 were all pretty close.


THIRD PLACE
The Flame in the Blood by Jason Venter

Venter's The Flame in the Flood review was the more engaging of the two, but I do have to give props to Putty Pals for identifying a target audience and sticking with it (in this case, parents looking for Switch games for their young kids - hopefully that audience finds the review). I've been a bit dismissive of Venter's Switch reviews lately because it seemed like he was phoning them in, just trying to create content for the sake of it, but this is what happens when Venter gets his hands on a game with actual substance. The praise for the game is balanced by the comments on the difficulty and potential frustration level, but when Venter still recommends the game, I believe him.


SECOND PLACE
Slayaway Camp by Joe Shaffer

Joe's Slayaway Camp won over Victor Vran. Both are good reviews, and maybe Victor Vran does seem better edited (there's a few distracting typoes in the Slayaway Camp review), but the enthusiasm for a horror puzzler really gave the review a lot of energy. Joe makes this puzzle game sound like a hell of a lot of fun - even if I'm not as big a fan of the genre as Joe evidently is. I think if I'd seen all these movies, I'd be eager to play a game like this that referenced a whole bunch of them.


FIRST PLACE
Journey to Kreisia by Rob "Holdover" Robbington.

Overdrive reviews another Kemco mobile RPG, and provides a good discourse on what works in these games, and what doesn't. I really like these reviews. I enjoy RPGs, and although I don't see myself getting into Android RPGs when I have so many games on my consoles and Steam that remain unplayed, I do enjoy how Rob makes these reviews interesting - you'd think with all these games using variations on the same formula, the reviews might do that too, but I never really know what to expect from these reviews. The idea of a character who is aware he's in a game is a good one, and if they'd kept that going the whole time, I might have been willing to give this one a go. But it's true that a lot of RPG heroes eventually fall into that "paragon of goodness" role. Hell, this is something I faulted Final Fantasy XII and XIII for back in the day, where character development removes what made the character interesting... Anyway, yeah, after reading 14 reviews this week and getting more tired and irritable by the moment, I read this one last and it actually grabbed my attention.



I think I've got 2 or 3 of these Review of the Week topics in me before I disappear forever.

I can avoid death by not having a life.