Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW // 12th March – 18th March // Medals For Everyone!

I’ll rarely have an easier week than this. Mainly because of the low volume (I have a review that [REDACTED] will probably forget to include in his rota; Joe had a review that remains mired in the production room). That leaves four reviews. Except Jason wrote two, which means there’s a podium placement for everyone! But it’s manly easy because how ridiculously one side the affair is. There are no bad submissions in this list, but there’s certainly one putting the rest in the shade.


THIRD Tag: The Power of Paint [PC] by Follow_freeman

Thus far, Freeman’s biggest asset across his reviews has been game choice. It’s been brilliant, often picking out games I’ve never heard of. For the most part, Tag’s another staller pick, but the brevity of the game does work against you somewhat. Maybe in an attempt to pad the review out, you spend as much time talking about Portal 2 as you do Tag.

But it’s a dilemma. You say all you need to say; I know how Tag functions, I have an idea how it looks. It’s only an hour long, so if you discuss any puzzles, it could be a bit spoilery. So you’re left with what you have; a decent snippet of an obscure game I’m happy to learn more about.

SECOND Yakuza 6: The Song of Life [PS4] Jason

Jason’s review is a little longer than he usually puts out, and the problem here is that it feels longer, too. There’s a lot of text to crunch through and, while there’s nothing I can pick out and declare as information better off unshared, it could have really done with being a bit shorter.

But it wasn’t, and here we are. There are some good paragraphs within, the discussion of 5 and 6’s paths between multiple and single protagonists being a highlight. I thought the mentioning and dismissing of the online play was very well handled, too. The second to last paragraph was perhaps the weakest; an undisguised list of minor gripes rife with word repetition. But I will say that Jason either knows or manages to make it look like he knows the ins and out of the series. It does lend an authorities tone.

It’s good of Jason to put the Switch down for a while.

WIN Silent Hill: Homecoming [360] by Masters

Here comes Marc to casually blow every review written thus far this year out of the water and produce the (second) best Homecoming review on the site.

Jason’s review had authority, but Marc wastes little time in letting you know that he knows this series, knows what made it work in the past and what it’s forgotten in its quest to be horror’s uneventful middle ground. In that light, it’s savage, bringing up previous series highs to contrast against Homecoming’s myriad lows.

And I know they’re good points because I made a lot of them myself. Homecoming fancies itself a series reboot a la Res 4, but the inability to tell a decent tale, the panicked everyman being replaced by a competent brawler, the weird middle section of the game where they forgot to supply consumables – it’s all there, succinctly and damningly described.

The only complaint I have is that I’m not sure how effective this will be against someone not as familiar with the series as I am. But I don’t care for those people, anyway. Everyone should suffer as we have. This is a great review for a once great series long since lost its way. It’s good of Marc to lay in a couple of fantastically accurate kicks to its rotting corpse.

For us. For them. For you.

Thanks for the topic, as always, and congrats to those who placed ahead of me. Congrats to those who placed behind me, as well. I guess just... congrats to those who placed!

"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

Can't say I'm surprised Marc won. Nothing against the other reviews, but his blew away a lot of what I've read from anyone in quite some time. Just one of those reviews where everything seemed to flow together wonderfully and nothing looked out-of-place or unnecessary.

If anything, I should be taking some notes; probably make Jason's job of copy-editing me go a bit easier!

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

Thanks for this, Gary. And Rob, that's pretty high praise, appreciate it.

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!