Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: March 19-25 -- Where I (hopefully) remembered everyone!

Here comes a new RotW by me, this time including EmP, since there's a few hard feelings just because I forgot him again with a held back review during my last time up and I'm the only one who ever forgets anything and he's the only one who ever gets forgotten and now I'm apparently known as [REDACTED]. So I'll give his review a pity read and then forget it, but because I said I read it, he'll have to take my word for it, even though I know it's eating him up inside, meaning that I WIN!!!

As a side note, I write these introductions before I actually start reading the reviews, so at this moment, I have no idea who will place, so if his doesn't, I eagerly anticipate a whole new level of grief-giving! And who knows if it will; this week looks to have a lot of good stuff. A total of nine reviews by seven different writers, so it'll be fun to see who gets the win and places. None of those reviewers are me, so Jason won't have to worry about anything related to skipping me. So everyone wins. Except EmP. Hopefully.

FIRST! Some words about the non-placers, since there wasn't a single review in the bunch that'd put me in the "if you haven't anything nice to say, COULD YOU FOR ONCE SHUT UP?!?!?" zone. In no particular order:

Jason: You did a really good job with two simplistic arcade games. Talking about the reasons you prefer the NES version of Double Dragon to the arcade original were nice and you also did a good job with both explaining how you got to play Moon Patrol in the Days of Yore, as well as explaining the fundamentals of this game. As a side note, this might be the most shmup-heavy RotW in history. Three pure ones, one classic prototype in Moon Patrol and one run-n-gun (at least for parts of the game) version in Super Turrican 2.

FollowFreeman: Good to see Over Horizon get a little love from someone else. Of your two reviews, I thought Super Turrican was the better. Really, kind of tantalizing, as you give an overview of the game and then blow through a "LOOK AT ALL THE COOL STUFF HERE!!!!!" paragraph in a way that should make anyone who likes games of this sort start drooling in anticipation. Quite effective way to bestow praise.

EmP: It was less you than the competition and, perhaps, the subject matter. When it comes to your reviews that I love the most, you have strong feelings about either the game as a whole, or at least some portion of it. So, I can count to being enthralled by your sarcastic, biting wit tearing it apart or your praise (sometimes, also biting) -- both of which tend to lead to memorable reads. This seemed to be the definition of a middle-of-the-road 3/5 game. You gave a great rundown of its mechanics (I've played 2-3 RTS games in my life and understood everything you were saying) and how various elements complicate things as you play further, as well as how changing maps before playing can be the key between winning and losing…and that was that. On a purely fundamental level, this might have been, if not the best, right up there with the best. But it just felt that this game didn't spark you. The sort you play, come away with an "Eh, that was decent, I guess" and then try to write something about it.

Pickhut: This was a very strong review that, like pretty much all the others here, could have placed in a lot of weeks. To me, it kind of got out to a slow start, but picked up steam the longer it went. You especially did great at comparing the various modes and how the one fell completely flat due to repetition and breaking no new ground, leading to this game being a bit of a rip-off since you're paying full price for half a great game and half a poor one. As someone who played a couple old-school Darius games, it is nice to see that the Fish-Loving Shooter Series still has some life in it!

THIRD PLACE

Masters' Hyperbolic Ignition (PC)

First, the negatives. 1. You didn't spend anywhere near the required period of time making fun of this game's name. At least it kind of cracked me up. 2. It's not your Silent Hill: Homecoming review, where I could auto-first it and tell everyone else they were fighting for second, whether they're cool with that or not. Still, you did a great job of really progressing from point to point in this review. I'd say the highest point was how you gradually built up to how the only reliable way you could survive was to lure enemies into a bombing path, but then found out that element was really nerfed, leaving this game as really, really frustrating. The early comparison to Thunder Force 2 was a great reference point for me, as well. I'm not familiar with this shmup sub-genre, but I have played that game, so I loved that example, as well as your biting comment on how well that game was received. I mean: "To be clear: a wholly inferior cardboard shadow of a shooter which was the nadir of its own canon back in the late eighties." was just a great sentence to lead up to an eventual 1/5.

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SECOND PLACE

Joe's Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (PC)

It really works to talk about this review after talking about Marc's. He loves his shooters, you love your "scare yo' ass off" games and both of you were disappointed. I really loved your step-by-step journey through this game and how it let you down at every turn. It has great atmosphere and sounds and lighting and stuff! Oh…for a long time, that's all you have, as nothing really happens. OH YEAH!!! SCARY PIG MAN GONNA GET ME!!!!! Oh…they're not really that tough and can be easily avoided and run past. Oh…now that I saw behind the curtain, that's it for this game's tricks. You really did great at conveying your high hopes and how they were dashed, one by one, leaving you with a mediocre game that gets the atmosphere down right, but fails at putting a good game around it.

Oh, and I'm just going to ignore your tagline pun. The less said of that sort of thing, the better.

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REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

Fiddlesticks' Inside (PC)

I suppose some could take issue with how you basically gave away the main twist of this game, but I personally loved it for a couple specific reasons. First, when doing RotW, I find myself reading a lot of reviews for artistic games by lesser-tier or indie designers that seem really intriguing where I want to know what their minimalistic story is telling or symbolizing, but know I'll never play them, so I'm left to search online to find out how things end. Second, I'm an old-school gamer and have a certain level of intense contempt for games that are artistic for art's sake. It's one thing if you have a great game with a bunch of weird stuff around it for people to come to their conclusions about what it all means, but so many of these games seem to be kind of dull as an actual game (as in "I want to sit on my ass for a couple hours and be entertained by the action I'm perpetrating on my TV/computer screen"). And so many of these games get SOOOOOOO lauded by various reviewers -- not because they're fun or anything stupid like that, but because "they tackle sensitive issues" or "they're IMPORTANT" (just imagine me saying the stuff in quotations while making air quotes, dragging out the words --ie: IMMMPPPOOOORRRRRRRRRTTTAANNNNNTT-- and sneering angrily). So I really like how you strip all of this stuff away, simply describing how the game is mediocre, regardless of artistic merit, and then telling exactly what the big, cool thing at the end is. I like this. Oh, and your writing was wonderfully descriptive, as well. As far as I'm concerned, this is the perfect way to handle a game like this, that aspires for artistic, but as said very clearly, is somewhat lacking for entertainment with its really simplistic puzzles.

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Good week to be a judge. Keep it up, people!

And thus concludes my attempts at motivational speaking for this month or, more likely, year/decade/lifespan.

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

Thanks for doing this, Rob. And for getting it up in a timely fashion. And for the placement and kind words about this review. And the Silent Hill one.

It really was a hell of a week: I read all of the reviews and they were all good. Strangely enough, part of me was hoping that Venter would win with his Double Dragon review, which was one of his best I've come across in a long time.

I thought Pick's was a standout too, but I'm also a sucker for a great shooter review and a comeback story. Where've you been, dude?

Congrats to everyone, really.

EDIT: It's funny that you mentioned Silent Hill in my write up, Rob. The last sentence of the Hyperbolic Ignition review was an appropriated Silent Hill 2 line.

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

Good job getting this up [REDACTED]. Keep it up and you can have your name back. You're right about this week's review effort. The game's okay, but there's nothing there for me to really big up or tear down. That doesn't often lead to my best output.

Congrats to Marc, Joe and Fiddle for placing this week. Hard luck on Jason and Pick in particular who I thought wrote a couple of very strong reviews, and props to Freeman for continuing to display great choices on what to write about.

For us. For them. For you.

Thank you kindly for the win. I enjoyed subbing (I believe) the first review this week and then having a bunch of people follow up with their reviews in a matter of days. Nice work, everyone.

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Thanks for the topic, Overdrive, and congratulations to the winners (a list of awesome writers that sadly didn't include me this week).

"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

I think probably all four of us could have done this topic and had a different top 3. Twas tougher than usual to pick the three that stood out the most. Funny thing is that it's Jason's DD review that's getting mentioned and I personally liked the MP one a bit more, so yeah, lot of perception differences as far as this week's action went!

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

It definitely was a tough week, and I knew that when I was pushing to get my review submitted before the last day ended. I could've waited an extra day, but what's the fun in that?

Thanks for the comments on my Dariusburst review. I was concerned I might have dragged it on too much, so it's good to know people still liked it. There's a lot of tidbits I had to leave out about the game, that I'm thinking about putting up a supplemental blog post. As for Masters' question about my reviewing absence from the site for over a month: I got burned out. I started feeling it after submitting my Dark Witch 3 review last month, and figured I could at least get a Dariusburst review up at the beginning of March. Wasn't happening. Took me near the end of the month to finally get back into the groove and finish the review. Hopefully that doesn't happen again soon.

Anyway, congrats to the top placers! Masters, Joe, and Fiddlesticks for taking the big spot. Good showing.

I head spaceshit noises.

I had a much longer response typed out before I lost it.

Thank you for placement, and for getting this topic out timely during a tough week. Congrats as well to Masters and the winner Fiddlesticks.

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.

Few RotW calls are easy. Sometimes you get weeks like I just had where there's a review like Marc's Homecoming which just blows other submissions away, but it's worth repeating something Jason often says - there's really no bad reviews. Sometimes one review gets a nod over another on ludicrously little, almost petty things because there's so little separating them. And sometimes that changes from person to person; had this been my week, then Jason's Double Dragon probably would have won, but Rob's not wrong when he says he prefers his other review, which did not place at all. Jerec said a while back in a tourney (that Janus made - what happened to that fellow?) that most of us have been doing this for so long and do it so well that we're all as capable as each other, and weeks like this just cement his point.

That's why these topics remain interesting to me, even after all this time. Except when it's my week, in which case I hate them with the fury of a million desert suns.

For us. For them. For you.