Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW // 30th July – 5th August // Face Off Edition. NOW WITH BONUS JOE

There’s only two reviews this week. Maybe the rest of the world is like my little island and it’s too bloody hot to do anything productive. Maybe the Production Room’s backed up to capacity again. I don’t know, but the result is I have more time swearing endlessly at the fact it takes me half an hour and a dozen attempts to get Yakuza 0 running.

So, then. Masters vs. Freeman face off it is.

Both these are good reviews but very different. Marc offers a breezy look at a new game tackling an old foundation, while Freeman has a look at an old game trying to update old foundations.

I think Marc certainly starts stronger, getting right to the point of the game and the driving argument of his review. Freeman kind of meanders around his topic, name dropping two games that would struggle to have less to do with the game he’s talking about. I get the tone he was going for, but using two huge genre staples against an obscure limited release platformer sets up a very false equivalency.

It also seems a bit unfair to compare SEGA-CD cutscenes to huge-budget anime cinema releases and modern day work. I think it’s fine to exaggerate sometimes for the sake of trying to say something funny -- I’d never have been allowed to post a single review if that were so -- but if it’s a line you start to cross, then readers might start questioning your credibility on the subject.

I think the following paragraphs ensure that doesn't happen (and the jungle in Maine barb was a great line). There’s a few word repetitions (of course follows on tight to itself quite noticeable once) but there’s several instance where the youtube citations are proved particularly valuable. The lack of invincible frames perhaps being the strongest.

The majority of Marc’s review is ridiculously tight (so much so, he’s not able to make any specific R-Type 3 reference and has to make do with just a series plug instead). It talks about how it’s a good shooter with a good gimmick and that neither aspect overshadow the other. It does this in a very concise manner.

Where Freeman’s low point was his meandering introduction, Marc loses the most steam with his penultimate paragraph, where he quickly stuffs in things like graphics and sound because he couldn’t find room for them earlier. You almost save it with the ho-hum line. But only almost.

Conclusion: Freeman produces a well cited, well written review that sometimes over-stretches in its attempt to bash its subject matter. It’s more ambitious that Masters’ review, but not as concise or authoritative. Very good reviews both. But Masters comes out on top this week.

BONUS ADDEM: BELATED JOE ATTACK

Pesky Joe, ruining my easy week. Grumble.

Reviewing a series in a combo is hard going. I’ve managed to more or less cover all the Silent Hill games, but only by doing a couple a year because running all that back to back sounds like hell to me (also heartbreaking - obligatory Konomi suck reference here), so props to Joe for his Sly Cooper run, a series of games I have exactly zero experience with. Which has made your endeavour of more interest to me.

So, yeah, this is a good review. It loses steam in the last few paragraphs where you try to jam in the stuff you couldn’t fit in elsewhere and offer up a couple of samey points, but the review itself tackles a pretty difficult subject; that there's a lot of variety and it’s all of a pretty jumbled quality. The review’s highlights was walking through the examples which did not separate everything into a simple good/bad list but jumbled everything together to form a more coherent picture of the whole. Good, consistent work. Finish the series off, and I’ll make you one of those dumb HTML chain things I used to do to link all the reviews together. Assuming I can remember how

(I can’t)

For us. For them. For you.

I also had a holdover review, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. It's okay, because I did forget one of your holdovers once, too. At any rate, good topic and thank you for having it out so quickly.

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

This is an interesting topic -- thanks for the slight nod. Kind of unfortunate that last week we had 10 reviews, and this week, only two. Although you're right, I checked the Production Room and there are 3 Joe reviews in there, and 1 Rob review. Looks like Venter continues to be overwhelmed...

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

Still a good week for both of us! Considering how close it was, someone's lucky I decided to do this before the El Viento review, eh? I would like it recognized that system limitations are no excuse for bad continuity or baffling setups like the scene in which all that is provided visually is a corner of a room... somewhere. As for my supposedly suspect authority, I'll go ahead and promote Snatcher as a game that showed how to do that right with simple tech, but that's a peripheral matter, anyway. I am surprised that my use of alliteration went over your head, but I'll be sure to keep in mind your criticisms of how the reader may not understand how terrible the gameplay is, despite the citations and vivid descriptions I provided.

Since I've done plenty of positive reviews and people seem to like an entertaining skim more than my past looks at the potential of the medium from an artistic perspective, you can look forward to more reviews of bad games in the future, which will be improving in quality despite my increased busyness IRL and juggling full-length film analysis reviews on Letterboxd.

A song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RqzFkV2K4g
Film reviews: https://letterboxd.com/Follow_Freeman/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVo7uK3vlYw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aToOckImfM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVpJTLpPLD0

Can't blame Jason this time for mine! He had it ready either Friday or Saturday and I went to post it, but realized that even though I prepared the oover art, I forgot to attach it to the listing and it was on my office computer instead of my home computer (because I really prefer photoshop to gimp, as far as stuff like that goes). And then I forgot about it, so it'll be up for my week this week, to be held over for another week.

tl;dr version: Shit, this time, it was my fault!!!

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

The hell? So what does the addition of Joe's review do to your neat finish?

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