Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: Nov. 19 to Nov. 25, 2018 -- The Lost Topic

You can hold the applause.

Yes, this thread is super, record-breaking late. When it started to look like my RotW was going to be running up against the next RotW, I thought, maybe I'll hold off, so that Rob gets his out first and my tardiness is egregious to the point of at least being exceptional.

But that wasn't good enough.

After I saw Zydrate and other malcontents angrily calling for my head, I pacified them with the usual blandishments while secretly plotting to allow Jason's topic to make mine over two weeks late.

In all seriousness, Real Life properly interfered in a way that it usually doesn't, and here we are. We all know RotW is thankless work -- in helping Emp help Joe, I was actually the one to come to Joe's rescue, however indirectly, while Emp received undeserved praise for saving the day, despite the fact that in covering Emp's week for him, I'm the true hero. (And Emp simply got to cover an easier week than the one meant for him. What a crock of shit.)

Anyway, there were a million reviews last week, or something like that, and Venter contributed three, CptRetroBlue did two, and six folks did one. Mariner made a welcome return, and Zydrate subbed a review along with a proclamation to haters in her own comments section. The above-mentioned pariah Emp, as well as returning enthusiast hastypixels, also gave us contributions. There's also a serious review-cum-history lesson from Freeman in what is one of his most readable reviews in some time. A person named Brian submitted a very long, technical review. I too, submitted a review, but it's ineligible this week for silly reasons, and went on to be spurned by both Rob and Jason. Good times.

Anyway, without further delay, here are the winners.

REVIEW OF THE WEEK
Jason Venter's Castle Creeps TD

Venter always has well thought out arguments (no strange non sequiturs), excellent transitions, and scores that match the feel of his reviews -- making for consistently readable work. Where he sometimes falls down is with making the reviews feel personal, as was the case with his other two submissions this week, but thankfully, was NOT the case with Castle Creeps TD. Everyone can relate to hanging on to playing a game for longer than they should, and struggling to come to grips with why that is. This is great work.


SECOND PLACE
Emp's Heavy Burger

Gary gets off to a bit of a slow start here, making lots of comparisons to other games and I had some difficulty understanding how the game played. Fortunately for us both, he ended the review strong, summarizing how the thing plays, and why it works very succinctly and in entertaining fashion over the last few paragraphs. Gary was looking to continue a bit of a personal RotW winning streak, which I am glad to bring to an end.


THIRD PLACE
Follow Freeman's Half-Life

Freeman's review is one of his strongest, most 'review-like' reviews in some time. It's also a bit uneven, but the good parts are good enough that it mostly doesn't matter. The opening paragraph is great, and he seems to set up a nice run down with the line, "Who can forget the world of Half-Life," only to curiously run down the game's technical achievements in sound. Then there are two tangents that feel unnecessary and counterproductive to your argument that this is a seminal 'paradigm shifter': 1. that Unreal is actually better but less celebrated, which only serves to suggest that your view might be that Half-Life is overrated, and 2. that the game should be punished for ill use of the conventions it popularized. You debunk this yourself, but then continue to mention it. Better that you had expounded on your bit about expansions, which you seemed enthusiastic about and the popularity of which help prove your thesis. Still, a well written review with good focus and flow.

OTHER THOUGHTS

mariner's Octopath Traveler review works opposite to Emp's: it starts impossibly strong, with tons of personality, smooth, easy to follow writing, and cogent analysis -- but when things get more and more technical, it loses steam and could have used more show than tell. The score also surprised me -- it didn't seem like a 5 until it jumped out at me at the end. But it's so good out of the gates, that it is absolutely notable.

Zydrate's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild comes off a bit less bloggy than with previous efforts I've read, which she made mention of, but it also has some issues that the last few reviews didn't: some tense issues, and a less focused, more stream of consciousness structure -- the latter of which could be fine, but I found that it was hard to get a read on your level of enjoyment of the game. The piece felt like meandering descriptions interspersed with criticism and then 4.5 a little out of nowhere.

Brian's Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition review is obviously written by someone with great writing. The issue is that the review reads like a blog entry directed at those squarely in the know. Were I the target audience, I probably would have held the piece in much higher esteem. There is a lot of talk of price points and expansion packs which instantly date a review, lots of comparisons to other games of the same ilk (some of them very technical and with no setup for noobs).

hastypixels' Chrono Cross has hasty showing off some of the best writing I've seen from him here, and yet, the first fourth of the review could feels like it could be scrapped in order to begin with "You are Serge." The review is long, and much of it is, as you put it, "prevaricating" -- there's a lot of, 'more on that later,' which wouldn't be necessary if the setup was dispensed with. There's also the issue of the spoiler. I get that the game is old, but the inclusion of that discussion makes the piece feel less like a review and more like a general essay on your thoughts about the impact of a game that is important to you.

CptRetroBlue's X-Men and Willow reviews both covered all the bases. The Willow review was pretty good if stiff, but what happened at the end? X-Men, though, is easily the better of the two despite a bit of a rocky start. The proclamation about Marvel's popularity at the time -- is that true? I don't know that it is. And was 'enigmatic' the word you were looking for there? After the first paragraph, the review is very informative and flows well and doesn't overstay its welcome: especially good traits for a retro review. Some simple spacing adjustments would go a long way towards making it even more readable too.

Jason Venter's Mobius Final Fantasy and Swamp Defense 2 are both well written pieces with very good flow -- nothing unusual for Venter offerings, I know -- but they both fall short of his gold-medal winning effort this week. Swamp Defense 2 feels a bit rote, and Final Fantasy's first few paragraphs read a bit like a press release, which is a criticism that has long been (often unfairly) leveled at Venter's works. Fortunately, he more than made up for any lack of entertainment through these two reviews with his Castle Creeps TD piece.

Anyway, c'est tout.

Second prize is a set of steak knives.

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

I'd be madder at the streak going down if this topic wasn't so unfashionably late that it made me forget that said streak was even a thing! Doublelapped effort, here.

But you made up for it by going one step beyond and featuring genuinely helpful comments for all. I look forward to reading your next RotW sometime next year. It's a shame it will be for a week set several months prior to publishing.

For us. For them. For you.

Haha, alright, well I deserve all the late comments from everyone. Except for Joe.

I probably should have mentioned this, but there was a close race for third spot in my mind, between Freeman, Zydrate and mariner. The three reviews all had moments of greatness, with some issues here and there which tempered my enjoyment.

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

Mostly a fair criticism of mine. I had no editors to look over it so when I came back to it after a day of writing I just found the usual syntax errors and cleaned it up myself.

Not sure what you mean by tense, nor do I believe it's hard to tell how much I actually like the game. The last bit serves as a summary for that. It had some issues, my biggest being that the world might be TOO big but was otherwise a very fun game that I plan on revisiting some day.

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Thanks for the topic, Masters, and congratulations to those who placed. Which includes me, for once... so I'm especially pleased even if I had to wait a bit. I wrote three reviews in one day, which I haven't done in something like a decade, so it was nice to see that one of them was capable of claiming the crown. And it was good to mostly get the games in question out of my system.

"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

Thank you for the placement! Although I'm not sure what you mean by this review being one of my most "review-like" reviews in a while; perhaps this is in reference towards my tendencies to challenge my readers to consider the medium? In either case, yes, I'm very proud of my great work with this one, especially the very paragraph you objected to. There was a graveyard's worth of dead giveaways that I was referring to atmosphere and worldbuilding in relations to aesthetics, and we all know aesthetics can be more than visual. Even those of us not privy to that knowledge can catch on thanks to my parallelism between those visual aspects I preface the list with.

Furthermore, it would be atrocious and dishonest of me to exclude those counterpoints you objected to my mentioning. I wrote a thesis, not a lowly sales pitch, and any good thesis must account for counterarguments. Or perhaps a better word than "thesis" would be "exploration," because I write in such a way that challenges my readers to see other points of view and even change their own if the facts demand it. A careful examination of my piece shows plainly that I did indeed intend to suggest that while Half-Life was the more influential game than Unreal, the latter was a better source to draw from in some respects. Nothing I said took away from my statement of Half-Life being the a good game or a more influential game than Unreal, which are statements everyone with the slightest pedestrian knowledge on the topics doesn't need me to validate for them.

Anyway, I hope I've managed to be a critical service in both my review and this response. And don't worry about being late; it's a service that you challenge me and the other writers to evaluate our own work, and it come very much appreciated. Best of wishes in your IRL affairs!

Thank you for covering me/EmP, Marc. I really appreciate it. Don't sweat the lateness, because taking care of real life is a higher priority.

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

No problem, Joe. As you said: real life. Also, my bellyaching wasn't for real, and I wasn't sweating the lateness. 90% of what I said in this topic was messing around.

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

Your hard work is appreciated! Thank you. And yeah, you pretty much caught me out, right? That certainly was more essay than critique, though I hadn't actually distinguished between a review versus retrospective for that writeup.

I suppose I could have called out its laundry list of faults and marked it low on the rating scale, but the emotional impact of Chrono Cross deserved deeper reflection. The fuss sure was interesting, though. I haven't had so many comments on any of my reviews before - an uncommon plus!

The civility of this community continues to impress me, by the way. So, thanks again. :)

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