Forums > Contributor Zone > Review of the Week: March 11 - 17

Emp's body continues to fall apart, so I'm guest judging, much to everyone's chagrin or indifference -- not sure which. Anyway, this week there are only five reviews by four authors, or I would never have agreed to save his bacon here. All the reviews are good, and I'd already read them all and commented on a few of them, so here we go.

Wait. Before we go, I'm told that the reason for the slowdown in review volume is largely due to Jason's inability to service the Production Room in a timely fashion. That guy is going through a lot as well. I suggest that bedridden Gary lend a hand with pushing pieces out of the PR while Venter rights his personal ship -- it'll give the otherwise helpless curmudgeon something to do that he can actually manage and help out our mighty webmaster. Yeah? No?

Anyway, CRB (that's what I'm going with from here on out since we already have a dude named "retro") subbed two reviews this week. Both are pretty good, but only one of them elicited a controversial response in its feedback topic. Hello Kitty World seems a bit light on content, and so the review follows suit. Although! While it is short and easy to read, I didn't get as good a feel for how the game plays as I'd like. Again, that's not down to the review being too brief, but perhaps the review is missing a passage or two that could help flesh out the description of the game experience.

Lunar: The Silver Star is a much bigger game, and it follows that the review has a lot more meat. The review demonstrates some of the best 'flow' I've seen in a CRB piece, and that's good news. From the story paragraph to the presentation to the gameplay -- it all works pretty smoothly and seems to have been proofread, something CRB told me he sometimes can't be bothered with. There are good word choices here and less awkwardness than in previous reviews. My issues with it are that the intro paragraph is a bit confusing, and the way the game's shortcomings are handled (weak story, monotonous battles, over-too-soon campaign) make the score feel too high.

hasty's review is an interesting and well written 'take' on the old relic, Bomberman, for the NES. In humourous fashion, hasty seems to both admonish himself for digressing, and insist that he isn't digressing. Well, he is, and I suspect that he knows and it's all tongue in cheek and the feeling is that the chatter on the periphery enriches the read, in blog/article style. I've made the 'blog criticism' before, twice very recently in the direction of two writers who've since left HG. I stand by it here: it can feel like more is less, as extraneous enrichment can easily come off as frustrating ramble. That said, this is one of the most focused hasty reviews I've read, and as always, I come away learning things I never thought I would, and no one can say his style is not distinct, that it is dry or cookie cutter.

Pickhut's Wonder Boy Returns starts out very smooth, and ends the same way. It's an even handed look at a remake of a game that was never great, and so the remake isn't either, but the original was solid, if repetitive fun, and Returns offers more of the same with some slick attempts at modernizing the experience. There are a few awkward constructions in the review, particularly the paragraph that begins: "If you've never played...". But on the whole, this is an effort that came close to vying for the win this week.

Joe's Dust: An Elysian Tail is a fantastic review and a pretty clear winner this week. It's also a pretty ideal way to go about writing a praise review: it gets the bad out of the way first, and then proceeds to categorically run down the overwhelming good points before tying it all together with a, "see, all of that, the collective of those positives, is why the minus doesn't matter at all." I have this game, and I played a few minutes of it but it got lost in my Steam library FLOOD; it's a testament to Joe's writing that I'm reconsidering spending more time with it. Kudos.

That's all folks.

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

Appreciate you picking up mu slack. I thought I was on the mend, caught a new bug, and was thrown back to square one. I feel better then I felt yesterday, so I'll just hope that continues.

'grats to all that wrote this week. Good stuffs all around.

For us. For them. For you.

Again, thanks for reading and liking the review, Masters. Considering you played the original, it's nice hearing that you understood the tone of the review and how it compares to the first. It's a straightforward type of platformer, but I still wanted to ensure the reader "got it."

Congrats to Joe on the RotW, and to hasty and Cpt for also putting in the work this week!

I head spaceshit noises.

Jason's overloaded? Sounds like that bug is going around. My recovery is slow at best so I'm glad to be pumping out reviews of any flavour. In retrospect I know I should have spent a little more time talking about game mechanics than personal experience, but as far as compelling writing goes... what's more interesting?

Obviously for me it was more fun to write about my experience with the game as a whole, so that's what I did. I knew what I was leaving out. :)

At any rate, thanks for the feedback, it's always welcome.

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

bump

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

Doh! Sorry, Marc!

Thank you for not only covering this week for EmP, but giving me the win and a critique. Sorry I'm a forgetful bastard. The beatings I've taken in Sekiro over the last week must've scrambled my brains.

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

No problem, Joe. There's something badass about winning all the RotWs and not even noticing!

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

Cool guys don't look at winnings?

Something like that.

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