Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: May 13-19, 2019 -- The I Have A Ton Of Work To Do And Also THIS?!?! edition

Cool, swamped at work, driving somewhere to cover something every day and it's my week to do this. Four review available for judging; let's get this done with quickly while I have a small window of opportunity, before that window shuts and this one enters world-record levels of tardiness. I mean, I could do it during my free time at home, but I prefer spending slacking/lazy time playing games, watching movies and reading. Hell, if not for slow periods at work where I can do my "personal project" writing, there'd be no way in the world I'd still be doing this. As it is, it's a win/win. Makes slow days go faster and keeps the rotation at a level where 1-2 people don't get overwhelmed by this task.

With no further ado, here we go!

Picking a non-placer was a very tough job, where I had to essentially come up with any reason possible to place one review above or below another. So, uh, sorry, Jason! While this was a very good review that likely would have placed during a lot of weeks that at least I'm the judge, there were two things working against it this week. First, much like EmP and that deluge of Telltale reviews he took such delight in vomiting up all over my weeks, "tower defense" is one of those genres where a little goes an obscenely long way for me. Probably was a testament to your writing that my eyes stayed on your text and not my computer's clock while reading it. Secondly, and more importantly, your tagline specifically states that one flaw turns it from a great game to one people'd want to avoid. But then, I read the review and go through paragraph after paragraph of praise, with the only issue you note being minor load times before stages. And then you bring up its obscene difficulty and how it was originally made for the free-to-play crowd right before the conclusion. I guess, to me, if the game has a flaw so notable that you feel compelled to mention it in your tagline, said flaw should probably be discussed early on. In the journalism profession, the way you did it is what we call "burying the lede". It's a good review, but while reading it, I found myself spending a lot of that time wondering just what the big problem was and getting impatient while doing so.

THIRD PLACE

Pickhut's ACA NeoGeo: Riding Hero (PS4)

Note to self: If I ever get to the period with the PS4 that I did with the 360, where I started buying Live Arcade and Indie games on whims, DO NOT touch this one. I never really got into Out Run or Hang-On, but did play games like that enough to know how they operate. And man, after reading this, it was kind of amazing how much that formula was botched. You just did a good job taking down this game. A brutally difficult and cheap quarter-muncher thrown onto the PS4 with nothing done to alleviate the quarter-munching aspects (other than the lack of needing actual quarters)! Not the cup of tea of any sane person, I'd wager.

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SECOND PLACE

Mariner's Minit (Switch)

I give you a lot of credit here. I read that first couple paragraphs and found myself in that "Here we go again; one of those reviews for a game that just sounds…ugh; guess I have my non-placer!" And then kept reading and found myself pretty captivated by how good of a job you did justifying the quality of an ugly little game where your progress is measured in 60-second increments. I loved how you described this game, with how it might take a couple time-spans to figure out a puzzle, to how finding shortcuts can allow you to progress further, to how you get this sense of accomplishment from simply discovering a new screen. The more I read, the more this review won me over and got me interested in this game. I mean, I'll likely never play it because my backlog only grows, never shrinks. But I was interested!

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REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

EmP's Neko Navy (PC)

Since you always love reading my reviews and how I'll tangent into personal anecdotes or anything not related to the game I'm reviewing at the drop of a hat, here's another one! When I first started reviewing at Gamefaqs back around '03 or '04 or whenever, I did a ton of shooter reviews to the degree I think people looked at that as "my genre". This was for two reasons -- as someone trying to get better at this, games like that were perfect to play through in an evening or so and crank out a review the next day. I'd be getting critiques on a very regular basis (since it was RotD back then) and using those to improve. Also, it seemed like everyone who was considered really good at reviewing by the masses had a number of shooter reviews and they were awesome to read, with a lot of them giving these great, vivid descriptions of individual levels. You could feel like you were experiencing the game while just reading the review to the degree that more than once, I'd be playing a game and get a flashback to a review I'd read of it while doing a particular level.

Now, to your review: It gave me good flashbacks to that time. You have a weird, Japanese shooter, you gave great descriptions of stages and the total chaos residing there, such as enemies appearing once and never being seen again. There's the addition of a crab boss picture right next to you talking about said boss to add to the "I can see what he's saying" vibe. I got a lot of enjoyment finally reading this (I was intrigued by Marc's comments on it, but decided to save reading it until I did the RotW) and, damn, I'm going to have to clear a bit of spare time to hook myself up to a shooter in the near future. Probably won't be anything this zany, but still…
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Quick and easy week. Off to do other stuff. Probably work-related, at least for a bit.

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

Thanks for the third placement! Glad you still managed to get into the review despite not really being into these type of racers that much. I had a "sneaking" suspicion that Riding Hero wasn't going to be a fun experience to play, but actually being part of the horror was another thing altogether.

Congrats to Mariner and EmP for getting RotW! And Jason for contributing!

I head spaceshit noises.

Thanks for getting to this, around what sounds like a pretty hectic week. Congrats to everyone else, as you all placed above me!

"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

Congratz to the winners! On a note of some description I've linked this on the Discord server, just as I do new reviews.

You know, because activity.

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

To keep the let's talk about meeeee vibe going, I've been working hard this year in making every tagline I put on these review a cringeworthy pun, because 2019 is the year of the pun. It's must be true; I said it in January.

ANYWAY! I worried a little that the Boston-influenced pun in this title would go unnoticed, but then realised it was a Rob week, and decided to show uncharacteristic faith for a chance. That'll teach me!

I share a sense of nostalgia in writing shooter reviews. I cut my teeth on 16/32bit JRPGs, but I was surrounded by people who could and would bust out a brilliant shooter review on whim, and I often got caught up in that current. I often enjoy writing them, and I would write more but every single time the chance to review a new one comes along, that bloody Marc Golding demands he be allowed to play it instead, then subs it six months late.

Thanks for the win, and props to the rest of the field. We may not be currently dragging in big numbers, but we've certainly yet to feel any absence of quality.

For us. For them. For you.

For what it's worth, EmP, I loved your "More than a feline" tagline and recognized that it was a song lyric despite literally knowing only the words "more than a feeling" from periodically hearing those few words from the chorus on commercials or what have you.

"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

Since this site is HONESTGAMERS, I'll be honest and say that I feel a deep chagrin about not getting that pun. I won't even use the "I was in a hurry to get this out this week during the only window of opportunity I had" excuse because for me and my "listen to 6-8 hours of music a day or go crazy" mentality, missing that under any circumstance is nigh unforgivable.

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