Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, 2019 -- What the hell, Sunday...what the hell?

It was a quick and easy, RotW, I thought to myself. We had entered Sunday and there were only four reviews to go through, so I felt like it'd be a breeze.

And then HELL SUNDAY came upon me, where Marc possibly doubled his 2019 output with two reviews, Joe had an OctJOEber flashback and also submitted two and EmP delivered the coup de grace with one review that showed him gleefully taking all manner of shots at my age or my penchant for chatting informally (or, as he refers to it, rambling) in my reviews.

And brought us to a total of 9 reviews by 6 different people. My easy week turned into quite the battle. Fortunately, even if I'm showing my age, I am still limping along respectfully, so I am still doing this RotW even if you jerks made it tougher on me than I'd have preferred.

In an order for honorable mention:

CRB shows up with a review of the arcade version of Captain Commando -- a game I reviewed twice: once as my first, very primitive GameFAQs review and then re-did for this site for, uh, some reason. It was a fairly short review that had a good bit of enthusiasm and did a good job of giving the basics. I did think the first paragraph read a bit rough to where I understood you were talking about the history of the CC character, but the sentences ran together in a kind of awkward manner where it seemed a couple thoughts went unfinished as you went on to the next one. Still, it always is nice to see someone put together a more positive take on a game that I found (at least on the SNES port that I played for my reviews) to be a blah Final Fight clone.

Jason reviewed a Picross game, giving us two Picross-game reviews over the past handful of weeks. Well, since I'm in mostly-retirement from those Kemco reviews, it's good to know we have another niche to step into! I did have to chuckle a bit at that sentence following your description of the rules where you said that previous paragraph might not make the game seem exciting. Mainly because my eyes kept glazing over while I was reading that paragraph and it took me 3-4 tries to get through it and begin to understand just how to play this game. Which isn't really anything to fault you over, as I'd imagine that explaining any of these brain-teaser games to someone uninitiated in them might prove more difficult than actually solving the puzzles. Twas a good review, but on a Rob's Interest Level category, it was right there with point-n-click adventures and walking simulators and virtually anything a a certain subsection of reviewers uses terms like "very important" and "it might not be fun, but…" as reasons to play. Which is not a compliment to the subject matter. But you did good at explaining the game to people who'd be interested! I especially thought discussing how this isn't a NOOB game due to how there aren't any novice-size puzzles, BUT, that makes it a good value to experienced Picrossers who wouldn't want to do 25 really basic ones to get to the meaty ones.

EmP's game was all full of fun references for a game that basically shares my screen name. And he took full advantage of that to poke at my dislike of brevity or how I'm in my mid-40s and feeling it (yesterday evening, I legit pulled something in my chest in the act of standing up from my sofa…WTF?!?!?). While I'd love to be spiteful and petty and use that as the one and only reason this review didn't make the top three, there are other reasons! I'd say the main thing is that you were SO DAMN GLEEFUL to immediately throw in the age and rambling comments that you wound up with this weird thing where you all-but-open by describing how the game outstays its welcome and mentioning several ways in which it does that and then just kind of throw in as an afterthought that this is a scrolling shooter. I looked through the Indie library back in the day and still have no memories of this game, so to me, that says its obscure enough to maybe talk a little bit more about what it is before jumping into what doesn't work about it. After I got my bearings, you did do a good job of describing a flawed game that works hard to try to engage players. but it took a couple paragraphs to figure out what I was reading about and a re-read to truly put all the pieces together.

THIRD PLACE

Marc's Spyro Reignited Trilogy (PC)

Armortale was a good review of one of those new-age retro title that should have had it all, but is brought down by a couple big issues. This one hit me more, though. Probably because I do own and have played and reviewed all three of the Spyro titles here AND when I bought my PS4, I saw they were coming out with this on that system and my first reaction was along the lines of "BUT I ALREADY HAVE A BIG BACKLOG AND A BUNCH OF GAMES I WANT FOR THIS SYSTEM -- DON'T DO THIS TO ME!!!!!!" Overall, I thought this was a very fair assessment of the series as a whole, where you eschewed talking about individual games or moments in favor of describing the total package. I do agree with how all three games kind of meld together despite whatever differences they possess. Only so many times you can do a level based on collecting gems where you might have a story, but odds are that story will solve itself simply by you progressing from the beginning to end of a stage (like the Yeti one in the second game, where you reach the end and the yeti gets auto-beaten). But I'll still probably get it at some point. What you said about the presentation is probably what I'm most concerned with. I've seen the games as they were on the PS1 and now I want to see them as the fairytale book lands I kind of imagined them as deserving to look like. Although, good mention on the camera. That could always be annoying on the PS1 games, so it is kinda a bummer to see that hasn't changed.

SECOND PLACE

Joe's Life of Black Tiger (PlayStation 4)

This is a rather fun bash review that made me thing certain things like: "Please tell me that Jason comp'd you this for a review and that you didn't spend money on it!" and "If not, of all the games on the PS4, you spent money on THIS?!?!?!", with the second of those thoughts being followed by cruel laughter as I try to ignore the presence of Venetica (360) in my library. Back to this review, you did a great job of letting the game speak for itself, by which I mean, you mainly just described stuff you saw and experienced while playing and let how bad things were speak for themselves. The thought of a tiger carrying a huge animal in its jaws like it was a small stuffed animal cracks me up, as does the image of a game with at least somewhat real-life graphics featuring over-the-top animal kills. Bad in the funny ways. And, yeah, your tiger having the sort of utterly lame social media presence of a marketing group… Bad in the pathetic ways, too, I see. And your tiger-centric title suddenly making you control a human at the end? Bad in the WTF?!!? ways, as well. This game seemed to hit most, if not all, the gamuts of being bad and you did a good job of conveying that.

REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

Mariner's Darksiders: Warmastered Edition (Switch)

I liked this review a lot, I say in stating the obvious considering I gave it the win. On a personal level, as a guy who has the original 360 version in my backlog, it's always good to see another person's opinion on something I'll likely be playing in the fairly near future, so I was interested in reading your take on it. As a guy judging a bunch of reviews to arbitrarily determine which three win praise, I really dug the overall theme. This game is inspired to a good degree by Ocarina of Time, which is a very big name game that people are likely going to know about and have good memories of. Therefore, show how this game stacks up to it via examples and comparisons. That led to a review where I could understand what you were saying and how you were coming by your opinions. Everything worked together well and it was easy to understand what you meant when you mentioned flaws such as how the game is more linear and pushing you forward, so the need to occasionally go back to get new stuff wasn't necessarily felt. Or your issues with the large number of moves and the often-low amount of damage caused. In short, this was an XTREME-ly good review!


And now, I'm off to do two reviews of my next game to review. The one that will be the eventual final submission for it and the 5000-word alternate version that I'll submit on EmP's week and then take down after he's been forced to read it in order to put up the real one. That'll show him!

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

I regret nothing.

For us. For them. For you.

What the hell indeed. Thanks for getting the RotW up so quickly. After a very slow week, I'm glad we had a good turnout in the end.

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

Weeks do seem to start slow, unless a few people just missed the deadline for the previous week, and then finish in a rush (relative to whatever was produced at the start of the week). It seems like most people get most of their writing done on the weekend.

Thanks for the topic and comments, overdrive. I would have commented sooner, but I was dealing with some pretty critical backend work and that got in the way a bit. I know reading about picross isn't your cup of tea, but I think there's a pretty decent chance you would actually enjoy playing it. So maybe look into that if you get a good deal on a good one. ;-)

"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

And here I thought ending on that incredibly lame pun would automatically disqualify me for ROTW... Thanks for the vote of confidence! Glad you liked the specific comparisons to Zelda; it probably wouldn't be a good idea to just say OoT is better because it's the name brand and has 20 years of nostalgia going for it.

Congrats to Marc and Joe, and I can certainly relate to Jason's challenge of trying to make Picross reviews interesting. For what it's worth, as a veteran of these games, it told me what I needed to know, so it seemed to do its job.

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If I thought ending on a lame pun would disqualify a person, what would that say for Joe's chances, being that he began with a lame pun? Or to be more specific, had said lame pun in his tagline, so it was the thing I saw before I even clicked on his review.

And if I then dumped both of you because of bad puns, well, Joe would still have two more chances to get in, but you'd be out and then I'd be in a position where I might have to give EmP positive recognition for his review which was most definitely NOT AT ALL a series of pokes at me. Makes me feel I need to re-visit an oldie of mine where, with one of my DOOM reviews, I referred to the Imp as an EmP. I mean, this site has BARELY ANY reviews of DOOM games or their .wads!

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In other news, I did forget to give a line or two to Joe's non-placers, so here they are.

1. Phantasy Star IV: Very solid review that kind of reads like a template review for a really good RPG, where if you changed names and stuff, it could describe a decent number of good games. A fun read, but lacking in what I guess I'd call the distinctive voice your other two had.

2. The Frankenstein one. While I said in my recap of Jason's review that walking simulator-types don't interest me at all, you did do a good job with this one, with your focus on how this game works, with new revelations leading to negative consequences for your character. Doubt I'd want to ever play this game, but you did a really good job of illustrating its appeal.

In short, I admire your reviewing work ethic. Three reviews in one week, with all being good and two of them being definitely placement-worthy on this pretty strong week. Meanwhile, my burnt-out self finished God of War about 3 weeks ago and hasn't even started writing a review of it yet because I'm either too busy or not feeling it or just wanna play shit because 3 of the 4 games I'm playing are long and RPGish to various degrees (Dark Souls II - action game with RPG elements; Witcher III - action-RPG; Divinity Original Sin - X-TREME RPGing!) and when I sit down with one, it's hard to cap things at just an hour or two unless I hit a wall in DS II. And I haven't hit many walls lately with the exception of that Ruin Sentinel room in Drangleic. Hell, I shocked myself by getting through FloodWaterDeath Zone Shrine of Amana without THAT MUCH fuss. Even if I feel a bit humiliated because the big frog demon actually killed me once in a showing where I showed no composure or ability to react to what it was doing. A death made even more humiliating due to how decisive the rematch was in my favor, where I think I got hit once the entire fight. If the rematch with Velstadt goes the same way, I'll be happy!

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

HonestGamers is and will (I hope) always remain one of the most welcoming places on the web for people who appreciate puns.

"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