Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW // 13th January – 19th January // Are We Doing This?

This topic is extremely late. Like, running into the next RotW late. And in the words of Conor McGregor, I'd like to apologize to... absolutely nobody. While I haven't spent my free time punching old men in pubs, inhaling copious amounts of cocaine, and worshipping myself, I have been busy, and this week on HG was busy, so you know. This topic is late.

Anyway, Joe has retired from RotW -- I think we all knew that. And so with Emp 'volunteering me' for the vacant and coveted position of RotW panelist, Joe's loss is my gain.

Haha.

LOL.

I figured I'd ease into this time-consuming and thankless job on an easy week with few submissions, because that's the way it's been going lately on the site. Of course, that's not what happened on my week. OF COURSE it's not.

The good news is it's nice when the site seems lively whether with contributions or forum activity (or both?!), so in spite of my bellyaching, I would agree that the sudden influx of reviews on my week is a great thing.

Enough already. You came, perhaps, only to scroll down and curse silently (or out loud), and click away, so let's have at it.

Emp really overachieved this week: he submitted two reviews. That's a lot for a guy we all thought was forced into early retirement after Joe spanked him last year in Site King. This effort was to show us he's still around and relevant.

I'll start with Killer is Dead. So first of all, what is "decedent"? I know (or I think I know) you were showing us how crazy and confusing the game is, by tossing us in a version of the game's crazy pool of your own making, but I was legit confused by the second and third paragraphs. Fortunately, things pick up nicely in the fourth, which is typically funny and snide. I didn't get what "Because it is the current year" sentence meant. But with this, "In an attempt to bring a belated sense of brevity to this word salad of a review" I think you recognized how we might feel. The review is cleverly written and full of sharp wit and poetic passages but it's all in service of showing us how utterly weird the story is that is behind the hack and slashing, and it was a bit much for me.

Emp's other review for Chuusotsu! 1.5th Graduation: The Moving Castle, is much more approachable. "God help me, I have that." Awesome: I do love that line. This review is ideally paced and organized, and covers the subject matter perfectly well. Its only weakness is that the subject matter isn't particularly exciting.

Total Recall by pickhut begins with a bang. Pick too had weird material to work with, as borne out by the introductory paragraph, but he picked a few weird examples he wanted to run with and kept it succinct. Then it was on to the nuts and bolts, and this is as good as a summation of flawed nuts and bolts as any: "That's what's wrong with the game: you're expected to break it down, to exploit mechanics and oddball AI nonsense, in order to make any true progress, because trying to succeed normally is detrimental." The review loses some steam with a listy penultimate paragraph and this line: "This is easily the worst part of the stage since entering the bar is flimsy..." Not sure what that means. That said, you bring it around and end the piece nicely.

Jedward Randy who is totally not our old friend Guts, weighs in with one of those ill-advised free game choices Emp is shopping around to desperate community members... but the game he got isn't so terrible!I thought it was going to be so bad he would be Pukan. Heh. But it's not. I rather like the irreverent, conversational tone he uses here: "The dude leaps crazy far, almost as far as me when I'm wearing the Jordans, we'll say these are more like LeBrons." There are jokes/passages like that abound, but aside from being funny and informal, the review actually explains the game well and provides useful analysis to boot.

Then there's Joe's Geneforce 2 review. I don't love the first sentence here, at all. That said, from there on in, the review is pretty much perfect. Joe brings up solid arguments, gives vivid examples to support his points, and floats from paragraph to paragraph with nary a forced transition. It's truly impressive stuff, but it's the kind of effort that you wouldn't point to as being particularly stylish or 'award winning'; it's just so fundamentally sound and flows effortlessly and gets the job done, like Tim Duncan. I don't even like this genre, but I was all in from start to finish.

Luigi's Mansion 3 by our friend mariner was my next read. The review starts off well enough, which is not a surprise since mariner is a very good writer, but the paragraph beginning with, "But the way the game plays is completely unique..." meant early on to explore the game's mechanics (specifically the avatar's viewpoint and how that impacts the experience), is not quite as clear as it could be. It's a bit hard to follow and given how early on in the review it comes, it's rocky enough to potentially put a reader off of continuing. Thankfully, part two of game mechanics which follows, is easy to follow and gets things back on track. It's not mariner's finest review, but it's still a good one.

Captain Retro is back in action with a solid review of the much maligned Tengen port of Shinobi. Retro does a good job of setting the tone for the disdain he has for the heavily flawed title: "If the premise was to make people hate both SEGA and Shinobi alike, then Tengen was pretty much on the right track here." Very nice. what's not as nice, is all the typos and missing capitalizations in the piece. I also found this a bit strange: "Another gracious addition is that even when you just BUMP into enemies you also lose energy." I'm pretty sure in the arcade version, touching an enemy meant instant death! Merely losing energy is a mercy! Love the ending though: "There is just no reason to ever bother playing this game much less spending any quantity of money in acquiring it. If someone even bothers to send it to you as a gift, toss it back at their face in turn." It tickles me to imagine tossing an unwanted game disc in Emp's face, for example.

Finally, wily veteran Jerec returns with his annual contribution, coming out of semi-retirement to take part in Emp's exercise in self-hate. His game sounds as shite as mine was, and he does a nice job of communicating that. In fact, I'd say bashing an overwhelmingly bad game was a good gateway for Jerec to get back to it, as his dry, cynical style lends itself to bash jobs: "There's only one kind of bulet to worry about in these sections of the game, so you'll walk around killing identical soldiers (their uniform is a different colour to yours). Everyone is holding their shotguns from the hip, and you can only fire horizontally at that level. There's no enemy AI to speak of, they just walk aimlessly back and forth and might shoot at you if they feel like it." It's always funny and always told with a straight face, and it's not funny just for the sake of it -- you are definitely well informed by the end. The consistent, purposeful misspelling of 'bulet' also had me chuckling.

And so, the order of finish?! This was super tough, as pretty much any other review could have been in the running for that third spot.

THIRD PLACE - Jerec

SECOND PLACE - Emp

REVIEW OF THE WEEK - Joe


See you in a month. Unless... yeah, no, see you in a month.

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

This was worth the wait, what a detailed RotW! I'll go back and read the comments on the other reviews shortly.

I'm glad you liked my review. I wasn't sure I'd have much to say about this really bad game, but every aspect of it was just so inept. I'm glad my "straight face" tone came across as intended. To get third place with a quick bash review like this is a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

Thank you!

I can avoid death by not having a life.

Time for a quick game of "teaching Marc Internet lingo". It's more common then you'd think.

So, a vocal group of mostly well meaning folk who are very often absolute dullards have, for as long as time immemorial trotted out little warnings like "You can't say X: it's 2020!" Like they're handing out little PC friendly behavioral tickets and it's the future, and all language should be controlled by the hive mind by now. It's routinely mocked in Internet land by exclaim faux outrage by reminding a reader that it is, in fact, the current year. In this case, I was trying to make fun of the cringey PCWorld review of Killer is Dead, which was very unhappy about the existence of attractive females being seduced with sticks of gum, and other more desirable gifts. Like most jokes I try to make, it's usually aimed at an audience of one.

~~lesson over

You took your bloody time This was a very thoughtful and helpful critique of no small amount of reviews. The BUSIEST WEEK OF THE CURRENT YEAR, no less. Thank you for the props, and congrats to all for an interesting week.

I still have plenty of bad game codes to hand out, too.

For us. For them. For you.

Thank you for the win, and for digging the review! I haven't fully retried from ROTW, but I am on hiatus until things settle a bit. I'm thankfully on leave right now until next month.

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

Thanks for commenting on the review. I guess I can understand why you had trouble with that sentence; I'll try modifying it when I get some more free time.

Congrats, Joe.

I head spaceshit noises.