Invalid characterset or character set not supported Project Referb: December 2020





Project Referb: December 2020
January 02, 2021

The Idea: Every week or so, to take a review that's unexplainably racked up a lot of rapid fire hits for reasons no one will ever understand and update it. Not rewrite it completely, but tidy away sections that have maybe not aged well, add screenshots where applicable and update the tagline in order to promote that punlife I have chosen. The site's undergone a lot of changes over the years, and the formatting once used has aged. For example! I remember the first time I played around with putting screenshots in the body of my review then tourney and/or RotW judge, Jerec, wondered out loud if it was a form of cheating. It's not my intention to rewrite handfuls of old reviews, just bring them a little up to date. If I can retrofit a pun tagline in there, all the better.



7 Sins.

I touch the circumstances about why I suffered this game in the body of the review, but allow me to expand. Jason had spent real world money to gain access to a database filled with screenshots that he (and this bit will date it) and Lasthero would delve through before their subscription ran out. It was back in the day when PC hentai reviews would routinely show up on the front page and this game, for reasons I never explored, caught our webmasters eye. He quickly fired up AIM (because this was the past) and badgered me to cover this game. I didn’t give it much attention, until I saw it being sold somewhere, and picked it up on the cheap. More fool me.

As stands, this is my second most viewed review, which seems insane to me considering its limited release. It was a pretty easy refurb though, as it seems I’d had a stab at updating it not so long ago. To my horror, I found that I’d used the dreaded ‘mixed bag’ description, which I’ve resisted the urge to edit out because this is a review that should contain no small element of shame.



Shadowrun.

Shadowrun is one of the oldest reviews I have, initially written for the thankless hordes over on Gamefaqs and shipped over to HG in 2005. 2005! It’s also, oddly, the only SNES review I’ve written. That can’t be right? The only one that survived the move over to HG, at least. I’m in no hurry to change that; some of that ‘Faqs stuff is pretty awful.

This didn’t hold up too badly. I’ve nuked a few jokes that no longer meet my high humour standards, but this big timesink here has been the screens. Not that I’ve minded replaying Shadowrun; it was a great game then, and remains one now. It’s currently the 4th most read review I have.




Shining Wisdom.

This review was a lot of work back when. Beating the game for the second time on a whim after relocating my Saturn was a pretty good time, but I then beat it again not long after on an emulator so I could play the NA version and be appalled by the awful Working Designs translation. It really is shockingly bad and, while WD were rightly beloved back in the day for giving us great games that we probably never would has seen released outside Japan otherwise, I shudder to think how their pathologic need to rewrite everything with pop culture references and dumbed down character would be received in today’s age. Twitter would murder them!

This is review #5 on the hit counter, but it’s only tens of reads behind Shadowrun. It will be mildly interesting to see which one pulls away from the other in time.




Hollow.

Here’s a little insight into the irreplaceable relationship I have with Marc “Masters” Golding. One day, back in 2017, we found ourselves kicking around Steam, looking at the upcoming releases in an attempt to find something new to write about. You can tell it was The Past, because Marc was trying to write something. “You know what I’ve not played in a while”, said 2017 Marc, “a horror game. I used to love that mess” So off I went, like a trooper, searching through the dross Steam insist are games these days and found a few decent looking horror games that Marc approved of, and requests were sent. Then the game arrived and was sent to Marc, who said he was no longer in the mood for horror, and why would I get him this Dead Space-like he specifically asked for. Not for the first time - not for the last time - I sighed deeply and took on a game I never asked for. I’ve played worse, I guess.

The upshot is this is - by far - the most recent review floating around near the top of my hit counter. Which meant it really didn’t need much done to it. Currently, this sits at #10.

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