aschultz's Bureaucracy review

There are a lot of lines in this one that confuse me to no end due to poor grammatical structuring. Such as:

"And that's if you can pay for a cab on time to leave your neighborhood, where no house gets mail it's supposed to, your bank account has an overdraft, and the bank closes and opens at random times."

That line.... doesn't make sense. Another one:

"No one's as interesting as the logic and minor programming puzzles you have to solve on your Boysenberry."

This one works on a grammatical level, but takes me out of the review. I don't have a Boysenberry. Does it play logic games? Are they interesting? I wouldn't know and neither will a large percentage of your readers. Try to not personalize the experience so much. Your next line is:

"They're more interesting than the forms to fill out, though: and the game randomizes which field to fill in when, offering snappy commentaries that get old the second time through."

Wait, what? What forms? Your reviews of these text games have done this a lot lately, they jump subjects and start to critique them without introducing them. I don't know what kind of forms you are referring to and thus this whole paragraph loses me.

Another one:

"If you've ever been more annoyed with someone whining about bureaucracy than, well, bureaucracy itself, then I think you know how this game will feel."

Try reading that outloud. It is painful on the brain. Or this:

"At least Bureaucracy didn't reference too many other Infocom ga--oops."

Wait, what? Does it referrence other infocom games? Why the oops?

Overall, this review felt a lot like a big in-joke to those of us who have played these old infocom games. I haven't so I was pretty lost. I don't think I had to be, but the writing didn't help me out any. Lately your reviews have been for very interesting games with some very strange concepts and I like that. But I think you have to work extra hard to make them come across in an understandable way.

"And that's if you can pay for a cab on time to leave your neighborhood, where (1) no house gets mail it's supposed to, (2) your bank account has an overdraft, and (3) the bank closes and opens at random times."

That line.... doesn't make sense.

It makes sense, but I think it can make better sense. Numbers inserted for convenience, but I shouldn't put myself into a position to do that.

"No one's as interesting as the logic and minor programming puzzles you have to solve on your Boysenberry."

Boysenberry...Apple...programming. Even for those of us who don't remember the Apple, I think it should be implicit that the Boysenberry is a computer, with "programming puzzles" preceeding.

Wait, what? What forms?

I mentioned the change of address form above, so it could be inferred through VERY careful reading, but my goal is to get casual readers interested. One would also expect to fill out forms dealing with a bureaucracy. Still, that can be changed.

Try reading that outloud. It is painful on the brain.

It's not painful, but I don't see how I can meaningfully cut it down. With the right Meaningful Pauses, it sounds okay. Maybe I just need to think about it.

"At least Bureaucracy didn't reference too many other Infocom ga--oops."

Wait, what? Does it referrence other infocom games? Why the oops?

I liked how the timing worked here. I was worried this joke might be too standard.

Thanks for this--I think I can find a few corrections here. Text adventures really are tougher than I think they are, and it's tough to find a balance between catering to people who know about the main text adventures and people who know very little about them.

And never get discouraged! That's number one!

Definitely, I'm not. Sometimes I'm frustrated I miss something, but I've gotten in the habit of modifying stuff a lot more, and a lot more quickly, than even a few months ago.

One big problem I have is that I take a break from writing down just notes to write a review and I can be in note-taking mode, and the results can be fragmented.