krozzus's LISA review

Hey - you asked for some critique, so that's a thing I'll do.

I've gone back through your review and edited out a fair few typos. It's always worth running a completed draft through a spellchecker before you finish. I'm awful at leaving typos in as well, as anyone else on the site will jump at the chance to mention, but it's an important thing to stay on top of.

Mainly, I would label your review as a 'tell; don't show'. You talk about all these cool things LISA does (and reminds me that it's sitting in my Steam queue unplayed, which I really need to fix sooner or later) but you could really profit by dropping examples to back up the assertions you forward. Doing so would also help address another problem that crops up, that your review does come across as a list rather than a complete piece of writing. This gives you problems such as you sound paragraph being a/ not a paragraph at all but a sentence and b/ telling the reader exactly nothing.

Hope that helps.

hello emp and thank you for answering. on typos i fully agree, shoulda checked. However my issue with giving examples is that I cannot do so without spoiling which I do not want to do. Having the choice between being pretty damn vague and simply ruining the best part i thought i'd stay vague. when reviewing how do you bypass this?

My usual rule is that if it happens in the first twenty minutes of the game, then it's fair play to talk about in any detail. Other than that, taking an example from a game doesn't mean you have to completely dissect it and tell the reader exactly what happens to spoil the impact. Really, it's just learning the difference between telling the reader something and showing the reader something. You don't have to tell the gamer how you got there, but talk about some of the moments that really shocked you - you don't have to talk about how they end or how you triggered them, just that they exist is enough. When you're feeling confident enough, you could talk about how things like the music and graphics either helped or subtracted from this, and that will in turn make the throw-away paragraphs you felt were necessary obsolete.

Try this: post a couple of examples here in the feedback topic. Be as vague or descriptive as you like; just moments of the game that really stood out for you and we'll find a way to include them in the review without dropping spoilers.

Im excited to review super hexagon at some point. Not even enough content to leave anything undiscussed lol. anyway back on track. You are given the choice by a sadistic man who has tormented you as his own little experiment for years on end by being the sole source of the drug he got you addicted to. Do you want your arm chopped off or do you want to sacrifice 3 of the friends that went through hell and back with you? What adds to this is the fact that the game is really REALLY hard even on the easyest difficulty and your attacks will weaken and your chances of beating the game will decrease. However is it right to sacrifice 3 other people for your personal gain?
The moments where a choice would have been nice is every time you fall into a drug induced rage and kill literally anyone in your path. friends are left standing in fewer numbers every time.
There is also a party member you can only get by playing a CD. Said CD you get from a horribly disfigured mutated monster of a human that has been slowly but steadyly expanding throughout an entire cave complex and you are glad whem you burn it to pieces. The companion then joins you to find his brother as that was his favorite CD and he hasnt seen him in a long time and really misses him.

you know i just realized sticking to stuff like super hexagon would literally be my best option. I have enough storyless games to review that i do not need to cramp around so hard to review things like this.

Puzzle games represent their own set of challenges when reviewing them. Trying to find something interesting to say is half that battle!

I've taken your examples and I've edited them into the review while taking away some of the more redundant points. Don't feel you're obligated to talk about sound and graphics standalone if you've got nothing to really say about them; if you're unable to weave them into the an example then they're just going to stick out as an awkward add on rather than as a piece of a completed review. Because I'm a show-off, I threw a few screenshot in there, too.

speaking of those would like to do that as well. How do you do that?

oh and since I didnt say it yet: thanks for accepting the reivew, keeping on helping and editing it into something useful

If you go to the game's main page (where you clicked the link to submit a review) you'll see at the bottom there's an option to view contributed image assets. If there are no assists available, then you can ask for some to be submitted (the option for you to submit your own will become available once your account is a little older) Assuming there are images, clicking on that link will take you to a page very much like this:

CLICK HERE

The HTML code you will need to insert the screens is beneath each shot. Copy that, and paste it into the part of your review you want the screen to be in.

And you're welcome. The review was always useful, but I'm happy to offer up pointers to anyone who wants to try and get a bit better.

If I want to bother people other than you, what is the best place to ask questions around here?

If you want to ask about getting a game page created, there's a topic for it. You can find it here.

Otherwise, just go into the forums tab in the toolbar at the top and post a topic in the Contributor Zone. Someone will probably stumble onto it there.