Including a carry over from Rob “Rob” Robington, which has become his name as declared last time around, there are eleven reviews this week. One more than last week, which, even then, I deemed too many. As such - and I know I’m repeating myself at this point - reviews that would often find themselves placing with ease in a typical week are going to be omitted. Only, this run of quality has been going on long enough now that I suppose it’s the new norm now and I’m going to have to put (urgh) more effort into these things. I guess we all need to up our game if we want our weekly ego boosts.
NOTES:
Looks like Jason finally cleared out the production room, because here there be staff reviews. There’s some good reviws up there this week, but it’s mostly been eclipsed by the fine work of the user base. Worthy of particular note is Jason “I’ll-just-drop-a-food-simile-in-here-and-see-if-I-can-hear-EmP’s-teeth-grind-from-overseas” Venter’s continued and laudable coverage of his God-Emperor Nintendo’s foray into mobile gaming. On the user side, Nightfire is especially unlucky with his omit after, rather remarkably, making an ancient digital board game about managing a job sound interesting.
THIRD Steins;Gate 0 [Vita] by Jerec
Jerec still loves anime - don’t let him fool you again with his misguiding words. I’ve seen him complaining that Pumpkin Scissors never got a second season and talking about how the Gantz dub is atrocious.
Steins;Gate’s is a mass of intertwining threads that’s difficult at the best of times to describe. Steins;Gate 0 has all those issues as well as a massive dollop of reliance upon the gamer to have played the hell out of the original. How do you review that without dropping spoilers from the previous game? Jerec’s answer is correct: you don’t. No one (sane) is going to play Zero without playing Steins;Gate, so it’s silly to pretend otherwise. Still, there’s a subtlety toward how he goes about these spoilers that I can appreciate. They’re pretty light going, for one. It can’t have been easy.
But, as such, this review’s main flaw is more or less unavoidable; it relies on an assumption of existing knowledge on behalf of the reader. While that’s a big downpoint for the majority of reviews, it simply has to exist in this very rare case. The underpinning argument that it’s not a tale that really needed to be told, but ends up being one worth telling anyway is a good lens to view the game through.
SECOND The Last Guardian [PS4] by Fiddlesticks
Bloody, bloody Fiddlesticks. I was a fan of his on his previous run, and was sorry to see his contributions ebb away. On one hand, I’m glad to see him return and smash through all those AAA releases pretentious indie pricks like myself routinely ignore. On the other, he’s making not including him in RotW round ups very, very difficult.
I thought he had offered me an out this week when the opening sections of his Last Guardian review came up a little bit rough. There’s a fair bit of word repetition in there, specifically, every other sentence seems to contain ‘Trico’. I appreciate that, what with him being a huge chicken-puppy, there’s no other word available to describe him but if this review was a drinking game and that was my trigger word, my kidneys would be tapping out. The review argues with itself a little as well, at one point talking about the figure-it-out via trial and error aspect of the controls in a derogatory manner and then, several paragraphs later, complaining about a myriad of on-screen controller prompts holding the player’s hand too much.
The second half of the review is the real highlight, brilliantly keeping the game’s strength up on a pedestal, but still tearing down the mechanical aspects that don’t really work. I think picking at the near invulnerability of the game’s casts was the best bit; it really kneecaps any sense of urgency the game might try to create. In juggling these aspects that work and fail so evenhandedly, giving equal service to both, you increase the credibility of your words.
WIN! Avernum: Escape From the Pit [MAC] Rob
Annoyingly, I was ready to write this one off early after the ‘Let’s talk about me!’ intro went nowhere and offered nothing. Truth is, if you start reading this review from the second paragraph, then you lose nothing of note. There’s little irrelevancies scattered throughout like how this game was purchased during a sale that no one cares about, and this made me happy for a while. I thought I could just move on to the other ten reviews on my list and get on with my life. But then, probably out of spite, the rest of the review ended up being especially brilliant.
Mainly when you start letting the game talk for itself and run through the numerous examples. Talking about the list you had to keep reminding you to go back to areas when you were strong enough is a clever way to big up the game’s depth and immersion, so I’ll assume you included it by accident. Dropping little teasers about what you need to do to progress the main questline, how there’s an Elder Scrolls-like amount of distractions most players will be completely unable to resist delving into -- discussions like that are when the review really comes to life.
The conclusion goes full circle to complete the hanging “me!” thread the review opened with, to no great effect, but everything sandwiched in between was incredibly effective writing.
Nightfire’s got next week. Let’s give him the same huge headache I’ve been given trying to pick through such an embarrassment of riches.
NOTES:
Looks like Jason finally cleared out the production room, because here there be staff reviews. There’s some good reviws up there this week, but it’s mostly been eclipsed by the fine work of the user base. Worthy of particular note is Jason “I’ll-just-drop-a-food-simile-in-here-and-see-if-I-can-hear-EmP’s-teeth-grind-from-overseas” Venter’s continued and laudable coverage of his God-Emperor Nintendo’s foray into mobile gaming. On the user side, Nightfire is especially unlucky with his omit after, rather remarkably, making an ancient digital board game about managing a job sound interesting.
THIRD Steins;Gate 0 [Vita] by Jerec
Jerec still loves anime - don’t let him fool you again with his misguiding words. I’ve seen him complaining that Pumpkin Scissors never got a second season and talking about how the Gantz dub is atrocious.
Steins;Gate’s is a mass of intertwining threads that’s difficult at the best of times to describe. Steins;Gate 0 has all those issues as well as a massive dollop of reliance upon the gamer to have played the hell out of the original. How do you review that without dropping spoilers from the previous game? Jerec’s answer is correct: you don’t. No one (sane) is going to play Zero without playing Steins;Gate, so it’s silly to pretend otherwise. Still, there’s a subtlety toward how he goes about these spoilers that I can appreciate. They’re pretty light going, for one. It can’t have been easy.
But, as such, this review’s main flaw is more or less unavoidable; it relies on an assumption of existing knowledge on behalf of the reader. While that’s a big downpoint for the majority of reviews, it simply has to exist in this very rare case. The underpinning argument that it’s not a tale that really needed to be told, but ends up being one worth telling anyway is a good lens to view the game through.
SECOND The Last Guardian [PS4] by Fiddlesticks
Bloody, bloody Fiddlesticks. I was a fan of his on his previous run, and was sorry to see his contributions ebb away. On one hand, I’m glad to see him return and smash through all those AAA releases pretentious indie pricks like myself routinely ignore. On the other, he’s making not including him in RotW round ups very, very difficult.
I thought he had offered me an out this week when the opening sections of his Last Guardian review came up a little bit rough. There’s a fair bit of word repetition in there, specifically, every other sentence seems to contain ‘Trico’. I appreciate that, what with him being a huge chicken-puppy, there’s no other word available to describe him but if this review was a drinking game and that was my trigger word, my kidneys would be tapping out. The review argues with itself a little as well, at one point talking about the figure-it-out via trial and error aspect of the controls in a derogatory manner and then, several paragraphs later, complaining about a myriad of on-screen controller prompts holding the player’s hand too much.
The second half of the review is the real highlight, brilliantly keeping the game’s strength up on a pedestal, but still tearing down the mechanical aspects that don’t really work. I think picking at the near invulnerability of the game’s casts was the best bit; it really kneecaps any sense of urgency the game might try to create. In juggling these aspects that work and fail so evenhandedly, giving equal service to both, you increase the credibility of your words.
WIN! Avernum: Escape From the Pit [MAC] Rob
Annoyingly, I was ready to write this one off early after the ‘Let’s talk about me!’ intro went nowhere and offered nothing. Truth is, if you start reading this review from the second paragraph, then you lose nothing of note. There’s little irrelevancies scattered throughout like how this game was purchased during a sale that no one cares about, and this made me happy for a while. I thought I could just move on to the other ten reviews on my list and get on with my life. But then, probably out of spite, the rest of the review ended up being especially brilliant.
Mainly when you start letting the game talk for itself and run through the numerous examples. Talking about the list you had to keep reminding you to go back to areas when you were strong enough is a clever way to big up the game’s depth and immersion, so I’ll assume you included it by accident. Dropping little teasers about what you need to do to progress the main questline, how there’s an Elder Scrolls-like amount of distractions most players will be completely unable to resist delving into -- discussions like that are when the review really comes to life.
The conclusion goes full circle to complete the hanging “me!” thread the review opened with, to no great effect, but everything sandwiched in between was incredibly effective writing.
Nightfire’s got next week. Let’s give him the same huge headache I’ve been given trying to pick through such an embarrassment of riches.
For us. For them. For you.
