Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW // 7th March – 13th May // The Generic Tagline Edition

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THIRD Kid Klown in Crazy Chase [SNES] Pickhut


I’ve said a few times that Pickhut’s one of the fairest bash reviewers of us, rarely grabbing the low hanging fruit of mockery (that I live by) and instead thoughtfully dissecting games. Perhaps he scales back on that a little here, and I’m very okay with that, because Crazy Chase is a game deserving of some mockery.

For the most part, though, Pick remains on point, picking out design flaws for fun. Talking about how the game succeeds at their goal of advancing a clumsy clown avatar at expense of the overall game was a very strong point to make. I also liked that you started with some of the smaller complaints and worked your way up to bigger and bigger fails as the review went on. It could be said that you managed to get a very, very good review from a pretty uninspired game. But I won’t say that. It’s far too positive.

SECOND Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA [PS4] by Joe


“Did you know”, I once said to absentee flunky, WQ, “that there’s no such thing as a bad Ys review?” I told her this because she was sulking that she’d pulled Y in an Alphaolympics. She thought about this for a while, reviewed a Ys game, and won the entire bloody thing.

OD’s still not won one; I’ve won three It’s to Joe’s credit that he does not break the streak. The first two thirds of his review especially are extremely effective, at walking you through what you can expect from Ys VIII, but it starts to falter around the time you drop a really jarring sound props paragraph in between two paragraphs that seemed to naturally fit together. I think we all do this at times; we realise we should have mentioned some aspect of the game, so awkwardly jam it in anywhere we feel we can fit it. I think this stands out so much because the rest of the review is so well written. There’s today’s backhanded compliment out of the way…

That’s why I’m going to tell you all this was beaten to first place. The real reason is that I really want to play YS VIII, but the only version I have access to is the awful, broken PC port, and I resent everyone else who’s managed to play this outside that.

WIN Yume Kikki [PC] by Follow_Freeman


It’s been a while since I had grounds to complain about awful food metaphors sneaking into reviews. I’d almost forgotten the deep-rooted seething hatred I had for them. Then came this opening line:

Some games resonate with us in ways that are difficult to articulate. When it comes to criticism, video gaming, like most other art forms, is like cuisine;


Pet hates aside, it a befuddling comparison in the contect you provided. It simply doesn’t work.

The rest of the review is exactly what a good review on a game as abstract as Yume Nikki should be; an attempt to understand its meaning rather than dissect the basic control scheme and RPGMaker graphics. It’s a game that wants to be a little more than a game, and, whether it succeeds or not should certainly be the focus of any discussion.

We’ve got an excellent line up of Yumr reviews (mainly thanks to Lewis, whose initial submission ensure the half written draft I once penned stayed forever rotting in the back of my hard drive) and to say that this one hangs with them is as big a compliment as I can offer. Freeman’s been penning some good stuff as of late and while I’ve often said (and continue to stand behind) that his greatest strength has been an uncanny knack of picking excellent games to talk about, he’s also been constantly experimenting with different styles of writing. It’s really starting to show; in a very short amount of time, his reviews are becoming a real asset to the site.

For us. For them. For you.

I’ve said a few times that Pickhut’s one of the fairest bash reviewers of us, rarely grabbing the low hanging fruit of mockery

Hmm. One of my upcoming reviews might challenge that notion!

But in all seriousness, thanks for the comments on the review, especially the above one. I guess it's one of those things where my curiosity to examine a "surefire" good-sounding game-turned-bad, overpowers my need to make fun of it throughout the review.

Congrats to Freeman on another RotW victory, and to Joe and dirtsheep for their submissions this week!

I head spaceshit noises.

Aw, gee, I eat up food metaphors, but dishes my own tastes, so take it with a bit of salt. Jokes aside, I'm glad you brought that up; I lost some progress typing this up due to computer problems (lost some good screenshots as well) and must've forgotten to put back in my changes to the intro that expounded on my point there. I'm glad you enjoyed it, though, and I can't express how much I appreciate some helpful criticism, too!

Incidentally, I'll add (since I'm the only one ever who'll get it since I'm bad like that) that I'm extremely and unduly proud of the title I picked for the review. "Dream Sequins" is a play on words that indicates the nature and quality of the game ("sequins" are gold coins), and it references one of my favorite albums, nmesh's "Dream Sequins," which I'll link in Freeman's Music Corner presently.

Tough competition from regulars and fresh faces alike this week, too. I'm glad the Ys review was the one picked from Joethe "Android" Destroyer's 2.5 octodecillion reviews to place. Great reads from other folks, whose catalogs of reviews I'm interested to read now. Hurray!

EDIT: I don't know how, but my post made quadruple copies. So those messages I deleted didn't have a treasure map or the winning lotto number or the release date of Half-Life 3. Sorry. But I fixed my intro and linked that music!