Forums > Submission Feedback > KevDaSuperb's Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time review

This is not a bad first effort. I think your text does a good job of demonstrating your familiarity with the series as a whole and your ability to turn that experience into an asset while looking at the newest release in a familiar series.

As far as critiques go, my main one is that the review is rather disjointed throughout, with quite a few sentences reading like they were copied and pasted from a press release listing game features. Between those sentences, a number of sentences employ passive voice, so the disconnect is sometimes jarring and there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion of how everything works together to ultimately provide a good or bad experience. The resulting writeup feels more like an overview on the game than it does a critical review.

Here's an example of a sentence you might wish to revise:

Incalculable crates to smash and bounties of wumpa fruit to slurp down there is no shortage of collectibles.

This particular sentence combines the two chief flaws I mentioned above. "Incalculable crates to smash and bounties of wumpa fruit to slurp down" is a compound subject that feels like it belongs next to a bullet point listing game features on a press release. Adding "there is no shortage of collectibles" just mashes that together with a separate sentence together without the required bridge. A possible basic rewrite would be: "Incalculable crates to smash and bounties of wumpa fruit to slurp down ensure there is no shortage of collectibles." However, you also have to look at the surrounding sentences to make sure it fits and flows. Sometimes, fixing one sentence breaks something else in a paragraph.

This is all stuff that you can work out with revision, as most of us tend to do. I myself spend probably at least half my writing time revising a draft. As you grow more practiced, less of this stuff happens even in rough draft form. You'll fall more comfortably into writing insightful, cohesive reviews. However, revision is how a review generally goes from readable to great. I hope you'll stick around and continue to contribute and participate in discussion related to the writing craft that we sometimes have around the site!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2