Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: Sept. 20-26, 2021 -- Where we went from 0 eligible reviews to 3 in only a few hours Sunday.

Thought this would be an easy week, with a grand total of zero reviews up by when I left my house mid-afternoon Sunday. And by that night, three were up. Since one was by EmP and EmP is determined to not let Vacant get on the podium, I can only assume he browbeat, blackmailed and threatened Brian and vgc2000 to follow suit. Is it possible that they did their reviews of their own accord? Yeah, operating under the theory that ANYTHING is possible, that could have happened. But I like my idea, so I'm going with that.

Caught a few movies, as always. American Gothic was a fun, quirky slasher that didn't treat the slasher formula as some absolute that has to be followed note-by-note. The main characters were mostly annoying people you wanted to see die and it took a way to get going, but the crazy family was a lot of fun and I dug it more the farther I got into it. Berserker took a cool slasher concept of young people going camping and getting killed by a Norwegian berserker transported to America and made it a boring and tedious slog that would have fit in nicely with direct-to-video micro-budget crap made by amateurs. Hell of the Living Dead was an Italian zombie film that most definitely wasn't good, but it was pretty entertaining in a "throw all sorts of crap out there and see if any of it works" sort of way. Strip Nude for Your Killer was a mid-70s giallo that might not have had any victims stripping nude for their killer, but it did have a killer, killings and lots of nudity, so it lived up to what I was looking for. And when that nudity is regularly provided by Edwige Fenech, who tends to make me wish I was an adult in the 70s (and an Italian film director, as that was what she was married to and getting roles from), that's even better.

Back to the reviews and stuff now that I've distracted myself with another daydream that isn't going to go anywhere good...


THIRD PLACE

vgc2000's 16t (Genesis)

Remember when we used to have this one contest focused on obscurity, where your point score would be adjusted by a modifier based on how obscure the judges deemed your game to be? You'd get more points if you hit up something no one had heard of, you'd get less if you were doing a big-name blockbuster and, if like me, you'd hit up a random Japanese NES game that never hit American soil but had a translation patch made for emulation, you'd be middle-of-the-road. Something tells me this would score well on obscurity. It's a short review, but this also seems to be a very simple game. I've played Flicky on a Genny compilation or two, so your comparison to that worked well. Main criticism I have is that you could stand to give this a proofing, as there are a number of typos ("a few different kind of PATFORMS" for one). Take care of those and this is a capable review that does a good job of describing a short, forgettable game.

SECOND PLACE

Brian's Thaumistry: In Charm's Way (PC)

A text adventure! Those don't get covered much around here. I mean, I have in one more sign that I'm either a totally awesome cornerstone of this site or completely insane, but reviews for these games are rare. Much like those games are rare nowadays -- never even knew this one existed. In tackling it, I felt you had a focused review that eschewed your bolded headers and the like to deliver something I found easy to read and mostly easy to get into. Why "mostly easy" instead of a second straight "easy"? One simple reason. There's a line between being spoiler adverse and simply not talking about the plot and you fall into the latter of those two. Which gets really noticeable when you're dedicated paragraphs to things like, as you phrased it, the underdeveloped theme behind its story". You talk about things like the designer criticizing that aspect and how the text-only nature adds to it, but all of that fell short for me simply because I don't really know what that story is other than is focuses on a guy named Eric Knight and how he finds out he's a Bodger. A bit of fleshing out something beyond those bare minimum breadcrumbs could have made those points a good bit stronger. Still, I enjoyed reading this.

REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

EmP's Xanadu Next (PC)

Sigh…Here I am having this great (for me) year in Site King where I'm only a couple points behind you. And then you write a really good review to get five points and I'm the one who has to give it to you. Shooting myself in the foot in the name of not being a horribly crooked judge who games things to his benefit. Life sucks…

I really dug this review. I liked the history lesson about how this was a forgotten game that never made a splash, but got a second chance. From the way it sounds, I hope it takes advantage of that new lease on life. I like the great use of a pic, where you talk about some big spider enemy with your discussion of it sandwiched around a pic of what seems to be a big-ass spider peeking through a broken wall. And you did a good job of explaining the game's appeal. I mean, stuff like shortcuts and finding new ways to access old areas is pretty commonplace now (ask me, I'm playing Not-Quite-Dark-Souls -- aka: Nioh), but you framed the way this game works as being ahead of its time and then gave some nicely-written examples of how it works. And if your'e talking about a game you really liked, it never fails to use the old "I could have beaten it AGES ago, but I did a ton of busywork just so I could keep messing with it and put off finishing it and moving on to something that likely will be disappointing in comparison!" line. I also dug the talk about how weapons power up as you use them and by swapping one that's maxed for something that will eventually be better, you will have short-term losses of power to endure. Overall, a deserving winner, even if it hurts my soul to say this.


That was fun, now onto the next fun thing I have fun doing. While hopefully not sounding like I'm hopelessly afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome. Like I did in the first sentence.

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

I did actually have a line in there originally where I compare Next to Dark Souls (not just the stages lacing together, but the stone circles are also very reminiscent of bonfires), but Souls comparisons these days have been driven into the ground, and are synonymous with meaning "this game is too hard for me" in today's video game media. So I took it out. None of that played out nonsense for me!

Thanks for getting the topic out so quick, and props the the rest of team Screw You Vacant. Every couple of years, I put some time into 16t and consider using it as my # for the year. I always very quickly change me mind.

RotW note: if it makes you feel better, a win is 3 points. 2 for second and 1 for third. I didn't want to put a big gap between the scores because there is rarely a big gap between the quality of the reviews.

For us. For them. For you.

My original plan to wait for "Vacant" to get a bunch of points in the Site King ranking and then change my username to Vacant has utterly failed.

I'm enjoyed EmP's Next review a lot. Falcom games are a huge gap in my knowledge. For years, I thought "Trails of..." and "Tales of..." where the same series!

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EmP
Huh, guess that explains why I'm so close to first, despite being Mr. Second Place. Shows how much attention I pay to my surroundings when I need walked through how many points each place is worth in the annual site RotW competition!

Dagoss
I've never been huge into Falcom's stuff. Mainly because I've only played a couple of their games. But I am a bit of a fanboy for the Tales of... series. Not to the degree of them being "can't miss" games to pick up, but to the degree that I've played a decent number of them over the years. Did Tales of Destiny (PS) before I ever started reviewing games and have reviewed Phantasia (Super Famicom), Legendia (PS2), The Abyss (PS2) and Vesperia (360). And my currently playing Zestiria (PS4) and own Berseria (also PS4). Right now, I'm kind of amused at how they've crafted this really complicated-sounding battle system with all these kinds of Artes and powers and stuff and it all boils down to me making the control setting Semi-Auto and randomly hitting buttons until I start getting the red numbers above enemies so I know I'm hitting them with something that exploits a weakness.

Of all the big name JRPG series, I think Tales of... is the one that most requires a guide to get through. There are so many little side missions and stuff in some of those games where you have to be in the right place to talk to someone at the right time or you'll miss out. At least in Zestiria, the majority of those are a lot simpler and just involve revisiting everywhere you go a bit down the road in order to fight special boss-class enemies that drop items that boost everyone's HP max. VERY useful since this game is all about improving your character by ways other that level-grinding, since gaining levels doesn't give you much improvement in compared to those HP-boosting items or equipment fusing.

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle