RotW // 8th -- 14th November // No modern games allowed. Kind of.

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THIRD - Soccer Kid [3DO] VGC2000

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For a game that was released over a slew of consoles, Soccer Kid remained pretty obscure. Point in case: I know of its existence, but I’ve never played it. VGC’s review is pretty sparse, but still contains enough details for me to know what I’ve been missing out on.

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SECOND - Gynoug [Switch] Honestgamer

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This review is relevant to my interests. Wor was one of the first games I ever put any real time in back when I was first establishing myself in the world of emulation (fuelled by my embittered hatred of the countless games released outside PAL before that stopped existing). As such, this review speaks to me, because it’s very much more about the re-release and what it has to offer rather than the game itself. There’s some good lines in here (the one about no longer having the necessary twitch skills hurts me), while the following line might need to be looked at as it could be read as having a meaning different from what’s intended:

This approach is welcome, because it lets you decide just how much you want to wuss out while playing (or if you want to at all).

I suspect you’re suggesting you may not want to wuss out, but I initially read it as you may not want to play it at all. I think what holds this review back from taking this week’s crown is an unfortunate side effect of the type of release you’ve taken on, in that so much attention is afforded to the modernisation efforts, and not a lot to the game itself. Personally, though, I really appreciate this review. I hope the game thrives in its second chance at life.

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FIRST - Star Ocean [SNES] Overdrive

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I thought the first few paragraphs of Rob’s review were a bit clunky. There’s some word repetition in there (system makes a couple of appearances in the first couple of lines, for example) and there’s a couple of overlong sentences. I can forgive the latter, because it made me smile how you followed one up with some praise for brevity, showing zero self-awareness.

The review really picks up after this, and I like the discussion about how the game pushes the croaking 16bit console with an ambitious battle mechanic it’s not really equipped to handle. The pointing out of the friendly AI’s failing was an important point to make with this in mind. You do a good job building up how Star Ocean wants to be its own thing but don’t pull punches when dragging it back down to earth. The hour long detour example was a good pick – that would be a game killer for me! Maybe that’s why I’ve only ever finished Second Story.

I guess now you’ve completed your silver haul, you can have a gold.

My lack of self-awareness has been one of my most consistent qualities over the course of my life. Which, looking at it, is a pretty self-aware sentence, so I've confused myself and now am living in a paradox.

Thanks for the win. I agree with your sentiment about Jason's review that it's good to see Gynoug getting a second lease on life and I hope it finds success. I have an affinity for that game because of its weird Hellraiser-style vibes. I've even reviewed it twice: An initial review and then I created a contest to rewrite an older review to make it better simply because I wanted to play the game again and try for a tighter review and figured I'd turn that into something fun (or "fun...") for the site.

Thank you for the kind comments, EmP, even though I'm fairly certain Overdrive wishes he and I could change rankings so he'll have a better chance at setting an unbeatable record for number of second-place wins.