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It has Tim Curry, Jennifer Hale, and a guy who did design on Starcraft. This game is truly a forgotten gem. (Not a 5/5...but I'd say at present a 4/5)
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MitchellTF: It has Tim Curry, Jennifer Hale, and a guy who did design on Starcraft. This game is truly a forgotten gem. (Not a 5/5...but I'd say at present a 4/5)
You know, Gamespot gave this game a better mark than it gave Diablo 2:P
Interesting. Then again, I'm not a Diablo fan.
Well, I say that you should aim for games that you can create an personality around. The AVGN for example does bad games, usually picking out odd details, like Noah carrying three or four barnyard animals at once. Ditto with the Nostalgia Critic, such as his "I WAS FROZEN TODAY" meme.

Basically, it is the weird and interesting details that help make an review come to life, as does having an genuine interest in the subject matter. So what kinds of games do you play?

LIST OF CRITICS, so you can see an number of different styles, and to know who already did what. There is a ton of ways you can approach reviewing. :)

Angry Video Game Nerd: The worst videogames on retro systems.
Nolstagia Critic, reviews bad movies from 10+ years ago.
Cinema Snob: Sexploitation/Gorefest films
SpoonyOne: Highlander, Ultima, and FMV games.
Plinkett: Stars Wars and Star Trek movies.
AngryJoe: Modern games
Linkara: Bad comics.
Phelous: Birdemic, horror films.
Mystery Science Theatre 3,000: Films in general.
The Gaming Historian: Looks back on old systems and games.
Post edited May 11, 2012 by Sabin_Stargem
Thanks Sabin. :)
Some criticism:
1) Spelling errors. Sorry, I'm a Nazi.
2) Your review hinges a little bit too much on your previous experiences with Telltale games. I have not played any of them, thereby cannot relate. You did not explain the core game mechanics at all. I have a faint idea about how the game plays out, but that's coming from 1-2 Youtube videos and not from your review.
3) There's a lot of ads on your site. I don't really mind all that much, but that banner is super annoying.
4) AFAIK PC players have no choice but to buy the full game. Apparently the episodic purchase thing is for console only.

If you could fix that, could potentially become a regular reader. Good luck!
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FraterPerdurabo: Some criticism:
1) Spelling errors. Sorry, I'm a Nazi.
2) Your review hinges a little bit too much on your previous experiences with Telltale games. I have not played any of them, thereby cannot relate. You did not explain the core game mechanics at all. I have a faint idea about how the game plays out, but that's coming from 1-2 Youtube videos and not from your review.
3) There's a lot of ads on your site. I don't really mind all that much, but that banner is super annoying.
4) AFAIK PC players have no choice but to buy the full game. Apparently the episodic purchase thing is for console only.

If you could fix that, could potentially become a regular reader. Good luck!
Well he only gave 3/5 to Skyrim, equivalent to 50% (edit:60%) ... WOW, I mean, we all have our personal favourites and I don´t think Skyrim is one of the best RPG ever made, the story lacks in some aspects, but anyway... It is a great game in so many things, a reviewer must have his own preferences but he must be a bit fair when he write an article.

Look for example this bullshit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysKhhk6LpiM
Really, Fable, Doom3 biggest disappointments of the decade?
Post edited May 13, 2012 by tejozaszaszas
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tejozaszaszas: snap
Well, 3/5 is 60% and it's not a score that I'd necessarily disagree with. I'd probably give it 3.5/5 myself.
Ultimately it doesn't matter what score you give to the game as long as your criteria for evaluation are clearly outlined.
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tejozaszaszas: snap
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FraterPerdurabo: Well, 3/5 is 60% and it's not a score that I'd necessarily disagree with. I'd probably give it 3.5/5 myself.
Ultimately it doesn't matter what score you give to the game as long as your criteria for evaluation are clearly outlined.
Yes. it equals to 60%, sorry.
So you think Skyrim deserves a 60%? Sorry, but that is not a rational opont of view. Skyrim may not be a masterpiece in some aspects, but you can´t give a game so bad score just because you were disappointed with it.
Post edited May 13, 2012 by tejozaszaszas
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FraterPerdurabo: Well, 3/5 is 60% and it's not a score that I'd necessarily disagree with. I'd probably give it 3.5/5 myself.
Ultimately it doesn't matter what score you give to the game as long as your criteria for evaluation are clearly outlined.
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tejozaszaszas: Yes. it equals to 60%, sorry.
So you think Skyrim deserves a 60%? Sorry, but that is not a rational opint of view. Skyrim may not be a masterpiece in some aspects, but you can´t give a game so bad punctuation just because you were disappointed with it.
I disagree. While I think that Skyrim was probably a 3.5 or 4 out of 5, personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with any reviewer reviewing a game with whatever score they want. If it is purely a complain about the game without going into reasonable criticism, that is where a review can fail. But, in my opinion, if the review is honest, and insightful into why a person didn't like the game then it can have any type of score, regardless of what other people (other reviewers, etc) think.
Well, here is the article

http://mitchell-lord.quazen.com/games/skyrim/

I think the score is very low considering all the things he exposes... Even though he is right in most of them. It remebers the ones I saw when I was a child in most UK magazines like Edge, too biased on the critics tastes; so, you see a game which in one magazine gets a 94%, in other 80% and in other 70% or even less. That´s crazy. I think that a game have many almost-objective aspects to be evaluated. I, for example, dislike Grand Turismo games, I find them boring and repetitive, but I would never give them a 60% even though I may give that score if I just base it only on my personal tastes, and that´s because I value some of the points which made it popular (maybe I won´t review it at all,I prefer to write about the things I like). Skyrim use the same concepts used on Oblivion, that game had many repetitive missions and so, even the beginning of the game is in some way really similar. But it´s a concept which have many fans.

I remeber, when Grim Fandango was released, in many adventure websites they gave it really bad critics (for the game´s quality) and scores like 74 75 and so. When you read them you realize that almost all were based on the control system, which changed the one used on Full Throttle and Curse of Monkey Island to one based on keyboard controls (maybe to make easier a port to consoles, thing which never happened). Personally I prefer the Full Throttle ones, but you can´t value a games, especially an adventure basing your opinion on an awful control system and be totally blind to the other aspects of the game, like the amazing story and the art design.
Post edited May 13, 2012 by tejozaszaszas
Looks good to me. He didn't like the game, and he did a good job of explaining why it didn't work for him.

Nice job!
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tejozaszaszas: Well, here is the article

http://mitchell-lord.quazen.com/games/skyrim/
Thanks. I actually just read it on my own (I decided I should probably actually read that review and a couple of others that MitchellTF did and throw my two cents in.

After reading the Skyrim review I still stand by what I said in my previous post. I think that he does a good job in explaining why he didn't like the game as much as many of his friends / other people did. And while I, personally, don't actually like numerical review scores that much (because I think they impact how we, as readers, think about the actual text of the review), I think that the 3/5 is a fair score based on what he said in the review itself. He basically thought it was average overall - not horrible, and did a lot of good things, but not his cup of tea. And so while a 3/5 seems low for a "AAA game" (ugh, I hate that phrase actually) it makes sense.

More generally about your reviews, MitchellTF:

I just read the Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim ones, because I've played those games. And I think your reviews are fair (though, as you say in the ME3 review, you are definitely a fan of how Bioware crafts their RPGs). I would say that for both of the reviews the writing style seemed a bit sloppy to me. Not bad necessarily, but I felt like the writing could be tightened up with some editing, different word choices, and making sure you don't repeat too many things (in the ME3 review you talk about the enemy variety issue twice where it seemed like you didn't need to).

A different problem was that I thought you didn't use a lot of knowledge of previous games in the series for either ME3 or Skyrim. Since you have played ME and ME2 I think that you could have, and should have, talked more about the three games together and how they both work as a whole, and the differences between them and what 3 does well: what it improves upon, and where it fails: where it doesn't repeat good parts about the previous games.
In the Skyrim review I also felt like it would have been good to touch on something like what Oblivion was like, or Morrowind, or any other Elder Scrolls/Bethesda game. While of course, if you haven't played them, it makes sense, my own sense in reviewing a game in a series would have been to reference the previous games, and other games like it. You talk a lot about why it isn't as good as Xenoblade, but I think it would have been good to talk about how it improves upon (in my opinion) Oblivion.

Anyway, I hope that is helpful!
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tejozaszaszas: snop
I said that I'd give the game 3.5/5, that's 70% and I believe it to be completely fair. Mind you, 70% is not awful by any margin. 70% is good, and that's what I believe Skyrim to be. Good.

I read the review and I agreed with pretty much everything that he said. Yes, there's a lot of shit to do in the game, but to me it feels like the developers made 10% of the game and then hit CNTR+C CNTR+V 10 times. You're constantly doing the same generic thing with the same generic motive for the same generic reward. Mind you, I do not mind grinding as such, but Skyrim I did find to be a boring grind. The idea is that once the grind is over, you're rewarded with something. You get a sense of accomplishment. In Skyrim your reward for the grind is another generic line of dialogue from another generic NPC and some gold - which is redundant anyway.

Mind you - I'm a huge fan of Morrowind and Fallouts, but what Bethesda did with FO3 and Oblivion made me despise them. To me, they were worse than EA. Skyrim has redeemed them a bit for me because it's a vast step up from FO3 and Oblivion. I hope that they won't keep changing direction.

edit:
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SheBear: A different problem was that I thought you didn't use a lot of knowledge of previous games in the series for either ME3 or Skyrim. Since you have played ME and ME2 I think that you could have, and should have, talked more about the three games together and how they both work as a whole, and the differences between them and what 3 does well: what it improves upon, and where it fails: where it doesn't repeat good parts about the previous games.
I'd actually like to disagree with you here, as this was something that I criticised him for (see post 21, top of the page). Underlying his Walking Dead review was a heavy assumption that everyone else had played the previous Telltale games. I hadn't and thereby had no reference point. Same for ME3 - haven't played any of the MEs.

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tejozaszaszas: I never said it is a bad critic, it isn´t. I only dislike the puntuation given.
Score*
Post edited May 13, 2012 by FraterPerdurabo
I never said it is a bad critic, it isn´t. I only dislike the score given.
Edit: Thanks
Post edited May 13, 2012 by tejozaszaszas