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General discussionReview Guidelines & Review of the Month contest(176 posts)(176 posts)
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Posted May 30, 2016
Our guide to a world of awesome game reviews

Game reviews are important. They help developers get direct feedback on their games, and as gamers they help us make an informed purchase or share our thoughts. Writing a quality review carries a certain responsibility: to do good by both the game and the community. Striking that perfect balance is a challenge, a delicate art that we want to promote.

Next time you're about to write a review, you'll see our simple suggestions for crafting a top-notch review. You can always revisit them from the review form as well.

—Focus on your in-game experience: if you have general feedback or need tech support, contact us!
—Avoid politics and drama: let the game stand on its own merits.
—Critique responsibly: whether it's positive or negative, a great review should be helpful and informative.

We hope that these three essential guidelines will help make GOG.com reviews even more awesome than they already are, but we also don't want to stop there!



CONTEST: REVIEW OF THE MONTH

Together with our friends at ROCCAT we venture to encourage and reward the best reviews on GOG.com – and to that end, we are introducing our monthly Review of the Month contest!

Submit your review for any game (or games!) released on GOG.com between May 1 and May 31, 2016. This time around, the grand prize is the RENGA gaming headset, courtesy of ROCCAT.

Here's what you need to know:

—Once you've posted your review, submit it for consideration by also quoting it in this post's forum thread.
—Keep the review guidelines in mind. A good review can be both entertaining and informative, it can be brief or extensive. It doesn't need to be positive in its overall assessment of the game - as long as it's eloquent and fair (or hilarious), it has our attention.
—All eligible reviews must be about games that have joined the GOG.com catalog within the previous month. For this first phase of the contest eligible reviews shall concern games that came out on GOG.com between May 1 and May 31, 2016.
—Winners will be announced at the beginning of every month with the start of next month's contest. The first round of winners will be announced in early July, giving you guys a bit of extra time to fine-tune your entries. Remember that if you're not happy with the shape of a review you've already posted, you can always contact our support team to rectify that.
—The best review of each month will win a sweet piece of gaming gear, courtesy of the good people at ROCCAT. Any runners-up will receive honorable mentions and one $9.99 code each, to be redeemed at GOG.com.

Let's celebrate the reviews that hit the nail on the head — the most constructive, informative, or fun to read. Grab your keyboards and make some magic happen, GOGers!
Post edited May 31, 2016 by maladr0Id
Posted May 20, 2016
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leon30: How to see if a particular game was released on GOG.com during the last month? For example <span class="bold">J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars</span> has it's original release date, not the date it came here?
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mrkgnao: See here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/review_of_the_month_contest_7732d/post36
Thank you!
Sadly both games I was thinking are not eligible :(
Posted May 20, 2016
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Skywalkerpl: You know what would be great? If GOG would finally add an option to edit reviews. It's possible on pretty much every platform that allows user-posted reviews, yet GOG somehow avoids it... come on guys, I want to fix typos in my reviews that I spotted post-factum, or correct formatting, because it works in some very weird way on GOG that you cannot preview, or correct some factual mistakes if I found later on that I was wrong about something.
There are so many games that would have much better reviews if we could do this! Games that were released in an unofficial beta state but patched soon after release, etc. I'd love to be able to see a list of my reviews and be able to edit them!
Posted May 20, 2016
To be constructive for once, here are a few suggestions how to improve the review system:


- Allowing infinite or at least more characters per entry

- Possibility to preview it before submitting a review

- Possibility to edit a review

- Possibility to delete a review

- Formatting options
Bold, italic, underline, spoiler (!) etc.

- Tags
Language, verified purchase, review based on GOG version (yes/no) etc.

- Filter
Filter by tags, average rating (helpful/not helpful), product rating (stars) etc.

- Sort options
Sort by best rated/lowest rated, newest/oldest, longest/shortest, product rating (stars) etc.

- A separate page
A link above or below the reviews section on the gamecard to "show all reviews" in full length on a separate page, as well as links to every individual review, preferably also on a separate page.


Most of these features I'd consider essential for a decent review system. What GOG offers right now is just bare bones – headline, text, rating. That's it. And on top of that it doesn't even work properly – see all the complaints from users about their review not showing up at all. Sorry, but contacting support in order to edit my review is not something that makes me wanna deal with this system at the moment. Not even for the opportunity to win a fancy headset.
Posted May 20, 2016
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Mr.Caine: heh. was this prompted by the response Baldur's Gate EE received?
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rampancy: Not just that, but likely the responses to other games like Gone Home ("WTF It's SJW rubbish/gay propaganda/etc.!"). There was also that whole madness surrounding Jack Keane 2 from the first Insomnia Sale, and going back further, games getting review bombed just because the forums didn't get the games they'd overhyped themselves into expecting would come. (Kind of like how the forums hyped themselves into thinking Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowing/FO3/FNV would be coming this week.)
It gets me wondering myself. My experience with reviews on gog has been very positive so far. I have not encountered much trolling and the reviews themselves tend to be quite informative. Honestly Siege of Dragonspear is the only review bitchin' instance I can recall (and that mostly because gog was the only major platform that didn't censor public reaction - people needed to vent somewhere).

All in all I don't see a need for any guidelines besides "don't be an ass". If you want to improve the quality of reviews some additional functionalty would be a good place to start. Like you know, editing already posted ones or other quality of life improvements.
Posted May 20, 2016
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CelineSSauve: So... Any games released at the end of the month will have zero playtime for their reviews, if I understand this correctly?
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Cypisss: Nope, you'll have almost a full month for those. The results of the contest for games released in May will be decided first week of July. So there is one full month for the "May 31" release and more for all the prior ones. :)
But when is the cut-off?
And the post implies that later months will have less time between the end of the month and the "contest" ending.
Posted May 21, 2016
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Cypisss:
I'd still like my question about how these headphones are going to be delivered to be answered, especially with your guys' past history of "prizes" in contests. Once again, ROCCAT's website states that they only ship to Germany and Austria. You guys are in Poland. So they ship to you who ships to the winner? And will the winner have to cover this shipping, or will you do it yourselves?
...and I somehow get the sneaking suspicion that I'm not going to GET an answer...
Posted May 21, 2016
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Cypisss:
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zeogold: I'd still like my question about how these headphones are going to be delivered to be answered, especially with your guys' past history of "prizes" in contests. Once again, ROCCAT's website states that they only ship to Germany and Austria. You guys are in Poland. So they ship to you who ships to the winner? And will the winner have to cover this shipping, or will you do it yourselves?
...and I somehow get the sneaking suspicion that I'm not going to GET an answer...
They reply only to people in Germany and Austria.
Posted May 21, 2016
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zeogold: I'd still like my question about how these headphones are going to be delivered to be answered, especially with your guys' past history of "prizes" in contests. Once again, ROCCAT's website states that they only ship to Germany and Austria. You guys are in Poland. So they ship to you who ships to the winner? And will the winner have to cover this shipping, or will you do it yourselves?
...and I somehow get the sneaking suspicion that I'm not going to GET an answer...
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mrkgnao: They reply only to people in Germany and Austria.
You keep getting all the good jokes. I see I have to up my game.
Posted May 21, 2016
i assume the winner wont be someone who wrote a 2 liner about how expensive <insert game name> is right? ;)
Posted May 21, 2016
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Niggles: i assume the winner wont be someone who wrote a 2 liner about how expensive <insert game name> is right? ;)
I'm honestly tempted to write a fake review on a game I haven't bought or played just to see what happens.
Posted May 21, 2016
"—Keep the review guidelines in mind. A good review can be both entertaining and informative, it can be brief or extensive. It doesn't need to be positive in its overall assessment of the game - as long as it's eloquent and fair (or hilarious), it has our attention.
—All eligible reviews must be about games that have joined the GOG.com catalog within the previous month. For this first phase of the contest eligible reviews shall concern games that came out on GOG.com between May 1 and May 31, 2016. "

Interesting. Nothing about game being bought on GOG.
Posted May 21, 2016
Does this include sorting the reviews after chronological order (again)?
Posted May 21, 2016
A question. Does Valhalla Hills package qualify for this review contest since the last dlc was released yesterday?
Posted May 22, 2016
Until I can give a detailed written review without a numerical rating being given, the system is unfit for the purpose you desire.

I will give every game the lowest numerical rating in protest, i don't judge games besed on a number, and refuse to be forced into it.

I don't mind others choosing to score a game, as I can ignore their scores, and read what they write.
It's ridiculous that I can't ignore it when I write my own review.

give me the option to not score a game, my review is what I write, not some useless number.
Just a tick box to remove the stars from my review, is all I need.
Post edited May 22, 2016 by UhuruNUru
Posted May 23, 2016
Exanima Review:

I've been playing Exanima since the first alpha version was released several years ago and man has it come a long ways since then! Nearly every single aspect of the game has been improved and continues to do so on a regular basis. Bare Mettle releases patches and content updates quite frequently considering the small size of their team.

Exanima is one of the most innovative games I've played in the past 20 years. Instead of using static animations characters move based off of motion synthesis (over 200 simulated muscles) which allows for very dynamic gameplay; every single fight plays out in a unique fashion. The physics are also applied to everything in the game so it's possible to use the environment in creative ways, like dropping an item in front of someone to trip them or barricading a door with a bench, thus preventing it from opening.

Another amazing thing that I haven't seen done before is the accurate collisions which affects gameplay in very significant ways. For example, when using an axe in order to get an effective strike you need to actually land the blow with the head of the axe; hitting with the shaft won't do much damage but it may block an incoming strike or become entangled on the opponent's weapon, body, etc. On the other hand, weapons with long, sharp blades can do drawing cuts with nearly the entire blade length so even small strikes can be quite deadly. Another thing that relates to the accurate collisions is that armor only protects what it actually covers (and armor can be layered on top of each other in realistic ways).

The game will not hold your hand and it encourages the player to think before acting. In the story mode it's up to you to figure out what's going on by paying attention to your surroundings (things are very deliberately placed and everything has a purpose for existing which can give you clues), reading texts/books/scrolls/parchment, etc. As you start to piece together the bits of lore it leaves you wanting more, to keep pressing on so you can find more clues to determine if you really have figured things out or if you're being misled (perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally). The dark, eerie atmosphere combined with never knowing what may be lurking around the next corner really creates a suspenseful gameplay experience which drew me in from the start and kept me glued to my seat the entire time.

If any of this sounds like it may be the type of game you're interested in I highly recommend you give Exanima a try :). Just be patient and try not to get too frustrated when starting out; due to the complexity of the game it does have a rather steep learning curve. If you are cautious and make decisions based off what you would do in real life then you should be okay.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionReview Guidelines & Review of the Month contest(176 posts)(176 posts)
(176 posts)