I have always liked writing and I have loved games since I was very young. Therefore, it became natural for me to give game reviews a whirl. Since I started, I have written approximately 30 reviews for games. 21 of which still exist. Most of my reviews is never discovered which is either because my review is drowned in a sea of thousand upon thousands of reviews or the game is simply hidden from the world. Some of my longer and more in-depth pieces have gotten popular and gotten praise, so it felt natural to continue the same review style for future releases.
After a quick glance I noticed some flaws in my process. Spelling mistakes is a rooky mistake and had to be corrected immediately. I haven’t always done proper research either, so I have shared some misinformation. I never had anything visual to show, so certain concepts and mechanics could feel extremely confusing. I wanted to fix those mistakes.
I have posted a few of my most popular and my proudest review here on my website and fixed each of these mistakes, but while working on them something dawned on me; These reviews aren’t proper reviews.
Delusion and denial kept my “system” going
I used to say that my reviews followed a similar principle as the “Before you buy” videos from Gameranx, where I give the reader information about the game and what to expect + a bit of guidance and personal opinion, which is all well and good. The problem is I have not followed that formula, and this just doesn’t work as well in written form. As I am very camera shy and don’t really have the voice for YouTube, putting my work up that way as it is now, is not an option either.
I do not know if you have read any of my reviews and if you have, you might have felt that you got very little out of it and was not totally sure why. Well, let me tell you. Most of my “reviews” is just me going over the story and the general game mechanics. I very rarely talk about if these mechanics work or if the game got any mechanics that makes the game unique to other games in the same genre. If I do it, it is maybe a sentence here or there.
My work simply does not work.
Getting to the standard review quality
Because of that I am going to start anew. I am planning to create a new review form. I have an education in computer science with speciality in games where I learned to analyse games and find out what makes them special and why certain mechanics work or don’t. I want to put that knowledge to use. Besides that I will add some important parts to the review, such as common bugs, glitches, and crashes, to let the reader know the stability. As I have 2 pc systems; one high-ed and one medium-end, I plan to add a performance section as the system recommendation for games is not always accurate. A TL:DR / summary might improve the readers interest in acknowledge my reviews as a wall of text can be intimidating or just give a sense of boredom. The TL:DR / summary will primarily be a pros & cons list giving the reader a fast understanding of the game and if they wish, they have the possibility to dive deeper in something specific.
However, I do not plan to just look and be like any other good reviewer out there. I want to let the reviews to still reflect me, so my dumb terrible pun headers will go absolutely nowhere. I know the humour is awful. Even worse than the worst dad jokes, but I love puns and it makes me laugh so they stay.
Ambition to climb even higher
Lastly, I do still see flaws in other reviews. Reviews who use a numbered score rarely gives games a 6/10 as that just means the game is bad and a 5/10 is absolutely terrible. And 7/1o is mediocre. I do not understand how or where that became popular and makes the whole numbered score invalid especially since these numbers are never given a value. It is just such a terrible system and I plan to revamp it.
Other reviewers have completely abandoned numbered scores which is great for simplicity. Gameranx simply gives their opinion and that is it. ACG used another system called: “Buy, Wait for Sale, Never Touch”, which have a few under categories, but is very self-explanatory. My plans are to create my own system. The idea so far is to use a variation of number score, which is given a name within a certain parameter, plus added notes that could lets the reader now that the score could be higher or lower in their own perspective. This sounds complicated, but when it is fully developed it will make a lot of sense.
With that said, there will be no more reviews posted until I have fixed the flaws in my reviews. When my next blog post about game reviews goes up a new review can be expected soon. It is still a learning process, so while I highly believe my first new review will be a lot better than my former ones, I expect it just only become better.
Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!