Build a Better Review System, Templates might help -- but they just as easily hinder Options

[ZarroTsu]

Wanting to write reviews, I decided I'd use the strategy discussed by one Yatzee Croshaw here.

The problem is that, because I don't give an "overall rating", this kind of review is rejected from the forum.

What reason is there for there to be an "overall rating"? Isn't it suppose to be what I think of the game? Giving it an overall rating because that fits your format is fine. But forcing me to follow this strategy isn't asking for what I think of the game; it's asking me for what you WANT me to think of the game. And that defeats the purpose of writing in general.

Moreover, their presence from a reader perspective is solely to ignore the rest of the review and judge the game on a given number. Some here might say they don't do this, but often times even they are guilty of it. Even I do it. But if these numbers don't exist, then it compels me to actually read the review. So...


Generic forum discussion question for the reasoning impaired:
Why do "Overall Ratings" exist? Are they there to help, or are they there to defeat the purpose of writing a review when you could just write a number?



This post has been edited by ZarroTsu: Oct 4 2012, 02:51 PM

[ZarroTsu]

I reviewed them against the standard of the RPG Maker game, Exit Fate, if I'm to give a standard. To be frank, there's nothing stopping any game made in RPG Maker from being just as good an an officiated console release. So maybe I'm choosing some especially bad, in my eyes, games for me to review. And, comparatively, I really and honestly found neither that I reviewed very good. The 'Overall score' I added to the end was more vague summary than anything, and was only really there to pass your 'requirement' in that case.

Both these games, Zandir and Nexus, come from completely opposite writing standards. Zandir was written quite well, where as Nexus looked much like a poorly done fan translation of some obscure Asian game (maybe it was, I'm not one to read topic background). But neither game really stood to hold my attention, because neither game seemed to understand how to establish a story for the sake of grabbing the player's attention.

I suppose I was thinking things more on a standard of 'actual game' as opposed to 'constructive criticism', but the fact stands that both these games were considered "Complete", and were placed in that designated forum. Maybe I'm wrong, but that seems like an invitation to hold high expectations for what I might hope to see out of the game -- at the very least an engaging story that keeps me wanting to play longer than the first boss.

And I don't expect perfection, I just expect it to BE there. A proper framing setup to let me know what kind of game it will be, and how dedicated the maker was. In either case, they very much danced around these things and made them hard to take seriously, causing everything to smash face-first into the ground when the main characters acted not only moronic, but UNLIKABLY moronic. Within what would be the first chapter of a novel, I was given no pretense to the setting, and characters I could not bring myself to like. Perhaps at that point, I should have simply denied a review -- but there's no reason not to bring these things to light.

In either review, while decidedly negative after my negative experience with the game, I did pose several serious questions that the author of the game could do well to ask themselves. Why ARE Golems hanging out at an abandoned, burning building in Nexus? Why IS this building underground? I could forgo answering this question with the obvious "hidden mansion of wizard cultists", which I'm throwing out there without playing any more of the game than I did in-stream (and am probably entirely correct), but what was to stop the protagonist from acknowledging this himself rather than just focusing all his attention on a goal without stopping to investigate anything CAUSING that goal to BE a goal. Why DO the bats run away unprovoked during random encounters, as the very FIRST enemy in Zendir? What possible reason would there be to punish the player for seemingly no reason, just because I missed a minor plot detail that the game failed to convey coherently?

While these are more questions that I could pose in my review, the firstmost of either series is a question enough. Maybe I came across as condescending in a way some users may not understand how to deal with -- but it's something they could stand to learn as well. To look on a review boasting a severe number of negatives, and understand precisely why these are negatives. To correct them, not because they were asked to correct them, but because they were asked why they weren't correct.

So maybe I should be looking for games that understand how to draw player attention to the game in the game itself from the get-go, or maybe I'm looking at things way more strictly than I should. I said before the final score was there just to appease you, but I suppose 1/10 was far too low, when an "F" is anywhere from 0 to 50 on a scale of 100. I'll consider reevaluating this if the "Overall score" stays a requirement (otherwise I can remove it outright), and I'll also work on toning down my language on the Zendir review.

Nexus, however, REALLY got me angry with it, so I won't be resubmitting that review. For reference of when and how, you can see the exact moment I got thoroughly ticked off in the blind stream of it, within the last 10 minutes of the video.