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[Ghost]

Hello all,

My name is Marten van Wier, I have been a fan of HOTU since 2001 but I decided to sign up when the site was resurrected.

I would like to write a couple of member reviews for favorite games of mine (Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake for example) but I was wondering if there are guidelines a review should follow in order to be good readable and be taken seriously.

What do people think a review should include?

[beenieweenie]

I think a good review includes about 5 points of discussion (graphics, sound, gameplay, replay value, controls) and maybe a topic that's specific to the genre or game. Add some non-spoiler examples from the game and voila!

[Ghost]

Yes, I can work with that.

I should think now how to write it down.

[limpythecat]

Basically do the opposite of this guy, Jakegamer
http://www.hotud.org/reviews/myreviews/?user=1972


Exemple of a review:

Patrick Stewart Voice Acting. Fun Game well made. This game has 2 sequals.

About Lands of Lore...

[jBrereton]

Basically do the opposite of this guy, Jakegamer
http://www.hotud.org/reviews/myreviews/?user=1972


Exemple of a review:

Patrick Stewart Voice Acting. Fun Game well made. This game has 2 sequals.

About Lands of Lore...

Aye, indeed. I like to think of myself as a pretty good reviewer, check some of my stuff out.

http://www.hotud.org/component/jreviews/my-reviews/user:1282/

[Jorpho]

Aye, indeed. I like to think of myself as a pretty good reviewer, check some of my stuff out.

http://www.hotud.org/component/jreviews/my-reviews/user:1282/

Two quick questions, if I may: Where do they spell Civilisation with an s?  And what's this about Grim Fandango's original release being buggy?  (The list of problems fixed by the one and only patch is rather trivial.)

[jBrereton]

Two quick questions, if I may: Where do they spell Civilisation with an s?

England. Probably ought to have used a 'z' as per the original release, mind.

And what's this about Grim Fandango's original release being buggy?  (The list of problems fixed by the one and only patch is rather trivial.)

The original release had a couple of CTDs in it that stopped me getting further than halfway through Rubacava until I installed the patch, after which everything ran fine.

As the patch notes point out, it fixed "various lockups caused by certain events throughout the game. "

Hope this helps.

[Progrox]

Well since there could potentially be a lot of people who review the same game, I think graphics and sound and etc. are not really that important. Best just write from your experience with it. How the overall feel was for you, what you thought was funny, or memorable. What cool stuff you can do in the game, and also what its shortcomings are.

I'd rather read 10 different perspectives on a game than 10 people each describing graphics, sound and controls. Because that just isn't all too interesting to read, and I think they'd all pretty much write similar stuff about that, anyways. Don't get me wrong, they need to be mentioned if they're out of the ordinary, exceptionally good or bad, but they aren't crucial.

Then again, if someone else made an in-depth review, you could just add one that fills in the gaps, and where you agree and disagree.

[Lord_Pall]

We can add separate criteria (1-10) in addition to the text sections.

Would that be better than the straight single value?


So you could have "bugginess", "Design", "Visuals", "etc" as individual ratings too..

[jBrereton]

We can add separate criteria (1-10) in addition to the text sections.

Would that be better than the straight single value?


So you could have "bugginess", "Design", "Visuals", "etc" as individual ratings too..

I dunno, I think an overall rating is 'purer', so to speak. If you weigh reviewers down with too many criteria, there will be umming and ah-ing over individual points, instead of concentrating on writing a solid review.

That's my opinion, anyway, I'm not sure how many would agree.

[SkeleTony]

I personally like the idea of separate ratings for each aspect because, for me at least, graphics are unimportant so a review that says "This role playing game's graphics were only slightly better than ascii..." but was otherwise favorable, I would try that game out. Whereas a singular "This game gets a 6..." without noting that it would have gotten a 9 if not for the tiled 2D graphics, might get passed by(depending on how much of a hurry I am in).

Probably what would work best is to have BOTH. An overall 1-10 rating at teh top with detailed review and separate ratings for different aspects below it.