Theory

[icycalm]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/whats_in_a_label/

[Molloy]

You type any "game" and "review" into search engines and you rarely see actual reviews on the first page other than Gamespy, IGN, Gamespot etc because all the major sites have stupid placeholder pages up already with loads of linked hits. And then all the cheat code sites/FAQ sites. You'd be lucky to end up on the 2nd page if the game is anyway mainstream. Who the hell googles for reviews anyway? Most people get to reviews through links from places like Digg, games news sites or forums.

Anyway, I don't see how it's a big moral dilemma. We just come to the site for good writing and for the most part the reviews have been good so far. You can always just cheat and call it a review in the title, then explain in a paragraph after the review that as with any fighting game or multiplayer game you're going to have to go back and review it a second time once all the game systems and balance have been hammered out by the SRK nerds.

[Flying Omelette]

I don't have any idea how or why, but for most games that I've reviewed, if you type the title and review on Google, mine will be on the first page of results and some are even #1...which I'm okay with for my newer reviews, but rather embarrassing for my older ones that suck.

Who the hell googles for reviews anyway? Most people get to reviews through links from places like Digg,

I wouldn't touch Digg with a 30 foot sterilized pole in a radioactive suit with asbestos underwear. If there's one site on the entire internet I think could possibly give me virtual cooties, it's that one.

[icycalm]

You'd be lucky to end up on the 2nd page if the game is anyway mainstream. Who the hell googles for reviews anyway? Most people get to reviews through links from places like Digg, games news sites or forums.

See here.

Currently on the top of the second page for No More Heroes, but for over a month until the game's US release it was on the 4th-5th spot of the first page, and for a couple of weeks after it was still on the 5th-6th spot, higher than both GameSpot and IGN. Overall, I'd say the review was read by around 5,000-6,000 people who found it through links in forums or blogs (links which were only there because I was first), and another 2,000-3,000 through Google. Most of those people had never heard of the site before.

So even with a mainstream game such as NMH, the returns are pretty huge if you are first. Basically, a dozen such reviews are all it takes to establish a site in the minds of people, and secure a large enough readership so that places like Kotaku and Slashdot feel obliged to start linking to you regularly.

Anyway, I don't see how it's a big moral dilemma.

This doesn't have anything to do with morality -- i.e. it's not about saving people some bucks if the game ends up sucking, because there's no way in hell it's going to suck. What this has to do with is whether I am following my own review guidelines. Not reviewing a game until you completely understand how it works or doesn't work is one of these guidelines, and with games such as this it means you must go through several weeks of competitive play before you can review it.

You can always just cheat and call it a review in the title, then explain in a paragraph after the review that as with any fighting game or multiplayer game you're going to have to go back and review it a second time once all the game systems and balance have been hammered out by the SRK nerds.

Yeah, this seems like a good idea. Not "review it a second time", but simply add a couple more paragraphs to the review. The only snag is the rating. Obviously, the game deserves four or five stars, depending on whether all the additions are implemented well or not -- but what if there are major flaws that can only be found under serious competitive play? A game like KOF 2003 shouldn't get more than three stars for that reason. So can I subtract stars later if this ends up being the case?

for the most part the reviews have been good so far.

Tell me which ones aren't so I can go back and fix them. The more specific you are the easier this job will be for me (and for the other writers, if some of these reviews you are referring to were not written by me).

[icycalm]

I don't have any idea how or why, but for most games that I've reviewed, if you type the title and review on Google, mine will be on the first page of results and some are even #1...which I'm okay with for my newer reviews, but rather embarrassing for my older ones that suck.

It's because many of these games were never reviewed by IGN and co. It's the same with me, with reviews of older games. Type Night Slave for example. No one knows this game, so the insomnia review is number 1.

[RyanDG]

Yeah, this seems like a good idea. Not "review it a second time", but simply add a couple more paragraphs to the review. The only snag is the rating. Obviously, the game deserves four or five stars, depending on whether all the additions are implemented well or not -- but what if there are major flaws that can only be found under serious competitive play? A game like KOF 2003 shouldn't get more than three stars for that reason. So can I subtract stars later if this ends up being the case?

Would it be necessary to offer a rating at first? I know people like the big bullet point at the end of the review (the number of stars), but in a game like Smash Brothers I would think that it would be acceptable to hold off on a rating with a disclaimer in the review stating that due to the nature of a competitive fighting game a final rating can only be issued after more time is allowed to put the game through the gauntlet of a competitive focus. Or do you think that would end up agitating some people who would feel sleighted with a review without a final score?

[moonside]

i have to admit, i'm a little surprised to read that you appreciate smash, icy! don't take this the wrong way but, having read your work, i've been under the impression that you wouldn't approve of the reckless disregard the game has for 2d fighting tradition, for lack of a better term.

[elvis]

Screw the mindless masses. I'm keen as can be to see your review.

[Flying Omelette]

It's kind of amusing that for games that they have reviewed, I'm the only non-professional site that's right up there with them. It's funny because I've known so many people who have told me they'd like to make a site like mine, but won't because they feel the reviews won't get any attention and it's easier just to submit to GameFAQs. Either (a) I'm proof that's not true and people just aren't trying, or (b) I did something special and have no idea what.

I'm really surprised I'm the first result for this and this, considering how insanely popular those games are.

[CosMind]

title it "...review preview" :wink:

you'd be making a perfectly accurate statement.

[icycalm]

Screw the mindless masses.

Unfortunately, I can't. I am not going to keep putting so much effort in this site forever only for the benefit of a couple thousand people.

Would it be necessary to offer a rating at first?

Without a rating, most people would not consider whatever I have to say after a couple of days of playing the game as a review. (And, to be honest, I am not really blaming them for that. I think that ratings are required for big, professional review sites. Blogs like Siliconera that do not offer ratings are only doing so as a cop-out, in order to avoid offending anyone.)

So the end result would be that my review would get largely ignored. Without a rating I might as well call it impressions and keep my conscience clear as well.

i have to admit, i'm a little surprised to read that you appreciate smash, icy! don't take this the wrong way but, having read your work, i've been under the impression that you wouldn't approve of the reckless disregard the game has for 2d fighting tradition, for lack of a better term.

I don't see what could possibly give you the impression that I would not like this game. I guess people are fond of making baseless assumptions about other people. And I don't see anything "reckless" about this game. It's a 2D fighting game made to be played by friends at home. Everyone and their sister loves this game -- what's reckless about that? I mean look at PowerStone. PowerStone is the 3D equivalent of Smash Bros., and it's excellent. Of course it failed in the arcades, just as Smash Bros. probably would if it saw an arcade release, and for the same reasons. But that doesn't make them bad games. The depth is there, the strategy is there, there's just not that much of it. But for casual play they are excellent, and the theme and presentation brilliant. What more could anyone ask for?

[icycalm]

It's kind of amusing that for games that they have reviewed, I'm the only non-professional site that's right up there with them. It's funny because I've known so many people who have told me they'd like to make a site like mine, but won't because they feel the reviews won't get any attention and it's easier just to submit to lamefaqs. Either (a) I'm proof that's not true and people just aren't trying, or (b) I did something special and have no idea what.

I'm really surprised I'm the first result for this and this, considering how insanely popular those games are.

This is due to how Google works. THEIR reviews start out higher than yours because their frontpages have much higher pagerank than yours. IGN has a pagerank of 7-8 whereas yours is 4-5, so this higher pagerank is passed down to all their pages automatically. However, your reviews are better than theirs, so in the VERY LONG RUN, yours will come out on top. Sure, initially, people will link the IGN reviews like crazy, but then one person will link yours in one thread, and those reading the thread will check it out, and A FEW of them will recognize that it's better. Then months later some of these people will find themselves engaged in a similar discussion on some other forums, and they will remember your review and link it, while at the same time ignoring IGN's review, because they now know that yours is better. And with every such link (even the ones you yourself posted in this thread!), months and years after the original publication of the reviews, your review will start to slowly climb up the rankings, getting closer and closer to IGN's review, and finally surpassing it.

I mean, does anyone here really think that ten years from now people will be linking IGN's or GameSpot's review of No More Heroes? It's not even a matter of who was "right" or "wrong" -- it's a matter of who is raising the more interesting points. So in every thread from now on people might still be linking IGN's or GameSpot's or Eurogamer's reviews, but they won't be linking ALL of them -- whereas EVERYONE will be linking mine, as "that one guy who disagreed".

So quality comes out on top eventually on the internet, as long as you have the patience to wait for it. Your site has been around for much longer than mine, which explains why your reviews are currently faring so well against those of the big sites.

[Flying Omelette]

I think your post got cut off there...

[icycalm]

I was editing it :)

[moonside]

I don't see what could possibly give you the impression that I would not like this game. I guess people are fond of making baseless assumptions about other people.

Yeah, well, at least I'm not afraid to admit when I'm wrong! I'm glad I am, in this case; overexposure to too many myopic people on certain other forums had left me with the impression that there aren't enough people who appreciate both smash AND fighters along the lines of KOF, GG and SF. That said, I don't hang out on Shoryuken.com or anything, so I realize I'm probably just reacting to a few loudmouthed idiots.

The game is significant to me too. Despite playing tremendous amounts of games of all kinds in my youth I had been what Nintendo likes to call a "lapsed gamer" for quite awhile, before buying and sinking hundreds of hours into Melee, teaching friends how to play .. it may have even been partially responsible for my landing a job doing web dev at a company that puts together tournaments.

PowerStone is the 3D equivalent of Smash Bros., and it's excellent.

Maybe, there is that new Smash Ball...

[Oils]

ICYCALLLLLLM!!!
Son of the arcade! You are not going to say something like this?

For years, I’ve been telling people I wanted a big-scale “fighting” game that played exactly like the Castlevania games on the Gameboy Advance (or DS, I guess): I wanted snappy controls, I wanted quick fighting, I wanted real, human opponents. More than a dozen times, some jackass snapped his fingers and then pointed directly at my nose and declared “Smash Bros., dude!” I wish I remembered all of those guys’ names because I would tell each and every one of them, personally, to fuck themselves. Instead, I’m going to use this paragraph to voice my concern about the game’s control scheme. Namely, the only way you’re going to be able to use a D-pad to move your character is if you play the game with just the Wiimote, which means that you have to press the A button with the side of your thumb and the hook-like pseudo-trigger B button with your middle finger to do a hard attack. Not too keen on that, thanks! I would rather use the Classic Controller’s brilliant D-pad (which I believe is the best D-pad of all time (I’ve verified this by playing through Landstalker with it)) to control my character. You can’t do this, however; though the game’s official website is smug enough to brag about the various controller-configuring menus, saying “We’ve thought of everything!” they actually haven’t thought of everything, because everything would mean I could use the D-pad to move.

Some people might say that the game doesn’t let you control movement with the D-pad because the analog stick is an integral part of the game design: you have to tap the analog stick hard in a specific direction as you press an attack button. I say that Virtua Fighter does a damn good job of having “short tap” and “long tap” special moves with just a digital joystick, and the execution time of said moves never feels longer than instantaneous. I want to double-tap that delicious, apple-pie-like, deep d-pad to run; I want to long-tap and short-tap to do smash attacks. My friends in the “Videogame Industry” tell me this is impossible in a game like Smash Bros. X, which is already taking huge risks and breaking tons of Nintendo’s internal rules (one of those rules being that a Nintendo-made game should neither have nor need a controller-input option menu), and that we should be glad we got as much as we did get, and that we should be doubly glad that this was all done in the interest of inviting The Casual Gamer to participate in the heated, old-school brawling action. Whatever. The default setting of the Classic Controller’s D-pad is left and right for “horizontal taunt”, up for “upward taunt”, and down for “downward taunt”. If Nintendo’s idea of inviting casual gamers into a hardcore game involves letting them do something useless in multiple directions, then I’d hate to see how they’re going to get hardcore gamers playing casual games, when that time comes. Are they going to invent overly complicated, customizable control schemes for a VCR-programming mini-game in Animal Crossing, where the A button operates the right index finger? On the other hand, a videogame that lets me customize my controls (thankfully, yes, I could make jumping button-activated and cancel the “up = jump” input) obviously assumes I know a thing or two about games, so why the shit does it constantly put a little indicator over the character I’m controlling, even in the single-player mode — and only if I’m using a customized control scheme? I mean, why not put a “1P” indicator above someone who’s too dumb to make their own custom control scheme? It’s weird, and thinking about it actually kind of makes me lonely, like that screen on MySpace.com that keeps telling me “You must be someone’s friend to make comments about them”. Oh.

Seriously, not a single person whose hands I’ve plopped a Classic Controller into has not, immediately at the start of a match, pressed the D-pad to try to move, and instead initiated one taunt after another, after another, after another. I don’t know, though; maybe they were just really cocky professional players.

Mmmm scrumptious apple pie...

[icycalm]

He took the words right out of my mouth.