Continued from the (hidden) staff forum:
http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=12105#12105
JoshF wrote:Anyway, I'm having fun writing reviews again. It's a much more pleasant process when I let perfectly adequate smaller words do their thing instead of racking my brain for the most pretentious way of saying something.
Yes, reviews really should be written like extended forum posts. It might even help you to write your entire review in a forum "post box". Try it out! Your
Buster impressions, for example, could have easily been turned into a review that way.
That is not to say that profound-sounding sentences have no place in game reviews. Striking a pose (by means of three-syllable words and complex sentence structures, etc.) can occasionally be justified, but it should come about naturally. It is only when
you feel the words coming to you that you should use them (a great example being the last sentence of your Shatterhand review) -- you should never
go looking for the words. Because to the reader, at least to the experienced reader, it is always obvious when the writer has had to look for the words, and in such cases the effect is exactly the opposite of what the writer had desired: he immediately loses all credibility and creates a comic impression. He appears ridiculous.
This is one case. The other case is of those reviewers to whom the words do indeed come naturally, because they are relatively experienced in the handling of words, but who still appear ridiculous because
the concepts these words are meant to designate are far plainer and simpler than the words and sentence structures used to do so. This is the case with people like Kierron Gillen and Tim Rogers. The poorest, most feeble and pathetic analysis,
pseudo-analysis really, clothed in the kind of language one would be embarrased to use even when discussing, say, a great movie.
The extent to which you are allowed to strike a pose, basically, is determined by the kind of game you are reviewing. In a review of a Spacewar or a Civilization or a Street Fighter II or a Tekki, certain amount of profundity is not only allowable, but downright
necessary (assuming, of course, that you are capable of providing it -- because if you are not you are still better off staying away from it altogether). But when you are reviewing the latest little game where a little ship shoots little yellow dots at another ship, there are hardly ever such opportunities.
This, at any rate, is the advice I would give to aspiring game reviewers after struggling with the form for several years. It used to be that reviews would take me a week, exactly because I would rack my brains to find the most pretentious way to say everything. Now I can do small ones in like an hour, and stuff like the GTAIV review in about 5-6 hours. And, like you, I am enjoying myself tremendously. It's really fun dissecting stuff. Basically, for me a review is a way of being done with a game. It's the last thing I do after I put the game back on the shelf.
So yeah, I'll try to match you from now on review for review. Next up: Ketsui Death Label. I have a lot to say about this game.
