Forums > Contributor Zone > Review of the Week, July 31 - August 6 - Kinked Hose Edition

Seven reviews, penned by five different authors, suddenly showed up on the site simultaneously at the eleventh hour on Sunday (not including mine). I imagine that a staff member - probably EmP - realized that I would have nothing to do this week, so he scrambled to find or approve any reviews that might've been sitting around in the submission queue or otherwise. For example, the three Zydrate reviews that showed up seem to be harvested from her Steam review archive, ranging from eight months to two years old. Curious.

And here I was ready to write a joke article where I was judging non-existent reviews from fake authors about games that don't exist. Ruin my fun, will you?

Anyway, here are the rankings:


Third place: truck_101's Bangai-O review (Dreamcast)

Fruit contraband is srs bsns apparently, and Mr. Truck does an admirable job of telling us why this is so. He also puts a tremendous effort into selling us on this game. In fact, his level of enthusiasm might even be a little over the top. But, we're all being honest here, as this is HONESTgamers after all, and he's here to tell you that this game is the best, it's the absolute BEST, that he enjoyed it a lot, a WHOLE LOT, and... I dunno, maybe he's right. Maybe Bangai-O is the greatest thing since sliced bread, though it kinda just looks like a run-of-the-mill bullet hell shooter to me. Then again, I haven't played it, and he has, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

All in all, this is a pretty easy read, and it doesn't get bogged down in details too much, although some of the descriptions of mechanics made my eyes cross a bit. It is also pretty solid on a technical level, aside from a few small issues (such as that mysterious hanging "0" at the end of the fourth paragraph).


Second place: Zydrate's Of Guards and Thieves review (PC)

Of the three Zydrate reviews submitted this week, this one is the strongest. It gives us the clearest overall picture of what this game is about, and reads more like a full review rather than a quick Steam blurb commenting on whether the game is recommended or not.

However, it also demonstrates some of her old bad writing habits, such as capitalizing words after semicolons, and her tendency for weird paragraphing (it only happened once in this review, though).

These small gripes aside, it is a good piece and easy enough to read. I wonder if EmP or whoever approved this article let her have a chance to edit it beforehand. I'm guessing not. Still, it gives us a concise view of everything we need to know about this game, and that can hardly be criticized.


First place: vcg2000's Pac-Man review (Atari 5200)

vcg2000 has a track record of submitting excellent reviews that are unfortunately bogged down by technical problems. For example, I thoroughly enjoyed - and distinctly remember - his Escape From Monster Manor review that he submitted last year, a brilliant snark piece that made me chuckle. He has a distinct conversational style, and it's a good one. He just needs to lay off the run-on sentences and insert more commas where appropriate. While his Pac-Man review still exhibits some of these same problems, he seems to be learning from his mistakes a bit, and as a result this one is much easier to read.

However, technical considerations aside, the content of the review is why he won this week. He thankfully spares us from going into details about how Pac-Man is played - I'm pretty sure that no gamer on Earth needs a recap of that - And instead focuses on the greater context of this cartridge's place in gaming history, how it holds up to the previous Atari 2600 release, and even gives us some hardware recommendations about the best way to play it. This is a man who knows his consoles. All in all, it was very thorough and informative, while managing to be packed neatly into a 500-word package. Nice job, man. Go pick a prize, if you feel like it.



And that's all for me. I'm going to go find a towel. I got words all over me.

Not sure EmP was too picky. Believe it or not, these older Steam reviews were some of my more interesting ones. I have a few single-paragraphers that didn't even warrant a submission.

That said, I do have AC: Rogue (A little short but a decent read) and Rebuild 3 (Also short as it's basically a glorified flash game) coming up.

My Tumblr (Don't worry, I just talk about games)
My Steam Profile