UnscathedFlyingObject wrote:"You can't spell IGNorance without IGN."
Came to post this.
The first game was a scared engineer tossed into hell. The second game is a guy who's lost everything to these monsters and really has nothing left to lose so hell yes he'll put his life on the line and shoot out an airlock if it means killing seven Necromorphs at once. Isaac is stronger here and I feel stronger playing as him.
What the fuck am i reading?
This reminds me of "and then John was a Zombie".
Elixir wrote:The Shmups forum is an amazing forum. I'm going to write about its scary moments, cool posts, and how much I dig Skykid's internal struggle, but the Shmups forum is about more than this. When I read it for the first time, I sat on the couch with my heart racing and dissected the journey I had just taken. Then, I read it again, and when that was done, I jumped into Off-Topic for the third time. Shmups forum is just that good.
Skykid wrote:As well as this, I was under the impression it was journalistic suicide to talk about oneself in the first person unless it's a unique opportunity to tell an anecdote or something.
Maybe the copy editors at IGN don't know that, or don't have the heart to tell the guy he writes like a ten year old.
Absolutely not true. You do want to avoid any reference to yourself when reporting, but for opinion pieces such as editorials and reviews it's perfectly acceptable. After all a review is telling the reader what you think and how you felt experiencing a product, not a factual, technical breakdown. You want your review to have a voice, that's how the reader can know and identify with you. Roger Ebert does it all the time.
That's because he's Roger Ebert. He's got a site called rogerebert.com and everything. People read his reviews because they think, hey, I wonder what Roger Ebert thinks of this movie?
But yeah, ultimately it comes down to house style. Still, it's *very* easy to have a reader identify with you - or your opinion - without ever once talking about yourself.
Skykid wrote:As well as this, I was under the impression it was journalistic suicide to talk about oneself in the first person unless it's a unique opportunity to tell an anecdote or something.
Maybe the copy editors at IGN don't know that, or don't have the heart to tell the guy he writes like a ten year old.
Absolutely not true. You do want to avoid any reference to yourself when reporting, but for opinion pieces such as editorials and reviews it's perfectly acceptable. After all a review is telling the reader what you think and how you felt experiencing a product, not a factual, technical breakdown. You want your review to have a voice, that's how the reader can know and identify with you. Roger Ebert does it all the time.
That's because he's Roger Ebert. He's got a site called rogerebert.com and everything. People read his reviews because they think, hey, I wonder what Roger Ebert thinks of this movie?
But yeah, ultimately it comes down to house style. Still, it's *very* easy to have a reader identify with you - or your opinion - without ever once talking about yourself.
Yep, that's what I was getting at. Different house styles and style guides dictate the manner and method by which copy should be produced. Obviously IGN have no qualms with how anything is written at all. I'd be surprised if they had a rulebook if the site Editor is getting away this kind of stuff.
Eurogamer is again a good example; you'll rarely find anyone profusely using (if using at all) the first person reference in their reviews.
Yeah, that guy pretty much summed it up. I noticed poor Greg didn't even respond to it. Kinda funny in how his blog that doesn't matter he can write perfectly fine, but when it comes to his actually job on writing a review he looks like a goddamn joke. I don't get it.
BIL wrote:
"Small sack, LOTS OF CUM" - Nikola Tesla
Specineff wrote:At least he's not taking the "You're all a bunch of ignorant faggots, so eat s**t and die" route, like certain "reviewers" I know of.
Agreed. Stuart Campbell is a complete fckuing twat. No matter how much you demonstrate to him that he's wrong or made an error he will never back down or apologize. Expect to be drowned in expletives and belittlement if you ever criticize anything he's published. With that being said, he does occasionally display a gift for writing.
Yeah, I will give him credit for maturely asking why his reviews are tripe. It just really baffles me how he can write fairly well on his blog, but not his reviews. Maybe he just buckled down hardcore and used the interwebs for English help to make his blog sound better...
Last edited by drauch on Tue Jan 25, 2011 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
BIL wrote:
"Small sack, LOTS OF CUM" - Nikola Tesla
Skykid wrote:Eurogamer is again a good example; you'll rarely find anyone profusely using (if using at all) the first person reference in their reviews.
They use "we" instead. It's as witty as using indecipherably small font to render your post sarcastic. At least one reviewer uses "I" on a regular basis. Others choose third person writing ("this reviewer" and so on). Gotta be some magical thinking behind it. Substitute for emoticons? Then again, I appreciate when reviewers appear more concerned about the subject of their writing than their own coolness.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
Well, obviously it wasn't just us that spotted a serious lack of quality then. When the internet gets its knives out it really goes for the kill though, I almost feel a little bad for the chap. That said, if it prompts him to better evaluate and edit articles he turns out in future, it's for the best.
Dunno, his "theory" sounds like he's not aware of mascot characters such as magical girls having been present in shooters at least since the eighties. Not very professional that.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
drauch wrote:Yeah, I will give him credit for maturely asking why his reviews are tripe. It just really baffles me how he can right fairly well on his blog, but not his reviews. Maybe he just buckled down hardcore and used the interwebs for English help to make his blog sound better...
Please don't criticize the "righting" of others.
Sorry. That was too easy and I have poor restraint.
<trap15> I only pick high quality games
<trap15> I'm just pulling shit out of my ass tbh
Was that a review of Dead Space 2 or someone taking down the words of a fanboy as he played it for the first time?
As a Wii owner, I find a good barometer for a site tends to be reviews of anything ported to the Wii. Favourites range from a dreadful IGN effort at CoD: Black Ops, where the "review" was a copy and paste of bits of the other platform review (including features removed from the Wii version) interspersed with comments about graphics not being HD and classic controller support, to various sites' reviews for games which boil down to "lolz, graphics are rubbish get a proper console". I find Gamespot to give the best reviews, as generally, whatever the score, there's enough from the content to tell whether it's just rubbish/great or the reviewer hated/loved it but you might like/despise it - that is the key to a good review.
This is much more poorly edited than the article is poorly written. If you're going to throw around phrases like 'conjugation for the conditional,' you damn well better know what you're talking about. (I'm using 'you' in the general sense, not to piss off one specific person)
Honestly, this is the internet, not an academic journal, and Greg Miller is perfectly justified in writing in a conversational register. In my mind, the only legitimate complaints about the review are the ones criticizing the content of the review, and not its style. I do read IGN from time to time, and I used to listen to podcasts with Greg Miller on them. I think he's a pretty funny guy, but he's honestly not very smart, and I very much disagree with his views on videogames. That said, his views don't differ that much from other editors at IGN or other major gaming news outlets. I agree that this review isn't very good, but it seems odd to single it out.
If the review had appeared in Gamefaqs, no one would have batted an eyelash. It feels more "dude, check out this totally sweet game I played" than "Hands-on experience with Dead Space 2, by Greg Miller". Hope he posts a revised version, and that people realize writers are human and bound to make mistakes as well. It's not something the size of "Professor Gertsmann And The Mysterious Case Of The Kane And Lynch Review".
Agreed with Linko9. The critique of the review felt dickish and pretentious.
I thought the review did the job. A sequel just generally just needs to please people and this guys enthusiasm shone through. I wouldn't have read past the first paragraph to know i'm buying this game.
This industry has become 2 dimensional as it transcended into a 3D world.
Did what job? I thought it was meant to be a professional review? I could make better reviews. I mean, I have, and I've also made better forum posts/blog posts/IRC chatter that's better than this entire review.
The entire review is basically just "I liked this game because it's awesome. I liked the character and he did awesome things that were totally rad and made me like the game. You play as this guy who does stuff and he also did similar stuff in the previous game. You should but this game because its good and if you dont then you suck. Your just mad because this game owns you're butt. I'm going to talk about the game. It's called Dead Space 2."
The review's score is also inaccurate, because his "enthusiasm" is "shining through" - in other words, he's hyped up (or possibly being paid to do so, considering his perspective sounds relatively uninformed) and reviewing the game based on his experience alone, not based on the positives and negatives which is what a review is meant to consist of.
Lasting appeal is not the same as 'good multiplayer.' I don't know if you played the original Dead Space, but it's the sort of game you'll want to play over and over (just like RE4). That's lasting appeal. To suggest that a single-player game can never have 'lasting appeal' is a bit foolish, especially on a forum dedicated to shmups.
X infinite
