Natako's Crappy Game Reviews (On hold due to RL Circumstances)

[greenraven]

To be honest I thought there would be no battles after watching the first two. XD

[Meiscool]

yiff yiff

[Moosetroop11]

I'm only half way through watching the second part and I want to die.

Oh, the marine's from Metal Slug, by the way.

[greenraven]

Oh, the marine's from Metal Slug, by the way.

Kinda answer that already.

Metal Slug, Red Shirt marine guy is from Metal Slug.

[Moosetroop11]

In which thread? I didn't see it.

[drenrin2120]

Dear lord... so much dialogue 0_o

[greenraven]

In which thread? I didn't see it.

In this very thread, go back a page. Preemptive time critique.

[Meiscool]

Like it really matters that it was already brought up...

[Felix-0]

yiff yiff

3:<
Why?

[Archem]

Because it's the hottest thing out on the market these days.

I'm not sure of my sarcasm there...

[Felix-0]

Because it's the hottest thing out on the market these days.

I'm not sure of my sarcasm there...

My hatred runs deep.

[Natako]

Okay, so to address what may or may not be an elephant in the room (most likely a minor annoyance for most people, not unlike an itch in an unsightly place when you're among company), I wasn't too proud of this one, so I feel the need to discuss why. I'm sure that half of you really don't care, so you're free to ignore this post and go about your merry way. :p

The reason that I had set the deadlines, for those of you who don't know me well from my past...presence on the forums...is because I am notorious for saying I'll do things and then not doing them. So to counter this, I set deadlines that I felt I HAD to get things done by because then I wouldn't look like an *** for making empty promises that I couldn't keep. Okay, so I gave myself a week to complete a CGR. Easy enough. Well, seeing that I work full time, that turned out to be not as easy as I thought it would be. The first couple reviews went fine, were done in my own time, and I was very relaxed throughout the duration of my recordings. Then, I got hit with the work schedule from Hell and the obvious downside to the deadlines kicked in as I felt forced to do them on days when I didn't feel up to the task, when I had spent the whole day working and truly just wanted to curl up on my bed with my laptop and watch stupid **** on youtube. I'll spare you the details, but when I recorded this, I had literally just gotten home from running back and forth all day, practically driving all around the state of NJ buying stuff for my new pet and running errands for family members who were away at a Labor Day picnic while I tried to make the most of my single day off. Obviously not the best conditions for a review, but I decided not to be an asshat and went through with it anyway, to...mixed results.

My attention was elsewhere - and this is saying something considering that I'm usually a huge mass of ADD-related forgetfulness - and it unfortunately showed when despite being warned that there were level skips in the game, I went ahead and skipped a level without thinking much about it. Believe it or not, I didn't mean to do it - it's like when I started playing Dungeon Defenders with Cerb and he warned me three or four times about the spikes in one level, and the first thing I did was jump into the spikes. I have a tendency to do stupid, clumsy stuff like this, and, in my opinion, that's okay. In most cases, I would have turned that around and made a joke about it. What made it worse was that not only did I mention it, I failed to realize the possibility of reloading from my last save and doing the level and instead went on to level 2. I want to stress that I am pretty much a perfectionist when it comes to things like this and it kind of bugged me afterwards.

Then comes the issue of not having planned for a long review. Yes, I knew going into the game that it was long, as in beyond the scope of a normal crappy game review. Yet when I approached it, I treated it like it was a normal review and, upon seeing all of the instructions and dialogue, I began to panic internally and wondered how I was going to make the review entertaining if 99% of it was text boxes seeing that it was meant to be posted as a 30-minute video. This is what led to me pretty much glancing over certain things - believe it or not, I don't edit these videos much except in the case of something being TOO drawn out in boring, so there is a sense of stage fright about the whole endeavor. I imagine this will get better with time and as I figure out more clearly how to go about reviewing these longer games. I don't want to be a clone of any other reviewer - I just want to do these things how I see fit to do them. Next time, I'll probably go for a more let's play approach, slowing down during the parts that I need to pay attention to (unlike in this case, where I was cycling through them quickly because I didn't want to bog the review down) and just editing them out if they get to take up too much time. I think that in the end that leads to a better experience for everyone rather than me forgetting about the level skips and other things mentioned in the tutorials, such as the "I win button" of sorts that makes it so you don't have to sit through every long random battle that pops up. This was purely my fault. Yeah, my attention span makes a fly's memory look like an elephant's in comparison, but usually if I slow down enough and read twice what needs to be reread, I don't have these issues.

Anyway, I've said what needs to be said. I have another longer one coming up and I'll try to modify my style accordingly. Most importantly, I'll be doing it on my own time (which will probably be sometime next week, and I think I've established that I can get things done this time around). Constructive criticism is always welcomed and taken into consideration. Thank you to all the great people who have commented thus far in support of this project. It's a pretty big undertaking and I'm hoping I get better at it as time goes on.

Love all of you. Except Cerebus because he's French.

TL;DR: I'm a retard but I'll try to be slightly less of a retard.

[greenraven]

As a fellow game reviewer let me just impart some wisdom and secrets of the trade to a young rookie like yourself. XD

Ok, seriously though.

Deadlines are a double-edged sword. As you've noticed sometimes you just don't feel like doing ****. I generally try to stick to 1 review every 2 weeks, it's flexible enough. But of course I review commercial games and you review games made by people you know, so that changes things a bit. You have a bit more pressure on your shoulders to release them sooner.

Second thing. Research. Before I wrote my first review I watched episodes of X-Play, various IGN video reviews, and a ton of written reviews. I sort of mixed and matched parts here and there until I created a format I was comfortable with. Like you I didn't really want to be a clone, but I'll settle for being Frankenstein's Monster.

You can still do a "lets play" style video with in-game commentary as you go, but you can also finish it up with a final results screen of sorts. What was the worst moment in the game? What was the music like overall? What did you think of the story? What would be the final score? Your scores can be realistic where the worse the lower, or ironic where the the worst is inverted to be the highest. They may be crappy but you still are calling them "reviews" are you not?

Now as for your issue of "stage fright", simply go back and edit in the voices later. You're not streaming these reviews live, you have the comfortable luxury of not having to record your voice at the exact same time that you are recording the screen.

An interesting thought that just came to me though, why is a perfectionist doing crappy reviews? You're a contradiction, lady.


Five paragraphs of you criticizing your criticizing, I hoped it helped you to vent a little.

[Natako]

Second thing. Research. Before I wrote my first review I watched episodes of X-Play, various IGN video reviews, and a ton of written reviews. I sort of mixed and matched parts here and there until I created a format I was comfortable with. Like you I didn't really want to be a clone, but I'll settle for being Frankenstein's Monster.

Well, that's a little different. I've done a few written reviews before and I'm not so shabby at them, if I do say so myself. I frequent That Guy with the Glasses (home to a wide variety of reviewers and review formats) and if it came down to a regular review, I think I'd do pretty well. My antisocial tendencies wouldn't come into play as I could write up a script and read off of it versus trying to come up with things off the top of my head. The name "crappy game reviews" is a bit of a misnomer started by Drak when he would post these let's plays of games that were MEANT to be crappy and call them reviews. I just continued the tradition under the same misnomer because that's what people are used to. In addition, "crappy game let's plays" doesn't sound quite as catchy.

Now as for your issue of "stage fright", simply go back and edit in the voices later. You're not streaming these reviews live, you have the comfortable luxury of not having to record your voice at the exact same time that you are recording the screen.

As I said, I wasn't the one who started this tradition. Crappy game reviews have always been a blind let's-play-type-deal. The point is that the reviewer isn't supposed to know about the game beforehand and the humor comes from seeing how the player adapts to various situations, such as in your game when you were laughing at how I kept falling into your traps. If it were a normal review, it would have hardly been as fun. In the case of most of these games, they're designed to be funny and random so the reviewer's reaction to the strange events that go on are part of the appeal. That's one part that, even though I don't want to be a copycat, I won't change because that's the spirit of these crappy game reviews. It's much like watching a blind run let's play on youtube. You may have played the game before, but it's really fun to see how someone else tackles challenges that took you forever to do or struggles on a boss that you defeated in the blink of an eye.

The overall review thing at the end might be a good idea, though. I might incorporate that, though it's a little harder to do with nonsensical games than it is with commercial ones.

Also, I just started a blog not long ago where I'll be posting written reviews on commercial games that I'm in the process of playing, and I'm also considering trying some let's plays of commercial games to get better used to the craft. I'll post these once they get enough momentum.

[greenraven]

In addition, "crappy game let's plays" doesn't sound quite as catchy.

How about "Let's play crappy games"?

The overall review thing at the end might be a good idea, though. I might incorporate that, though it's a little harder to do with nonsensical games than it is with commercial ones.

True. I think you might be able to use a non-uniform review criteria for each game. Treat each game on it's own merits.

Also, I just started a blog not long ago where I'll be posting written reviews on commercial games that I'm in the process of playing, and I'm also considering trying some let's plays of commercial games to get better used to the craft. I'll post these once they get enough momentum.

Looking forward to them.

Also, I'm going to go do a quick google search on this "Guy with Glasses" thing. Sounds interesting.