Game Review: Introduction

My Problem:

To be honest with you I have bought a decent amount of games in my life, nothing crazy, like I don’t have a room full of floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed to the brim with game cases and cartridges with more piled on the floor up to my head, but I have purchased my fair share of games. The problem I found is that the number of games I have purchased, although not too extreme, far exceeds the number of games that I have actually completed. I’m not even talking about collecting every item and completing every side quest, if that were the case there would be a much bigger problem, I’m just talking about getting to the end of the main story and seeing the end credits.

Why?

The main reasons I have a lot more games than I have finished are: Firstly, I often fall into the trap of buying games that I want and playing them for a week and then the next game I want comes out, so I move on to the new game and the cycle repeats and I don’t go back to the game I was playing before. Second, I am often the prey for a good deal, if a game goes on sale that I think I might like to play at some point or I have heard good things about then I end up buying it, this is a major issue, especially during the holiday season where it seems like almost every game goes on sale. And third, I have fallen into the trap of free-to-play online games, in particular games like League of Legends, Valorant, Overwatch, and Pokémon Unite. I find that when I have some free time instead of loading up one of the games that I actually had to purchase I tend to turn on my phone or computer to play a free online game with my brother or my friends (Though I have probably spent more money on these “Free-to-play” games, that's a story for another blog post, or maybe a therapist).

Solution:

Just to recap, my problem is that I have a pile of games that I paid for and never finished collecting dust in addition to the many new games coming out this year that I know I will want to play, and this year I want to change that. Another problem I have is that I am currently in the middle of a rough job search, and I want to do something productive that could potentially help in the job hunt. So, I thought it would be a good idea to have a two-in-one solution for both my problems: a game review blog on my personal portfolio website (which if you are reading this means that you are on my website, so thank you and feel free to look around and share it with a friend). 

The Plan:

I have a list of all the games I currently own but haven't played much of, if I have even played them at all. And after a quick internet search I found that for traditional game reviews which often come out the same day a game releases, the general rule is to play about seven to ten hours of the game then writing the review, because otherwise if reviewers waited to finish the game before writing the review everyone would already be on the next game by the time the review came out. So, with this in mind I will commit to playing seven hours of each game on my list, making time for any new releases that I want to play, then writing a review. Then after writing the review if I wasn't able to complete the game in the seven hours then I will decide whether I am going to try and finish the game, drop the game for now and possibly try to finish it later, or if the seven hours was enough for me.

Review Format:

Now for how the actual reviews will look, I have decided to keep them simple. For each review, I will start with a short summary of the game then I’ll touch on the following categories:

• Controls/Gameplay
• Graphics/Art style
• Sound
• Story
• Replayability
• Personal Opinion & Final Thoughts
• ​Game Status

To be clear everything in the reviews will be my own opinion but the “Personal Opinion” category will be purely my own selfish thoughts about the game, while the other categories will try to be a little more factual. So, for instance, if I think the story or gameplay is objectively not great, I will talk about it in their respective categories and the scores for those categories will be low to reflect that, but if I have a personal soft spot for the game or IP then the score for the “Personal Opinion” category may be higher. Or vice versa if objectively the game is great, but I personally don’t enjoy it then the scores for the other categories may be higher while the score for the “Personal Opinion” Category is low. The "Game Status" category will just be if I decide to continue playing after writing the review or if I will move on to something else.

Scoring System:

The scores I give each game will hold no actual validity and be completely irrelevant, but this is my blog and if I want to score a game then by George, I’m going to score them. The breakdown of the score is as follows:

• Controls/Gameplay /10
• Graphics/Art style /10
• Sound /10
• Story /10
• Replayability /5
• Personal Opinion & Fi /5

The total points available will be 50 then once I have given it my score, I’ll double it to make the score out of 100, like most respectable and legitimate game reviewers. And just to switch it up instead of saying the score is say 75% or 75/100 points, I will do my best to come up with a unique way of saying the score for each game. So, for example, if I was reviewing a Pokémon game instead of giving it a score of 80% or 80/100, I would give it a score of 80/100 Poké balls. (This may be completely ridiculous and make no sense to anyone, but the numbers will still mean the same thing, and again this is my blog and I’ll do what I want to.) 

Final Thou​ghts:

Again, if you are reading this then that means that I am actually going through with this idea, and it is currently on my website. I like to think that I will follow through with this and have multiple reviews posted on my website, so if that is the case then I hope you’ll keep reading them and getting some insight from them. But again, this is my blog so I'm not sure how many posts there will actually be, but we will find out together.