Smashchu's Reveiw Archive

[Smashchu]

Hello there. You know I dont post here as often as I should.

Anyway I've been making some reveiws over at Friendcodes.com and have gotten some good feed back. I wanted to know what you guys think. Here are my Reveiws so far.

Tetris DS
Chibi Robo
Pokemon XD:Gale of Darkness
Drill Dozer
New Super Mario Bros.
Mario Party 7

If theres a game you'd like reveiwed let me know.

[nocturnal YL]

OK, your reviews are great! But let's see... my hobby is debugging, you know...

Tetris DS:
- The HOLD feature is NOTHING NEW at all.
- It is spelt "Tetrimino".
- "Graphics will only appeal no Nintendo fans" - I think you meant "to", but N is not even close to the letter T, assuming you use a QWERTY keyboard.

Pokémon XD:
- "Pokemon coliseum" - spell "Colosseum": C-O-L-O-S-S-E-U-M.

Drill Dozer:
- There are more than 11 levels. Count the secret ones! Well.. maybe you really meant 11 at start.

New SMB:
- 1 to 4 players can play! 4! FOUR!
- You know, they do have stuff from Mario Bros, but ... what do you mean by "Mario Bros. games"? Add a "Super" to it!
- Versus mode, not "verse".
- The music are not wholly alt version of classic tracks. World map ones aren't, and the one of most stages aren't. It may be true for Ghost Houses, undergeound stages and Fortresses, but that's it.




Some other comments as well:
Drill Dozer:
- "Game Freak has always been associated with Pokemon and not much else." - CRUEL! How could you forget Mario & Yoshi? And Mario & Wario?
- I think Drill Dozer is very easy. Might be harder than some Mario platformers, but still easy.
- I'd say Game Freak is better on action games than RPGs.

Nes SMB:
- This game isn't meant to be challenging. After all these years, I think they're trying to re-introduce Super Mario Bros.

Mario Party 7:
- Ugh, you know, Mario Party games are released at year ends in Japan. Winter, that is, for the nothern part of this world.
- The mic seems not to be recognising well in the Japanese version. I tried to say 1, and it recognised it as 2. This won't happen at Mario Party 6!

Not played Chibi-Robo though. No comments there.

[Doubutsu80]

All reviews are great

[Smashchu]

Thanks guys. I'm doing this becuase I might change my carrer path. I've always wanted to desinfg games, but it may be possible for me to review then, since I seem to be good at writting.

I'll make the spelling correction BTW YL but the 1-2 for New Super Mario Bros was actually IGn's fault. I got it from there.

[nocturnal YL]

Hmm... maybe ding reviews is good for you, but to be honest, it seems that you still have a long way to go, English-language-wise. However, I'll have to say that your reviews are objective (ugh... antonym of subjective, you know, I don't mean other meanings) enough.

As for getting info from IGN, I'd say, don't always trust game news sites. I mean it. Not even from www.nintendo.co.jp since they do change their schedule.

So thats it.... If that's me though, I'd not choose gaming-related stuff for my career. I don't want my official job to crash with any of my hobbies.

[Fryguy64]

Yeah, I don't mean to rain on your parade, 'Chu... but you really need to work on your spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Game reviews aren't just about writing about games you like. It's about articulating your every view on the game, good and bad. Providing an argument that will lead to a satisfactory conclusion. And in order to articulate your views, you need to write down the key points into an ordered list and expand on them.

You also have to be aware of your audience. Not everyone will find funny what you do, so you have to be wary of including jokes or insight that may not be well received by the reader. You also have to realise that your words may be the reason somebody does or does not buy the game - so if your overall message is "buy this game", you can't leave the bad points of the game until the very end.

And remember... reviewers have to write reviews for really crappy games as well.

Best way to get started is to write one review and one feature. The review should, ideally, be for a game that is recent, but overlooked - something with problems, but still enjoyable. Set yourself a specific word limit (say 1,000 words), and follow it. Don't worry about image selection. Write the same review three times based on the style of three different magazines/websites.

The feature should be about something interesting. Main thing to do is do your research. Set a longer word limit this time round, and don't plagiarise other sources (*cough*NinDB*cough*). Write this again in the style of different publications.

When you have finished a piece, check it for basic spelling, grammar and readability. Perhaps come back to it a few hours later and read it again. If you're not sure something sounds right, it doesn't, and it needs to be rewritten. Post it here... I'm sure we'll be lining up to point out your foibles.

Remember, most importantly, reviewing is a job - not a hobby. You have to be constantly critical of your own writing, or else you'll never improve and you'll never get into the industry.

[Smashchu]

admin said:

Yeah, I don't mean to rain on your parade, 'Chu... but you really need to work on your spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Dont worry about it. One of my flaws is I lack a Word Prossesor right now.

You also have to be aware of your audience. Not everyone will find funny what you do, so you have to be wary of including jokes or insight that may not be well received by the reader. You also have to realise that your words may be the reason somebody does or does not buy the game - so if your overall message is "buy this game", you can't leave the bad points of the game until the very end.

Good point. I try to add some humor as a hook. I know what you mean about negatives at the end but I do try to outline all of the stuff I can. Thats why I putthe pros, cons and overveiw.

And remember... reviewers have to write reviews for really crappy games as well.

True. I was going to do a reveiw of Shadow the Hedgehog, but to many ppl have done it and it was a little late. Mayb e I'll do one and try again.

Best way to get started is to write one review and one feature. The review should, ideally, be for a game that is recent, but overlooked - something with problems, but still enjoyable. Set yourself a specific word limit (say 1,000 words), and follow it. Don't worry about image selection. Write the same review three times based on the style of three different magazines/websites.

I'll try. Also it seems you described Chibi-Robo. It fis all the qualities, yet it was recent when I did the reveiw. Images are also hooks, but I leave them for the end.

The feature should be about something interesting. Main thing to do is do your research. Set a longer word limit this time round, and don't plagiarise other sources (*cough*NinDB*cough*). Write this again in the style of different publications.

Ok, but differenmt publications for that may be a tad harder since there not as common. I'll give it a shot anyway.

When you have finished a piece, check it for basic spelling, grammar and readability. Perhaps come back to it a few hours later and read it again. If you're not sure something sounds right, it doesn't, and it needs to be rewritten. Post it here... I'm sure we'll be lining up to point out your foibles.[/quotes]
You've got that right. BTW YL, I did fix some errors in the NSMB reveiw. I'll try and do the next ones with Spell Check

Remember, most importantly, reviewing is a job - not a hobby. You have to be constantly critical of your own writing, or else you'll never improve and you'll never get into the industry.

True. Im going to be a senior in High School so I still have some time. I'll do to new reveiw. One will be Shadow the Hedgehog(a crappy game) and another unnamed game. I reveiw the games I own or rent. If I had a better Blockbuster or Gamefly then I'd do more of these. As for a feature we'll see.

Thanks for the help. It seems my workk gets better after I post it here. Thanks guys.

[nocturnal YL]

You may lack a word processor (Why capitalize?), but I think there should be something like online spell checking ... if not, bring it to some online translator. If something is untranslated, you can see if it's a mistake. And word processors may not be of its full use if only for these basic stuff. And there are free word processors.

And Smashchu, do you mind trying to review Polarium Advance if possible? It's not anything.... I just want to see it for no reason, and I don't think many have reviewed that.

[mrmolecule]

If you don't Quick Reply, you can spellcheck your posts! Whooo!

[nocturnal YL]

Oh yea..... just debugged my last post. It DOES have errors.

[Fryguy64]

For the record, I wasn't describing Chibi-Robo (that doesn't have any flaws, it is fantastically awesome!) Actually, I wrote a review for Kirby Air Ride a while back. Everyone slated it - perhaps rightly so - but it wasn't a completely bad game.

[Doubutsu80]

I didn't like the microphone connection for Mario Party 7

[nocturnal YL]

fran1357 said:

I didn't like the microphone connection for Mario Party 7

Which part of it you don't like? It may not recognise well, like messing up the fruit names and numbers (for my experience with the Japanese version anyway), but in overall it's still good. Not as good as MP6, but still good.

admin said:

I wrote a review for Kirby Air Ride a while back. Everyone slated it - perhaps rightly so - but it wasn't a completely bad game.

It is SUPER-AWESOME!!!!! Kir Air Ride is a very very VERY good game - except it lacks contents.

[Doubutsu80]

younglink said:

fran1357 said:

I didn't like the microphone connection for Mario Party 7

Which part of it you don't like? It may not recognise well, like messing up the fruit names and numbers (for my experience with the Japanese version anyway), but in overall it's still good. Not as good as MP6, but still good.

I was never good with the minigames on the microphone

[Smashchu]

It seems were going to start argue which game was good and which game sucked any moment now.

admin said:

For the record, I wasn't describing Chibi-Robo (that doesn't have any flaws, it is fantastically awesome!) Actually, I wrote a review for Kirby Air Ride a while back. Everyone slated it - perhaps rightly so - but it wasn't a completely bad game.

Kirby Air Ride was like that, although I liked it. However Chibi-Robo was not flawless. It did feature some bad graphics, although not awful. The other thing is its short and totally unplayable after the credits, unless you like busy work. Reveiws seem split on this too as X-play gave it a 3/5(about what I gave it) IGN gave it about an 8/10 and Game Informer gave it a 5/10. Although it wasn't flawless, it had potential. If it was longer and maybe with a little graphical polish it could be a great game. Theres always Park Patrol though.