Adventure Gamers - Forums

There’s quite a lot of things to think about that merit response, but I’d like to take the chance to flip the perspective.

I’ve written a couple of reviews on steam and in the user section of this site, even one or two on GoG. I enjoy writing, arranging thoughts, analyzing structures and putting experiences into words. I also like to be helpful and entertaining, maybe a bit challenging, in a quizzical fashion. I enjoy reading. I’ll take a deep dive through steam reviews and dish out steam rewards left and right: I do enjoy a review that is super helpful, or kind of deep, the occasional hot take - I love just stumbling onto another person’s thoughts. Besides the mental stimulation it’s also just interesting to see another mind making sense of it’s input.

(I see I’m getting dangerously close to going full VP so let me get back to my original point before this goes out of hand)

I was writing my first review, with Jack’s editorial help. From the start, my mind was set on writing in accordance to the standards of the site. I looked at a lot of official AG reviews, made notes about each specific aspect of the game. I got a lot of notes, which is not a complaint: it was quality control.

That’s what differentiates a review on a site like this from the stuff you can find exploring the dank tunnels of steam reviews. The latter might be interesting, you might find a couple of gems, but there are also troll about. Adventuregamers.com upholds a certain standard.

I don’t think it’s possible for the site to have a view or opinion on any game. It can’t rein in the inherent subjectivity of reviews, because the media reviewed varies so much in style, budget and price.

Here’s where I flip it back to you. You have wildly different ideas about what constitutes a 4,5 and a 2.5. Some of you want to be able to count the pixels, others basically want a HD home cinema experience. You dislike lack of or moon logic, but some of your favourite classics have the most Rube Goldberg-puzzle solutions known to man. Some of you have a small budget and love games made by one person in AGS (alright that’s mostly me).

Any ideas on how to set a standard that is workable for reviewers and represents your standards regarding games? Or how to establish the amount of subjectivity involved in determining a score?

Vegetable Party - 16 June 2022 06:29 AM

Any ideas on how to set a standard that is workable for reviewers and represents your standards regarding games? Or how to establish the amount of subjectivity involved in determining a score?

Just like you said, studying earlier site reviews is a good idea. I remember the good old days when the grass was greener and I used to visit Just Adventure. Many of their reviews were graded A/B+ and read something like “Ok, this game we have here: story - great, puzzles - good, sounds - nice, gameplay - as in manual, extra star for being a Myst clone, all in all recommended”. Yes, many authors had their own distinctive styles, like Randy Sluganski himself or Ray Ivey who just tapped along to the strange rhythms in his head as Hugh Laurie would’ve said)) or Jonathan Boakes, Augustin Cordes and other great people who once contributed to JA. But it was this dry, formal and at the same time overly positive, forgiving attitude that got stuck with you.

And then I discovered Adventuregamers, at the time known as a rival site, somewhat of an underdog and a home for the fans of traditional 3rd person adventure games (and LucasArts in particular). One would’ve expected it to be even more friendly towards games, and yet I was shocked to learn how different it was: the writing style in general was more expressive, rich and informal, while their rating criteria were more critical and unforgiving. Not in the modern “gonzo” way where reviewers review their political preferences, greenhouse effect, people they met, everything in the world except for the actual games, but in a way serious journalism works: they got to the bottom of things, described all pitfalls and didn’t allow even smaller developers to get away with obvious faults.

After that I found it even more hard to read JA reviews, they were that different despite there were no formal site standards - in fact JA was known for experimenting with formats, giving one game to several reviewers or creating the famous Dungeon of Shame which is still an epic read. Yet you could often tell which review belonged to which website, even if it wasn’t a Myst or Monkey Island review And I think this is what every serious site, magazine or TV/Internet show should go for, while contributors should try to understand what makes it tick, even if they are planning to make their reviews as subjective as possible. And it’s even better when there’s someone to guide you, like Jack did. Personally I was a bit afraid of him and never even tried to write for AG, as I knew I wouldn’t meet the standards. But those who did were GOOD.

Thanks, it’s good insight.

I still have that one review lying around. It was one from the backlogs. Jack was gracious enough to offer help after his departure from the site. I’ve considered it, but decided I didn’t want to impose.

I’m currently playing a new release to write a review. It’s pretty challenging. I’m trying to edit and direct the stream-of-consciousness writing of my posts and avoid the weird pseudo-essay stuff I did in my user reviews.

Also: avoid using words like pseudo-essay.

It’s a doozy.

Doom - 16 June 2022 11:43 AM

And it’s even better when there’s someone to guide you, like Jack did. Personally I was a bit afraid of him and never even tried to write for AG, as I knew I wouldn’t meet the standards. But those who did were GOOD.

lol Jack was intimidating, esp with his God-like avatar, but always had the kindest heart, I remember when I was sacked once, and when I emailed him he reached for me, and in a way he assured me it is gonna be alright I (if I behaved), lol, and how am I behaving now?,  only Jack knows

Vegetable Party - 16 June 2022 01:26 PM

I still have that one review lying around. It was one from the backlogs. Jack was gracious enough to offer help after his departure from the site. I’ve considered it, but decided I didn’t want to impose.

I’m currently playing a new release to write a review. It’s pretty challenging. I’m trying to edit and direct the keep the stream of consciousness writing of my posts and avoid the weird pseudo-essay stuff I did in my user reviews.

Also: avoid using words like pseudo-essay.

It’s a doozy.

It would be great to see you writing for the site, and not in a pseudo-essay sort of way, whatever that means To me the biggest challenge (not counting the obvious language barrier) would be writing a serious review, or a review at all (of normal size, taking everything into consideration).

Advie - 16 June 2022 01:37 PM

lol Jack was intimidating, esp with his God-like avatar, but always had the kindest heart, I remember when I was sacked once, and when I emailed him he reached for me, and in a way he assured me it is gonna be alright I (if I behaved), lol, and how am I behaving now?,  only Jack knows

Yes, that was one of his many wise decisions It’s pretty amazing he found time for everyone and everything going on at the site.

I would HATE to see AG turn into a site where postmodern prescriptive language aka compelled speech is the norm in reviews. Where betatesters publicly state here on the adventure forum they stopped testing because the dev made a joke about misgendering a ROBOT for pete’s sake. Where games are given 1.5 stars because they are considered “damaging”, whatever that means.

I would like to see some of the older reviewers chime in on this. Not older as in age older. But older as in those who were writing reviews five years ago. I can think of a few, Becky being one, who wrote reviews I trusted.

I wonder what their thoughts are regarding the current editorial direction, if there is any.

I also wonder whether Jack was an Uber moderator of the reviews. As in if he didn’t think a game was worthy of a review, that game wasn’t reviewed.

Today it would seem that any game that supplies a reviewable copy gets reviewed. And it doesn’t seem that there is much supervision as to whether the review merits the score.

Karlok - 16 June 2022 07:32 PM

I would HATE to see AG turn into a site where postmodern prescriptive language aka compelled speech is the norm in reviews. Where betatesters publicly state here on the adventure forum they stopped testing because the dev made a joke about misgendering a ROBOT for pete’s sake. Where games are given 1.5 stars because they are considered “damaging”, whatever that means.

I think in both cases you are referring to me, whis is fine.

It is a bit absurd to me that anyone should refrain from doing something because of your very strong emotional reaction (hate in caps), but other people should just get over themselves. There’s a bit of a disconnect going on.

I finished testing that game, by the way.

I think this is being overthought.

We need to simply accept that reviews, even ones written under the broader authority of an established publisher (ie. IGN, Gamespot, The New York Times, Roger Ebert’s website) are still the opinion of the person reviewing the material—although in the case of certain publishers, they will only hire reviewers who adhere to the publisher’s views and style guide (not applicable to Adventure Gamers).

Now, if a reviewer simply says that a game has ‘bad graphics’ or ‘poor puzzle design’ without further elaboration, that is simply unhelpful writing and bad reviewing practice. However, if a reviewer says ‘I don’t like the graphics/puzzles/music/script/voice direction/message/theme/characters, because of X and Y and Z factors’ then his readers are not lectured, but informed, and can use that information to make up their own minds.

The subjectivity of reviews is part of what makes them enjoyable, to me. A good review is a piece of writing, a small essay, not just a pure critique.

While that subjectivity is appreciated, reviewers also need to be self-conscious not to let their fresh enthusiasm of having *just* enjoyed a game/movie/book obstruct the greater objective context. Sometimes when I finish a game, I think ‘WOW! That was so much fun! 9/10!’ Then I think ‘Yeah, that was really good, but in the grand scheme of things, was it as holistically splendid an experience as Syberia, or Primordia, or Full Throttle, or Day of the Tentacle, or Conquest of the Longbow?’ Insert your own personal favorites. ‘If those are 10/10’s, well, is this game just a tiny notch below them, a 9/10? Or is it 2 or 3 notches down?’
Which leads to another problem in the reviews of most publications: Anything less than an 8 is a C- at best. A 7 is damning with faint praise. A 6 leagues below average. Basically, no one uses the full scale. A 6 ought to be well worth one’s time if they enjoy the genre and subject matter. A 5 is an average game, which means that, if there’s something about it that stands out to you (let’s say you love bicycles and the game is about a cyclist) then you might love it.

Anyway, in a nutshell, the reviewers should immerse themselves in the games and enjoy them without focusing on comparing each individual element to the elements of other games…but then step back before delivering a final score and thinking ‘where does this really fit in the scope of gaming history?’ Or at least, in the scope of gaming zeitgeist. Which might be a whole nother can of worms.

You’re a wise one, Baron Blubba.

Stay blubbery.

meteor - 17 June 2022 09:25 AM

The truth is, almost no one reads reviews these days.

I really hope you don’t mean that. It would be similar to participating in a book club and entering a discussion about a book you haven’t read.

what is SF?

I do need reviews, but I also need certain things to be fed to me before anything else, first:

1. what is it about?
2. how is it played?
3. how are its technicalities; graphics, animations, voice-acting(or not), and music?

-and then I need your opinion about:
A. what do you think of its ‘game design’?
B. what do you think of its difficulty?
C. and overall, is there a game you can reference it to?, or does it have its own original aspects and features (if it does, please, elaborate)