I've seen a few pretty interesting game reviews (mostly concept wise) that I'd like to share with you.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/10/yakuza-3-review.html
In this one, Jake Adelstein gets three yakuza to play the video game Yakuza 3. They have a lot of really good shit to say but mostly it's about yakuza in Japan and not about the game. I'm not interested in the game so this is a plus.

http://www.destructoid.com/100-objective-review-final-fantasy-xiii-179178.phtml
In this one, Destructoid's Jim Sterling pretends to try to write a completely objective review of Final Fantasy XIII because people complained about the one where he said it was awful. Makes a great gift for deserving youngpersons who believe that reviewing can be done without bias and other interesting things.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/07/limbo-review-xbox-360.html
In this one, Kirk Hamilton really liked Limbo and isn't afraid to say it. He makes a nice contrast to Sterling's 'completely objective' review.

In conclusion, some people have reviewed games in a way that doesn't entirely suck. Discuss how videogames writings can suck less or post other decent reviews.

that 100% objective FFXIII joke is irritating and not funny. i took at look at the original review, too, and i don't like final fantasy 13 but that review is also pretty silly and i think he is wrong in what he finds bad about it.

i didn't play final fantasy 13 so i can't have that kind of opinion. i found sterling's review funny so i guess i don't get to be a grown up. oh well. i think the point he uses juvenile humour to highlight is kind of important in the context of videmogames because a lot of videogame reviewers really do use a fakeass 'unbiased' style to give an air of authority to their passive non-opinions.

which might actually be a good thing. I don't know, I pretty much just listen to what you guys say instead of read game or movie reviews. but people who write reviews for websites like that generally have absolutely no clue how to effectively evaluate or critique something and it turns into this awful mess where people are inventing opinions just to be able to write about them or to make a joke it's the worst thing

I would be up to reading a good review tho

My biased review of his Final Fantasy XIII review: Out of all the Final Fantasy XIII reviews I have read, that one is no doubt the least interesting out of the bunch.

Even if you look at it as the reviewer trying to make a joke by posting that review in an ironic way, then the attempt itself is just as funny as any of the times when I try to make funny posts myself, since that's exactly what effect I go for at least 97% of the time when I decide to actually try to be funny.

And as most everyone here can attest, I am not a person who writes funny posts. If someone like me can tell how bad his attempt at humor is, I already can tell I'd hate to meet the person that actually finds this review funny.

Oh yeah, and my unbiased review of his review: If you want to read a review with inherit bias, opinion and thought, read a review by someone who writes with those in mind. If you want to read a review without those things, then read a review written by someone who never takes those things into consideration. I can't possibly tell you fickle people just what kind of review you actually want to hear, so if you want to know whether you'll like a review or not, review it your own damn self!

Conclusion (biased): Because that reviewer is willing to change his entire method of reviewing just because he doesn't like how other people judge his reviews, he has lost literally all credibility as an honest and upfront game reviewer in my eyes. The actual motivation or point behind the review itself is irrelevant, because regardless of any of those factors, you cannot escape the fact that the very act of making that review stems from the reviewer's deep seated desire to respond to youtube videos, making the very fact of having an opinion on youtube itself valid.

In short, it undoes the entire point he wanted to address, because he's using the exact same motivation for it that caused this problem in the first place!

It's simply that I cannot let someone like myself have someone like that giving me his reasons not to play Final Fantasy XIII. I have more than enough of those already.

yeah let's not talk about yakuzas playing a game that's about them at all. let's fight it out as to whether or not jim sterling is really funny. you're really grown up and your father is proud. visible chest hair and a chin-heavy countenance.

I liked the Yakuza one but part of that is because I suspect that it's actually a really awful and dumb game and that the guys are getting excited about these completely generic mafia stereotypes.

M: The corporate yakuza guys get a thumbs up for realism. Nice suit. Smart. Financially savvy. Obsessed with money. Sneaky and conniving. Ruthless.

NUANCED.

I don't have any reviews but I read a game magazine a few weeks ago and it was pretty bad for all the usual reasons of you know having no actual thought or analysis and the actual content mostly being cobbled together from press releases and the reviewers all going for the kind of pseudo-objectivity mentioned above where they just tell you what the plot is and what the features are and then presumably let U DECIDE until the end where they grudgingly throw in one-sentence remarks in a special little box (the pros!! the cons!! etc). Having said that most of the game criticism which deliberately tries to counter this stuff usually just ends up being kind of shouty and gimmicky or bad Lester Bangs impersonations or whatever. Places like actionbutton.net or the Filthy Critic in non-game terms have some pretty good opinions/ideas sometimes which can get suffocated by having to wrap it all in some gross persona of HIP OLD TESTAMENT PROPHET/Christian Slater, "Pump Up The Volume". The moral is your all fucked l.m.a.o

http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/ actually this is meant to be good and interesting in terms of a fairly high-end critical approach to some random games. i hate reading whole books online and honestly couldn't get past the introductory bit where he compares plato's cave with a videogame arcade aaa but it sounds kind of interesting and weird so ??? someone tell me if it's worthwhile because i'm apparantly an illiterate baby

yeah let's not talk about yakuzas playing a game that's about them at all. let's fight it out as to whether or not jim sterling is really funny. you're really grown up and your father is proud. visible chest hair and a chin-heavy countenance.

That's not what I'm arguing. I'm just arguing Jim Sterling trying to be funny shouldn't be listed with these other articles as if it's something even worth arguing about.

Now who feels like an asshole? I don't, just because I rather enjoy making all my points through posting ironic statements. It's probably the main reason why I relate to a guy like Jim Sterling so well.

yeah let's not talk about yakuzas playing a game that's about them at all. let's fight it out as to whether or not jim sterling is really funny. you're really grown up and your father is proud. visible chest hair and a chin-heavy countenance.

what the hell is this

I skipped the post above yours because I have a headache so idk but come on man are you really so upset that someone doesn't like the same thing you like that you're gonna pull out being a man/MAKING PAPA PROUD aaaaaaaa you pulled the same GROWN UP thing against jamie so that was meant to be dig at him too. jesus christ I'm sorry we didn't get a boner over yakuzas playing a yakuza game

which would be dumb enough even if they weren't awful vainglorious possibly pretend yakuzas

but uh, not that it's a bad topic or anything man. it's a kind of interesting subject. I mean I think those particular reviews stink and I'm pretty sure I can give a lot of good reasons why but who cares man, we're talking. it really is absurd, like if someone disagrees with you irl you don't get all bent out of shape and throw a tantrum. that would be nuts.

puke let's start over at thecatamites's post

i don't cope well with people being aggressive towards me because i have low self-esteem. almost cried a little after reading your post actually! not really gonna pursue posturing any further.

http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/  actually this is meant to be good and interesting in terms of a fairly high-end critical approach to some random games. i hate reading whole books online and honestly couldn't get past the introductory bit where he compares plato's cave with a videogame arcade aaa but it sounds kind of interesting and weird so ??? someone tell me if it's worthwhile because i'm apparantly an illiterate baby

I think I heard this namedropped before, it sounds familiar. Reading the first five or so pages was interesting, I'll take a good look at it when I don't have assignment work to look at.

In the way of academic games analysis stuff, I've gotten out the book 'Expressive Processing' from the library to take a look through. Some if its ideas about software analysis looked useful. Anyone read it / know about it?

ok well sorry. but those posts up there really weren't aggressive towards you at all, they've got nothing to do with you. idk good luck getting better

I think I'm gonna read the civ III uh chapter on that site catamites posted

I quite liked the FFXIII "objective" review. Makes a point that a review without opinion is basically a discription. Funny how some people seem to have missed that.
On a side note, I actually read his propper review of the game. I would have probably given it a 6 instad of a 4 but so far (just over six hours into the game) I find myself agreeing with most of what he said. I do like the music though.

I thought at first that FF13 had the best OST in a long time, but then 15 hours later they were still looping that same fucking piano arrangement with those terrible god damn vocals in every single chapter of the game. Do you know why most videogame soundtracks rarely contain singing? Because we have to listen to them for hours and hours on end and even the best lyrics and vocals get incredibly irritating after awhile. A well done instrumental has less of an impact on us, why I don't know but we just notice it less than singing, probably because there's nothing there for us to try and understand. It doesn't help that this song was jpop garbage to begin with. I ended up just muting the game for extended periods so I didn't have to listen to it anymore

best ost, chrono trigger.

best ost, wild arms

best ost, wild arms

holy fucking shit, i have never seen someone else say this ever but yes, wild arms 1 has TO DATE the fucking best videogame soundtrack i have ever found. grandia comes in a close second.

I would guess that the only chance you have of finding interesting game reviews is by finding some amateur person or people who just maintain a blog or small website for fun. That's dependent on those people being smart and not awful, though, which would probably bring it down to a handful of blogs total. I don't really know any, but the type of thing I am describing is basically http://www.actionbutton.net/. If you look at that it's just a well presented blog you can search and read reviews on. Now, I thought actionbutton was pretty cool once but I haven't read any reviews in a while and I know the guy who writes these as someone from selectbutton and he's OKAY but he can also be pretty irritating in a pretty typical internet guy kind of way. Also, the reviews can be pretty pretentius. So I'm not using this as an example of a shining success, but that it fits the format I would think that good reviews would be in.

I'd be pretty excited if there was a site/blog like that written by a cool person. Sometimes I take a look around but it's kind of hard cold searching for something like that, it's something you are probably more likely to find from sifting through forums because a member there knows the person doing it or is actually doing it themselves.

I've thought about doing it. I mean, I spend alot of time reading what other people have to say about games. I've probably spent a collected like 10 hours of my life just reading about what people had to say about Silent Hill 2, and they weren't even saying anything interesting and were mostly irritating people. However, I've been trying to cut back on that lately cos I find myself clamouring for reviews, or more likely, forum topics about things I am currently invested in and it's probably influencing my own thoughts on it too much. I find myself reading about a small piece of something someone else picked up on, and then adapting that into my own view of it as if I thought of it when I didn't even and probably wouldn't care about it if I hadn't heard it from someone else. That could be good or bad though, but basically I don't want to sit around reading reviews by critics and things people say who I don't even respect the opinion of. I mean, I wouldn't ask these people about it in conversation.

and yes, I don't know if I even really want reviews in my life at all! Because I don't know the context of the person, and I feel pretty good at being able to sift out pure dung from my intake on my own, and then I think I am okay with leaving it up to me to decide whether I like something or not. What I do like is being able to read people who I know talk about things, and then talk about them myself and THEN i like to chime in and let them weigh in with their thoughts before coming back up on them with levelled response that

but I'll take what I can get, if that means reading selectbutton topics that are 4 years old and I don't know anyone and they are all pretentious and silly nerds. i would search here but there's never been much discussion of games on here beyond setting up online games and other stuff that people not actively involved in have no interest in. i guess i could give it a go to get some topics started. people would probably be more likely to talk about games here than anything else.