Originally Posted by
Narfle
Well thats the general feeling i got from it, that it wasnt really a review as much as it was something you wanted to get off your chest, regarding the game. I'll give some examples.
Also please keep in mind that i almost never read any reviews of games, movies, records, books, you name it. I read reviews about hardware sometimes, though.
You say you like the feel of being inside the metro, and that it has strong immersion (you use different terms, but same ****). And then you say that when you leave the metro, all that is lost. The interested reader would loooove to know why that is. Is the world design outside the metro poorly done colorwise, is it too open, is it not open enough, do you personally just not like the icy feel of post-apoc moscow? (which i kinda did like, it made me think of 12 monkeys). You use the words "empty" and "dull". "Dull" can mean just about anything and is entirely subjective (and as such it needs to be elaborated on), and "empty" can also refer to many different things. Are there no buildings, no monsters, no NPCs, no items to pick up, no quests, what?
Then theres the place where you say that it didnt really scare you, and honestly i dont think games scare anyone above the age of 12 these days, but you actually name the particular place in the game where you did get a bit scared. Thats known as a spoiler and the people reading the review will now know expect to encounter something scary once they reach that place, pretty much ruining the surprise effect.
Like in Alien where the most scary moment was where the cat jumped out at Ripley. Imagine if someone had said "are you afraid of cats?" five seconds before you saw that in the movie.
You also spend wayyyyyy to long (compared to the size of your review) talking about the gas mask. Obviously the gas mask situation got you miffed, but still, keep your focus, the game isnt called Gas Mask 2033.
Also, i werent too happy with the paragraph where you say the sounds are realistic, and that the voice acting is good because you picked up the russian accent. No offence, but survivors in moscow living in a subway dont speak with a russian accent, if its supposed to be "realistic", they speak russian. I know that wouldnt make a good game, but you just used the word "realistic" a second before saying that, and thats a wee tad contradictory.
The glitch part of your review was very good, i didnt really get the reference to Hellgate: London, but thats because i avoided the game since a friend said it was crappy. Still, you mentioned that it was very glitchy and gave fine examples of potential glitches.
The conclusion is also decent, except for the fact that you bash the gameplay, which you havent really given any reasoning for other than the various glitches and the gas mask situation.
In the section about currency, "dont ever" should probably have been "never", but thats just me nitpicking. Also in other sections you use terms such as "population". Its a post-apoc game, use the word "survivors", it gives the proper thought associations. Again just nitpicking.
Theres also the potential spoiler alert of you saying "supposedly 'evil' scientists". You are talking to people that havent played the game, dont say stuff like that. Talk to them like they havent even seen the intro movie. Wheter or not the scientists are actually good guys or bad guys, they are percieved as the enemy when you start the game, and should be described as such. Let the player learn what the player should, while the player is playing the game.
It would probably also have been a smart move to read up on what the developers had to say about the game after its release and initial wave of feedback, like if theyre planning to release DLCs, or maybe some patch to fix various glitches, and then link to that interview. And if you cant find any, then just mention that, gamers love to know if the company is in contact with its playerbase or not.
But all in all, the thing i really missed was comparisons to similar games, Fallout series (primarily the third one since its a FPSRPG) and the STALKER series (which is post-apoc FPSRPG in russia, that one should have been sorta obvious). When doing the comparisons you can take the route of going "if you like X in STALKER/FO3 then you will like Y in 2033".
A good review is a tricky thing to do, though. It has to inform the player of key aspects of the game, and how they are done, without giving any spoilers, and at the same time showing that you are a good reviewer so they will come back and read more of your stuff. With all the various link-sites (reddit and such), a good review could get a crapload of attention, if one gets lucky, and perhaps one of the major sites would pick you up and ask you to write 5 reviews for them (unpaid prolly, sure) as some sort of audition.
Anyway, thats all i had to say, i may think of more later. And yes, a lot of it was just nitpicking, but we if we never run for the end-zone, we will never get a touchdown.
EDIT: Screenshots would also have been nice.
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