20051209

Review

Triple update today, be sure to check it all out.

Be sure to give me feedback on the idea presented at the end of this particular entry, especially names!

There are a lot of thing I like to do. I have plenty of hobbies, and my devotion to them all is obvious given how I am complete unable to properly do much in any of them as I am too busy figuring out which I want to do at the moment. That's not to say I never actually get to reading books, writing books, writing music, playing sports or whatnot, but more to say that I never actually am able to devote consistant time to each because of the competition between them.

As such, I have a designated hobby. That is to say, video games.

Recently it has come to my attention that video game reviews both in magazines and on the web are wholey and completely useless. There is little they afford in terms of useful information. Certainly, you'll get a basic concept of the premise of the game, whether or not the controls are utter crap, and whether or not there is any sound or music whatsoever. However, you could deduce most of that from a ten second video. When it comes to game reviews, I most often find myself longing for some hard information that actually pertains to the depth of a game.

Additionally, it has come to my attention that game scores are highly inflated. Goldeneye: Rogue Agent did not deserve anything about a three or four on a scale from one to ten, and that high a score was simply for the fact that the game had music, had graphics, and was technically playable. Yet, reviews were consistantly around six to seven for the game. I would have given the game a two.

Beyond simply horrid games, good games are inflated as well. The scores on the mediocre offerings of the Xbox 360 are enough proof. Madden 2006 for the Xbox 360 got only half a point less score on average than its PS2 counterpart, despite having only half the features, marginally improved graphics, and a plethora of game crippling bugs. Aside from that, the game was apparently fun. However, it just seemed odd that there wasn't a game that scored less than seven in the Xbox 360 launch lineup, despite the "meh" reactions to most of the games from the people who played them.

While studies show that marketing blitz effects sales and reviews are actually a non-factor for the majority of the gaming public, I know what bothers me and I intend on doing something about it.

A while ago, one of the other ryuugakusei (foreign students) said he wanted to write video game reviews for a magazine. I said I preferred reading independant websites such as Penny-Arcade and 1up.com for my reviews, as they seemed less likely to be biased about what games rocked, and what games sucked. He suggested we should start a website, we had a nice talk about it but in the end nothing came of it.

However, it seems to me that since my designated hobby is playing video games, I should not keep my experience to myself. Rather than sit around and bemoan the lack of truly informative reviews, I should try my hand at making my own.

I've actually already done this to an extent. Epinions offered a nice outlet for reviewing things. However, the lack of support for niche and foreign titles (such as the Japan-only DS titles I've picked up here) as well as the feeling of being lost in the waves of other reviewers turned me off, despite the fact that my reviews for some games were widely used to promote those games at various websites (such as this one).

So, something I want to do in the near future (which is likely not to take shape until after I graduate college) is to start my own full fledged website for reviewing games. Admittedly, as one man there won't be a whole lot I can do, but I'm certainly going to do it. If I'm going to be buying games anyway, I might as well tell the world what I find. I love writing anyway, I love fiddling around with HTML, I love web based attention, and so I'll be combining all this with my love for video games.

As such, I'll need an appropriate name and theme for my site. I'll probably go with a similar graphical scheme to this blog. As for the name, I don't know yet. There are some ideas listed below, but I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Ideas:

inflammablemonkey.net
yeoldeschool.net
technowhatsit.net
holybit.net
notaurl.net

Tell me your thoughts!

1 comment:

jocelyn said...

inflammablemonkey.net
yeoldeschool.net
technowhatsit.net
holybit.net
notaurl.net


I like the wit of "holybit.net" and "notaurl.net"--those will be easy to remember. "inflammablemonkey.net" could yield you a really interesting looking logo.

That's my opinion.