how to become a good video game reviewer?

LEGOMYEGGO

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i want to start off with YouTube then later on i'll try this site. what do i have to do to e considered good? im going to pretty much review any game so give me some tips pls
 
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im an odd person, but i feel objective reviews are pointless as videogames are art and as such entirely subjective, so just say what you thought of any game you review
 

Scarlet

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im an odd person, but i feel objective reviews are pointless as videogames are art and as such entirely subjective, so just say what you thought of any game you review
Objective reviews are impossible either way, unless you count a fact sheet about a game as a review lol
 

Veho

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Play a shit ton of games. More than that. More. Force yourself to play games and genres you don't find interesting. Build a knowledge on video games. Have a basis for comparison. Reviews are subjective, but they carry more weight if you can elaborate on your opinions. If you're saying an element of the game is good/bad, say why, and give an example of a game that did it worse/better. Be aware of the state of the art. Don't get your mind blown by stuff that other games have done before, and better. Likewise, don't dump on a game just because there is a single title that did it better; there could be thousands of titles that were worse.
So, to reiterate, play more games.
 
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Goku1992A

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To be very honest with you it is hard to be a reviewer and I will explain to you why. Mostly companies like IGN will be biased against another company and will rank the game low. Then again it will be your own personal opinion while reviewing the game.

Example IGN gave Pokemon SW/SH a 9.3 out of 10 and I personally give it a 6/10 we both played and reviewed the game. They may think the game is great and I think the game isn't completely finished so you will have diffrent opinions. That's why it is very difficult to go off soley reviews when you are trying to buy a video game. My best advice to you is just be yourself and review the game honestly.
 
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Sonic Angel Knight

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First step is to do a review. Just try it once, got to get out there and test the waters. Got to find your way. Do it a few times, take notes of comments and then also take notes of your own review. Self reflect on it and how you can do better next time. Usually you do this cycle until you find a satisfying format for yourself, I suggest first a game you do like very much, one you don't like very much. It helps to contrast the two when taking notes and self reflecting. Then move on to something you haven't tried before to wash out the nostalgia bias between them. Perhaps one you wanted to try and then no plans to try. :ninja:
 
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Objective reviews are impossible either way, unless you count a fact sheet about a game as a review lol
Exactly, but i mean it as a "just talk about the game" sense, the subjective opinion of someone similar to me means a lot more than an "objective" review by a professional
 
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Mythical

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Play the game, I understand you're not going to play all of monster hunter or something, but make sure you've actually played enough of the game to give a good opinion
 
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Kwyjor

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i want to start off with YouTube
Your efforts will almost certainly not translate into any meaningful quantity of viewers. If you want to do something people will actually see, I would suggest doing a text-based review and finding a handy site that is looking for submissions. But of course you will have to ensure your text is readable and well-written in that case.

If you must do a video, there are three things that will probably make me stop watching:
  • Keep your intro short. Lengthy and overly-flashy intro sequences are so very tiring.
  • Keep your face off the screen. Sorry, no one needs to see that.
  • And if you really want to stand out, try to avoid talking entirely! Unfortunately Youtube doesn't do annotations anymore, but maybe you can use hardcoded subtitles – provided you can write them well.
 

LEGOMYEGGO

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Your efforts will almost certainly not translate into any meaningful quantity of viewers. If you want to do something people will actually see, I would suggest doing a text-based review and finding a handy site that is looking for submissions. But of course you will have to ensure your text is readable and well-written in that case.

If you must do a video, there are three things that will probably make me stop watching:
  • Keep your intro short. Lengthy and overly-flashy intro sequences are so very tiring.
  • Keep your face off the screen. Sorry, no one needs to see that.
  • And if you really want to stand out, try to avoid talking entirely! Unfortunately Youtube doesn't do annotations anymore, but maybe you can use hardcoded subtitles – provided you can write them well.
what sites would you recommend?
 

FAST6191

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A warning at this juncture. Those that go down this path will find themselves thinking like this always; most people with a skill will tend to have it become second nature and being able to dissect games is a skill. This may well make it harder for you to enjoy certain things.


For myself I like to know the science and maths of games, the science of programming, how to break a game. Ask yourself "if I was making this game then how would I do it better?". An encyclopaedic knowledge of games certainly helps in this, you can try limiting it to your own focus but you do run the risk that somewhere else does something better -- GTA5 shooting mechanics might be better than GTA3 but nobody is going to be comparing them to Quake or Halo, and frankly that I just compared Quake and Halo in that is itself not an uncontentious act.
This also expands outside of games as well; story is often a thing many find weak in games, certainly I read far more novels with impactful stories per year than I experience game stories that stick with me despite doing equal amounts of both (and seeking it out). Likewise I look through my music collection and vanishingly little of it comes from games.
You may also want to develop a lexicon that deals with games and failings either unique or more prevalent to it. While it is now a maligned term the history of "ludo narrative dissonance" (does the gameplay line up with the story being told) does provide some insights here.

You ought to be able to write as well. This need not just be technically correct grammar and punctuation, though it certainly helps, but something to make it memorable and amusing to read. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/ is something I recommend even those that do not want to write do in fact still read.
A common trick people are taught in giving presentations is have something that makes them laugh. There is much truth in that.

For a book on the science and maths of games I do suggest Characteristics of Games.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/characteristics-games
If you can handle it then basic game theory as well. These guys serve as a pretty nice intro to it all.
Such a thing might however cost you some audience; never let the inmates run the asylum, however if you are trapped in one then playing to them is not the worst survival strategy.

For breaking games... it helps to know programming, though
https://textexpander.com/blog/the-7...-errors-in-programming-and-how-to-avoid-them/
Today such things are less of an issue than that might once have been (updates have existed and been widespread for many years now so a bad game may indeed not be bad forever) so I would usually look more into maths and breaking things from an internal systems perspective.
You certainly have have fun with macros, autoclickers, CPU overloading programs, savestates and trying to trip up the logic and timings of menus... why that is a thing when it is trivial to fix/prevent I do not know, well actually I do (game programmers are not all coding savants employing best/standard practices, quite the opposite in fact) but let's not go too far into that one. Anyway such things might be noted in a review but unless it is going for some kind of super balanced competitive multiplayer then it is better saved for speedruns and silly but otherwise entertaining videos. If they start bothering otherwise "normal" play then that is a different matter.


Still on finding bugs and glitches then other than hoping you stumble upon them randomly during normal play (neither the most reliable nor quickest method) then you can be a programmer (another mentioned above, ROM hacking being another field of potential interest), a game tester, someone that messes with things for fun and someone that messes with specific things for fun.

I like to make my own fun (sometimes literally by messing around with the game's code but you need not go in for that one if you don't want) in games and report on that as well. If you have ever made a save/statestate/respawn point and done something the game devs never intended 20 times in a row because it is fun then... you might be a unique case among those on this site but no time like the present to correct that.

The science of games and game design is a long one that never really ends as game design in many ways is still a young discipline.
Still seek out things like https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iNSQIyNpVGHeak6isbP6AHdHD50gs8MNXF1GCf08efg/pub?embedded=true
http://hciweb.usask.ca/uploads/332-aim-assist-cameraReady-v8-final.pdf

Of course I might be wrong in some of the above -- some review games as a work as a whole, some look at systems, some look at other things entirely.
I have massive misgivings with a lot of what this guy says in many other things (being able to engage with the works/writings/thoughts of people you disagree with is kind of key in life) but as a framework then the following is not without merit


In the end it might be subjective but if you write the review you would want to read if you were going into the game you will be able to sleep happy at night. That is unless you want to work for IGN and in that case obey the whips of the masters (which is to say the advertisers), make those deadlines, and if you are going to copy and paste then don't get caught.
 
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Sonic Angel Knight

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Read the shit official temp review I did a few months ago and then you will see how not to do it :rofl2:. My review must have been really bad as the site haven't asked me to do another one sadly.
Well it was your first, I was impressed that it was more engaging than my first. I mean I haven't even considered how I would lay out the form of the review. I just said many things off memory (which could have been too much and not know when to stop) and even the screenshots was a after thought. It was really disorganized. I didn't think about asking for help or reading others until after I started writing my own.

I wrote the first review on my android nvidia tv (as well as the screenshots from the game) and I did it all in one sitting since I didn't really know about "Draft saving" and was worried I'll lose my progress. It couldn't been more obvious it wasn't the best. Since i started writing more, I visualized how I would find it appealing and if it convey what I wanted to when I read it and if someone else read it. I'm still a bit embarrassed by the early ones that I wanted to do it again just for comparison sake. See how the process of evolution took place.

To the OP, just do it a few times until you feel comfortable and convey organically what you experienced. :)
 
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Kwyjor

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what sites would you recommend?
I suggest looking at the sites that have reviews you like reading. Or try Googling around for sites that have already reviewed games that you've enjoyed in the past.

Perhaps I should not assume this goes without saying, but of course a review for an interesting game people haven't already read about dozens of times over for the last twenty years is probably going to be of much greater interest than yet another piece about Final Fantasy or Zelda - unless you think you have something new and unique to say about Final Fantasy or Zelda, and sad to say, that's probably unlikely at this point.
 

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