If you were reviewing a game for the first time, what would it be?

[Taleweaver]

Erm...I get the impression that for some here, 'reviewing a game' automatically means getting the highest number of youtube-hits ever. If that's your goal, then yeah...you've really got quite some competition on your hands to be the first, smartest, funniest, edgiest or most appealing reviewer on youtube (which pretty much means on the planet). And you'll have to keep up with recent trends as well.

While that may certainly be a goal later, I certainly wouldn't start out that way. Take your time. Review those 12 articles a year if you have to. But in that time, learn what works. Get feedback from the ones watching and adapt accordingly (assuming it's a direction you want to go). Learn the differences between a good and a bad review. Practice video editing. Practice your voice (articulating and various tone differences). Remember to keep talking without being boring. And have fun while at it.


I personally write reviews because I like games, thinking about games and writing about them. I honestly couldn't care less if my steam review reader amounts are in the single digits (in fact, they probably are). I guess that goes for youtube as well: have fun in the creation itself. The moment you start seeing it as "something to be done to get more subscribers", I think you're on the wrong track. But hey...I'm not exactly the one to listen to in this field.

 

[Foxi4]

Let's put it this way - when a restaurant critic reviews a restaurant, he or she orders one or two meals and forms an opinion on that basis. While reviewing on the basis of the complete game is preferable, it's only possible with shorter games - JRPG tapeworms don't give you the chance and we all have schedules in life. When you have a week to write the piece and a 100 hours to go, you're buggered and it's not a matter of lacking passion, it's a matter of reaching deadlines. If you play the game for 10-20 hours, you have a pretty good idea what it's about, much like a critic has a good idea about the restaurant after trying a few meals, not the whole menu.

 

[Social_Outlaw]

I do not think I could disagree more with most of what you said there. Mainly as I try to go in cold before reviewing anything really and would encourage most people to do the same, save perhaps if they are deliberately going in for a game that was trashed to see if there is anything salvageable about it.

"It's up to the more experience reviewers to choose to review it"
If you are reviewing the piece of medical equipment that is going to save my life or a new tool that is going to bankrupt me if it fails then I absolutely do not want johnny the intern to review it. For games then anything goes, up until it requires some kind of serious gaming skills or is a game based around serious maths skills or something like that. Not everybody should review every game (for instance it is probably not worth reading a review of a football game from me -- "it's boring, football is boring and I am bored" is about as far as that would go, mainly because I find football very boring) but experienced vs not in matters of reviewing matters very little in most cases, especially in game reviews where most reviewers do not talk about game theory like film reviewers talk about cinematography and they tend not to go full blown literary analysis like someone might be expected to when reviewing a book.

Football is very boring lol (I try to get in to it ), and well... what can I say? To each his/her own, reviewing a game might not be equivalent book wise or film wise, but having a somewhat In-depth/analysis is in there when talking about it. Nobody doesn't want to do a bad review when talking about it, that brings down the fun factor about the game. People list the Pro's and Con's of a game to give you analogy of the game many features, although it doesn't have to be a full blown analysis to be considered an analysis (Just saying). You break it down for a reason to make people understand, reviewing a game isn't book or film level, but it is considered high in the gaming world, and the reason is because it has freedom unlike the other two, which makes it great, so really anything goes .