Reviews and Such

This past week I caught up on some 30 seconds reviews. Mostly because it was a really busy week in my personal life. If you are curious, you can click on the links right here (first 6 games, last 3 series/shows): 

• Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City
• Chrono Trigger
• Doodle God Universe
• Game Dev Story
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
• Legends of Kingdom Rush
• FBoy Island
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
• Real Time with Bill Maher

All of the above reviews are actually things I recently played or watched, so they’re fresh on my mind. And since I did that, might as well talk a little bit about the importance of reviewers / critics in this blog post.

I’ve always found reviews very beneficial. Even before I had reliable internet, I would be reading various PC games magazines before deciding which game to play. Partly because I didn’t have my own income and so would have to rely on presents or my parents generosity, but also because ultimately, I wanted to know if something is worth sinking my time into.

Game demos or movie trailers are often straight up bullshit and pick the best parts of a game or movie, skewing the potential audience’s expectations. So many times I got excited about a something based on a trailer or a demo, only to be disappointed in the end. Often there was no doubt about it: the budget was mostly wasted on marketing instead of creating actual content worth playing (watching).

Even today I frequently wait for something to be released, watch or read a review of two (preferably ignoring big conglomerates like IGN – they are often just sucking up to the game / movie industry anyway). Honestly, I do wish there would be more independent reviewers out there, but it’s difficult – financially speaking. Tales of people being drowned by Youtube algorithm, or, being otherwise bullied away from it are just the tip of the iceberg. This is in fact, a whole problem in on its own that I’m not going to delve into.

Back to my own reviews here. I personally enjoy writing about stuff in general. And I have in the past written longer reviews, but eventually I decided that’s not the path I want to pursue – unless I’d get a chance to be paid for doing that. So my 30 second reviews are just my own little way of remembering what I watched / played and force myself to write something truly short (as opposed to my stories). No expectations of anybody ever reading them.

One major downside of me doing this for fun is, like I previously implied, I have gotten really good at avoiding stuff that I won’t enjoy (for the most part). So a whole lot of things I review end up having at least 2 or 3 stars. Oh well!

I am currently also writing a new short story. More on that next week!