Disclaimer: This is not an official feature of the Escapist Magazine or Website
[HEADING=1]And the winner is?.[/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]NeutralDrow![/HEADING] ... who places in First with 74 points!
With a score of 65, 2th place goes toLostInTheVoid! With a score of 64, 3th place goes toVaudevillianVeteran! With a score of 63, 4th place goes toSnuggles! With a score of 60, 5th place goes toSassafrass!
Who reviewed what game under which name
RV:AB - Angry Birds - Sassafrass
RV:RT - Ristar - NeutralDrow
RV2 - Portal 2 - Snuggle
RVAH - Destory All Humans - VaudevillianVeteran
RV:VBL - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - LostInTheVoid
<color=blue>Congratulations to our New Champion, and many thanks to our judges for making Review Wars V a success!
<color=purple>For detailed results, please see Page 2 of this thread.
[sub]Feel Free to check my math if I got any scores or anything mixed up[/sub]
Judges: Harshest Judge:New Classic awarded 58 out of a possible 100 points Most Generous Judge:Hear of Darkness awarded 70 out of a possible 100 points Most Efficient Judge:Heart of Darkness Least Efficient Judge: Blue Ink Alchemist Best Uintentionally Hilarious Moment:LostInTheVoid, Classy shirtless Email Profile Picture, bro
Judging Stats:
Average Mean of Scores: 13.04
Standard Deviation: 1.9
Well, it was a close race for everything except 1st. Fun to see all the scores come in, even if there wasn?t as much of a variety as in previous Review Wars. I was a little disappointed that we only got 5 entries, meaning we couldn?t do our usual top 3. Instead only 1 person got an award. I was hoping this theme would bring in more unique reviews. Especially older games like ?Donkey Kong? or ?Sonic.? But I still had fun with it. I?m definitely looking forward to next time, so feel free to mention some themes for the next one. Even if I think my next idea is a winner already. Congrats to Drow, he earned it!
Disclaimer: This is not an official feature of the Escapist Magazine or Website
Welcome, one and all, to the unofficial Review Wars; a place where the review competitions never end! A coliseum where the pen truly is mightier than the sword. So crank up that inspirational music, take out your thesaurus and prepare to mince words. Many will enter, but only one will leave as the undisputed Champion of The Review Board. Do you think you have what it takes to match with the best and brightest of the board?
Last competition ended with a triumphant victory of newcomer [user]Scobie[/user] and his Mass Effect 2 Review [http://bit.ly/v9TkYH]. We thank [user]Maet[/user] for emceeing the last competition, and look forward to another glorious round in the Review Arena!
[HEADING=3]Basics[/HEADING]
I. Reviewers will sign up for an upcoming arranged competition.
II. Competitions will take place over the course of four weeks.
III. Reviewers will have two weeks to enter, write, and submit their reviews to the supervisor. (That's me!)
IV. The supervisor will distribute the reviews to the judges, who will then have one two weeks to judge the reviews based on the rubric found below.
V. Results will be posted as soon as they're gathered, barring any complications. If a judge fails to give out a score in a reasonable time period, then their duty falls to me.
[HEADING=3]Schedule: [/HEADING]
December 4th ? December 25th: Write and Submit the Reviews
December 26th ? January 13th: Judging period
January 14th: Results posted
[HEADING=3]RULES & GUIDELINES[/HEADING] I. Entering a competition
There's no need to sign up, but if you want to make a quick post showing your interest, by all means, have at it. Just be warned that you are not to indicate what game you intend to review. Feel free to talk to the other reviewers or get to know your judges either here or in The Review Wars Official User Group [http://bit.ly/vgCPXt]. All competitors must submit their review to me via email before the deadline listed below, whereupon it will be distributed via email to the judges for evaluation. If you submitted a review that wasn't entirely to your satisfaction, you will be able to edit and resubmit it as many times as you deem necessary. Just make sure that you clearly indicate which version is to be taken as your final.
Notice: You must include your user name either in your review or in your email to me so that you can be identified. Your user name will then be removed from the review when it is sent out to the judges. You are not to tell the judges who you are! You willbe disqualified if you do!
Poor sportsmanship or failure to follow regular forum guidelines will result in a deduction of 10 points to your score or disqualification and bar from future events depending on the incident.
II. Writing a Review
All reviews must be written within the set turn in date. You cannot submit previously posted reviews. Apart from that, however, the only restrictions on things to review and review formats are those set for each individual competition. Default writing guidelines for arranged competitions include a 800-1000 maximum word limit, in standard essay format, unless specified otherwise in the prompt. Write and format your review as if you were going to post it as a thread in this forum. This should help you make sure everything is neat and tidy with no broken code in place. The judges will be advised to evaluate the presentation of your review based on what they see when they preview it in the forums.
III. Judging
In past competitions, the floor was open for guest judges. Unfortunately, since the majority of those volunteers proved to be terribly unreliable, this is no longer the case. Instead five judges have been contracted for a panel of competent and reliable judges. Rest assured, this is a panel of both excellent reviewers and readers themselves who have been on this site for a long time. This number of judges should be plenty and make for interesting results.
Our judges are:
[user]NewClassic[/user]
[user]Maet[/user]
[user]pigeon_of_doom [/user]
[user]BlueInkAlchemist [/user]
[user]Heart of Darkness [/user]
Just a wave and smile to say I'm judging this time around. For the sake of the writers, there are a few red flags to avoid. The worst thing someone could do is to try too hard. Relax, and let a comfortable writing style hold true. Stressing over the writing tends to produce alien writing, which does more damage to the tone and feel of writing than not. Also, try to key relaxed in the review. Writers sometimes take a very "Tra la la, la la la, la la, gamewasgood" stance on reviewing, which is off-putting for the reader. If you enjoy reading it, chances are the judge will enjoy reading it to.
Considering some of the scores of my fellow judges from the last tourney, I think it's safe to say that I'm a rather easy judge to impress. In my experience, all critics need to do two particular things to write a good review:
1) Cover their bases.
2) Spell/Grammar check.
People tend to lose a lot of easy points by failing to back up their statements and by approaching their subject from a narrow perspective. Even more points are lost by not taking the time to give their work a once over and by submitting a visually unappealing review (that is, one with poor paragraph spacing, no images, no panache, etc.) The truly special reviews are the ones that combine meticulous attention to detail, utilize an amicable writing voice, and read effortlessly from start to finish. Remember that it's not at all hard to write a good review, but to write a fantastic review tends to take a lot of effort and experience.
3) The use of coarse language, in my opinion, tends to be favoured by writers who lack the vocabulary necessary to express their thoughts in an effective and appropriate manner. I've nothing against minor expletives like damn and hell, but don't just toss them in without first considering other ways to convey your thoughts. Not only will this help you spice up your vocabulary, but it will also force you to avoid relying too heavily on verbal ticks and crutches that make for bland writing.
4) There's no real reason to mention the context or motivation for writing your review inside of it. Some people lost a point because they momentarily drew my attention to things like "The Escapist Forums/Community" and "Review Wars III" instead of keeping me focused on the subject of their piece. A good review should stand independent of the circumstances for its creation.
5) Assume that the reader knows nothing. One review in particular (GENEFORGE) included several asides and references that went over my head, and as I result I didn't really care for the review (the somewhat puerile and aggressive writing voice not helping matters much either). Only make references and jokes when you're absolutely certain that they would be intelligible to almost everyone. The risk of effectively including an obscure reference far outweighs the reward, in my view
Any efforts towards entertainment value are certainly appreciated, but don't compromise your responsibility to inform the reader. There's also risk of giving a distorted account of the game with misapplied hyperbole or comically exaggerated complaints, while excessive humorous asides can detract from a piece's direction.
An effectively constructed, pleasant tone tends to be more conducive to a pleasant reading experience for me. It's always worth staying aware of how you sound, understand how you want to sound, and then work towards best emphasising that effect. The impact the content of a sentence has is relatively transitory, but don't underestimate the cumulative impression a reader develops as they proceed. A choice comment can be more effective thanks to the overall framework it's set in.
Additionally, keep a sense of perspective and try and be fair, while remaining engaging, to get good marks from me. Easy, right? Have fun and good luck everybody.
I can sum up my advice as "Don't try too hard." Find your own voice and use it rather than trying to be someone else. Voice your opinions and be willing to stick by them. A good review is easy to read and relatively deep in its coverage. Relax! We review stuff for fun, and if it's fun for you to write, more often than not it'll be fun for folks to read. Provided you observe basic rules of grammar and composition, natch.
As the newest judge on the Review Wars panel, any advice I give is likely to be old information at this point, but is worth stressing for our aspiring writers. First and foremost, do not leave this thing until the night before. Writing is an art, and you need time to go back and refine that work into a masterpiece. Leave substantial time to review your own work, correct blatant (and not so blatant!) spelling and grammar errors, and improve the flow and tone of your piece until it is sweet on the ears and rolls easily off the tongue.
The other thing that I need to stress is for you to find your own voice. By all means, we are looking for reviews that would be acceptable in a semi-professional setting, but do not lose your unique voice when you write the review. And, for the love of Pete, don't break your review into sections like "Sound," "Gameplay," etc. Reviews sectioned by a game's elements horribly disrupt the flow of the piece, and may cause you to begin repeating yourself as you discuss how game elements work together to help or hinder the game you're reviewing. If you feel need to section things off, try to do so by topics, rather than by following a checklist of game elements. If you also include captioned pictures in your piece, try to make the captions supplement the body of your review, rather than try to crack a joke, and here's why: forced humor will never work in a review. Everyone's sense of humor is different, and trying to push a joke you find funny may end up hurting you in the long run.
Overall, just remember that this contest is supposed to be fun, so try not to stress over it. Regardless of the outcome, you will pick up extra writing tips that will help you grow and flourish as a writer. So go into this contest with an open mind, and don't be discouraged from any scores or criticisms you may receive.
I've been a judge on Review Wars pretty well since it began. I've been noted as being a little more, shall we say, reserved with the distribution of high scores. I would say that I have yet to read a truly great review from this competition, but if you want to score higher with me then here's some generic and vague advice:
The first thing to know about writing a review is that if you don't start aiming to write with a professional level of quality, your review is not going to be of sufficient quality to win. I don't mean that you have to have a stiff formal tone, or that your reviews should follow the format and style of professional reviewers; rather that your writing should be at that level of quality to score well as a review in Review Wars. Adding in non-sequitur humor, tangental rants and cultural references do not necessarily help your review; neither will doing anything to channel Yahtzee Croshaw (which includes but is not limited to the above). If your writing flows well and you have a good voice, the review will be entertaining, so don't try and force humor on the reader. We are here to read a review of a game, not to read a funny blog or browse the liner notes from a stand-up act. By no means should you avoid humor, but rather, do not focus on entertainment over the actual review. Keep your review organized, concise and be true to your own voice. Do that and I'll be slightly less harsh than normal.
The best general piece of advice I can give is to avoid the temptation to checklist. It's something that is said time and again on the Escapist, but in the last competition, most of the reviews suffered from the checklist style. Try to cover everything necessary, yes, but if you think the sound of the game was average, it's okay to skip that in favor of a better flow. Basically, just write naturally. I have faith.
Also, I'm going to echo the sentiments of BlueInkAlchemist and NewClassic: don't get too worked up over the contest. In the last competition, I found that many of the reviews came off as pretentious, with long, self-important phrasing and a generally flat tone. Don't do that. Write like yourself, and we're going to be more impressed than if you try to write like a bad English professor.
For more specific advice, Scotth266's stickied thread is a good place for basic tips of the trade. Most importantly, just have fun. The concept gets lost in reviewing games, sometimes, but we're all here because we like video game reviews. Judges are trying to help, not humiliate.
IV. Rubric
Reviews will be scored out of 20 points, with 5 points possible in each section. Presentation: _/5
The way the review is structured and formatted. Being easy on the eyes, the use of pretty pictures, proper use of forum code, etc.
Readability: _/5
How easy or difficult your review is to read, and how polished your writing is. Notice: You will lose points for atrocious spelling and grammar!
Content: _/5
Essentially, how comprehensive is your review? Does it touch upon all the things we generally expect from reviews, such as gameplay/presentation/artistic design, etc? What other interesting things does your review deal with and discuss?
Tilt: _/5
This category, more or less, is an amalgamation of the previous style, appeal, originality, and entertainment value categories. There was often much difficulty in ascribing a numeric value to these sections, largely due to their highly subjective nature. Thus, in recognizing how polarizing these ideas are, We've decided to compile them into a general "Tilt" category. This should hopefully serve as an indicator of how much or how little the judges cared for your reviews as a whole. In general, think of it as the "how much do you like my review?" category.
You may receive feedback on your review and explanations for how well/poorly you fared from our judges once all of this is over. The judges are not required to do this, but we do encourage them to leave helpful comments if they're able to do so.
V: Prompt
[HEADING=1]Non Human Protagonist[/HEADING]
Games these days are lacking a certain creativity in protagonists. If we're not a wise cracking suave ladies man, we're a hardened military badass. This Review Wars calls for the participants to get away from the gun toting super men and into the claws, paws, or hooves of your favorite non human player characters.
Reviewing Guidelines
- Target review length: 800 - 1200 words, but preferably as close to 1000 words as you can.
- Last chance to enter: 11:59PM (Central US) December 25th
- Any game with an Non Human protagonist is fair game.
-Humanized characters or characters that act/talk/behave like humans are all fair game. As long as they arent actually human.
- When in doubt, ask me! But ask through PM only! I can't stress this last point enough. The judges are not to know who wrote what review so as to avoid biases and favouritism. If you post what game you intend to review inside this thread or otherwise let any of the five judges know what you intend to review, you will be disqualified!
[HEADING=2]The prompt for this event is Non Human Player Character. You must review according to this prompt in order to be considered by our judges![/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]Submit your review as an email to [link]ReviewWars@gmail.com[/link] whenever you're satisfied with it, but do so no later than 11:59PM (Central US) December 25! No late entrants will be accepted![/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Special thanks...[/HEADING]
to Lvl 64 Klutz for emceeing Review Wars I.
to Pimppeter2 for emceeing Review Wars II and III.
to Maet for emceeing Review Wars 4.
to Labyrinth, Heart of Darkness, and thenumberthirteen for the banners for previous tournaments.
to Heart of Darkness for taking charge of the Review Wars user group.
to the returning as judges.
to everyone eager to participate and yearning for a new competition.
Yes. In fact we encourage newcomers to try their hands at the competition. Even if you don't win, or even come close, the knowledge you gain and the advice you get from our well-accomplished judges is invaluable to writers. Besides, its a great way to get your name out there if you do well.
No, games can be from any year as long as they fit the topic of this competition.
These questions have been added to the official Q&A
Hmm, the prompt did throw me off. I liked having these as motivation for my own reviews (nothing adds to work ethic like a deadline), but nothing in my upcoming review list had a non-human protagonist that I knew of. Non-human love interests, perhaps (demons, fairies, alients, etc.), but not protagonists.
Then something glaringly obvious struck me, so I have an idea. I'd like to join in.
...wait, this is number five? Did I miss a review war? I know I participated twice, and skipped one...
Hmm, the prompt did throw me off. I liked having these as motivation for my own reviews (nothing adds to work ethic like a deadline), but nothing in my upcoming review list had a non-human protagonist that I knew of. Non-human love interests, perhaps (demons, fairies, alients, etc.), but not protagonists.
Then something glaringly obvious struck me, so I have an idea. I'd like to join in.
...wait, this is number five? Did I miss a review war? I know I participated twice, and skipped one...
I was actually looking to review a game before I saw this so I was all like
Then I saw the prompt and was all like D:
But I'm sure I have some other game that can fit it. I'll see if I can't have a shot at it. My reviews aren't all that good but meh, it's a nice pass time either way.
Well, call me interested, my first time participating in a Review War.
Best of luck to everyone participating. :3
I only hope that the game I've picked is any good. >>
Well, call me interested, my first time participating in a Review War.
Best of luck to everyone participating. :3
I only hope that the game I've picked is any good. >>
Question: What happens if the game has a choice of whether you want to be a human or not? Now, I don't own Skyrim, but if it's anything like Oblivion, you can be a human, or you can be an elf, tiger-thing, orc, etc. So can you do that game (or another like it -- I'd like to repeat that I'm not doing Skyrim and don't even own it) because there's an option for a non-human, or is it disqualified because you can be a human?
OT: I might enter. I'd have to find a game to do first, but I could probably get something done.
Oh, and topic is stickied. For now, at least. I'll unsticky it after the deadline has passed.
A game that has a non-human protagonist and a 800-1000 word limit? Damn, looks like I'm out already (planned on doing a book with a human protagonist and I know I'll blow past the 1000 word maximum).
Question: What happens if the game has a choice of whether you want to be a human or not? Now, I don't own Skyrim, but if it's anything like Oblivion, you can be a human, or you can be an elf, tiger-thing, orc, etc. So can you do that game (or another like it -- I'd like to repeat that I'm not doing Skyrim and don't even own it) because there's an option for a non-human, or is it disqualified because you can be a human?
OT: I might enter. I'd have to find a game to do first, but I could probably get something done.
Oh, and topic is stickied. For now, at least. I'll unsticky it after the deadline has passed.
I'd appreciate if you unsticky it now. People tend to skip over stickies, and Review Wars was never stickied, by tradition.
I wouldn't count Skyrim, but that's only for that game. There is no disqualification if you can be human, but its a fine line, so its better to ask me on an individual basis. I wont give a general view on it in fear of limiting games.
A game that has a non-human protagonist and a 800-1000 word limit? Damn, looks like I'm out already (planned on doing a book with a human protagonist and I know I'll blow past the 1000 word maximum).
Review wars will never do anything but video game submissions. At least in the foreseeable future. You'd be surprised how many words 1000 words is. Its a talent in itself to make every word count.
A game that has a non-human protagonist and a 800-1000 word limit? Damn, looks like I'm out already (planned on doing a book with a human protagonist and I know I'll blow past the 1000 word maximum).
Review wars will never do anything but video game submissions. At least in the foreseeable future. You'd be surprised how many words 1000 words is. Its a talent in itself to make every word count.
Maybe if I think hard enough I'll come up with a game. Skyrim has lizard people and kitties, that counts, right? Blops has wooden actors, and trees aren't people.
Hey, this will be easier to figure out than I though!
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2 - Portal 2 - Snuggle
