Adam's Blog #3: On Reviewing

The boxset review was for the first season of the show Legend of the Seeker. It was based on the fantasy book series The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Goodkind's books are mature fantasy in the vein of Game of Thrones but where that show (which didn't exist then) is faithful to the tone of the books the producers of Seeker decided to take something that was written strictly for adults and make a family friendly show out of it. And this wasn't even its worst offence. The bigger offence was that they made a 22 episode season out of the first book and only four of that number had anything at all to do with the book's plot. The rest either did their own thing with pointless side stories or went out of their way to do the exact opposite to the book's established canon. It short they completely butchered it and I gave the series a negative review (2/5).

Enter the rapid fans who promptly informed me about how wrong I was and that my criticism were basically invalid because the series was only meant to be 'based on' the books (which ironically they think are shit) and not an actual 'adaptation'. I was unaware there was a difference. Apparently there was 'no point' in comparing how faithful the series was to its source in 'ridiculous detail'. I expect these are the same sort of people who complain about Game of Thrones being too full of sex and violence. Anyone's who's extensively read fantasy should know the majority of it is not for the kids.

The game review was for Slender: The Arrival which I thought was a pretty good horror experience but a bad video game experience. I can't remember exactly what the comments said now as this review doesn't exist any more as I decided to pull everything I wrote from Steam due to the mentality of the user base but I felt that I gave it a fair write-up based on my experience of the title. Again, enter the rabid fan who was quick to tell me I wasn't qualified to give the game a negative write-up. He seemed most pissed that my review had actually been voted up as the most helpful review as well. Another one was genuinely upset that I had given the game a negative review saying something like 'I don't care if you didn't like it but don't rag on the game and hurt its reputation for the rest of us'. 

I eventually deleted all my Steam reviews as I couldn't stand the user base any longer. I've since put a new review up to test the waters but found it hasn't changed much. It's a place where throwaway reviews that don't really tell you much get voted up and thought out ones that actually evaluate the game get voted down as unhelpful. My testing the waters review was for a simple point and click game that I found a game breaking bug in that required a complete restart to get by so I based my negative largely on that (while praising the game in general and pointing out that it would be a positive otherwise). Apparently pointing out this serious problem in the game meant the review was 'unhelpful' though. 

Here's the Slender review. You guys tell me if it describes a game you want to play (the game has actually been updated since this was written but I never played the new version):

I've been a fan of horror video games, particularly survival horror, ever since buying the Penumbra and Amnesia titles. Following them I'm always on the lookout for further horror titles for my collection, the latest of which to find its way there being the 2013 game Slender: The Arrival. I've seen the game called before a sequel and extended version of the previous game Slender: The Eight Pages. I haven't played the original, so I'm not sure which is correct. Perhaps it's both. In any case Slender: The Arrival does what every other horror game I've played since Amnesia: The Dark Descent has failed to do, and that is give such an experience to prompt a panicky sort of gameplay as you desperately try to keep the player character alive. Ironically this is what makes Slender: The Arrival such a poor survival horror experience. The game starts off more positively, featuring exploration and very little danger, but enough creepiness to keep you wary of your surroundings, and jumping at every little noise and cautiously poking into dark rooms of the house that marks up part of the early setting. You're following clues in regard to the disappearance of your friend Kate and any moment you're expecting something to happen and have to run, like in any good survival horror game where you can't defend yourself. Well that happens, but when it does happen it simply does not relent. The titular Slender Man attacks relentlessly after the first area of the game is completed, resulting in that panicky gameplay I previously mentioned. You'll spend a lot of time running. As a horror experience I can't fault it, but the trouble is the attacks from the Slender Man are so frequent it begins to kill the atmosphere and become simply tedious. And the game only has autosave, and only at the start of each level, so if you fail you potentially lose a lot of progress. But hey, now you know what you did wrong right? Wrong. The second chapter randomises itself , placing the items you need in different locations. Good replay value if you were going to start the game from scratch, but utterly frustrating when you're only reloading after a death. The next chapter seemed more thought out, with a different enemy known as the Chaser with the Slender Man markedly less troublesome than previously. This does of course change again in the later stages of the game as you try to escape a forest fire, with no real clue about where you're meant to be running too, and it is only by sheer dumb luck I eventually got out of that area. But then, I suppose that is good for a horror game is it not? Well, I can't deny that developer Blue Isle Studios make a good horror experience in Slender: The Arrival. What I do deny is that they made a good game out of it. The story is rather vague, perhaps intentionally but even so, fleshing out a proper plot is essential for any game, and Slender: The Arrival seems to really scrimp on the details and in my opinion it suffers for it. The ending is especially deflating and sudden when it comes. I actually groaned thinking I'd just got killed again before the achievement popped for beating the game. The gameplay is further more rather repetitive even for such a short game, which can be beaten in under 45 minutes, going by the requirements for one of its speed runner achievements. It's basically a lot of running, collecting items, and shining your torch at things. Said torch went dead towards the end of the game, leaving me in pitch darkness and literally unable to progress due to not being able to see a single thing beyond the outline of the video camera the character holds throughout, a item which serves no particularly use, by the way. I want to like Slender: The Arrival, I really do. But it's difficult. The game is good horror, yes, but it is not fun. Surviving is down to luck and running, leaving no room for really thinking problems through and trying to find a solution. Disappointing because it has the potential to be so much more.

I think it speaks volumes that Valve felt the need to add a funny option on the review feedback.

Basically, back at the first site I was doing promos for, one of the reviewers made a forum post explaining he was working on a promo but hated the album so much he couldn't get through a single listen, and asked if people thought he should go through with the review anyway. He did, despite me and another person saying it wasn't a good idea, and long story short, I discovered one of my best friends on RYM loved the band in question, so I pointed him to the review and shortly after I heard from the person who ran the site that he had recieved an email blasting that review, and I knew it was my friend who did it, because he told me he had. I too thought the review was terribly written, so I did what I thought was the best thing to do at the time: I checked the album for myself and got to work on my own review. Well, surprise surprise, I loved the album but because I was a bit immature as a reviewer back then, my review looked like a blatant counter to the other review, and so I recieved a bit of negative feedback from the site before it got posted (we had a place where we worked on reviews and the admins of the site could see what the staff was working on before it was submitted,) leading to a heavily edited version being posted. 

A slightly revised version of the original review still exists on RYM, though I won't directly link it because even though I made some good points in it, I also made some of the most obvious mistakes a reviewer shouldn't make, the most obvious being that you should never write a review specifically to counter someone and make them look bad, which is essentially what I did. Yes, writing a detailed positive review can help when the only other review on the site for that album is negative, but directly mentioning other reviews in any way is an obvious no-no and back then I didn't know better. So basically, that whole situation was handled quite terribly by just about everyone involved. (For those curious, the album in question was http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/album/andromeda/manifest-tyranny, though I'd never post that review here for the reasons I already mentioned.)

Thankfully, since then I haven't had any similar situations. I have gotten a decent amount of positive feedback for my reviews over the years, though. In fact, I've gotten shout outs from the makers of my two favorite albums of all time (one of them was even for a review I specifically wrote for MMA recently) so that's pretty awesome.

My experiences are different from Adam's though, because I'm part of a team so I don't have to worry about encountering some of the challenges he faces. I pretty much get to pick and choose what I cover and know new albums from the labels will always show up for me. I do occasionally experience burnouts, but even then it's usually more struggling to come up with opening paragraphs for a review than it is not being motivated to listen to my promos. I did enjoy reading Adam's write up though, and can agree that a lot of the things he brought up on both sides would be problems.