If you’re a gamer, then there is a strong chance that you have come across at least one game review written by a professional game expert, or someone who has had considerable experience with the game you are reviewing. These reviews are invaluable tools for any budding game expert or wannabe expert gamer. With all the resources available on the internet, and the fact that anyone can publish a game review, it is essential that amateur gamers pay close attention and try and find the most accurate assessment of their favourite games. This article will discuss the three aspects that I feel a review should focus on:
A good review should be an intertextual expository on the game it is commenting on. It ought to read more like a casual friend, talking about the context of the game in video game and cultural history and highlighting key decision points and gameplay elements to incorporate into future play. By including a lot of relevant information about the game, as well as giving it a well thought out and researched perspective, it gives the reviewer great flexibility to include a lot of subjective information into the review. A good review is rarely predictable, but instead is more open and spontaneous. This is both a good and bad thing. Some reviews are clearly created by a gaming obsessive with a major agenda and are almost always worthless, while other reviews are done by a layman who has a strong opinion, but doesn’t necessarily write with a great deal of skill or expertise in the field.
A video game review that are written by a reviewer with some knowledge of video games, but who has not necessarily spent years playing them, is more likely to be thought-provoking and informative than a review written by an unknown person who is only playing the game for the first time. Something to keep in mind when reading a video game review, whether you are buying the game or reading one for the first time, is that the opinions expressed may not be biased by personal experience with the game. In other words, if you are a huge fan of a certain series and you are reading a review written by a random person who only plays the game occasionally, you may come away from the article with mixed feelings about the game. However, a person who only plays video games occasionally and is writing a review based solely on their experience, may come away with a totally different point of view.