Game Review

Well my next task is to write a game review and present it as a presentation. As I am not sure when I have to do the presentation, I am just going to dump a few sentences here to help me later on when I complete my presentation properly.

What is the game, and when was it released?

The game I think I will be reviewing is The Legend of Zelda, The Ocarina of Time. However, I haven't played this for a while fully as I played it when I was younger. I have played bits of it more recently on my friend's PC but it isn't the same. The game was released on November 21, 1998 on the Nintendo 64.

What genre is it?

This game is an RPG. It is in third person view however you do only play one person through the game.

What happens and most importantly, what’s it like to play?

As with every Legend of Zelda game, the princess gets kidnapped by Ganordorf and your aim is to go and save her. In each game however, the storyline and gameplay is slightly different. In this game, you start off as a child working to get three stones to open the Temple of Time, obviously going to different areas and defeating different bosses to obtain each one. Once you open the Temple of Time however, it turns out to be a trap set by Ganondorf and you then wake up 7 years into the future. You next task is to then go and defeat the bosses at each of the Temples and awaken the sages to help you defeat Ganondorf. The worse temple is the Temple of Water. You have  boots that make you sink and walk on the bottom of the water and this game decides to make you have to change to these boots every two seconds! Once the sages are awoken, you are then able to defeat Ganondorf and his other form (who i always thought looked like a pig), Ganon therefore freeing Zelda.

I think this game is amazing to play as it takes very long to complete and there are a lot of puzzles to figure out. This makes is my type of game, i'm not keen on games where you have to just fight or shoot people...
The only problem (apart from the Water Temple) is that if you get stuck on one little thing, you are unable to carry on the game. I overcame this by asking my friend what to do next as she had completed the game before :D Although i suppose you could look on google for a walkthrough...

Writing about Games, Previews, Reviews, Commentary and Lies.

The main issue that faces reviewers is that they must write without being biased as it is very easy to do so. Even if they do not like the game, thousands of other people out there may think that is it the best game ever. Therefore, reviewers need to look at games from all people's point of view.They also tend to pick out faults such as glitches in the game and the developers of the game get blamed for it as there is not much they can do after it has been released or close to being released. This shows that the game developers and the game press are 2 completely different groups are people that are not working together. I'm assuming that the game magazie that they work for pays their wages.

I think that an objective ranking system for games should be neccessary as, like i said before, different people like different games so even if a game is given a bad review in a magazine, a lot of people may still like it. To overcome to "bias" problem, other people should also play and review the game and then talk about what they like/didn't like to give more of a fair review. This may be hard to do as game reviewers are constantly under stress according to Kieron Gillen. "The rush from issue to issue leaves little time for serious contemplation. The second a magazine is finished, then the next demands your attention." This shows that reviewers barely have time to think about and write one review, let alone more than one.

Well I didnt know what the NGJ was before this, therefore, I looked it up on wikipedia.  This is their definiton; "New Games Journalism (NGJ) is a video game journalism term, coined in 2004 by journalist Keiron Gillen, in which personal anecdotes, references to other media, and creative analyses are used to explore game design, play, and culture." I like the idea of this. To me, it sounds like it is made more personal so people can relate to it more. This type of writing is subjective.

As i mentioned above, this type of writing can feel more personal to the reader. I mean, i know that i would prefer to read a game review like this instead of one going on about how good the graphics are and such. I know that the graphics are a major part of the game, but all i'm doing is finding out whether it's worth playing or not- i dont particularly care about the graphics at that moment. What makes game more fun is the inside jokes you have with your friends about them and the small things that you find funny.

Other types of game reviews are video trailers, stragedy guides and previews and they can be found is a variety of places but mostly online or in certain magazines.

In my own writing, I tend to value subjectivity. I find that when i am writing, i struggle to put down all of my feelings about things and make them make sense at the same time. I also don't really know other people's views on games; if I don't like it, then i struggle to understand why other people would like it. But then again, i'm only really into role playing games.