More Media Reviews Coming Soon

 

Starting soon, I will be posting more reviews to this blog. There will still be plenty of feature articles to come down the pipeline, but more of an effort will be put towards reviews of different media, from games to movies to TV shows to comics and more, and from major releases to more obscure titles. The following will be detailing how these reviews will go, so you, the readers, will have an idea of what I will be looking at.

CRITERIA

These are the different aspects I will be looking at when giving a review. Keep in mind this list is not all-encompassing.

Story – How does the story play out? Is the pacing good? Do the questions that need answering get answered?

Characters – How are the characters structured? How do they fit into the story? Do they develop well?

Visuals – How does the art style look? Do the motions run smoothly?

Audio (Excludes Comic Books) – Are the sounds/voices convincing? Can everything be heard clearly?

Gameplay (Video Games Only) – Is the game responsive? Are the controls easy to understand?

Extras – Is there extra content worth noting?

REVIEW SCORES

Since everyone uses review scores as a quick “yes or no” answer as to whether something is good, at the end of my reviews, I will give it a ranking out of five. These rankings are inspired by X-Play, a video game review show that aired on the now-defunct geek and gamer TV network, G4.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Why out of five instead of 10 or 100? Because as the X-Play hosts explained (before the show folded to pressure from sites like Metacritic), scores like these are used more like broad generalizations for people to use as guides, since all the score can tell you is if something is good or bad and there’s no real difference in 1 or 2 points out of 100.

Here is what the different scores here mean, with some examples of what would receive those scores.

1/5: A completely broken mess with no redeeming factors. Not even worth the bargain bin, this would probably even make someone mad if you just gave it to them. Just stay away.

Poor story, poor casting, poor writing, poor acting, poor development. It’s so poor, it would fit right in at a homeless shelter.

2/5: This is a feature that fails on almost every level. Keyword though: almost, because it has some significant redeeming factor in it that would make it impossible for it to receive a 1/5.

Thank goodness for Will Smith and Margot Robbie for keeping this from being a complete trainwreck.

3/5: This could mean one of three different things. It is either a just about equal mix of good and bad elements, 

 Literally half the game is what Sonic fans have been begging for. The other half, not so much.

...it has a great concept that’s poorly executed,

 It gets a bit repetitive after a while, but the comic book storytelling style is interesting and the characters and monsters have a lot of personality.

or it works functionally but is otherwise completely uninteresting or unoriginal.

Copypasta? More like COD-pypasta. Am I right, guys? *bricked

4/5: These are excellent works that either have significant problems... 

The plot can drag at times, but the drama is engaging, and you really fear for the characters’ lives.

...or would only really appeal to certain niche audiences.

Three guesses who the biggest fans of this show are. (Your first two will probably be wrong.)

5/5: A perfect or near-perfect gem of entertainment. Outstanding and genre-defining, if you’re a fan of a certain genre, something with this score is a must-buy.

Fun, action packed gameplay with colorful environments and interesting characters each with their own unique abilities and gameplay challenges. If only the fandom was just as nice.

In addition, I'll also include a small verdict on the work's replay value, which is basically how likely someone would be to watch/play/read this again. There are five levels to this, inspired by how the video game magazine GameInformer ranks replay value, but these can apply to just about any form of media. Instead of with the rest of the

-Low: You’ll quit before you even finish it.
-Moderately Low: After finishing it once, there’s not much reason to give it a second go.
-Moderate: Good for a few months or a few times through.
-Moderately High: Great for a long while, but the thrills won’t last forever.
-High: You’ll still be pulling this off the shelf five years from now.

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Thanks for coming to this preview. Look forward to more articles in the future!