Saturday, February 18, 2012

A Decent Way To Review "Short Guide By Me"

Am I Moe~ Enough??
So much has been going through my personal psyche as of late. With my parents getting a divorce after twenty fours of marriage, having to blow over 1500$ to pay off some bills losing a chance to get a car/job in the process. I realize that blogging about his and getting it off my chest will help, however I will save that for a later time. It's been eating me up inside for a long time now but again I will save my personal drama for later

The main focus of this article is for those who want to write reviews professionally or just for fun like I do to keep myself sane. Please keep in mind that you do not need to follow this model exactly, all I am doing is pointing out faults that I read in a lot of reviews personally Even my own personal writing suffers from this, I also give all credits to this Ann Podcast that pointed out things I really should have noticed along time ago.

Alright lets get this show on the road already. One huge thing that needs to be pointed about most reviews that I have read from crunchy roll or across the net is this. People are willing to say they love or hate series but are not willing to explain why you feel this way. Reviews are your opinion/experience with the product people want a clear reason why. This is very critical for starting up any review that you choose to do. 

Why do i love this series, What about this series hooks me in or pushes me away, Why do I hate him or her so much?? These simple questions alone can help build-up some strength for your review, however this alone isn't enough. Another thing I have done personally and noticed online is that people are to afraid to point any flaws or criticize any series that is really popular. Listen I  love Higuarshi to death however a huge flaw in that series is the pacing, with horrible deen quality artwork.

Please do not be afraid to point out any flaws no matter what the series is. I understand you might some black lash for it. Keep In mind it's suppose to be your Impressions not a copy/paste feed back on the forums. If you hated how the series ended point that out. If you hate the mc's love interest point that out as well, again you need explain why you feel this way or came to this conclusion. I explained back in my review of the school days visual novel, explaining why I do not hate matoko for what happens to him or any other character.

Next is the last and tricky of all issues with reviews which is scores. Personally now I hate them  now when i used to rely on them for everything. I would personally do what 90% of other readers usually do, which is to skim then go right for the score. you have no idea ho much this actually hurts when doing a review and I understand that numbers serve a purpose with the score. The biggest problem is that all readers care about is the numbers. A good example would be IGN.com. Say for example  if a game makes below a 7/10 on their average level most readers will not even read the review or bother with the game. 

This beats the point of doing a review in the first place. The overall purpose of doing a review is to show what you liked/disliked about the show or product. Number scores attached to that do not help in the least and only give people a quick sense of instant gratification so they can brag around saying on their favorite game in a franchise got a 9/10 while my game got a 7/10. Now there is some-one that manages to pull off doing reviews with out ever giving scores and people know if not he loved or hated the game based on that review. Head over to the escapist and watch any episode of zero punctuation to see what I am talking about.

Now should you use scores at all?? Well that's up to you in all honesty, I will personally keep using the 1 to 5 scale until my writing gets better. I do wish to add one more little tidbit of info, write up a short one to two paragraph synopsis before doing the full review. This helps give people what the series is based on, where to watch it and short summary of what it's about before reading your review. This is all the advice I can really give you all, If you choose to write let me know and I really need to follow my own examples soon. I will catch you all around later see ya~

Seven Deadly Sins~
 -Cecil The Dark Knight

6 comments:

  1. thanks Cecil this is gonna be helpful.

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  2. All very true Cecil, I like how it wasn't just a 'this is how you do it' guide. Great insight.
    ~Xarthos

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  3. Your guide is very nice, what you're saying makes sense and you've raised some good points .I like what your saying about giving reviews a score at the end. I've also just skipped through to look at the score on numerous reviews.
    Also having looked at some of your reviews i can see that instead of giving titles an overall score you give them scores for individual categories. While using a scoring system is arbitrary the way you use the scoring system is a lot better than giving titles an overall score.

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  4. Nice review of a review! i actually agree with the whole scores thing as i'm also one of those guilty people that sometimes jump straight to what the reviewer gave the thing in question to decide whether it was worth reading more about.

    anyway, hope your personal life gets better mate.

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  5. thanks. i was actually planning to attempt a few reviews of my own.
    this will be a great help.

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  6. could have sworn i posted a comment here. lets try this again.
    thanks for the tips, they will be really helpful as i've been planning to do a review show for anime, and now i have some insight on how to make a good review.

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