fohguild.org / uberguilds game ratings

[Aulirophile]

Originally Posted by Sean

Luckily for you guys I have absolutely no delusions of grandeur about participating in this, because I have absolutely terrible creative writing skills and I'm pretty inept at getting my thoughts across in a coherent manner.

Actually your reviews are usually very helpful. Or do you mean detailed reviews expressing your thoughts? I imagine someone would be willing to help ghost write your stuff, you do the ratings and they translate your writing...

[matmanx2]

I'd definitely be interested in participating in something like this. I have no problem expressing my opinion in written format and as a gamer I'm passionately interested in game discussion and review. What's not to love?

[Delenar]

Originally Posted by matmanx2

I'd definitely be interested in participating in something like this. I have no problem expressing my opinion in written format and as a gamer I'm passionately interested in game discussion and review. What's not to love?

I think there's a real good idea to be had in this thread but i'm not sure anyone has uncovered it completely. I'll be completely honest, I trust the things people say in this section of the board more than any review site at the moment. It's easy to find someone here who shares your interest in the same type of games and read their thoughts.

If anything, there aren't enough threads about the good or mediocre games for discussion. It's usually the very bad or the very good with monster threads.

[Aztlan]

If we were to do this, I'd recommend being able to search or organize these reviews by 'user'. It'd help you find reviews with people you see more eye to eye with.

After some thought, the easiest way would be just to do a subforum of "other games" that is specific with reviews. No other posts would be allowed except 'review' posts.

Example:
Original Post
Game content with game title and information & maybe a pic or two. These posts could be created even before the game comes out if anyone felt the need to create it in advance.

Reply Posts would be user reviews.
User Score:
And whatever criteria we'd set for reviews. I.e. graphics paragraph & score, gameplay paragraph & score, story paragraph & score, etc. Kinda like gametrailers.com reviews. I like their style of reviewing.

Reply Post:
Example the same as the first review post.

Every post would be a review. That way this forum would be easily searchable and filtered of any such information that isn't relevant.

[Hatorade]

This is something that would need heavy moderation. No flames aloud etc. for it to work.

[Aztlan]

Would be pretty easy to moderate too, since it'd be pretty clear what is expected. Anyway, that's just an idea I had.

[Zarcath]

are we talking about a seperate Uberguilds game review site? or just a new way to format our threads here? Are we going to have two threads now, one for our rating and one for general discussion?

Maybe Req can come up with something similiar to ForumSpy. We put a block of formatted text into our post and ForumSpy would pull that info and display it all on one page. A person can search for a specific game title and ForumSpy would pull up everyone who submitted a formatted review of that game. It would just be a paragraph preview or so and when they mouse-over, or click, it would expand to show the full review. We`d also need to regulate Spoilers.

Or have some Game Review group with some designated people in it as the `pros` and then everyone else can throw their 2cents in as amateurs. Most of us are smart enough not to include spoilers without warning but I dont want some 2007 asscake ruining a game by saying `i give it a 2/10 because aeris dies`.

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by Lorrac

Oh dear god, amateur reviews. Pro reviews are worse enough.

This is exactly the kind of shit that would need to be deleted... You imply you don't like Pro reviews that are "worse enough"..So I imagine you don't read them or at least don't take thier advice. So don't do all those things with this idea.

[PerritoBites]

Or you could use tags... like the spoiler tag... the search would look directly for these tags and ignore the rest of the post(s).

Or maybe add a check box in Miscellaneous Options that will mark your post as a review. In order to get this check box you need to get permission from an admin.

`i give it a 2/10 because aeris dies`.

Everyone knows she doesn't die if you use the gameshark code!

[Jubee]

As much as I trust certain opinions in this forum, I see nothing but 0/10's for any console FPS's in the future. I also see 10/10's for every piece of uninspired trash that Nintendo shovels down our throats.

[Lorrac]

Originally Posted by Hatorade

This is exactly the kind of shit that would need to be deleted... You imply you don't like Pro reviews that are "worse enough"..So I imagine you don't read them or at least don't take thier advice. So don't do all those things with this idea.

I imply what I say, most of the reviews out there in the net by supposedly pros are garbage. Very few sites have worthwile reviews and that number is dwindling.

Now, amateur reviews are not even reciclable garbage. Can't wait for the poorly written, bias riddled, mediocre skills and limited experience that plagues the amateur reviewers. Look guys, it's time you admit it - proper reviewing (be it books, movies, games) is a craft and no matter what your mum says or how cool you think you are chances are high whatever you write is at best shitty. In the context of forum threads, people usually stick to the bullet points (fun, not fun, ok graphics, short-long, etc) and that's ok as far as peer-advice goes, but a full blown review section would do nothing but stimulate crappy writers to perpetrate long-winded and bloated mirrors of their crappy self. I can't wait for the full 10 page essay about how the thousand belts in the next FF protagonist are some kind of metaphor for the inner conflict whatever.

Man, I miss the days when there were critical editors policing content - bless the internet for exposing the masses to audience.

[Sean]

Lorrac has somewhat valid points. Check out the reviews section on Gamefaqs for an example.

[Zarcath]

I know I`m bad at writing real reviews, too much shit to cover properly. Generally whenever I write a review its my initial impressions after playing it for a few hours and then a follow-up after i`ve had time to learn the ropes.

[Lorrac]

Besides, there's the problem of people rating games they haven't even played. I could see some people rating down games they irrationally hate without even touching them.

It could kind of work with psn/xbl tracking down played games and achievements to gauge the degree to which one experienced the game, but it'd mean a shitton of work - checking if the attached gamertags were real, checking if every game reviewed shows on the gamertag, profiling people to find the biased morons, quality control to remove the bad reviewers (man, this one would take the forums in a drama shitstorm), filtering out the shills, etc etc...

[Szlia]

Just say no to scores!