These seem to be pretty common on MobyGames. It's such a mistake to think that more words are better. I mean, we're talking video games here. If you can't hit all the most salient points in three or four paragraphs (per section), please, re-think your approach.

Frankly I am somewhat offended by some of these reviewers who think that what they have to say is so interesting that I will read an extended essay on some middling PlayStation release.

Rant over.

I gather you're not a fan of Tim Rogers, then.

I don't recognize the name -- is he a local?

Don't worry, you aren't the one who needs to understand the joke.

Good for you.

Hmm... if only I could figure out who you're talking about here...

Oh... to address the point - pretty sure you're in the minority on this one. I sort of hope the target of this rant won't feel the need to defend himself, well secure in the knowledge that his work his appreciated and carries plenty of fans.

...but I suspect nothing can stop the inevitable.

You really don't have to read them, then. It's not like you're paying for this stuff. I'm not trying to be rude, but what's the point of getting offensive about something that someone posts for fun and discussion? Nobody's trying to waste your time.

Sure. But I do want to raise the point, as I regard it as a bit of a systemic issue on this generally-awesome site. A little discipline, or just concern for the readership, is preferable to long-winded essay-writing, I submit.

Okay, fair enough. I personally would have recommended more constructive ways of discussion, but your method seems effective enough.

Out of curiosity, though, what is your ideal length of a review? The standard in internet journalism seems to be about 1500 words for a standard release. Is that too long in your opinion?

4-8 paragraphs total seems about right for most games. Longer is fine if it's interesting to read, of course.

It's such a mistake to think that more words are better

I actually tend to agree with this more and more now. That's one of the reasons why I'm "trimming" all my overly long reviews...

This doesn't change the fact that you sound like a jerk in your rant, though :)

This does not bother me in the slightest.

Heh. I think I hold the record of longer than ultra long reviews here. About 16 pages for a DOS game. I really can't how anyone can explain a game they like/dislike in just two paragraphs. Hell, I can't see how anyone can explain anything they like/dislike in just two paragraphs without it looking like a forum post. Well, except maybe Californians when they're not on weed. :p

Though I doubt gamers read reviews primarily for wanting to know the game, compared to looking for a good read or a subconscious justification to enforce their already made opinion of the game.

Isn't lovely when someone thinks that subjective opinion should be controlled? Police state in the making. :p

...hey!

You know, I'm not really offended by his distaste for long reviews (some people have interesting insights...and some people ramble), but I am offended by his implications that games aren't even worth writing about seriously.

You sound like a fanboi. Oh, wait...you're in the right website!

Ah, a native Californian. I have mastered the secret Californian language of air-tight lengthy arguments with the use of only one word! Though can't remember if the Californians who taught me were on beer or weed at that time. I also find it quite amusing that it almost always works in winning an argument too. Doesn't work in forum posts though.

San Fransisco? Gawd, I hate yer town. Clove-smoked lungs and 45 degree walkways is a recipe for premeditated death by natural causes. :p

"Dude"?

...dude. Depending on the mood and inability to notice one's own age, may use the word awesome as well. :p

We could go on like this for 20 posts and I believe I'd still understand everything you're talking about. :)

Too bad Internet posts are incapable of identifying the various different intonations, pitches, etc., of the word.

Dude. Duuuuuude.

...d00d? :P

3... 2... 1... RUSH!

Or the slightly more realistic:

A man is walking down street and without realising wanders into a road. A lady on the pavement calls out "MIND THAT BUS!". So the man looks at her confused and enquires "What bus?".

A moment later, the mans intestines are promptly removed from the buses windshield by it's windshield wipers.

If you're writing a report on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, it pays to cover everything. But for a game review, all I want is general feel for whether a game deserves my time and money, and a few points on why or why not. I do not want an expansive discussion about -everything you could possibly say about it-.

"Brevity is the soul of wit" -- William Shakespeare

You might not, but maybe someone else does. I don't read a game review for consumer advice, I read a game review for a personal opinion on a piece of creative expression. But clearly we look for different things in game reviews and, apparently, games themselves.

And as I said before you seem to be marginalizing games simply because they're "games." Would you say movies aren't worth writing in detail about? Music? Literature? In the strictest sense, they're all creative works that serve no real practical purpose. I see no difference in value between a 15-page essay on the philosophical implications of The Matrix and a similar essay about Gears of War. Or Halo, if you must.

Now if this whole thread was started in response to pointless fanboy gushing, then sure, I'll agree with you. But there are times where a deeper explanation has a purpose and makes for a stronger piece of writing.

Deeper explanations and stronger writings...for a game? Gamers don't care about that stuff.

Yes, we do. We care about short puzzle games. We care about story-driven role-playing games. We care about strategy games that take months to finish. We may not agree with each other's tastes, but we respect any inhuman attempt to push creativity to the next level. An average gamer wouldn't care less. Fortunately the denizens of this place is not the average gamer, thank you very much.

That, and we really don't have anything better to do, like solve world hunger. :p

Psh, as if a creative work that dozens of people spent possibly years of their life creating deserves anything more than a dismissive one-paragraph "review". :P

What about my reviews were I trash games? :)

As in our experience with game descriptions here. Writing up stuff really is difficult for a lot of people, as not everyone can write nor have receive the proper education to create an adequate report.

*shakes fist at examining research methodology undergraduate reports*

Personally, I'd find it amusing if someone could write a whole ten-page article on a platform game, due to its simple game mechanics. I would also find it insulting that a game with different and complex mechanics, an impressive adventuring environment, and at least 100 hours of gameplay can be summed up in two paragraphs.

Don't tempt me.

I'm sure just over the past couple of years Braid and Super Meat Boy have been subject to exhaustive dissections... much as I'm sure that Super Mario Bros. has been dissected down to the cellular level at great length.

I would. For me it's easy to write a short novel on games that have an abundant of data to work with, such as role-playing games and strategy games.

Platform games? Even the idea of attempting it sounds fascinating.

I don't read a game review for consumer advice

Especially not for the majority of the games here, commercially unavailable in any legitimate form for years.

I've always found this quote amusing, as Polonius himself is anything but brief.

Please. I am just expressing my disgust, not enforcing anything.

Sometimes what some of those reviewers have to say is indeed interesting enough. Sometimes it isn't what they have to say, but how they say it that makes it interesting.

Certainly that is a point. But I find that someone who thinks it's a good idea to write 3000 words in a game review generally has minimal stylistic appeal.

While I understand your point I've got to say I disagree with it. I've played lots of games and most are middle to average and I would not bother writing a review for those because they just don't thrill / annoy me enough. I assume that's the case for most of us.

Where a game, for good or bad reasons, really gets to me enough for me to want to sit down and write a review then its quite likely that I'll want to say not just what it is that motivated me to write a review but perhaps give a few examples, compare with similar games or other games in the same series. That's going to take more than just a few short paragraphs.

For example some games, like Fallout 3 that I played extensively last year, really get under my skin to the extent that while out shopping I found myself looking at potential sniper points. (Am I alone or does that happen to anyone else?) If I'd been contributing to moby at that time I'd probably have written a review that would have turned out to be really long as I tried to describe not just the overall story arc(s) but also the subtleties of the game that made it so good in my eyes. To others the result may appear as an overly long review for 'just another post-apocalyptic survival shooter RPG', for me it's kind of a tribute to a game that gave me much pleasure.

Short reviews are good to catch attention, but when we're talking about old games that have countless of reviews across 10 or more years, what is one more short review going to say new about the game in cause.

A short review is not likely to draw the attention of a hardcore gamer for example. There is so much you can say about an old game. Leaving the overall description aside there is the impact it made on the industry, similarity to previous titles, the developer's attitude towards it and if they did or not try to build on its success etc etc

The problem lies more with the approach - a reviewer makes a great mistake when he elaborates on a rather trivial gameplay element for example; you can hear this a lot in reviews made for Bethesda titles or for Diablo and the games inspired from it... They stick to one idea, and refuse to look at the overall picture. They keep repeating the same idea over and over again across a 10-paragraph review. I could easily write such a review about the inventory system in KOTOR game for example "I almost never used the objects found in the game, unless I strictly needed them, because of the inventory was poorly done for PC", "there were some datapads scattered around, but I never bothered reading them, because of the inventory system, and generally I think the game was a grand deevolution compared to BG's writing", "the game crashed when it took too long to browse through all the objects in my inventory because it displays only 4 items at a time, and frankly this game sucks 2/10".

Long reviews are boring to read, but they are rewarding if you bear with it and finish them, if the reviewer is a keen observer. He might have a lot of interesting facts to share. Shorter reviews are harder to do right. Most of them are equally boring because they say the same thing you heard 1000 times in the past like "Graphics are ok, story is epic, AI is stupid". True the AI in Doom 3: RoE or Far Cry is almost as stupid as the one in Realms of the Haunting (they both bump into walls) but surely we can do better than that. Shorter reviews, in my opinion, must be more artistic at the core, otherwise you'll never manage to cover all aspects.

In the end we're talking about user reviews. They should choose themselves... Both one-liners and 10-page reviews are useful in different situations/to different categories of people. I will (maybe) read 3 short reviews before playing the game, but I will surely read the long one after finishing it.

This post is valid for moby user reviews (mostly older games), not reviews made for still commercially fresh titles.

Hardcore gamer? What is that exactly? I don't think I like the sound of them. It is someone who has played orders of magnitude more games than books they have read?

Just the majority of people who hang out here and take games more seriously than others. What a strange website this is. :p

Pretty much sums it up. Both short and long reviews can be good, as long as the author doesn't run out of interesting things to say (and is able to put them in nice words and sentences). And among the good ones: if you only want to know whether you might like the game or not, skip the long ones. If it is a deep game that gives much food for thought, it's possible you're interested in reading what other people took from it, how they interpreted the game, what went through their heads. Now from the OP I gather he probably isn't into that kind of game, but I wouldn't really remember the more mechanics-driven games having excruciatingly long user reviews. If this is about reviews that go on about every detail from the placement of the enemies to the anti-aliasing effects and font sizes of the GUI, I can agree. But most long reviews I read were long because the author had lots to say.

I would be interested in maybe an example or two of such reviews that are considered too long.

Just do what i do when i can't quite be bothered to read a long review. Skim through for stuff you look for in a game. Or if you are in a particularly lazy mood, just skip to the summary paragraph/box.

For sure. But once I have scrolled down three pages of text, finding naught but unfocused, rambling prose, I'm giving it an Unhelpful just out of spite. I'd like to discourage such reviewers from submitting to this site until they learn how to write properly.

For sure. But once I have scrolled down three pages of text, finding naught but unfocused, rambling prose, I'm giving it an Unhelpful just out of spite.

You know, what I like about you, Chris, is that you aren't ashamed of publicly admitting that you are a jerk :)

If a review has three pages of unfocused, rambling prose, it is unhelpful. I disagree totally with the idea that a game review shouldn't be long because man it's just games, but a review should only be long if it uses the length.

I'm not so sure where to side on this one. But I completely understand what he means, specially since a lot of reviewers (you know who you are) mistake the reviews as their own personal blog entries. Hell, I know I did once.

My solution was to just start a blog instead. :P

In a game review! :p

Heh. Zovni just made a more compelling argument with just one post.

a lot of reviewers (you know who you are) mistake the reviews as their own personal blog entries

That's exactly why I revised almost all my reviews.

I think reviews should be more like this one.

I agree. I mean, it's a Polish game -- what else do you need to know?

Would you like the complete list or the highlights?

*Puts on Oleg mask*
"Will an admin please remove this review?"

*Puts on admin mask* "WIP-ed back"

*Puts on user mask*
"Hey, what's wrong with my review*

Fear the Olegadminuser mask!

Boy, this is lame. :p

Indra, please, close the small tag.

Whoops. So much for my attempts for html sabotage. :p

I would advise you to lead by example, as we already have a perfectly serviceable review rating system, but to your credit you appear to have been doing so, averaging slightly north of two points per review.

So... what was the point of your post? Keep doing what I'm doing? I will.

My intentions were twofold: first, to indicate that you already have a built-in way to register your opinions of specific reviews; and second, to indicate the disparity between the approvers' taste in review quality and yours, extrapolated from how they have chosen to score your reviews (supposing, of course, that you are exemplifying the virtues you hope to see.) The community's standards don't seem to match yours, at least on the approvers' end, and I don't know to what extent you can lobby to change those on the forum. But I have no doubt that you will try nonetheless.

I myself might be writing a really long review myself pretty soon. All Shadow of the Colossus related. Even after five years (I got it in 2006.), it still blows me away. The landscapes don't look as smooth as they once did, but once everything gets moving, it's still beautiful. I think about three megs worth of text should be enough to do it justice. ;)

On a completely unrelated note, Aquaman seems to have boobs in that avatar of yours, Daniel.

Everyone wet has boobs.

Combine this with the thread title creatively and you'll have found the original algorithm that ignited the butterfly effect of the 2012 Armageddon, as indicated in the never to be released movie 12 MobyGamers.

Where's Rabbi Guru and his Cosmic Peacelord Vixenia Delta when you need them?

They're probably on a intergalactic journey to find the best rpg of all time.

Sorry, we were caught on the way by the evil minions of Arachnia the Spider Queen, who was stealing lunch money from poor schoolchildren and I was immobilized by a giant boner...



But thanks to the bravery and dedication of Vixenia Delta, the forces of goodness won the day and poor schoolchildren all over the Galaxica can pay for their lunch again.

Rabbi Guru and Vixenia Delta save the day!

I love a happy ending. ^_^

I never noticed that. I changed it to a more thoughtful looking pic. Aquaman gets enough flac without suggesting he has boobs. 8D

Meanwhile, in his underwater hideout, Aquaman wonders...

Well then more than just the fish would want to talk to him.

Why does he need to talk to fish when has has a hot\bipolar\alternate dimension under sea queen?

Or that half naked chick he was hanging out with in the 90s.

LOL!!!

Yes, we are talking about Videogames here.

And not every videogame is as simple as tetris. Your statement reminds me of an opinion about videogames made by my own parents back in 1995 maybe.

If a game is long, full of different story, character, gameplay elements..why not describing them in a long review?

Yes, I believe that the length of a review should be proportionate to the content of the game.

"This is a program that displays 'Hello World!' It has absolutely no playable components and there is nothing to review." <-- this is a perfectly useful and complete review (well, assuming it IS just a program that displays "Hello World")

Then you're gonna love my review of SoC if it ever gets approved. (All that text must be scaring them off.)

Complete...? What font and color? Does the text blink or scroll? ;-)

I write ultra-long reviews. For some things, like Metroid: Other M or Ninja Gaiden II, there was just too much that I hated that I couldn't stop listing.

But, I notice that "professional" game reviews, such as at IGN or GameInformer, are actually fairly brief. They're meant to be quick and to the point, I think. Something that can be digested quickly, and understood as such.

I've begun thinking that, maybe, the real challenge isn't in writing a lot of stuff (in order to cover everything), but to write somewhat briefly, and still cover all the same points. From listing all a game's faults (or successes), to covering them with some efficiency.

I think that's also due to a different intent. Professional review sites write about games before or right upon release, and the explicit purpose of their reviews is to give potential buyers an idea of whether they should or shouldn't purchase it. There it is certainly a good skill to be able to mention all the important points in a brief, to-the-point text. The reviews deal mostly with features and technical execution. Content-wise, it's enough to give a short introduction within a few sentences, so that reader's can see whether it's to their tastes.

For reviews like those on MobyGames however, which are written by gaming fans, amateur reviewers, sometimes years after a game's release, the goal is somewhat different. It's more of a treatment of the game or a personal opinion than cold purchase advice. Of course it is still preferrable to be on point. But I think such amateur reviews can tolerate being longer because they are mostly read in order to read something about a game, rather than straight buy/rent/pass advice.

First, I agree with Daniel's point about intent and audience. Retrospectives can afford to be more in-depth.

However, I also think you're on to something. Most people can't edit their own work. It has nothing to do with lack of objectivity or professionalism, more that you're on your own wavelength. It's easy for YOU to follow what you're saying, whereas others can likely find parts that can be cut or don't need so much explanation. Traditionally, over-explaining or losing track are what contribute to the longest reviews.

And all this time I thought I just liked to whine. :p

Naturally, also, amateurs are given the time and luxury to play the game as much as they like before they begin to review it; the pros often only get to play the game for an hour or so (phew, just finished the tutorial!) before they need to start sending drafts back to the mothership.

Would it be too crazy an idea to create a position for Mobygames editors? Then again, maybe approvers should do that; not just reading and pointing out spelling errors but offering editor's advice. I know I could use it, I certainly suffer from this sort of dialectical incontinence. And also an oversized ego which makes me believe that every single word I write is important.

Approvers would be in a good position to offer that advice, but that's not traditionally the point of the role. We're not making creative judgments, by design.

But if anyone wanted editorial help, and asked for it in the notes for their submission, I'm sure plenty of approvers would be happy to oblige.

Or the review will keep pending forever :)