12 Steps to Video Game Reviews

Posted on Thursday, September 15 @ 15:00:24 Eastern by Anthony Severino

Step 7: Cracking that game case for the first time is like popping a bottle of 50-year old-champagne. But why do they have to make this plastic impenetrable. It's not like it could get stolen at a retailer, it goes right to us. Maybe we need to hit the gym more often. Who knows. All we do know is that the release date is in 3 days, and we've got to play this 80+ hour game. We know it's impossible to do it within 72 hours, that's simple math for ya. We take on this Herclean task to make sure you know where to spend your money come release date.

Step 8: OK, so this game is running a little bit long. What's more important to us? Getting the review out early? Or making sure we've played it all the way through so our review is the best representation of the game possible? Being thorough wins every time. We keep on pushing, despite other responsibilities, relationships, reality. Getting this review out takes precedence over nearly everything else in our life. We don't shower. We hold our piss until it hurts. We eat though, fuck that, I'm starving. The finish line is almost near... or is it?

Step 9: Time to write up this review. We can't just put a whole bunch of text on paper. We need screenshots (hey, I guess they sent those over for a reason!). We need to do a little bit of extra research to make sure we spell character's names right, names of towns, etc. (OK, so maybe the review guide is useful.) We're not hacks here, we're professionals! A few hours and a fifth of vodka later, the review is typed out. Now it's time to send it to the editors.

Step 10: Nick does the majority of the reviews editing here. You can't find a finer tooth comb than the one Nick runs through our reviews. It's tedious, and it takes a long time to make sure everything is perfect. [Usually it takes me an hour... or an hour and a half... or two hours... any longer and I turn all their errors into throwing stars... you writers know what happens after that... ~Ed. Nick]

Step 11: OK, it's written and edited. We've avoided angering Nick and facing his wrath. But now we must figure out the best time to publish the review. More often than not, the game is under embargo and our hands are tied as to when we can publish our review. If the embargo is already up, is it best for us to wait a little closer to release date? If release date has past, do we push it ASAP? Is there really ever a "best" time to publish a review? Believe it or not, there is. We find that reviews posted in the PM do far better than ones posted in the AM. We assume more people are off work, and have more time to sit down and really dig into our reviews. We take everything into account before we push that big red button to push it live. (Wait! Not that red button! What have you done?!?!)

Step 12: Published. Now we watch and we wait. We wait to see what our readers have to say about our review. A lot of times we'll fire off links to our review to our family, friends, or even the PR reps we just spent the last two years dealing with. It's all out there now. Two years... over in the push of a button. There's a lot of stress, anxiety, and most of all, hard work that goes into reviews.

We do our best to bring you the reviews that are most important to you in a timely manner. Sometimes we slip past release date, we're only human. Sometimes we don't get to a lesser exciting game because we were so focused on that AAA game. Hey, we want to enjoy our games too. 95% of the time we're stuck playing shit. So when Fall rolls around, we want to play the big guns, the heavy hitters. So shut up and give me Batman: Arkham City already.

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Comments

damo_rox619
Joined: Jan 2007

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
good article, at least now i know why the GR review of Guitar Hero 5 was out a month after release

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danielrbischoff
Joined: Nov 2009

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 6:31 pm
HAHAHA, that's the game review you were worried about. :P

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damo_rox619
Joined: Jan 2007

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 6:52 pm
haha no, i just remember thinking "it's been a month, is there really any point in posting it anymore?"

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danielrbischoff
Joined: Nov 2009

Posted: Sep 16th, 2011 at 1:55 am
Yes, that's our problem when publishers don't send us their games on time. We've already had to buy several titles this Fall simply to give you readers the verdict you deserve

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Anthony_Severino
Joined: Oct 2010

Posted: Sep 16th, 2011 at 9:26 am
We figured that since all of the Guitar Hero games are pretty much the same, we didn't need to review it.

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tinymhg
Joined: Jun 2011

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Hard work says the guy who plays video games for a living. ;-)

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Chunibrow
Joined: Mar 2010

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
and to that sir, I say zing

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Bras
Joined: Jul 2008

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
I always thought a guy named Ed did the editing

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usaglory
Joined: Mar 2009

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 6:40 pm
That is classic dude. Nominated. Daniel do your thing.

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spanky1113
Joined: Mar 2008

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
To be honest, I thought the same thing for a good 7 or 8 months until I saw it somewhere else and went, "Man, that Ed dude gets around."

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Nick_Tan
Joined: Jul 2006

Posted: Sep 16th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Maybe there was a guy named Ed. Maybe there never was. No one will ever know...

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mrallamericanboy
Joined: Jun 2006

Posted: Sep 20th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
i think nick used his ninja skills to kill our beloved Ed and the consume his succulent corpse with his other skills as a zombie...

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usaglory
Joined: Mar 2009

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Glad to see I'm not going mad. Saw this article, then it vanished from the site. I thought some secret society of game reviewers had gotten to Anthony for revealing secrets of the trade or something.

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Bretimus_v2
Joined: Jan 2009

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Love this article. I have to say that what I'm loving the most about GR's front page is the transparency and the insider look you give us. The articles have all been really good actually. Thanks, GR.

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drathbone
Joined: May 2011

Posted: Sep 15th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
Pssh....we all know new game campaigns are 15 hours TOPS nowadays.

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CaptainPicard
Joined: Sep 2010

Posted: Sep 16th, 2011 at 12:25 am
great article! its good to get some insight on yalls operation :P

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KevinS
Joined: Dec 2008

Posted: Sep 16th, 2011 at 11:02 pm
Some of us have experience dodging the stars of Nick, but they still hurt, dammit! We've all got a few battle scars from the nin-

*star to the neck*

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spartan317
Joined: Dec 2005

Posted: Sep 17th, 2011 at 9:37 am
Its thanks to this site that I've managed to put an ungodly amount of time into awesome and sometimes truly epic games... Its only been when I've gone out on my own that I've ended up with the "shoot-me-now" trash that trickles through (Bulletwitch *hangs head*)... So please keep it up and I believe ed was Ninjee starred by Nick way too often....

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Mrbdls
Joined: Sep 2011

Posted: Sep 19th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Is it just me or does GR take for ever to review games. For example dead island has been out for more than a week and sold well over a million copy's and yet there is still no review. By the time they review the game it will be useless. Any one else feel their review have been coming in late

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Jessica_Vazquez
Joined: Sep 2010

Posted: Oct 10th, 2011 at 11:07 pm
Sometimes we don't receive copies of games before the release date. No matter how much we bug the publishers.

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Devin_Charles
Joined: Aug 2011

Posted: Sep 24th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Hey we get to them, theres tons of games. Only if we all were like Bathulk!!

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Eddy_DS_Fettig
Joined: Jul 2011

Posted: Nov 2nd, 2011 at 12:20 pm
"a stable of overqualified freelancer writers."
Aw, I feel so special. But I'm not BatHulk.

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