Saturday, October 29, 2011

How To Review Video Games

By Owen Jones


Playing computer games, or gaming, is almost certainly the most preferred pastime in the world. Children do not play football in the street t as far as they did, they sit in their bedrooms or in video cafes playing video games. This means that there are always millions of people playing video games, talking about video games or reading about them.

Reviews of computer games are everywhere, but still there is a huge requirement for more. If you would like to write reviews on video games, you will find eager publishers on Web gaming sites and if the reviews are good, you might kave them published in gaming magazines too. So how do you go about writing a review of a computer game?

The first thing to do is establish your target audience. Gamers are on all sorts of levels, but basically you can say that there are novices, hobbyists and experts. So who are you capable of reviewing for. Of course, an expert will be looking for a more detailed review than a beginner.

What is your own degree of expertise? You will find it almost impossible to write on a level a lot higher than that and still be convincing. If you try to fudge it, people will see through it and know that you do not really understand what you are writing about, so write to your ability / knowledge of the game and attempt to increase your ability / knowledge.

Every game tries to be different, but they share a commonality nonetheless. So, there is a fundamental set of questions that has to be addressed no matter which game you are reviewing.

The questions include: does it load swiftly? Is there a selection of characters? What are their powers? Is the action smooth and fluid? Are the colours true? Is the action fast? Does the game crash? Can it be played by more than one player at a time? Can you play it on line?

Players on every level want to know the answers to questions like those. Other vital information is: which machines can it be played on? What specifications does that machine or PC need to run the game at top speed - CPU speed, RAM, HD free space and screen resolution.

More advanced players will want to know about specific locations or characters in the game. They may also be searching for a way to get out of a situation that they find impossible to sus out. They will want to know how to earn 'trophies' and what these trophies bestow upon the owner.

Specialists and hobbyists may be searching for so-called 'cheats'. Cheats are special, undocumented commands that allow someone 'in the know' to do something special. They may bestow unlimited lives or super powers or allow you to jump to any level in the game.

Experts may also be interested in the heritage of the game: who wrote it, who programmed it, who did the graphics, whether it is based on another game and other technical details.

So, you need to gain a thorough understanding of the game by having played it really often and to a high level if not the highest level and you have to be honest with what you find and present your findings in an impartial fashion.




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