Last year (2012), I slacked off a bit on my one-week game reviews. In my defense, I had a lot of things going on, including some ups and downs in terms of wanting to play games in general. Not to mention, two of the games I had been waiting years for were finally released. I have, however, racked up yet more games from Humble Bundle and I intend on closing the gap between games-I-have-yet-to-play and games-I-have-played. So, I will attempt to be more dutiful in my sampling of games. I have also felt that my reviews have been a little unstructured and general impression dumps, although I have tried to be as fair as possible yet bias from unrelated issues manage to sneak in. This post will attempt to provide a little more structure in this year’s reviews.

I realize the most important thing of one-week reviews is not necessarily the art, gameplay, story, audio, whatever individual components alone, but rather, would I want to keep playing past the one-week mark? Do I want to finish the game? That sort of question defines what it means to demo a game for one week. As a perfectionist, I have a tendency to want to finish games, whether or not I happen to like it. However, as a review, this question should be answered.

I want to keep the list of individual components I talk about small. I have focused mainly on art, audio (music, sfx), and gameplay. Sometimes I have discussed controls. As all of the games I intend to do one-week reviews for are PC games, a good or bad port from a console may make a difference in the experience of play due to amount and degree of control. I will make control optional, especially when standard keys are used (e.g., WASD or arrow keys for movement). Likewise, not all of the games I have played have a story or the story is shallow enough it’s more fluff than an integral part of the game. Story is another optional topic.

One-week reviews are appropriate for first impressions. It may not be fair in comparison to finishing a game and then writing a review, but refer to my first point (is it worth it to play past the one-week mark?). A lot of individual components come together to make the game and the experience of playing the game, so first impressions will count in determining whether or not to stick with the game.

A general layout might be:
1. Introduction of game – type of game, genre, what it’s about
2. Worth playing past one-week?
3. Individual component (art, audio, gameplay, control, story) observations
4. First impressions – combination of components together, did opinion change at some point, etc.
5. Closing remarks

The whole point to this is to add a little more structure and regularity to the reviews. I may deviate at times or I may realize it’s not working well and tweak it a bit. I may add additional topics because they were things that popped into my mind as I was playing, which is part of first impressions. (I will have a pad of paper handy to jot down thoughts that do pop into my head.) I don’t want to make it so structured that it becomes bland and boring, but rather have just enough structure that you as the reader know what to expect when you read through my reviews.

The one wrench I can think of that would cause problems is when I actually finish a game by the time I write the review. Some games are short enough or more arcade-like that this is possible. However, I think I would still like to keep the general concept of a one-week review, but adjust the first impressions to accommodate for any change in initial opinions. The fundamental question would also change to whether I would recommend the game and to whom.

I am not sure yet if I will dedicate a particular day of the week this year to writing the review. I did start playing Cthulhu Saves the World, intending it to be the game for this first week of the year, but last minute plans have separated me from the computer with the game so I may have to postpone for next week. If I get into a regular routine, I will make note of it in a future post.

Happy 2013!