: Re: What are elements to consider when writing a review for a videogame? I will soon start with writing reviews and guides for games and I am divided between simple raging of a game or in-depth

@Kaufman555

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When I was writing movie reviews, I had some unwritten rules, but chief among them was I was rating the execution of the story first rather than the stylistic choices. My official rating system was maxed at 4 "paws" (we called them "Paws" after the college mascot, which was a Panther, hence why we didn't have a five star system.) and could give paws in half-paw increments. For my rule, a movie with terrible story and awesome visual effects could only hope to win 2 paws max. However, the reverse was not true as a good story could net 4 paws and look terrible.

For video games, I would advise developing an averages rating system, where you have categories and rate the game based on each. If you wish, you can weight the category, but you should show your metric (i.e. all categories have the same stars, but not all stars are equal. Good story is twice that of good visuals... and mechanics are one third story). Award each category on a 1-5 or 1-whatever scale and then take the average of the numbers when adjusted for weights and give the score.

Alternatively, I would go with an idiosyncratic rating as really, what your readers are going to come back for is your critique... either good or bad, and so the points aren't worth anything. If they were a Pokemon, they'd be a lvl 100 Magikarp that only knew Splash... not good for anything. What they want to see is your praise or mockery of the target of review.

As for what makes a good game, ultimately that's up to you. I'd recomend story, visuals, UI (including controls), and X-Factor (this would be where you talk about specific elements of the game that make it more enjoyable or less... not every game is going to please everyone and if there are bad bugs or whatever, this can be a good place to gripe). I'd avoid the PVP as new games often won't have the meta and community established by launch date, and these days games can be patched so the meta can change away from launch date. And some genres tend to have terrible pvp anyway (I've never played an MMORPG where the PVP was the main draw of the game, for example).

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