If you’re viewing this, you’re probably thinking, “what is this?” The answer: it’s everything and it’s nothing. The alpha and the omega. The review and the anti-review. Actually, it’s just the review, THE review. The one review that matters to us: the review we will be using from now on. Brace yourself for change. It’s coming in HOT.
Forget the dividers. Yep, that’s right. No more dividing reviews into sections. We will be writing our reviews as if they a normal article. Starting out with what we feel is important and moving on from there. Stating our opinion. If we think something objectively, we’ll be sure to mention it, but this is our review. No one else’s.
I know, I know, our dividers were one of our more defining features. It’s something we did that hardly anyone else did. But I posit that they actually did us more harm than good. They simply provided a wealth of bullshit information. Every single review I’ve written since starting at Twinfinite has had a throwaway sentence in it. Whether it’s BS about the sound design or it’s BS about the menus, it’s still bullshit.
We simply won’t write about something if it’s not worth writing about. If the sound is adequate, if the menus are functional but not amazing, literally no one cares.
That’s pretty much it for the body of our reviews from now on. No more breakdowns as crutches, no more forced points.
Also, because the reviews will be more opinionated from now on, we don’t need a Reviewer Impression section, either. The entire review is our impression.
We will do a final breakdown with all of our points of the above review. We won’t feel the need to put up our points about everything (especially when said point isn’t involved in the review), but we will highlight the points we want to make about the game. Now I’ll breakdown this format:
[Final Breakdown]
[+Eliminates Bullshit] [+Gives Writer Less Crutches] [+More Concise] [+Less Separated] [-Too Perfect?]
The green will be for positive points, while red will be for negative. Pretty simple. We’ve completely gotten rid of yellow points, which were for more “middle of the road” criticisms. Since the reviews will be more opinionated, these should be far less common, leading to us deciding to eliminate them entirely.
AND NOW: TO BLOW YOUR MIND. FROM NOW ON… WE USE SCORES.
We’ll be using a five-point system with no half points, using numbers and words. We can’t reiterate enough that our reviews are the reviewer’s opinion. Thus the final score given to the game reflects their opinion on the game and possibly not any other. The words are there to be clearer about what the numbers mean. We hate what the point scale for game reviews has become and don’t intend to abuse it any more than it’s already been abused. However, we also understand that it’s a futile attempt which alienates ourselves by ignoring that scoring exists at all.
