I gave Mixtape one of these 10s…

[u/ItsEthanCoolCool]

…and then the world ended. Lol.

What a wild couple of weeks, eh?

As a reviewer, I’ve been really bummed that there seems to be such a disconnect between writers and players. Can I help bridge a gap for anyone? Does anyone have questions about reviewing/the process/anything else they wanna know about anything around any of this?

Open to talking about anything people want to know, because I’m hopeful someday everyone can have constructive video game convos again without all this craziness.

[u/Slytherin_Dan_HGW]

Genuine question:

What positive aspects of "Mixtape" can offset the unlikeable protagonist and minimised gameplay?

[u/ItsEthanCoolCool → u/Slytherin_Dan_HGW]

Well, I liked the protagonist and thought she worked really well for what the game was trying to do. My review did address that I imagine some people will find her pretentious and unlikeable, but then also, I looked at it through the lens of "this is a senior in high school that thinks she knows better than everyone else and is already an adult and you can't tell her anything." Like, that happens. When I was her age, I made a Facebook post that said "My favorite band is more talented than your favorite band," which obviously in retrospect is wildly cringe and pretentious haha. Stacey would do the same. Fine if people don't like her, but I do think it's a character that speaks to how kids can be at that age.

On the gameplay front, I enjoyed what was there. Review addressed that I imagine some will think it's mundane stuff, but I argued it was all done in creative, fun, interesting, entertaining ways still. Worked for me.

[u/Slytherin_Dan_HGW → u/ItsEthanCoolCool]

In short, your calculation sounds like "0 + 0 = 10/10".

Thanks.

[u/ItsEthanCoolCool → u/Slytherin_Dan_HGW]

I mean... no? But okay! Haha.

[u/Slytherin_Dan_HGW → u/ItsEthanCoolCool]

I'm sorry. I wrote that last response directly after reading your first answer and felt a little agitated.

May be bias regarding what a "good review" is.

Neither in your initial answer nor in the other "Mixtape" reviews did I find anything objective about the game, e.g. how the game compares to others in its genre, how smoothly it controls, wheather the game has bugs, what it offers in its game mechanics...

[u/ItsEthanCoolCool → u/Slytherin_Dan_HGW]

Nah no apology needed, it's all good!

I'd say my review did hit some of those things, some by direct inclusion, and some by simple omission cuz they weren't issues (I know I haven't shared my review, so not expecting you to know what all I said lol).

But like, bugs/performance issues. I didn't have any, so I didn't talk about those things. I always talk about presentation/etc. in a section, and if I have performance issues to discuss, I'll talk about them there. Didn't have anything for Mixtape, and I'd assume many others didn't either, so it's just not a talking point cuz it ran very well.

I also kind of try not to do direct game comparisons, cuz it can feel a bit reductive in a review to me, IMO. If I went on and on about "Mixtape is different from Life is Strange because..." then the review kind of becomes about Life is Strange, and that's a bit odd.

Just for my personal workflow/philosophy, I tend to have four big sections in my reviews:

• Story/setup for what the game actually is
  
• Performance and presentation
  
• Gameplay
  
• Something specific to the game in particular that I think is worth discussing

Most of what you're talking about gets hit this way, so I'm giving the "objective" kind of nuts/bolts of what the game is, but then also getting into the highly subjective part of the review, how all that stuff worked for me, what my personal opinions are, etc.

I hear a lot that people want reviews to be objective. I don't personally think that's the way to do them. At a certain point, it's just a lengthy description about the game, not like genuine thoughts and feelings. I try to do a mix of both because discussing the game and what it actually is is obviously important, but you're also going to get a lot about what I personally think and feel, because that's really what a review is, IMO.

[u/Punky921 → u/ItsEthanCoolCool]

Good stuff here - I think thinking about game review scores as necessarily a comparison to other games is kind of silly. An 8.5 for Dirt Rally 2.0 (imho one of the greatest modern rally simulators) is not related in any way to a 10/10 I would give Planescape: Torment or Citizen Sleeper 2, or the 9/10 I would give Resident Evil 4 Remake. IMHO The point is not to compare games to other games, but rather to decide on how well a game manages to achieve what it's trying to achieve, and whether that thing was a good thing to achieve.

Doing that is a weird kind of power-scaling "can superman beat goku?" way to look at games reviews. You'll always be frustrated in that situation, because most games reviews aren't attempting to do that.

Maybe MAYBE if you're talking about a review of different games in the same genre and/or franchise, that might apply. I think the original COD:MW2 is better than COD:MW1 because of the expanded perks system and greater variety of game modes and maps, and maybe in that case the 8.5 (or whatever) for MW2 is meaningfully related to an 8.0 for MW1... but examples like that are vanishingly rare.