How to Write a Video Game Review

 Writing a good review of anything can be tricky. The most important things is to understand what you are writing about, to know it well enough to share your experience concerning the product. A movie or book is a fairly easy thing to know, watch it or read it and you are fairly qualified to review it. Writing a review about a video game requires that you spend some time playing the game and a great deal of time testing the game. There is a large difference between testing the game and playing the game.

Image via Wikipedia

You should start out by playing the game, interact with the community, and see how enjoyable the entire experience is. Take notes. Take screen shots (really these are just visual notes). During this phase you should be aware of the learning curve of the game, how hard or easy it is to master the controls and the basic strategies of the game. You should discover if the gaming community (assuming it is online) is friendly to newcomers or if they bash all “noobs” on sight. Take a look at the graphics and the overall performance of the game, do these elements feel right for the generation or type of game? How compelling is the storyline or world? Do your tasks/missions/adventures feel boring or repetitive? When you have a good overall feeling of what a new player to the game is going to experience move on to testing the game.

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This phase of the reviewing process has a lot more to do with game mechanics than anything else. Are there a lot of bugs (errors) such as the ability to become stuck on the map, or walk through walls? Are the characters that are available for play fun and exciting? Are they balanced, meaning is one type more powerful than the other? If the game charges for access to certain items, classes, maps, etc. are they worth the price? This phase usually takes the most amount of time. During it you explore the inner workings of the game, try and ferret out as much information about the actual mechanics behind the game and be able to deliver it up on a black and white platter for your readers.

Image via Wikipedia

The last part is to wrap up all of your ideas and screen shots and put them into an informative and helpful review that will allow a casual read to produce enough information that the reader knows whether or not the game is intended for them. Ensure you list off the pros and cons of the game, the type of genre and play style (such as a FPS set in the modern world, or a RPG set in medieval times). I like to rate some components of the game, and yield an overall rating to give them a numerical rating as well as a text based experience of the game.

Image by Ian Muttoo via Flickr

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