15th May 2010, 8:49 AM
In playing through a lot of PS1 games, I've also been checking out some old IGN and Gamespot reviews. It's funny because a lot of them are little more than three our four short paragraphs that say almost nothing at all about the game. I though, surely, the reviews for bigger games must be better, more in-depth.
I checked out IGN's review of FF7 and, though longer, I have no idea how anyone not familiar with the game already would have any idea at all about what the game actually is from reading the review. Everything is pitifully vague, if it even gets mentioned at all [the music isn't, nor does the review give even the most basic outline of the plot]. Heck, the review doesn't even mention anywhere that the combat is turn-based, it just assumes that you already know that.
In fact, you could glance through the manual and crank out the exact same review in a couple of minutes. Which may actually be the case since the review mentions the play time of Next Generation Online, rather than his own, in discussing the game's length.
The review also mentions that the backgrounds are "hand-drawn".
I checked out IGN's review of FF7 and, though longer, I have no idea how anyone not familiar with the game already would have any idea at all about what the game actually is from reading the review. Everything is pitifully vague, if it even gets mentioned at all [the music isn't, nor does the review give even the most basic outline of the plot]. Heck, the review doesn't even mention anywhere that the combat is turn-based, it just assumes that you already know that.
In fact, you could glance through the manual and crank out the exact same review in a couple of minutes. Which may actually be the case since the review mentions the play time of Next Generation Online, rather than his own, in discussing the game's length.
The review also mentions that the backgrounds are "hand-drawn".
Sometimes you get the scorpion.