Reviewing: Quantity, Quality, or Both?

There will be no blog tomorrow. I will be back with some reviews of more shorts of The Simpsons on Tuesday. Now let's get to today's blog.

On a game website, a user was looking into doing reviews of various games and wanted people to look at them and give him feedback. Some have given him some stuff that could be improved and work better on it. A few others, on the other hand, have been vocal and think it's not worth doing. I've taken a look myself and it looks like quantity for now. As the title suggests, is it quantity, quality, or both that helps with reviews?

I really think you can do both. However, the effort has to be put into doing the reviews. That's the biggest issue. Looking at the guy's reviews, they look to be done with even below the minimal effort. This is the kind of stuff that might make a game magazine if it isn't one of the big games on the corner of a page. Now, minimal reviews aren't always a bad thing. The issue is how much depth do you go into a minimal one. I personally think you have to put a little depth into a game to explain a few basic things about it.

With games, it's a matter of the system, game library, and relevance to its time period. You can't just review a game from 1982 and compare it to a modern game today. You have to look at it from the time period it was in and games that were there with it in a previous generation. Movies is a tough one. Taste is subjective unless you're working for the New York Post. It's hard for some who may not like a few genres. Same thing with television. Negativity sells, but not everybody wants to see bad reviews of anything, especially TV and film. That's why some will have a choice or no choice to review the films or shows they want to see.

I think you do have to be careful, though.You're putting yourself in the lion's den when you talk something that is the opposite of its reception. Take the game Shaq Fu. It wasn't panned when it released in 1994, but time has not been kind and is labeled today one of the worst games ever. I think it's a bandwagon thing to say and I really believe people who say these games are the worst, I doubt they played most of them. It's not a bad game per se, but not something I would put on the top of 16-bit game releases.

It's possible to do both. You have to be committed to delivering on that. Otherwise, it may overwhelm you.