By Nelson Schneider - 12/06/14 at 05:58 PM CT
Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time:
Nelson’s Reviews:
Fall has not been conducive to the MJ crew playing coop games. Part of this dire situation is due to Nick using his turn to pick our online coop game to dump us back into the MMO void of “Dragon Nest.” We were also running low on local coop games, so Chris and I ended up doing a lot of solo gaming. I tackled numerous short Indie titles from my Steam list.
“FEZ” – 4.5/5
“Of Orcs and Men” – 3.5/5
“Valdis Story: Abyssal City” – 4/5
“New Super Luigi U” – 3/5
“Breath of Death 7: The Beginning” – 4/5
“UnEpic” – 4/5
“Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles +” – 1.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris continued his self-indulgence in ‘Chris would love that’ games, and continued to NOT actually love them (all those 3.5-star ratings equate to ‘like’ at best). The only game he LOVED was, again predictably, “Borderlands 2” (his review didn’t quite make deadline last quarter), despite the fact that his Gunzerker was one of the least helpful Gunzerkers ever (maybe the strong physical resemblance between Chris and Salvador had something to do with it).
“New Super Luigi U” – 3/5
“The Walking Dead: Season Two” – 4/5
“Bulletstorm” – 3.5/5
“Borderlands 2” – 4.5/5
“Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed” – 3.5/5
“Goat Simulator” – 3.5/5
Featured User Review:
Let me guess, this month’s Featured Review winner will be either dbarry_22 or Jonzor… again… wait…
…err…
…ahem…
SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP! It appears that at least some of MJ’s users have taken my exhortations to heart! This month, we have not one, but TWO new contributors whose reviews live up to our expectations here at MeltedJoystick.
The winner of this month’s Featured User Review is StarBlaze, with an in-depth (though numerically wonky – MJ uses a 10-point system, not 100) review of the NES’ “Metroid.”
And since there were so many in-depth reviews this month from people NOT named dbarry_22 or Jonzor, I’m granting Runner-Up status to Edge-Vi for a detailed look at the 3DS cross-over TRPG, “Project X Zone.”
It was a close competition between these two contributors, but StarBlaze ultimately came out on top for one simple reason: Paragraphs. Formatting a review is very important, and breaking a detailed review into easily-digestible paragraphs and discreet sub-sections for different topics is essential in the creation of good work. Outside of a few simple things that they can do to improve readability via formatting, both of these users demonstrated adequate writing chops, so it’s completely up in the air who will win the featured review slot next quarter!
