one year later reviews, tips/ideas?

BlitzKrieg

Thinking of putting together a small youtube review series called one year later reviews. Which will focus on reviewing video games a year after their release (roughly).


You might think this is a stupid idea and in some ways it is. But in these times of tightening budgets and crazy prices for new releases, I have found that picking up big name titles some time after their release has proven to give a much different appreciation for some games and with multiplayer being such a major factor it is important to give time to see how an online community would grow around some titles.

Not to mention some titles can be quickly outdated, either by their own company releasing a sequel or by some other company taking the same premise and blowing it out of the water (*cough* Prey's portals vs Portal's portals...). Other titles might benefit strongely from a distinct change in the market where they would be the only recent title of that sort for a while.

And of course price would be a central focus, most titles after a year fall down to the 19.99 range in some form others might not (cod4) and of course in the era of DLC, is there enough of it out there to warrant picking up the title + DLC over the cost of a new game.


So I was looking for suggestion of one year later games to review and also suggestions on what aspects I should be focusing on most.

It doesnt have to be exactly a year later, just roughly.

At the moment I was thinking of doing:

Red Alert 3 (october)
Mirrors Edge (november)
prince of persia (december)

as my first two contenders, mostly because they play out so differently, red alert 3 it would be looking more at the online community and patches since release and is worth picking it up on the cheap to get some online rts in, or are other titles (Relic's selection, classic starcraft) out there or upcoming (starcraft 2, C&C 4) make it not worth the 20 euro pricetag. Mirrors Edge on the other hand would be looking to see if the fresh gameplay mechanic that made it such a standout make it an even better purchase at its current price and if its meager dlc content worth a pick up.


So in part its a normal review, but it has a focus on how the game has aged over a short period time, (rather then being a retro review).

inspired in part by the jew wario series You can play this (which focuses on retro reviews, but also on accessability to those who cant read japanese)

Overheal

Left4Dead obviously.

Of course they could have loved the game to death with content updates, but the game is already great, tbh and on the flipside you can see what a prolonged scheduled of regular content updates has done to TF2 - in my opinion, it totally ruined it. The class packs: THAT would have made something worth selling as a sequel.

Politigamer issues aside L4D is still worth of fine critique and acclaim. And yeah so is TF2 for many other good reasons.

Liamario

Overheal wrote: »

Left4Dead obviously.

Of course they could have loved the game to death with content updates, but the game is already great, tbh and on the flipside you can see what a prolonged scheduled of regular content updates has done to TF2 - in my opinion, it totally ruined it. The class packs: THAT would have made something worth selling as a sequel.

Politigamer issues aside L4D is still worth of fine critique and acclaim. And yeah so is TF2 for many other good reasons.

I would not dare question L4D's quality, but I would definitely mark it down for quantity. The game for me desperately needs a full on campaign and without it, it lacks any real sort of longevity. The game is seriously over-hyped.

Sabre0001

Interesting idea. As some reflected above - will the review be altered by the way the game is supported post-release - i.e. if a game was bugged beyond belief a year ago, but is now patched will that be expressed...Or is it simply a matter of reviewing games that were released a year ago?

Please don't be too harsh on Mirrors Edge (though the levels should have been kept to the same style as the opening run).

PogMoThoin

FarCry2 is another contender here, totally overhyped and no support from day one. Loads of things were mentioned, free roaming predatory animals etc. There was talk of them being patched in later but nada, 2 patches in the first 6 months and then one small 60MB fix nothing one later.

We're seing more and more of these launch day ripoffs.

silvine

Anything with multiplayer would be good as people tend to return to those games. I don't think many return to the likes of Mirror's Edge once they've completed the game.

alastair_doom

Maybe there should be more of a formula for picking the games to keep it fair/unbiased. For instance, pick a review site you think is fairly credible, and then pick the game they rated highest last october. Then during your review you can address the points they make in their review to see how their claims stand up.

Its a nice idea tho. The whole inFamous and Prototype situation is a great example that could benefit from some unbiased retrospective. Even 6 months later I'd love to know which held up better.

Liamario

Finding an unbiased site is almost impossible. The same person who reviews Halo and calls it the best FPS of all time is the same person who'll mark down games for having any sort of similarity to it. They'll say that the other game offers nothing new, yet they won't throw the same points at Halo 3.

pixelburp

PogMoThoin wrote: »

FarCry2 is another contender here, totally overhyped and no support from day one. Loads of things were mentioned, free roaming predatory animals etc. There was talk of them being patched in later but nada, 2 patches in the first 6 months and then one small 60MB fix nothing one later.

We're seing more and more of these launch day ripoffs.

Seconded; it might be interseting to take games that launched in a sea of either hype or expectation & examine if a year or so on the game is still deserving of the backlash and so on. Far Cry 2 could be a good example. After the dust has settled & the promises and hype forgotten, was FC2 in fact a decent game?

The exact same could be levelled at Assassin's Creed; between the lustful fascination with Jade Raymond & the hype over the free-roaming environment (which admittedly still represents the most convincingly "real" city environments out there), the game flopped and received fairly a fairly tepid response. Justified? Hmmm, two Ubisoft games promising the world and being, in fact, crap. There's a lesson there.

Perhaps another good contender would be something like Fallout 3; now that the DLC has stopped & people have had time to scour the wastelands, do people still play it? I myself got very tired and bored of the samey environments and tasks.

Some other games to consider (though not necessarily qualifying under the banner of "one year later":

• STALKER
• Mass Effect, given the sequel's on its way.
• Empire: Total War
• Half Life 2 & the Episode 1, 2 sequels (in the cold light of day are they as "good" as they were made out to be?)
• TF2, though I am not sure how you could compare the release version with the state of the game at the moment.

tman

Resident Evil 5 could be one for next year
I've returned to it recently and am actually enjoying a lot more this time through (a mag with unlimited ammo kind of helps that though!:p)
I'd definitely be interested in an unbiased review of it, including the multiplayer DLC

I'll definitely be watching this whenever it launches, seems like a great idea to me!

PogMoThoin

tman wrote: »

Resident Evil 5 could be one for next year
I've returned to it recently and am actually enjoying a lot more this time through (a mag with unlimited ammo kind of helps that though!:p)
I'd definitely be interested in an unbiased review of it, including the multiplayer DLC

I'll definitely be watching this whenever it launches, seems like a great idea to me!

I quite enjoyed it, although its a little short.

Retr0gamer

Think it's a great idea and it's always a much more accurate review when you look back on something some time after you have played it to death. I'm planning on doing the same in blog form but need to get myself a capture card. Any recommendations on one?

EGriff

pixelburp wrote: »

The exact same could be levelled at Assassin's Creed; between the lustful fascination with Jade Raymond & the hype over the free-roaming environment (which admittedly still represents the most convincingly "real" city environments out there), the game flopped and received fairly a fairly tepid response. Justified? Hmmm, two Ubisoft games promising the world and being, in fact, crap. There's a lesson there

Assassin's Creed wasn't crap. Loads of people are still playing it nearly 2 years later. Thats a good review right there from people who bought it.

johnny_ultimate

EGriff wrote: »

Assassin's Creed wasn't crap. Loads of people are still playing it nearly 2 years later. Thats a good review right there from people who bought it.

Yeah there is a significant difference between crap and flawed! While Assassin's Creed had plenty of problems, it also had almost flawlessly implemented technology, in particular the glorious freeform movement which was pretty revolutionary and certainly made me stick with the game until the end despite the repetition of the subquests. I think reviewing games in light of their impact as well as their content is a great idea - games like Resi 4 or Gears of War would be fascinating to revisit in light of the imitators that have popped up since (i.e. default third person camera positioning, reliance on cover mechanics). May not be quite one year, but could be applied to many games (although one year may not always be enough for the influence to seep through to others).

BlitzKrieg

Sabre0001 wrote: »

Interesting idea. As some reflected above - will the review be altered by the way the game is supported post-release - i.e. if a game was bugged beyond belief a year ago, but is now patched will that be expressed...Or is it simply a matter of reviewing games that were released a year ago?

Thats a core reason for doing it. Alot of review sites would state they wouldnt review an MMO on launch because day 0 MMO's are a poor representation of the game I'm applying the same logic to every other game.

Take for example one of my first reviews that I am currently scripting and researching, Red alert 3. Day 0 the multiplayer was insanely broken in two areas. The automatching feature was completely broken and didnt work and the balance was insanely off in favour of one faction (the allies with their airforce and IFV rush). There have been 11 patches since then with numerous bugs and imbalance issues. Now the game is really close to being perfectly balanced and alot of the game's merits are shining through in its multiplayer. While its single player remains a flawed undeveloped and very weak experiance.

The other important element is DLC, red alert 3 has had one to remedy its single player woes only.

And finally the market itself which is where red alert 3 seriously lucks out. RTS is a small market, on the pc its really only EA, Relic and Blizzard making them consistently and relic rts is very different to those produced by anyone else on the market with a focus on territory control and diverse infantry squads. With starcraft 2 delayed (again) and C&C 4 announced to be a very different type of game then really red alert 3 is the only modern competative RTS on the market. Also the rise of DOTA style RTS games brought on by warcraft 3, means even less alternatives.

Then red alert 3 is lucky that its only competition at the moment and the for the immediate future is c&c3/red alert 2 and the original starcraft, As they are the only other competative RTS games of the same mould, and if you are looking for a really good high speed competative rts online experiance, then it comes down to how much out of date visuals bother you and how much individual tweaks to the system appeal to you or annoy you. Cause C&C3 is well known to be broken because of its ecnomic system leaving red alert 2 and starcraft while both still fantastic games are both much older titles.

Please don't be too harsh on Mirrors Edge (though the levels should have been kept to the same style as the opening run).

I'll just be honest.

Overheal

Actually Day 0 stuff is what hurt sales of Dawn of War II and its very public Beta. The matchmaking software was (and, still is) pretty woeful.

Retr0gamer

EGriff wrote: »

Assassin's Creed wasn't crap. Loads of people are still playing it nearly 2 years later. Thats a good review right there from people who bought it.

Assassins Creed I feel will be joining goldeneye and donkey kong country in a few years time where you look back on it and think 'How did I actually enjoy this back then?'.

PogMoThoin

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Assassins Creed I feel will be joining goldeneye and donkey kong country in a few years time where you look back on it and think 'How did I actually enjoy this back then?'.

Doubt anyones ever replayed it, I played it for 10 mins then got bored

pixelburp

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Doubt anyones ever replayed it, I played it for 10 mins then got bored

It also holds the award for possibly the most obtuse & annoying method of exiting a game known to man:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pbita6u8xI

PogMoThoin

pixelburp wrote: »

It also holds the award for possibly the most obtuse & annoying method of exiting a game known to man:

LOL, alt + f4 worked for me

anonymous_joe

Overheal wrote: »

Actually Day 0 stuff is what hurt sales of Dawn of War II and its very public Beta. The matchmaking software was (and, still is) pretty woeful.

Yeah, it's fairly horrendous.

It's a pity, because it's a lovely little game, but Relic just didn't quite perfect it.

Definitely think Empire:TW deserves a re-review.

That was one of the worst games I've ever played on release, and is, by all accounts, quite good now, but I've long since lost all interest in it.

AlmightyCushion

pixelburp wrote: »

It also holds the award for possibly the most obtuse & annoying method of exiting a game known to man:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pbita6u8xI

I'd nearly play assasins creed just to be sure this isn't fake. Whoever came up with that idea should have been fired.

johnny_ultimate

pixelburp wrote: »

It also holds the award for possibly the most obtuse & annoying method of exiting a game known to man:

Yeah that was bad. But aside from the exiting method, the repetition of tasks, the horrific 'interactive' cutscenes where you could move around but only where the developer told you you could move to (which wasn't very far), the overlong death monologues, the painfully slow moving future sections, the simplistic combat, the over-reliance of ancient folks on conveniently placed bales of hay and the Insta-Death Water (c), it was sometimes fun. I think.

Kinetic^

Great idea Blitz, good luck with it.

Krieg

Also +1 to the idea and best wishes

May I suggest spore, especially since it's supposed to be community based game and its been out for 1 year.

Crowman

Another +1.
I dont' get a lot of time now to play games, so I tend to pick up stuff about a year or two after launch, Just finished Drakes Fortune which I picked up for 15 Euro's (at least thats one benefit), really enjoyed it.
I picked up Fallout 3 for PS3 at the weekend and would be interested to hear what people's take on it is one year on.

Great idea and Good luck.

humanji

It's a good idea for a show. Is it set in stone that you'll only do a game roughly a year after their release? Because you could always the odd MMO to show how they've changed from their (usually buggy mess) start.

Dead Space, surely.

But +1 for this. Good idea.

Star Lord

Just to play devils advocate here, but I did really enjoy Assassins Creed, but found it a lot easier to quit out of on the xbox... (Press middle button, press Y to quit)

+1 for one year later... reviews

Vegeta

Can I suggest Crackdown on the 360, probably out more than a year though

Myself and 2 other boards members played pass the controller on this yesterday trying to milk a few more achievements out of it.

Has stood up well

Kinetic^

Just noticed you plan on doing it via youtube. You going to set up your own site? I think if you were to issue reviews exactly 12 months on from when they initially came out it gives you a specific angle to the reviews channel/website. You could also do a once a month review on older games which could be by request. 1 thing, don't do scores/percentages. They suck.

Ri_Nollaig

Deleted User wrote: »

Dead Space, surely.

But +1 for this. Good idea.

I recently played through dead space and enjoyed it, didnt like the back tracking but over all it was a good game. Infact only reason I got it was because it was only 15eur, so +1 for buying games a year after they were released.

Another one for Spore here...
Fine example of a game that promised so much, I dont think I even played it since that week it came out. Infact I often look back at that now when ever I see a game getting hyped, its best to just ignore it all and wait a few weeks after its released (or year even)

Vegeta

Kinetic^ wrote: »

1 thing, don't do scores/percentages. They suck.

Weird I was thinking the very same thing when replying earlier.

James Howlett

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Assassins Creed I feel will be joining goldeneye and donkey kong country in a few years time where you look back on it and think 'How did I actually enjoy this back then?'.

I'm going to grab a PP7 Handgun (silenced) and shoot you in the back of the head, while your on the toilet, if I catch you giving out about Goldeneye again.

BlitzKrieg

s it set in stone that you'll only do a game roughly a year after their release? Because you could always the odd MMO to show how they've changed from their (usually buggy mess) start.

One year later is really only the name, it just sounds better to call it ONE YEAR LATER REVIEWS! rather then GOOD GAMES GONE CHEAP or something.

Originally got the idea cause I was so pissed at DICE and EA for releasing 1943 exactly a year after bad company came out and I picked up bad company just before it and a large portion of the multiplayer population jumped game.

Not to mention Red Faction 3 showed up a month later and put all the destructable enviroment element of bad company to shame.

RobertFoster

James Howlett wrote: »

I'm going to grab a PP7 Handgun (silenced) and shoot you in the back of the head, while your on the toilet, if I catch you giving out about Goldeneye again.

Have you played it recently? The goggles rose-tinted glasses do nothing...

humanji

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

One year later is really only the name, it just sounds better to call it ONE YEAR LATER REVIEWS! rather then GOOD GAMES GONE CHEAP or something.

Originally got the idea cause I was so pissed at DICE and EA for releasing 1943 exactly a year after bad company came out and I picked up bad company just before it and a large portion of the multiplayer population jumped game.

Not to mention Red Faction 3 showed up a month later and put all the destructable enviroment element of bad company to shame.

Well it's an excellent idea. Some of the review sites are slowly starting to do something similar. Gamespot, for example, occasionally update their reviews after the initial hype. So get your skates on! :P

RobertFoster wrote: »

Have you played it recently? The goggles rose-tinted glasses do nothing...

Hell I have and it plays just as good. The graphics are dated now, but the gameplay is still great. I dusted off the N64 and had a few mates over. Multiplayer still pisses over everything else out there. It's too much fun.

BopNiblets

GTA IV PC version was in December if that counts
Never finished it, never reinstalled it when I moved from Vista to Windows 7.
Fcuk off Niko Bellic.

Retr0gamer

humanji wrote: »

Hell I have and it plays just as good. The graphics are dated now, but the gameplay is still great. I dusted off the N64 and had a few mates over. Multiplayer still pisses over everything else out there. It's too much fun.

With the 2 FPS it runs at you might as well be playing a text based adventure with all the fluidity it affords in the single player game.

Sabre0001

Looking at the multiplayer side of games that have been out a while would also be very helpful. There are games that people have just moved on from while the likes of CoD4 and Halo 3 still have massive online communities (even within the lower ranks).

Gotta agree with Vegeta and Kinetic^ - no scores. They're pointless and often contradict the makeup of the review.

Some magazines do re-reviews...but I think they are afraid to go back on what they originally gave out.

Finally, you could team up with another person - not necessarily in a Devils Advocate kind of way but at least there would be two perspectives. You could do individual reviews and then a discussion piece on various aspects of both reviews.

OctavarIan

Scores aren't really needed for video but you'll lose readership if you don't have them on your text reviews.

Retr0gamer

You should take a look at gamespite. They do numerous retrospectives and don't have review scores.

Star Lord

Another angle for the 1 year later reviews is laptop gaming, as they're generally pretty underpowered compared to standard PCs, it'd be good to have lists of games that would run reasonably well on them.

Vegeta

Sabre0001 wrote: »

Finally, you could team up with another person - not necessarily in a Devils Advocate kind of way but at least there would be two perspectives. You could do individual reviews and then a discussion piece on various aspects of both reviews.

I think that is a very good idea and a positive thing to have in a review.

Gaming is so subjective, so the more opinions expressed the better.

DARK-KNIGHT

A GREAT IDEA HERE BLITZKRIEG! not everyone has cash to buy new games all the time and also very habdy for newbie gamers to see whats worth buying!!!!!

A1 to you good sir!;)

Sabre0001

I think this Uncharted 2 score debate shows a reason not to post scores - very subjective, the thread mentions that Uncharted 2 was docked for things that Halo ODST was not and as I stated previously some review text can completely contradict the score.

But then again, scores give people something to debate (I'm sure IGN got some clicks as a result of the debate kicking off) and it gives lazy people something to flick to quickly...


Good luck

BlitzKrieg

personnally over on the film review board, when I give a review, I try to make it clear how I broke down the score. Mostly I do it out of 10, and I divide it up that 5 points go to what should work and 5 points should go to what is really good.

So in the case of games I would give a game 5 points if its bug free, stable consistent net code, tight controls well rounded content (decent length + features) and visually consistent.

Nothing amazing, if a game does all that and nothing more, then i'd give it 5/10

then the remaining 5 is for special stuff, essentially taking the above to the next level.

But I wont be using controls for this.


I've decided to do Left 4 dead as the first programme, mostly because I'll be playing it a good bit at the upcoming lanparty 2 so I'll prob bring along my camera and get a few quick comments from players about their opinions on the game after a year and the upcoming left 4 dead 2. Aim for a halloween release.

Then I'll do Red alert 3 after it After that I'll decide if its working or not to keep going and what games.

Going for the two above cause they are both pc and I havnt been arsed to really work out the cabling to record 360 footage without a capture card (I've been told you can run the 360 straight to a video camera if it has comp in/out which my one does. So I might opt for that.)

Sabre0001

Good stuff. CU@LAN (from Saturday night ). Also, talk to PPC about the setups for recording XBox footage (I have to too!); he'll be the guy recording the SF4 matches.

Ross_Mahon

I think this is a great idea, Has there been any requests for a general gaming video section? It would be nice to share montages and reviews with other gamers.

Overheal

Add world of goo to the list.