The Club

[twmac]

That was a solid read actually. My only qualm I would say is that there seemed to be things in there that clearly were oppinions or feelings you had about the game that were bluntly stated as if they were facts. My favoured reviewers are people that write about stuff in a way that makes me understand why they draw those conclusions which in a couple of cases I didn't think you did.

Certainly a lot of shooters do rely on bombast to pull them through, but I actually disagree that The Club needs this. Moreover I'm not sure why you thought it needed it. The Club, with more explosions, more feedback in the vibration, more colourful and varied levels would have distracted the user from the focus of the game (there are a couple of levels which I think fail because the path is too confusing). The focus being purely to kill everything that moves and to do it in a fashion that allows you to increase your score each time.

Looking back at the comments I understand what Tracer menat by this being more of an XLA title. Not because it looks like one, but because it plays like one.

The other point that you made that I wasn't keen on but understand is that you felt it got repetitive and became 'meh' felt too heavily emphasised on telling the user that they would feel like that too unreservedly. It would have been nice if you could have developed why you found it repetitive, at what point that indifference kicked in so that I could have gathered whether my patience would have given in or not.

Like I said it was well written as an oppinion piece, something someone who has already played the game should read and see if they agree, but I'm not sure allotting a score and someone using it as a guide as to whether they would like it or not is prudent.

However, if you do have anymore like that on games that I have played I'll definitely read them.

[gdf]

Thanks for taking the time to read it! Yeah, I'm still learning, and I agree with some of the stuff you mentioned about my style. It's a general flaw with me that I tend to state my opinions as objective facts, and I'm working on it, promise [though in my defence I never write in a personal manner, and trying to keep it strictly impersonal can at times make experiences harder to communicate. It is, however, a much better way of improving my writing and if I can do it well it will theoretically look awesome to potential employers, especially if I still have the view to eventually doing this shit professionally]. I also sort of got tired of the review because it's not really, for me, an interesting game to write about. Sorry if that's totally unprofessional, but it's hard to avoid in certain scenarios.

Although I acknowledge games don't necessarily need to be leaning to the flashier side of things - look at Pong, Space Invaders et al as an extreme example - The Club's core gameplay didn't feel strong enough. The score attack would become interesting for short periods, but before too long the clunky controls would get in the way or the environments would blur into a monotonous corridor, and if the shooting itself more closely matched the way movement is presented it may have benefited. With that sort of premise, generally either more or less speed in the movement would have suited it much, much better.

Basically, I love score attack games (such as the cited examples in the review), but this was... not a good one.*

*[in my opinion ]

Again, thanks very much for reading and passing comment, this is the kind of constructive criticism I need. And here's my fairly bare catalogue of material. If you hate it please tell me