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Reception reviews:Burnout Paradise [1330 words]

(created by Grabbergirl678 on 2024 Oct 9 Wed 17:27:53 GMT)

The first entry of my little reception reviews project. Burnout Paradise was submitted by ToTheEdge. As a page mainly drafted by a moderator and an admin the stakes are rather high. At a glance there's definitely good and less good aspects but overall, it's a nicer read than I expect to find on reception wikis. Lets start with what it does well. Visiting the paradise Pointer quality: The page stands out for reasonable pointers overall which focus on elements of the game itself that are favorable, I like this. There's not as much as I'd expect in the way of poor logic, and the examples I can find do not break the article. I would say the GQs do a better job at this than the BQs. More on this topic later. The page is concise and neat. This is not entirely to its favor, but being easy to process is a good trait. It does this without falling into the other failure of not bringing anything substantial to think about. Lean meat without fat, this is appreciated. Well structured: The infobox is done right, the headers make sense, nothing to cringe at. At worst you could say the article is a little boring. But I'd rather it be clean like this than try to be funny or ramble in paragraphs and fall on its face. The page appears to correspond well with the reception. Despite lacking sources or backup media (more on that later), it is fairly objective and seems to be accurate. That's really what a page should go for, if it is highly opinionated or doesn't match reception it would be better off as a blog. This certainly isn't long but these are some of the most important things to get right with a page. Fail on any of these and you have a fundamentally broken page. It's got the basics down well. Falling into burnout Despite a better-than-average showing there are a handful of issues the page should correct, and in the bad qualities especially a handful of poor pointers. The page is rather barebones. Simplicity is good but there is a balance. I would argue the balance leans towards this page being too simple despite having an edge over windy articles. Redundancies: GQ 4 remarks on the open world. GQ5 does the same thing with a small twist. GQ9 lightly rephrases GQ5. This is one point with a few different phrasings. Non pointers: I would be careful with the ones that simply rephrases gameplay features. More on this later, but my golden rule here is: If it just declares what a feature is, it's not a pointer, it's just a summary and should be in another section. Examples: GQ 14, 16, 17. Contradictions: BQ4 complains about limited physics but figures the game doesn't need them that much anyway. But then BQ15 complains about the lack of never released better physics. Hmm. Missed opportunities: Modding comes up multiple times, perhaps it should be expanded on more. Clearly it accounts for some missing features and adds a new dimension to the game. Perhaps it should have its own header. Otherwise GQ 21 should expand. GQ 18, the "Insane sense of speed": show me. You are claiming. This is where supplementary content would be helpful. The page being barebones means a reader cannot experience the highlights of the game, they simply have to take your word for it. Any "trust me bro" should be avoided. Plain bad pointers: Several are plain poor observations. Maybe there's more to them, in that case it should be made clear. GQ1.1: "which is also a nice touch, even though it might be seen as lazy." Is it lazy if there is a full soundtrack besides? Unless there's a credible case to call it lazy I'd leave this out. BQ 3 I see the point, but this should probably be lower in the order if it's even a bad point considering the outcome. Most of it is just history. BQ 12 nullifies itself by offering a logical answer upfront. Clearly it would make sense, if the right to use these tracks was revoked. Attribution does not provide legal right, which is what the other half of this seems to imply. BQ 11 complains about something extremely specific and probably too minor. If it's relevant it needs to justify why. BQ 14 is a mess, someone will have to rephrase this for me because it glues together an overall condemnation of the game being cut down and removing what the game was good at in the series, or something. What's this about? This needs expansion and justification. The whole article gets into good stuff, reasonably posits some disadvantages, then ominously concludes that the game ain't what it used to be. Other notes Many of the good pointers simply state what features exist, and these are things that could be better summarized under the Gameplay header. The GQs can then focus more on what the game does which stands out in its series. GQ's 2, 11, 13 and 15 are standout pointers. It would mean fewer GQ entries since more of it would be in the gameplay summary and the otus would be on you to justify why certain features stand out, but this would be matched by a better trimmed BQ section. I would discourage the pointers that simply mention general things about the game which aren't necessarily stand out, or if they are stand out, provide some evidence. Show off the game a little: relevant gameplay clips, a screenshot or two, maybe a review that gets into it more as a source. Despite being well composed the article is completely absent of sources or supporting media, only having the bare passable minimum in sections, standing out only in halfway decent pointers. Although the rules don't demand more, this is a shame. Any article is improved if it tactfully builds in sources to justify itself or even just illustrate why people like or dislike the game, rather than having the reader take their word for it. The page mostly fits the Feature requirements, but the opening line could use ending punctuation. The reception section is adequate. Linking the review pages would be nice. There is no convenience on this page: it expects people to look up the sources if they want to know, and to just trust it otherwise. There's more bad pointers than good pointers! Here, I should clarify, not on BP. But the same logic applies in other places I think. It's easier to find things to complain about than praise. When things are done right they stand on their own. Things not done as well need more highlighting. I won't get into this on every entry but I'll draw the line here: with rare exception I intend to highlight what's done well, expand on what can be improved, and then look at the bigger picture, even if the article is plain bad which in reception wiki world means bad pointers first. Number of pointers is not very important. Quality of pointers is. Conclusion Burnout Paradise has potential. There is good meat here and little fat, but the meat is very thin - there's not much to chew on. It makes reasonable statements but does not back them up. This certainly beats the average I see, but there's room to grow. If it does I think it could be one of the better pages, proving you don't need long essays to make a good solid page. At that point, a good candidate for a Featured Article. Kudos to the primary author ToTheEdge supported by Pacman64fanj for making one of the better rounded pages on the wiki. Until next entry! Sonic Frontiers is next up and I will probably give it a couple days. At brief glance it seems to be stronger than Burnout Paradise but shares some of the basic failings. More on that another time. Comments Loading comments...

Reception reviews [362 words]

(created by Grabbergirl678 on 2024 Oct 9 Wed 13:51:28 GMT)

I'm among the weirdest users since I am a reception wiki critic almost completely. I don't make pages, I point out errors and I seem to do everything else except content stuff. People who make pages here get a rise of making them, I get a rise of critiquing them. So lets see if we can put that to good use. Submit a page by comment and I will make a blog entry that honestly reviews the page, in reception wiki style of course. I will look for, Point inflation: a redundant point that is there only to get the count up and says nothing new. Generalization, poor claims: a point is made against a strawman without a source or background evidence. Bald faced lies/plain wrong: bad facts written on the page. Critical errors: the reception is nonexistent or doesn't justify the page layout (good/bad) And little things like poor structure, too long, misses things, etc. If something's done well I'll give it kudos. At the end I'll give it a rating. No promises on how fast I can deliver. No refunds. I will review the latest revision only, not old versions of pages, and I will review it as I see it - if it's improved later, great. If you give me a draft I will review it as if it's complete. Might be a way to strengthen your drafts before publishing them. If you have something from another reception wiki I might review that too. Why don't I just fix the pages? Too many pages not enough time and I don't want to spend 6 months in edit wars training people to think critically. No, if you want me to do that I'll give you my opinion and you can decide if you want to agree with it or not. If you're interested in this leave a comment and I'll add it to my queue. Best of luck. Review queue User blog:Raidarr/Reception reviews:Burnout Paradise User blog:Raidarr/Reception reviews:Sonic Frontiers User blog:Raidarr/Reception reviews:Ranma 1/2: Chōnai Gekitōhen User blog:Raidarr/Reception reviews:Rayman 2 User blog:Raidarr/Reception reviews:MVP Baseball 2005 Comments <comments />

Something ends, something begins [268 words]

(created by Grabbergirl678 on 2024 Jun 4 Tue 0:42:38 GMT)

I no longer have much time or interest to even passively observe NQP, and I know CJ strongly toyed with the idea of resigning several times and hasn't done anything management related in some time, popularity aside. That leaves us with effectively no bureaucrats. What I want to do is hand off the wiki. For better or worse keeping a hand on things does not interest me anymore. Here's what I'm looking for as replacement (can be more than one): Someone with actual ideas, drive and willingness to do something with the wiki, ie, will not sit on their title. Someone willing to manage the staff, the discord server, and work on improvements of the rules. Someone willing to work with both fellow admins and other bureaucrats to get things done, as well as work with Original Authority to deal with technical/platform related problems if there is a need. If you believe you fit these categories you can present yourself below regardless of your current role if you are a user in good standing. This will follow with an election where I present each viable candidate. Successful candidates will then replace the current bureaucrats. Viable means you have some background on the wiki, are in good standing and aren't someone I veto as clearly inappropriate for the role, this is not a role for any random user to try and pick up: doing it poorly can risk the survival of the wiki in the future and I'd rather not see it die immediately after I let go. But let go I must sooner or later. Comments <comments />