Two New Review Boards

[Nick]

We've added one board for your game reviews and one for your movie reviews. I included a write-up of the "classic" arcade game Chiller so you can get an idea of how it all works.

I will add some guidelines to the FAQ in the next week, but feel free to ask questions here.

There will also be some contests announced along with the FAQ update.

[Advocate]

That's f'ing cool, Nick. Thanks.

[Doc Holliday]

Yes. This is seriously cool. Will music get one?

[Nick]

I made one for Music, but I am holdiing off on implementing it until I see how well the Cinemania one does.

[mannerbot]

Tubular!

[Tain]

Cool, new review section. I'm sure there will be a ton of debate over the categories (would it be possible to let us fill in our own when we make a thread?), but it looks slick.

[Aurora]

That game scares me.

[Nick]

I'm sure there will be a ton of debate over the categories (would it be possible to let us fill in our own when we make a thread?), but it looks slick.

I'll change things around as needed once I see what work for us and what doesn't. There probably will not be a way to add your own custom rating, but if there is a category/rating/etc. that should be added to the template, it won't be a problem.

One issue that just became clear when I wrote the Chiller review: if you just fill in a year for the release date, it won't display properly. I put in "1986" with no month or day, and it was changed to something like "October 25, 1985." Chilling.

[Melf]

I'm going to add my non-Genesis reader reviews from the old board, so you'll have some stuff up quick. I'll give 'em the once-over to update them.

[Nick]

That would be great. I haven't explained the system yet, but when you go in to post a review, it's pretty self-explanatory, and it can always be edited later.

For games, the following are some good rules of thumb when it comes to assigning ratings:

Technical Achievement should be measured by how much the game pushed the envelope for its time on the hardware it was on. That means you should try to rate graphics, sound, and other technical factors on how well they measured up to what else was out at the time and take into consideration what system the game was on and how far that system had been pushed up to that point. That's the ideal way to look at it, and I think that the people that post here are generally knowledgeable enough to make an educated rating.

Fun needs no explanation, other than to say that this is probably better viewed in absolute terms. So, you would be comparing Pong to Gears of War.

With Originality, we're back to rating games as products of their time. Super Mario Bros. would rate a 5 in Originality. It's not a measure of absolute uniqueness, it's a measure of how unique it was when it came out.

Staying Power can be a measure of how long the game is or its replayability. World of Warcraft, Oblivion, and Tetris are all 5's, in my opinion.

And the Overall rating is the final word: 1-star games are garbage, 4-star games are excellent, and 5-star games are absolute classics. I think the Overall score should be influenced more by Fun and Staying Power than anything else.