A Good Review

Okay, I'm postponing the end of serious posts.

I have decided not to stop trying to be a games journalist, for now.

Again, my issue is the reviews. So far I have not enjoyed writing them. I feel like my reviews of games have been a waste of the hypothetical readers' time, that they've been either unfunny or too long. And there's nothing I can do about the funny part; the average game (that I have played) has been too good to review humorously. [Yatzhee can review even good games humorously because of his drawings which double opportunities for humor.]

I'm not ready to abandon games journalism yet because I think I've found a structure for the typical game review, one which will at least make the "boring" reviews concise and thus useful to the reader.

The structure goes like this:

1) A hook to entice the reader for the coming luscious parts.
2) An explanation of what the game's about: what type of game it is and what the player's role is and what makes the game unique.
3) The things that make the game not as good as it should be.
4) Conclusion; overall opinion of the game and a sexy last sentence.

The better the game, the shorter the review. The worse the game, the longer and funnier the review.

If I can master this format, I think I can grow to like review-writing. But if that doesn't happen, then I'm done with games journalism. And if this divorce occurs, I'm going 100% for humor-writing.