Game Review Bias and ‘Innovation’

It always terrifies me that (I’m going to be mean and say supposed) ‘supposed’ (in scare quotes and everything!) highly regarded review websites write reviews with such obvious bias. ‘But…’ I hear you say ‘the bias can’t be that bad, can it?’

Well, for example when you put two long running game series together – in this case we’ll say Dynasty Warriors and Pokemon. A lot of big review websites describe these games in pretty much the same way – that they haven’t changed at all (despite the fact that they have, but we’ll get to that). But apparently because most of them watched Pokemon when they  were kids this makes it okay and it get a high scores. Dynasty Warriors on the other hand is slated for not ‘innovating’ (again, in scare quotes! I’ll explain why in a bit too). Read More

Coming soon…

Here is a list of games that are coming out soon, that I will probably mention/review as they are released:

Dynasty Warriors 7 (which should be fun)
Portal 2 (which I am both excited for and wary about)
Mortal Kombat (I’m very nearly going to buy this…)
Infamous 2 (could very easily have been ruined given current game’s sequels)
Alice: Madness returns (which so far at least looks very nice)

Portal 2 I don’t feel the need to review – there are already lots of reviews and it isn’t even out yet. More than likely I’ll mention the rest and review Alice. So, games to look forward to!

A (not so) new camera

So, Peter just got a rather swish Nikon D90 DSLR camera.

This means I’ve been gifted with his older camera, the Sony DCS H50. It’s still a pretty swish bridge camera (what this means is that it has a large very capable lens stuck to it, but it’s not interchangable). I’ve been told he’ll still want to borrow it, as the Sony has some lovely features his new camera currently can’t do. The Sony manages to do close up and macro pretty well with the one lens – whereas Peter will need to buy a macro lens or macro filter. It also has a pretty nifty night mode, for taking in the dark photos.

So, while it’s a little old – it’s pretty good. We already have a little studio set-up with really bright studio lights, sheeting, tripod etc. – so I’m good for some experimentation. Now I just need to figure out how to take photos. And get a steadier hand….