ILLUSTRIOUS'S PROFILE

I played it. I wanted to give my take on this. I wanted to give it a score and this is how you do it.
Really, I only see too many reviews as a bad thing when most games around here have too few reviews.
Can't help those game's I did not play.

Cut me slack, the curiosity comes out of the immediate response of 3 reviews. When someone feels strongly enough about a game to give it a one star, I either go to a game to laugh at how horrendous it is(Drakyth style) or disagree and write a review that gives it a fair shake.

If I play it for 10 minutes and its bad, no loss. Moving on, it was just as bad as Karuman said. Telling someone they are better off taking a poop - HARSH.

Yeah seriously, this is no worse a topic than the popular "What are you working on now thread" that lives on forever. I think the last thread on anticipated games had ran its course and has been buried for some time now, and since the last time some new projects have come into prominence. So people call out this topic is lame and are making it self-fulfilling by posting

" I'd have a game for this list but I am testing it so "

The posters have been worse than the topic. So what if a few people get to hear their game is being looked forward to, or people are passing along the word about what they have subscribed to.

On topic, I am most looking forward to The Queen's Court. Really, this game wins me over based on how good Three the Hard Way was and not what he has shown on his game page. Please Ish, give us a sign you are still working on this.

@Locke Z: Not only is that number not founded on anything tangible, but I can't even agree that sounds about right.
Playing other games is just as important to me as making my own, so I am already a drop against that statistic.
I would find it hard to believe most of us are trying to make the best game possible so we can keep it to ourselves.
Wanting to share games is part of the reason rpgmaker on the PS2 is considered pointless amongst a lot of this community.

I review like developer and score like player. My overall e-star rating is not about how I reviewed each facet of a game. That score is only about how much I liked the game, not a level of technical achievement (often making that rating much higher than what one would think with how I picked apart a game). I have two reasons for this. One is an awareness of our limitations of being on solo or small teams and using things like rpgmaker/gamemaker. Second is, I genuinely do like a lot of games on this site.

I think most peoples' issue with a Solitayre review is that he calls out all the same problems we all see in a game and still manage to enjoy, while he finishes off a game review by giving it two stars. His trend of giving a game 2.5 stars or less started about 16 reviews ago (in May) and look what his average score was before that. Beautiful Escape must have scarred him something fierce and his only redemption came in the form of "Pretty Princess: RM Edition" Nowdays, the average game is below average? Or shall we say the above average games are below average? Is this a paradox?

I have two problems with the average Solitayre review as of late.

1. As he is scoring lower, he is doing this with increasingly more popular games. Now I would not want his reviews to lie to conform to what other people on the site are feeling, but as an official reviewer for the site can we not expect his scoring to represent a more mainstream assessment of a game? (Admittedly, it is hard to prove his reviews are not of the mainstream sentiment when all we have to go by are reviews and comments on game pages. Using what we have to go on, Solitayre judges much more harshly than most other game players)

If I have not played a game, the most useful review to me is the one that is most likely going to tell me how much I will like the game. When Solitayre tells us to look beyond his e-stars and read it for its content he is missing a point. The rating matters because it puts what he wrote in kind of a context that we DO care about- Is this game fun and enjoyable or not? It's totally fine to have opinions that do not represent that of a larger part of the community, but for the purpose of being an official reviewer for the site it would surely help.

2. It's hard to be a reviewer on this site who is not Solitayre and generate discussion. He is recognized by the site, prolific, and contentious. I am one who wants to know if people agree or not when I write a review and then discuss those points of the game. It's also rewarding simply as social involvement in the community. Most of the time review submissions amount to the game author giving thanks and then going back on forth on one point, amounting to about 4-5 responses exclusively between reviewer and creator. I kinda wonder, are other people's reviews other than Soli's being read? Do people think his opinions matter most or is he just more controversial? My five star rating of the Drunken Paladin had been referred to a lot, but no one is talking to ME about it on the page of my review. Only by looking at Solitayre's review and forum threads do I know that particular review has been read a lot.