I'm looking for harsh critiques of my writing/reviews

Keeping in mind I'm a deeply sensitive boy, of course.

I have a number of stories and articles I'm currently researching on that I'm looking to present to a couple websites/magazines to pick up, and I'm having that preternatural feeling of "Is my writing anywhere near up to par," So, I would hugely appreciate if a few people were to go through a couple of my past written works and tell me what I need to work on.

The Last of Us (PS3) Review

Gunpoint (PC) Review

A Listicle on Video Games and Drugs

A quick joke article I wrote regarding a Duke Nukem Forever Sequel

And, as I said above, *deeply* sensitive. Thank you so much!

Here goes - for your Gunpoint review, a few things stood out to me:

1. The language in the beginning of the article seems unnatural, like you spent a hell of a lot of time writing and rewriting the opening paragraphs. Almost overwritten. This devolves slowly but surely until the end of the review which has quite a different tone from the beginning, almost as if you rushed it or just couldn't figure out how to conclude it. I also got the sense that you looked up some words just to use them for some reason, such as defenestrate. That is not a word a word that is widely known in English, it wouldn't surprise me if most people have never even seen it used before. This type of thing will cause a disconnect between you and your readers and could cause them to just stop reading altogether, or just get annoyed. Keep in mind who your audience is and write to them.

2. Many run-on sentences make the article difficult to read. This is all one sentence:

"The written dialogue is funny and well-implemented inGunpoint, as well as much of the instructional prose, whether it’s the game shaking its head with disdain as you punch a security guard’s head for the 197th time, or when you choose the dialogue option that has Conway admitting he may have done more harm than good in that least building, you can definitely tell effort was put into the writing."

This is also all one sentence:

"The story isn’t driving, nor do I think it was really created to drive you, but it does come with some well-written dialogue that often had me grinning, and with an art style that satisfied my itch for noir and a soundtrack that kept pace with the gameplay, I felt as I walked away from Gunpoint like everything tied together nicely."

3. Too many sentences are started with and or but. You can do this, but try to keep it to a minimum especially when you have multiple sentences back to back that begin with and. Example:

"And her tongue was almost as quick as her feet; this dame, Gunpoint she called herself, certainly had moves, the kind of moves I hadn’t seen before. And while I didn’t believe every word of her story, when I walked away from her I did so with a grin on my face."

@mb: I can definitely see your point, I think I need to be a bit more concise with my sentencing, I have a tendency to rely on over-long explanations. The "and" and "but" thing is also a great tip, thank you.

In my defense regarding using the word "defenestration", I *never* get to use that word, and was so excited to get the chance to put it in something that I had to take it.

I read your review of The Last of Us and it's up to par in the sense that it's as unexceptional as what I would expect from any other game reviewer. If your texts were slightly improved and proofread I wouldn't be able to pick them out from a heap of IGN reviews. You said nothing that was particularly interesting and you use too many words prefacing the review and introducing the game.

There were mistakes which would look bad to any literate employer or editor. "Tired cliché" is a tautology. You use commas where new sentences should begin. Your hyphens are all wrong. In some places it reads like you're using spoken language, and a lot of talent is needed to have that trick work. In your case it comes across as unnatural and needlessly colloquial. (I'm thinking of the bit beginning with "It's the mark of a good game...")

Find some way to cultivate a style of your own, and especially learn how to construct an elegant sentence and make your thoughts stick in the mind of your reader. Be glad you aren't one of those morons who pepper their texts with adjectives and semicolons in futile attempts to compensate for blandness. And stop making lists.

Random thoughts about your The Last of Us review:

• Some rambling, some random typos, whatever.
• Your thesis is remarkably weak. It boils down to, "Other post-apocalyptic video games exist, and this is one of the good ones." What specifically makes it good? If you had to tell me the most important bits of your opinion in a sentence or two, what would that be? Without a strong thesis at the start of your review, you have nothing tying all the paragraphs together.
• Your first sentence for the Story section runs long.
• You could spend a lot less time summarizing the plot.
• "While there are some strong hooks in this narrative [Rambling summary problem I just told you about] the set-pieces themselves pale in importance to the interactions between characters." Kind of a weird thing to say when you told us that you liked the game. Maybe split this into two points and address each individually.
• Overall, you could use some more focused analysis. Your morality paragraph is a good start on that.
  • But on that note, "Though, to be fair if you were to make any moral choices in this game they would definitely all be grey and ugly." is not a necessary sentence. We already know that The Last of Us is a bleak world.
    • Bet you guys didn't know about indented bullet lists, did ya?
• This doesn't read like a review so much as it does a basic summary/walkthrough of the game with light opinion sprinkled here and there.
• "The feelings evoked" paragraph: go into more detail here. This is the kind of stuff you want to focus on. What does this contribute to the game's quality and whatnot.
  • And the paragraph after that: you're so close to making a point with this. Go deeper in.
• What mood does this game evoke? What mood should it evoke? These are the questions you should be thinking about and addressing in a review for The Last of Us. (Or any game, really. But especially The Last of Us.)
• There are too many comparisons to other games here, and they're put in too bluntly. Abandon this technique for a good while.
• The exploration part is getting closer to the level of thinking you should put into this review. Or maybe it's already there, and your writing doesn't reflect this. Whatever.
• Change "appearance" to "aesthetic." Other than that, it seems like you're going in the right direction with this (although again, greater depth is needed).
• "A number of people have gone so far as to call The Last of Us the Citizen Kane of gaming," :|
  • Even if it's true, that's a dumb sentence to include in anything.
    • And the sentence after it isn't much better.
      • In fact, you could just get rid of this entire paragraph, as it's not relevant to much of anything you're trying to argue. (Not that I have much of a clue what you're arguing other than the vague "The Last of Us is good.")
• "I think by this point you can see that I think The Last of Us is something important." No, I can't.
• "In more concrete terms however The Last of Us is also a hell of a lot of fun to play" Is that a good thing? Wouldn't fun contrast sharply against the amoral world depicted? And wasn't one of your earlier points arguing somewhat against this (in that combat/stealth/whatever feels like what the characters feel or whatever)?
• "It’s my hope to see more games like The Last of Us come out, titles which focus not just on gameplay mechanics but on crafting a setting and a narrative, games that tell a truly complex story, and by their end have you walking away to think about them for a long time to come." This reads like something written in 2004.
• Your "What Worked/Didn't Work" segment at the end is just repeating points you already made, not simplifying complex points you were hoping to make. That section would make sense if you were going for the latter, but as of now, I'd just get rid of it.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, this is just my impulse gut reactions when I read the article. I think this'll put you in the mind of an average reader

Listacle of drugs:

• First off, as MB mentioned, don't use words that are just about never used in the english language. Even if you use them, think about your audience. "Imbibers," I have never even heard of that word and it felt forced.
• Second paragraph feels like it's a tangent. I thought the article was going to go on to talk about real life drugs in relation to video games. I understand you were hooking the reader, but keep hooks concise, and stay on topic
• You're use of subsequent adjectives just prior to nouns or verbs just feels off most of the time. That or its being used too often. Examples: "That ugly blue pixelated logo goes hand-in-hand with arcade memories for me..." "small quantities from deep sea parasitic slugs..." "insane, only-seen-in-video games black ops government project." Just try to use variety is all.
• Eliminate extra words (I know there's a word for that) or restructure the sentences so they flow better. Ex: "of unstable stem cells, which when introduced into..."
• Noticed grammatical errors here and there, like using "a" instead of "an"

By the way, cocaine is not a narcotic.

Can I be lazy and just suggest poking around for a copy of The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and expanded upon by E.B. White? It's a tiny little book that you can fit into your back pocket. Well-worth peeking at if you want to improve your writing. I should probably take heed of its advice as well, actually.

I peeked at your Last of Us review and here's one thing worth bringing up:

you can tell from it’s outset that this was a title made by people well-versed in the over-saturation of post-apocalyptica in gaming and thought “we can do better.”

Be careful with contractions like "it's" and "you're" and "they're". All of those are actually two separate words smashed together because humans are lazy creatures and would rather slur "it is" into "it's". If there is ever a question, just separate the two words and you'll know whether there is an issue.

"You can tell from it is outset that this was a title...

@video_game_king: Showoff.

Strongly recommend also picking up On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. Those two books together impart some of the best possible writing advice available.

Just read your Last of Us review. Beyond points already made, I hope this doesn't sound too harsh but you really need to work on basic English grammar. There is a ton of incorrect and overused hyphenation throughout the entire piece. Ignore that this quote is all one sentence and just look at the hyphenation:

"While there are some strong hooks in this narrative and certainly many chances for the team at Naughty Dog to put Joel and his cadre into some form of horrible-albeit-interesting danger, from escaping past a military search team, or a mob of unrecognizably-mutated infected, or a shootout with a ruthless group of bandits, the set-pieces themselves pale in importance to the interactions between characters"

Why are "unrecognizably mutated" and "set pieces" hyphenated at all? The horrible-albeit-interesting should likewise have just been simplified or even rewritten.

Personally, I find the whole Story, Gameplay, Style separation to be pretty dated and not what I personally look for in reviews. I also tend to look for an interesting critical viewpoint that isn't necessarily expressed via most bland 'product review' type things. I would much rather someone give their emotional response to the experience as a whole rather than going through the features, and then saying the blindingly obvious and if they can add a unique insight into some particular subtext that's a bonus. Don't just walk in the footsteps of all the other reviews that you've read and focus on what you as a gamer can say about an experience that not everyone would immediately see.

I wont delve into your prose because I only really skimmed your reviews for The Last of Us and Gunpoint, and everyone else is already doing that. Take that for what it means. I read your joke piece as well.

I have a tendency to write complex sentences too so you have my sympathy there. I have some tips, though I'm far from an established writer. One, don't be afraid to use a period. It's perfectly fine to take more than one sentence to make one point. Two, though it seems you've already noticed, try to think about what information is really necessary to the reader. Here's an example:

"There are also countless bricks and bottles also strewn about the landscape to help your shadowy endeavours, which can be used as distraction items to throw either in the direction you want your enemies to search, or in their faces to temporarily stun them before running away or finishing the job."

If you just say "Strewn about bricks and bottles can be thrown to distract or stun enemies." then they'll get the picture. I'm currently writing my first review (which I will also seek criticism for soon) and I had to take a step back and ask myself 'Do I really need to explain the details of all these mechanics?' Generally the answer is no unless there's some specific brilliance or failure you want to highlight.

Lastly on a more conceptual level, your Last of Us review takes a strange turn when you take a single paragraph to discuss common perceptions of the video game medium versus other mediums. Even if your points are valid and you could probably write a whole article on the idea, it doesn't really belong in the review.

Don't want to seem too negative so I'll end with a positive. It seems to me you've got a solid base to build from and there were some parts I really liked, like this:

"This is not the beautiful, rhythmic combat you’d see in an Assassin’s Creed, this game is all about survival and the combat reflects that – it’s pure and filthy endurance at its most base."

I'd probably break it into two sentences and maybe lose the hyphen, but I love the punch at the end. This is a great spot to use such flowery descriptive language, just be careful with it in other places.

Cheers!

@believer258: I will pick up a copy of this, thanks for the tip

@video_game_king: There's definitely a lot to unpack here, thank you for taking the time to write it all out.

I am trying to take a few overarching lessons from your criticisms, to which I suppose I could sum up as "less summary, more in-depth analysis." I find it really telling that the parts I most enjoyed writing, the discussion of the intent of the game, its game play and aesthetic and how it lines up with the game's theme, are the parts you seem to think I am on the right track with.

It's kind of hard not to instinctively feel upset and defensive in the face of large doses of criticism, but I feel like there are some very good lessons here that would help push my writing forward. Not to mention I did ask for it. Thank you again