And now for the non-review-y reflection on Valkyria Chronicles.
By Pepsiman 11 Comments
Beings as I don't have a paycheck attached to the hobby, I write reviews of games when I feel the opinions I have on them can contribute something new to the discussions. If I'm lucky, timing isn't a huge issue; when I get games brand new at release, more often than not, I'll write up a review on it because it's still fresh in a lot of people's minds and therefore not everything about it has necessarily been said. As a game gets older, things get more ambiguous on that front. When I finally bought a PS3 Slim recently, for example, I also bought and finished a copy of MGS4 with it. I really, really, really enjoyed that game and now agree with a lot of assessments that it was indeed one of 2008's best, but when it came time for a review, I decided against doing one. I like a lot of Kojima's stuff, but years after they're released, it's hard to come up with new material that hasn't already been rehashed and analyzed to death. Kojima knows his cinematography. He knows his dialog and over the top plots. He (now) knows how to make his gameplay be complete experiences on their own, too. But those are given points when a lot of people talk about his games and if there's one thing I hate doing when it comes to writing, it's being redundant. It feels tedious and if other people have already expressed the exact same views I have about something, chances are pretty high that they've done so at least as well as I could. Such are the sorts of roadblocks I tend to run into when deciding whether to review a game I played that didn't come out that same year.
That's usually not the case with more obscure releases and why I'm more consistent covering them in review form when I feel the inspiration to do so. Games like Okami and Beyond Good & Evil naturally have their followings, but they're not nearly as huge as what the mainstream stuff attaches, so even when I play older stuff, I'm usually still fairly motivated to give them a review, despite their age. Unless it's absurdly old stuff like Hebereke. That game is pretty great, but dude, don't ask me to do a Famicom game review. I'm not the Angry Video Game Nerd for a reason.
But yeah, that brings me to my review of Valkyria Chronicles. It's an SRPG on the PS3 and a pretty great one at that. It did enough things right that I definitely intend to buy the sequel when it makes its way to the States this summer. But if I go any further than that, I'll just be repeating what I said in my review. You did just read everything I had to say on being redundant, after all, even if I'm ironically doing just that by bringing it up. Again.
11 Comments