Actually, it is all games, but it’s not all fun. I’ve been playing and reviewing games for Sparkle Gamer for about a week and a half now. There are 5 full reviews up now, and I’ve even been lucky enough to have a publisher send me some promo copies of new games. If there’s one thing I’ve gained working on this project it’s a new respect for professional reviewers.
Being a professional video game reviewer sounds like a pretty great job, you get paid to play games and write about them. And I still think it’s a great job. But for every review copy you get of a game like Child of Eden, you get a Bratz: Forever Diamondz. I’m playing through Rabbids Travel in Time now, which is pretty good, but after the Petz Fantasy 3D review I needed a palate cleanser. If you play too many similar games they all start running together. If you play too many bad games, you start to feel your standards slipping. And suddenly you understand why so many horrible, horrible games have so many positive reviews on Amazon: because it can get so much worse.
I’ve been playing a lot more Starcraft II since I started order levitra Sparkle Gamer, as well as Box Life on the DS. Because all of the titles I’ve reviewed so far have been DS games, I’ve been able to play them while commuting to/from the office. I judge a title by how much slower or faster it makes my commute go.
You’re supposed to play each game all the way through, which I do when I can tolerate it. The worst thing about most of the girl game titles is that they’re incredibly repetitive; most of them have nothing new to offer after the first hour or so of playing. And I do mean nothing: many of them don’t even bother ratcheting up the difficulty level of the minigames.
So I have a new respect for people who do this for a living. Sure, it beats a lot of other things, but it’s still hard work.