After nearly two months of stalling, distractions, and medical delays, it’s finally time to get this up. Let’s not waste any more time. From this point on, I’m going to be working with a new review format that will examine games according to three categories: Gameplay, Presentation, and Legacy.

Gameplay refers to the systems in the game, how well they work, how effectively the player can interact with them, and what experiences they can create. If the game has great shooting mechanics or a bad penchant for corrupting saves, this is where I’ll let you know. Presentation refers to the visual and audio assets in the game, and how they work to enhance the player experience. This category isn’t just about the quality of the graphics or the realism of the sound effects. Instead, it’s more about how the aesthetic aspects all come together to improve and define the game. Legacy is a bit vaguer than the other categories, and will generally be the shortest section. It will change a lot based on the game in question, but I’ll try to use this section to examine notable differences between this game and other games in its series or genre, and try to determine if it holds up today or will hold up in the future when compared to its peers.

With these categories, sorting my ideas into a concise and readable article becomes much more possible. For example, I could mention the camera in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence in several contexts based on what aspects I find most important, but it would most likely end up in the legacy section of a review, because it represented a watershed change for the Metal Gear Solid series.

The main meat of the review will be bookended by a brief introductory paragraph and a conclusion, wherein I will render my judgment of the game in question. The introductory paragraph is premise section of the previous review format, covering essential details and the thrust of the game. The verdict paragraph will also be similar to my previous conclusion paragraphs, with the major difference being a shorthand, categorized conclusion at the end. The final verdict will always be one of these four options:

• Highly Recommended – A very high quality game. Give it a shot, as this game represents the best its genre has to offer and may surprise you.
• Recommended – A well-executed game that is likely to please fans of the genre.
• Niche – Highly invested fans of the series or genre only, of limited appeal to others.
• Avoid – Game is excessively bad in several regards and should be avoided.

Final verdicts will also be labeled on review titles in the post directory section, allowing you to skip reading the entire article if you’d like! Hopefully if you’ve come this far you’re interested in why I feel the way I do about the game, but more power to you if not. These also don’t really necessarily represent my feelings about a game, merely what my experience with the game leads me to believe about it. I enjoyed Final Fantasy XV well enough, but I would be lying if I didn’t label it a niche experience. I’ll also be retroactively labeling my older reviews via this convention, but not editing the reviews themselves. I’m going to leave the past alone.

The Persona 5 review that was set to accompany this release is done, but I’m going to wait a short while before posting it to let it simmer. After this I think I’m going to try to get a new review in at least once a month, but not limit myself to only one. However, for this first month or so of the new format I’m going to definitely do several in rapid succession to see how this works out. The titles discussed in the previous post, FFX and Nier: Automata, will be among them.