Greetings and Salutations everyone. I am known, in real life by many of my friends/fiance, as "The Walrus." I am hoping to offer a different style of reviews here and, if successful, I will continue to post more reviews of future games I play. My approach is to eliminate bias by focusing on specific categories of the games I review, and then at the end add up the score. A lot of people seem to write a review and then attach a score at the end and list out a couple pros/cons of the game. I want to show you specifically why I give a game a certain score.

A couple more things before I get started that demonstrate the unique quality of my reviews. First off I only review games I beat (and often don’t review until I beat all the bonus stuff too). Secondly I review games based on comparison of other games released around the same time. This means that a game released 20 years ago could still beat a game released today because it pushed the system it was on harder than the new one pushes it’s modern system (for example).

Lastly I want to point out, as you will see below, that story is THE MOST important aspect of a game for me. If games focus either mostly or entirely on multiplayer (Call of Duty, Mario kart, etc) then they probably won’t get a very high score. If the game is really fun despite its low score, I usually give that game an (*) symbol.

Here is how I review games:

Review Standards for Videogames: Out of 100 points

Originality: Does this game have a unique feel, one that totally copies off of something in the past, or somewhere in between? /20

Graphics: How does this game look in proportion to the time it was released? /10

Art Style: Is the art style truly impressive and unique, or is it a game that only focused on pixels, p quality, and frame rate? /15

Story: The most important part of a game for me. /30

Game Interface: Annoying or not? /5

Controls easy and fluid or difficult and rigid? /5

Is it fun? /15

Tropical Freeze Review:

Originality: The introduction of more playable characters, 3d backgrounds, a bunch of new enemies/settings does make this game a masterpiece for a sidescroller, but it is not a breathtakingly unique game. Just like the first 3 donkey kong country games (as well as many other series) this game does suffer from being the 2^nd (or 3^rd if you count the 3ds version) in a series that have come out as very similar games over the past recent years.

14/20

Graphics: I can honestly say the 3d backgrounds, the detail on “dat fur” (as my fellow nerds say), and the amazing cutscenes and animations going on in this game make it clear to me that Retro really tried hard on this game to make it as good looking as possible for the small crew that developed it. In my opinion, this blow NSMBU out of the water in terms of graphics while falling short of Trine 2 and potentially Rayman Legends.

8/10

Art Style: When I first started this game, I was not very impressed by the art style. Then I played the secret level in world 1 where you’re black in a forest, and then I played all of world 2 (I love Africa!!!), and then I fell in love with each world after that, then I got to world 6 and the combination of fire and ice and the way their contrast looked in levels sealed it up for me. This is one of the best looking art styles of any game I have ever played.

14/15

Story: Well… yea… Need I say more? Look, I’m going to rant here a little bit. Nintendo has demonstrated that they CAN make EPIC stories based on their characters (I would argue Paper Mario: Thousand Year door is the best story Nintendo has ever made). Starfox is amazing for it’s story progression, and I’m sure the Metroid fans will agree they love the story of Metroid. Donkey Kong 64 had an AMAZING story in my opinion (I loved it almost as much as Banjo Tooie). So why for the love of every golden banana did this game not end up with a story, let alone a good one? It’s not like Retro isn’t capable of it. I personally believe Nintendo didn’t want them to go deep on this. I don’t mind Donkey Kong not speaking. I DO mind going from one island to the next without any story progression or transition of some kind. I get that this is supposed to be simple enough for a kid to understand, but they CLEARLY put stuff in there for more ages gamers (online time trail, hard mode, collecting all the bonuses) so why couldn’t they have at least put more time into this story? The only story we received was when they invaded and when we beat the game and they were very small amounts.

7/30

Game Interface: Not clouded up with any modern day nonsense. I could see the screen (whether on TV/gamepad) clearly and enjoyed looking at every aspect of this beautiful game!

5/5

Controls easy and fluid or difficult and rigid? Very easy controls (except for the flying barrel thing but that was SUPPOSED to be hard).

5/5

Is it fun? The worlds are so unique from each other and the style of game play changes so frequently that this game never gets stale.

 15/15

68/100 *

It's not difficult to put at least some story in a game and again, that is my most important review category across any game. I still loved this game and Im close to naming it my favorite side scroller of all time bit the story stunk. They intentionally withheld one imo.

Sorry. I understand the effort you put in this review and respect it if you have a low opinion of the game, but I really don't think reviews should have breakdowns like that.

I am sorry but deducting points for Story in a game where everyone clearly knows there isn't going to be one is just stupid.

I don't go into a platformer expecting an amazing story.

This is like saying that Bubble Bobble is a bad game because the story is 2 cartoon dragons jumping upwards while spitting bubbles.

You should definietly post more reviews, can never get too much thought out quality material on here to counteract the oceans of 720p one line posts and the like.

That said, as long as you consider story the most important aspects of a game I will not be reading any of these reviews. 

presentation, value and gameplay are the most fair analisis points that i've seen.

Just because a game is fun doesn't mean it is of good quality on every level. I gave the game a (*) symbol indicating this. It's an incredibly fun game to play and I made a good choice in buying it but my review stands as something that won't be influenced by whether or not something is simply fun.

Again, it's not that difficult to at least put some story elements into the game. This is my review and story is more important than anything else in games to me. You could be more polite than to say your first sentence.

that was horrible.
not all games have stories, you know?