GamesFirst! Mailbag

Under The Magnifying Glass

Rick Fehrenbacher

I am generally a old timer gamer who tends to look at professional reviewing magazines like IGNPC and Andrenalin Vault for reviews since they tend to have staff that are expert in looking at every facet of a piece of software that has been released without pissing the whole point. However I realise there are other good sites out there too.

One site that I know is renowned for completely missing the point is Daily Radar. In fact is has almost become a joke with gamers now :) And I have never heard of your site before but your Alice review is almost definitely going to place you in the same league. Your references to lack of gameplay might stem from the fact that you probably didnt even attempt to play on 'nightmare' level which I admit has been badly named since it is the level on which the game plays best - the difficulty is too low on the others to offer much competition and thus what you might call lack of gameplay.

However if you want to 'learn' how to write a good review, you should check out IGNPC's review to understand how it is done and maybe email some of them to give you tips. Also if you make contraversial statements such as :

'Perhaps most problematic is the game’s use of Wonderland. Look, Alice in Wonderland is one of the most beloved of all children’s books, a work of infinite linguistic ingenuity, and a true family classic. It’s also a sometimes disturbing and creepy account of a young girl’s psychosexual development written by a pedophile. Hey, that’s weird enough, and is actually a lot deeper and darker than the game Alice’s Wonderland. The Alice team seems to have thought Wonderland would be more "edgy" if everyone was mean or crazy, and if Alice dressed up like a Wednesday Addams/Winona Ryder circa Beetlejuice clone. Ah, the subtlety'

try and at least properly spell the word 'paedophile'... that really does ruin the whole thing. Especially since that comment itself demeans your whole review since you have just made a public attack of a childrens author where there is absolutely no evidence to support such a comment. 'Her psychosexual development' - that is simply a view of yours and most people dont see anything sexual about the view at all.

Consult any American dictionary, and you’ll find that we’ve spelled "pedophile" correctly. Don’t go getting all Anglocentric on us and require the English-speaking world to adhere to British standards. And before you laud Carroll too much, do a little research. Carroll was a mathematician, writer, and photographer. He especially enjoyed taking photos of little girls in suggestive poses, and most of all he loved to photograph Alice. Yes, that Alice. And to prove just how scary he was, here’s an excerpt from a 1998 article that revisits Carroll’s controversial photography upon the occasion of Mark Hipper’s show at London’s National Gallery, which also featured photos of naked children:

"What exactly did these children mean to him, and how did Carroll himself affect their lives? There is an undertow of narrative in the exhibition, from the day Carroll first spotted Alice, then aged three, younger sister Edith and older sister Ina in the Deanery at Christ Church. He noted the date in his diary with one of those "white stones" that marked what for him was a personal red-letter day. His technical proficiency as a photographer developed as Alice grew bigger. His feelings for her deepened, gathered in complexity, subsumed themselves in those wonderful strange stories, Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, ending in an inevitable tragedy. He did not attend Alice’s wedding in the end.

. . .

In 1879, Carroll’s diaries show what Colin Ford describes as "a positive crescendo of activity" in photographing young girls naked. Frances Henderson was "in her favourite dress of nothing"; next day, little Leila Taylor "in jersey and bathing drawers". Then Frances alone, "lying on a blanket, naked as usual". On July 25, his model was Evelyn Hatch "naked - a kind of photograph I have often done lately". He repaid his models with kisses, taking them up on his knee to do so, and in fact the lips of many of the children in his photographs seem pursed ready to give or take a kiss." -- Daily Mail & Guardian

Rick Still Has Fans

like your review style and have agreed with you on every review yet. Short, sweet, descriptive and to the point. Somehow you also seem to understand the meaning of the word grammar, which I feel most Web game reviewers don't.

Well, back to playing NOLF...

Oh, the irony!

Blink 182 in THPS 2

Thanks for sending this our way. We’ll make sure people see it.