It cannot be

....or can it? A new review coming tonight? After months of nothing?

Oh. Hell. Yes.

Finishing that paper certainly got me out of that writing slump, and so I decided it was time to get back to some reviews, starting with one for Onimusha on the PS2. I'm still a little concerned about the overall quality of my review skills, so this one's a bit small so as to ease my way back into it.

There's also a new twist; the review has no score. That's right, I'm ditching the idea of using a score system. I found that in attempting to write several reviews in the last few months, I was more concerned about what score I was going to assign certain games than what I was going to say about them. Far too many gamers look to the final score of a review to be the sole indcator of the quality of a title, and since so many major gaming sites tend to have scores that are skewed on the high side, I have gotten some criticism by friends that my scores are far too low. In fact the very first opinion I ever got about a review was someone telling me that I was an idiot for not liking Max Payne, because said person didn't realize that a 3/5 is not at all a bad score by me. I've also been told that my reviews are sometimes wishy washy, which I beleive may be caused by me trying to fit the writing to the grade.

The solution to all of this seems clear; if there is no score to worry about, then readers have to actually do some reading to judge if they'll like the game, and I can worry about nothing more than what it is I want to discuss about it. I've also tried to shy away from always doing the "all comprehensive" review where every last detail has to be tackled. If the story isn't worth mentioning, or the graphics are just average, I may not give them much attention. Hopefully this will make things a lot less boring.

Will all of this work? I can't really say for sure, but its worth a shot. As always feedback is appreciated, and expect the review by midnight (hopefully!).