Do reviews need summaries?

Summary

I have never been huge on giving summaries of the games I review. I kind of come from the perspective that most readers of a review will have at least a passing understanding of what the product being reviewed should be about. I always do include a bit of a Cliff's Notes version on the story in case they don't, but I figure that previews of these products are there. If a reader wants to go deeper on a product, I always figure that they can go to these to find this information out.

Now, I guess the first thing I should explain is that I do not think a small summary of a game's story is a bad thing. As a matter of fact I would say that at least a small run down of the plot of a game is key to any good review, unless you want to risk the review having no draw to a reader who has never heard of the product you are reviewing.

I think that summaries of a game's control and mechanics are also key to a good review.

What I hate are reviews that have more summary of these elements, then they have criticism of the product being reviewed. Recently I have run into a few reviews that had this problem.

Dave Halverson's recent review of Brutal Legend is one such review. Now, Brutal Legend is a game that does need a bit of a summary to review, simply because of the fact that Tim Schafer and company did not do a great job of advertising the different mechanics contained in the game.

What I do not like about this review is that Halverson simply gives explanations of these mechanics and the story and theme elements of this game without giving much actual critique of them.

Of course he also gave the game a 10+... so I guess any critiques he had would probably have boiled down to "and this is awesome!"

While the review is for a movie, Lisa Schwarzbaum's review of Everybody's Fine spends more time telling us the plot of the film then it does telling us her thoughts on it. Now, I tend to really enjoy her reviews, but isn't the point of a review to tell the reader a critics opinion of a product?

It seems to me that summaries can be a great thing in a review, but they can also be used as a crutch by writers if they decide to simply restate what is in a product, rather than actually have to spend some time contemplating and then verbalizing their opinions on something.

What is your opinion on summaries? Do you like them, hate them, think they are a necessary evil?

(6)

Aaron Thomas

December 07, 2009

I think moderation is the key. Don't tell me that a game's story is unimportant and then give me a paragraph summarizing it. The same goes for control schemes. I used to detail the entire control scheme, and then, thanks to peer reviews at GameSpot, I learned that this was a waste of everyone's time.

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Michael Bradley

While I don't mind 3-4 page reviews that really get down into the details of the game (IGN reviews) I appreciate short, scoreless reviews as well. From a writing standpoint, I think it's more of a challenge to present your thoughts on a game, without rambling too much, and leaving it scoreless. With how media rich the web is today (images, videos, game play footage, etc) it's easier than ever for consumers to really get a good feel for games without even having to play them.

Nick Gates

December 08, 2009

My question: Do summaries need reviews at this point?

In no offense to the writers offering their critical analysis and doing their hard work to bring us a review, my position is that reviews are becoming increasingly irrelevant, not because reviews are irrelevant (even though I myself don't read them very much as of late), but because that is all that the ADD Internet generation typically consumes nowadays. Most often, they get turned off by the three pages of an IGN review, for instance, and flip to the third page where they read the Closing Comments and the summary and the score.

For me personally, I don't read reviews because I actively dislike what people are reduced to in face of them and because I like to experience that for myself; thus, I myself do not need this review. And for the people who do, summaries are a quick and easy way to convey the information can be conveyed to the reader. They are a crutch simply because people don't consume information they used to. Since people are consuming more information nowadays than twenty years ago, condensing this information is an easy way of helping the reader. If I do read a review, which is rare at this point, all I need is the summary, but for the writer, it is just a simple way of aiding the oftentimes lazy reader. Summaries are disingenuous to the editorial and represent the decreasing necessity of deeper critical analysis nowadays, which is kind of sad as a commentary on the state of good review-writing. As much as I want to say their stupid and unnecessary because people are simply getting lazier, look at me , I don't read the review. My intentions may be slightly more noble than some, but I think they're helpful for pockets of people who are growing away from reading longform critical opinion, as sad as that is.

Did that make sense? I feel like it didn't...

Frank Anderson

I think you made sense Nick. You hit a good point in that different people are going to need different information on a game.

I doubt GamePro readers want as in depth a review as IGN readers do.

I guess I just feel like every bit of exposition in a review should be leading into or expounding on the reviewers actual opinions of the product.

If you leave the movie review, you will see that there are only two critical points (DeNiro's character is not realistic and he is too good an actor to be seen as this character... are at least the only real critiques I read in the piece).

It felt like she was just padding the review to the size her editor wanted, rather than take the time to explain her opinions in more depth.

I guess I just read so many game reviews and movie reviews that this type of lazy writing drives me a bit nuts... but then again I am not the best writer in the world, so I will not throw too many stones.

Bryan Glynn

December 12, 2009

I feel like some of us are on different pages of what's actually being discussed here. The "summary" you're referring to is that of the game's plot within the review - not the summary of the review, right Frank?

If so, I do agree that the inclusion of any exposition or plot points in reviews is generally unnecessary, and I always find myself skipping over them to get to the actual critiquing. No one is reading a review to get a background of the plot; either we know it already, or we'll wait to experience the story when we play the game.

As for review summaries, I have no problem with them. If you're going to give an ambiguous metric at the end of your review to appease the lazy, you might as well briefly summarize your review as well. I can attest to skipping to the "Closing Comments" of IGN's reviews from time to time.

No, I am just referring to plot and control summary. Both can be key, but they are often used for padding a review rather than as part of the actual critique of the review. If the reviewer simply tells the plot to the game or the way the controller is used without giving their thoughts on these elements, they are kind of undermining the point of writing a review.

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