Article depth/complicatedness

The thread on the Prey review sparked a bit of debate on how heavy the language should get in regards to both technical details and thesauruses, so this is the thread in which you can post what you want more of. More detail or less detail, more flamboyance or less bull****, more explanations of terms or things explained more easily for newbs to understand. The debate is here and the review is here.

Personally my stance on this is that big words are great so long as they're limited enough that not understanding them doesn't get in the way. It made me smile broadly just to even see the word schadenfreude(shamefull joy) used in a review, but once it gets to a stage where the majority of people are having serious trouble keeping the reading smooth it needs to be limited a bit. Saying that, the reviews shouldn't be limited to words no longer then 2 sylabels, things shouldn't be dumbed down. There just needs to be a balance whereby the less wordy folks can still get on the with the review and the rest can still get more out of the articles.

As for level of details, again I'm for lot's of it. If things are going to take too long to explain then articles explaining technical stuff for those intrested are supurb, but personally I think things like a comparison of sound effect types in a review can be very helpfull. The recent Core 2 review really stuck out to me as being a great example of a review where you could quickly get to the juicy results if you wanted to, or if you were so inclined(and I was) you could read through all the technical stuff explaining why the latest piece of fantastic kit works so well.

I guess it's all just about balance.

So, voice your opinions and counter-opinions

 

I do agree with the complicatedness of the Prey article. The last page was far too over the top, a page on graphical performance, yes.

A page on audio performance? No. It sounded like the reviewer was an agent on commission for Creative and trying to sell the X-Fi for a game which he himself didn't really like that much. Apart from the audio...

 

As someone who mainly reads the articles and lurks around the forums i felt the need to chime in on this particular issue.

While reading the prey review it stood out to me that it was not written by any of the normal staff, the style, pace, and even the sentence structure seemed different. When i got to the very minimal graphics section i though...how odd usually they focus on that.

However, having read the explanation i agree that it was warranted.
The game was nothing new, nothing amazing, and nothing we all have not seen in 8 pages of benchmarks before. I was for once glad that they did not go into redundant detail about an engine we have already read so much about. While graphics are all nice and good they are second to actual game play(yes, it's true).

As for the audio, it was refreshing to see someone go into detail about what could have otherwise been a filler section. The utilization of the X-FI hardware was something many games lately have not done(imho). The detailed explanation about how the sound added to the game play and enhanced the playability of an otherwise confusing game was extremely helpful, exactly what i want out of a review.

Well I've said my share. What do you think?

P.S. click-to-large screenshots would have helped the article.

 

Well Xfi is the ONLY thing games are coded for now (other than standard dolby/dts) so an audio section was gonna comment on whether it works well or not. It's not like there's an alternative like NV vs ATI.

 

*comment* bindi, not give us a lecture, just say if there were any problems and what worked well, not something waaaay OTT like that.

 

I don't want to detract from the original topic here, but if I'd spent £100+ on a sound card, I'd want to know what kind of benefits I was going to get in games. Creative's biggest competitor is on-board sound and there are games that utilise Creative's technology, showing benefits to buying a descrete sound card.

Sound is something that is not really talked about often enough, IMO, yet it contributes as much to the gaming experience as the graphics - if not more. Personally, I think it's worth talking about in future game reviews (i.e. are there benefits to having an X-Fi card?) in much the same way that the AGEIA PhysX card will be if the technology takes off. We'd definitely be covering more sound card reviews if there were more competitors in the marketplace.

 

I have to agree that the sound needs to be covered. Some obviously felt a page was excessive, I didn't, but even just half a page would be enough to explain to people quickly what the sound in the game is like and whether it makes use of a decent sound card or not.

 

Fine, I get the hint, I'll shut up then.

 

I'm not hinting anything - I'm trying to explain the reasons why we included that page. You're more than entitled to disagree with me if you think we're wrong - after all, this is a public forum and we welcome people's opinions providing they're constructive.

 

I agree with Speck, I didn't realize that games were not being optimized for the X-fi and I found that an interesting bit of the article. I have an X-fi card, but unfortunatly it's feeding two cheap speakers and I really can't tell the difference between it and on-board. Nice to know that when I finally get good speakers the performance will be there.

 

Removed

 

Pardon?

 

Don't get me wrong, I can read that review and understand what is being said, but it's chocka with space-fillers. It's akin to when I was at school and the homework set was a 500-word essay on, I don't know, the mating habits of tree monkeys or something. You'd get to 400 words or so, then perhaps 430. Then you'd be rifling through a thesaurus to see where you could expand certain sentences and finishing up with 503 words. Then I could go out on my bike and ride through fields of corn.. ah, them were the days.. ahem, sorry, where was I? Ah yes..

I like to read spoken words. No-one I know uses words like 'sololiquy' or 'adjunct' in conversation. The first sentence turned me off. I remember a reviewer that wrote for Edge magazine and I'd leave his views to himself as I found it full of too many 'examples of the English language and how to use them'.

My 2p, take it or leave it

 

There's really no need for you to be obtuse like that. You'd be complaining if an article had no screenshots and mentioned absolutely nothing about the game's graphical performance on various graphics cards, so how does the Creative X-Fi coverage differ in any way? Of course, an expensive graphics card provides (imho) a greater benefit in games than an expensive sound card but for anyone who purchases one, they should be given the opportunity to see how their new kit will improve their gaming experience.

Anyway all this ranting is directing my cerebellum into a state of utter discombobulation so I'll attempt to staunch this torrent of circumlocutionary floccinaucinihilipilification forthwith.

 

TBH the reason you think their commissioning for creative is because that's all the sound section goes on about

However, their the only competitor in performance sound, no-one else makes decent sound cards, its a 1 horse race, unlike in the GFX market where you can compare ATI vs Nvidia, there's no competition in the sound market atm

 

I agree, it did seem a bit not-so-bit-tech (prey). It's one of the first articles I've skipped most pages and jumped straight to the 'discuss'.

 

ERK! Sorry lazlow, I edited instead of quoted you!!! Grrr...stupid VB buttons. Now I forgot what I was going to say.


Aha! Now I remember.

@Kenco: your 2p is always taken, that's why I wanted to request a more proper, thought out response here Your explanation makes perfect sense.

@Lazlow: There is a reason it seemed less bit-techy, mostly because Lance is a freelance writer, so he's not one of us in the editorial staff. His style is remarkably different from all of us, though...I think in part, that's just due to experience with your editor and your readers. Sometimes, you look at a page and say "this just seems too short..." and part of the experience is knowing whether your readers would just rather have it be short

 

n0000000000000000000b

To contribute more to the thread, I'd say that I'm in support of quite complex language being used in this sort of situation. As a very subjective thing (unlike the mathematical benchmarks that a processor review might entail), someone reviewing a game might need to use a little more vocabulary to describe what they think. Yes, I can see where you're coming from - some parts were a little over the top - but it's definitely not bad to use a wider range of words.

P.S. specofdust: complicatedness = complexity

 

A broad vocabulary isnt a gift that most people possess... and those that have heard the words, often misuse them

My position is if you have to use a thesaurus more than five times, the language is too over the top