vonFiedler's Game Reviews: Duke Nukem Forever

[vonFiedler]

So when I'm not trying to make my own video games I do like to play them, and to not feel like a total lazy asshole I decided I might as well cobble together game reviews of the things I play. Who knows, maybe some day it could get me a job or at least the penny money from youtube sponsorship. I realize there's alot of competition in the online game review market, but I for one am a little tired of game reviewers who dislike entire genres of games or are willfully ignorant about all but their favorite series.

Please leave constructive criticism, if you look at some of my old videos you'll notice that some of them are shit and I can still get better.

I'll keep this thread updated each week, but games I really want to play don't come out each week so requests are as good as putting names in a hat honestly.

L.A. Noire
Brink
inFamous 2
Duke Nukem Forever

 

[ivar]

mean, but honest constructive criticism: your voice is tolerable, but your appearance doesn't work. i'm not saying you're ugly, but you're unkempt and it takes away from your presence as a reviewer. these little clips are meant to be entertaining, and an important aspect of that is the charisma of the lead (i.e. you) and how you dress and look is an important aspect of that. it's one thing to look as though you don't give a shit about how you look, it's another thing to actually not give a shit. how you look is important.

for example, AVGN is not a pretty boy, but his look works for his genre. though video game reviewers are not mean to blow anyone's balls off in terms of good looks, they should look more presentable and at least be quasi-character actors. AVGN works well because james rolfe dresses as this absurd caricature of a nerd (with pocket protectors and all). if the dressing and looks part is not your thing, then just record your voice a la zero punctuation or even critical with a video montage.

good luck with your endeavor!!!

 

[vonFiedler]

I'm just a little confused, unkempt in which way? I actually changed shirts before filming (and the shirt in question is brand new), and I wore the jacket because I get routinely complemented for it. If my camera was good enough that you could see the shitty beard I'm trying to grow that'd be one thing, but I have reputation among my friends for being a sharp dresser.

I'm not a beautiful man but I've never been called unkempt before.

I do know I can stand to be more charismatic, performing in front of a camera is a weird thing for me and I much prefer an audience.

 

[Umbreon Dan]

i think it's the lighting. you'd look fine if you sorted that out, imo.

 

[VKCA]

At times the background music got kind of loud.
Outside that, I liked the review, as I was very curious about the game.

 

[vonFiedler]

i think it's the lighting. you'd look fine if you sorted that out, imo.

Fuck me I didn't even consider the lighting. I'm such a fucking dunce. Well, I'll look up some tips on good lighting.

 

[Mentlegen]

Fuck me I didn't even consider the lighting. I'm such a fucking dunce. Well, I'll look up some tips on good lighting.

The background looks like you filmed the review in a hoarder's house. If you look at popular youtubers (sxephil, RWJ, tobuscus, etc) they all have very clean, simple backgrounds. I suggest just finding a blank wall, put a poster or two behind it, and film in front of that.

Also, watch the volume. the "what is love" montage is blaring in comparison to the rest of the review

 

[ivar]

its not just the lighting, though yeah that could use improvement. by unkempt i didn't mean you looked like you rolled around in mud before you shot the vid, but you don't take some random jacket that got you compliments with while wearing some other random dress shirt. i know they're probably your "best" shirts and you like them, but you just don't look all that good.

of course, i'm also not implying that you need to look like you're from a GQ mag (in fact, that just wouldn't suit you), but you need to find your "look". james rolfe did it with AVGN and trust me, a huge reason he's successful is because of his dress. the perfect white shirt, with the perfect glasses and the ideal look for a nerd--not actually ugly, but not a pretty boy either. he's just right.

i won't pretend i'm some veteran in the field, but i have done some commercial work, and i've seen people audition for roles and despite their talent and intelligence, a lot of the time i discredit them because they don't "look" the part. that's why leading men are classically handsome and comedians are funny-looking.

find some chick friends and ask them to help you out with finding the perfect gear for your show. as for your charisma, i don't think you're a bad speaker, but your look is really detracting from what charisma may lurk beneath the incongruent combination of jacket and dress shirt. trust me, it doesn't look cool.

sorry for the harshness, but i'm trying to give legit advice instead of hand-holding "yeah it's okay maybe the lighting could be better". yeah, the lighting could be better, but that's not the real problem. everything looks kinda lame, including you (again, sorry you might be a cool guy) and for that reason i didn't even bother watching. you need to reel me in with presentation and then i'll be interested in the content. it's how we are.

 

[vonFiedler]

Incongruent is what I was going for. AVGN may be a perfect little package of nerdiness, but he's about the closest thing to a character I know of in internet review circles. I didn't think "What good character design" when I started watching guys like The Nostalgia Critic, Linkara, and Angry Joe, but after I had come to enjoy their work and respect their opinions I noticed that what they wore was unique and consistent, and yes, incongruent. I know the Nostalgia Critic intentionally made a character with a unique look, but most of the popular online reviewers look like I could have pulled them out of the a group of nerds from the nearby community college cafeteria, and that works for them.

I'm not saying my presentation is great... in addition to the lighting I need to change my set and I already know how I'm gonna do that. As for chick friends, well my chick friends already are the ones who help me shop.

I'm not gonna say that I've never out of morbid curiosity checked some random youtube video to find some guy in a room with no lights, webcam zoomed in on his face and muttering, and thought, "I'll start giving a fuck when you do". But then again, everyone I follow online I found through word of mouth. They talk about how word of mouth made them popular in their blogs. And if I'm worth it, it's gonna be no different for me. The people who know me know that I know video games, and they are where it all starts. Not with a shirt and a jacket. At least I don't think so. But you are harsh, so I could really use the same harshness applied to the rest of the video if you wouldn't mind (most of the video is game clips).

 

[Umbreon Dan]

i really didn't mean "yeah it's okay maybe the lighting could be better". i meant, having watched about a minute of it (my speakers are not currently plugged in!), the one thing that jumped out at me was that he had obviously made no attempt at good lighting, and it showed.

from what i've seen, the lighting is definitely the biggest problem. fix that, and then decide if you need to change your look.

 

[THE_IRON_...KENYAN?]

this is a really awkward thread

 

[norulz]

are you gonna take requests for vidyagames

 

[vonFiedler]

Yep. I'd like to be reviewing new games, but more games come out a week than I can review so requests are helpful.

 

[norulz]

you should review l4d2 if you don't mind reviwing a game 2 years old (it still gets DLCs all time, every few weeks)

 

[wickdaggler]

yeah like some over people said lighting could be a bit better, and the noise from the game, especially when you cut to gameplay, tended to overrule your voice: you're supposed to be the focal point of this video; put the volume to such a point that you can *barely* hear it, or to a point that it complements your voice rather than competes with it.

also please don't ask for subscribers and for people to "show this video to your friends" because honestly every youtube reviewer does that and it makes them look like total douchbags imo. It would be a great gimmick for you not to do that.

 

[vonFiedler]

I do mind, but if you just want my honest opinion on the game I can give it. It's a very good sequel to a very good game. Some people complained about it's worthiness as a sequel, but honestly it's hard for me to go back and play L4D without the new special infected, especially when playing as the infected there's pretty much only one strategy (boomer to set up hunter + smoker) whereas strategy in L4D2 changes depending on what infected are out. It's one of the best cooperative games out there, and as a party game it's one of the best ever. For my 21st birthday I had friends from as far as the next state, two 360s were brought over and we just played L4D2 all night while getting drunk. I might not give it a 5 out of 5 because full price is alot to pay for a game without single player, but L4D2 is a game anyone with friends should play once in their life, so I'd say 4/5 (wide appeal).

also please don't ask for subscribers and for people to "show this video to your friends" because honestly every youtube reviewer does that and it makes them look like total douchbags imo. It would be a great gimmick for you not to do that.

The douchiest thing is that it works. I don't ever need to have the most popular game channel on youtube, god knows I'm not good enough at CoD for that. But like I said earlier, word of mouth makes the internet go round.

 

[Xaqwais]

I think you did a pretty dang good job for the first time. Most of the stuff that bugged me has been noted (lighting, music being too loud at some points) so I won't go into it too deeply.

It wasn't perfect, their are some parts that seem to be dragging, but for a first video in this style I think you did really good. The frame of your video could be adjusted a bit, but since you're constantly going to game footage it's not too big a deal. I'm looking forward to more. It gave me a pretty good understanding of a game I embarrassingly didn't know much about.

For other games, maybe Brink? I'm curious if it's worth it and it didn't come out too long ago or anything.

 

[vonFiedler]

Brink it is then

The goal of Brink is to get from Objective A to Objective B as fast as possible, so technically it's well designed if Objective A is Poor Implementation and Objective B is Frustration.

I had a director this time to try and avoid this stuff, but the problems are pretty obvious. The angle and zoom aren't good, and the lighting still isn't perfect (but there was an actual effort this time, and it look soooo much better). My biggest problem in this video is terrible posture, I'll be sitting up straight from now on.

I realize I'm something of a hypocrite after docking Left 4 Dead 2 a point in this very thread, but I've thought about it for this review and I do take it back. Left 4 Dead 2 is an awesome game, and it deserves a 5 out of 5.

 

[norulz]

liked. you're a solid review. i would say the lighting isn't perfect but it's considerably better than it was on your last video, i got a good laugh at the OBJECTIVES rant and the overall variety within the video

 

[Hipmonlee]

I preferred the setting of the first one, it seemed more natural to have you sitting at your console talking about the game..

Have a nice day.

 

[vonFiedler]

That's what I thought, but I've seen alot more reviewers find success with the simple white couch approach. I might experiment with just sprucing up my desk area, which was pretty bare except for a few hard to see knick-knacks.

 

[norulz]

I might not give it a 5 out of 5 because full price is alot to pay for a game without single player

uh, it does have single player, unless you mean single as in 'you alone without the other 3 survivors' in which case the name left -4- dead wouldn't make muche sense, not to mention there's already a mutation called last man on earth out in which you play alone

also i just noticed i commented asking you to review l4d2 -again-, i forgot i requested this at some point earlier, just ignore that

 

[vonFiedler]

I did change my mind about that, as I said above. However, L4D doesn't have a single player campaign, and is marketed entirely as a multiplayer game. Brink was marketed as a game that "blurs the line between single and multiplayer", something it fails at due to almost unplayable single player.

 

[Firestorm]

It's really hard to find people who will sit and watch a 7.5 minute video review from someone they don't already follow in the internet age. Cut it down. Your intro video shouldn't be 30 seconds. Ideally your entire video should be <3 minutes.

 

[wickdaggler]

This one seemed like it had a lot more polish, it was really good. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
The one issue I had was that you didn't really outline what the game was about as much as you did with LA Noire, and the moments when you raged against the game seemed a bit... forced?

Not big issues though, it was enjoyable to watch, and sort of informative