Writing a review for school

[PLATINUM7]

For an end of year project, I have to review a video game. I am going to review Melee.
I would like to hear your suggestions on what things I should talk about and areas I should cover.
I figure I am already going to talk about things like gameplay, roster and music, but I don't really know what else I should talk about. Would talking about the competitive aspects help, if so should I talk about tournaments and similar things?

All help is appreciated.

 

[Krynxe]

what is the class about, or what does the assignment ask for?

But some general points:
-The complexity of having free-form movement of your character, and how that allows people to express themselves better than most other games.
-How an intended party game became so competitive and complex due to a community that simply loved the game. (comparable to speedrunning)
-Despite a newer game coming out, people stuck with what they liked more. it's amazing to see so many people care more about the small details and intricacies of Melee enough instead of being won over by what many games in popular media would try to appease their audience with: more character, more stages, better graphics, online play, etc

 

[BTmoney]

What level writer are you and what course is this for?

Give us a prompt!

 

[PLATINUM7]

what is the class about, or what does the assignment ask for?

Thanks, you've given me some good points to write about.
In regards to your question, it's for my IT and the assignment is just asking for a detailed game review. The teacher has just given us the task as we have finished all our topics and we have nothing else to do for 4 weeks.

What level writer are you

I usually get high B's and A's. I'm doing an advanced english course for my senior studies. Hope that helps.

 

[TobiasXK]

-How an intended party game became so competitive and complex due to a community that simply loved the game. (comparable to speedrunning)
-Despite a newer game coming out, people stuck with what they liked more. it's amazing to see so many people care more about the small details and intricacies of Melee enough instead of being won over by what many games in popular media would try to appease their audience with: more character, more stages, better graphics, online play, etc

this is all really romanticizing of the competitive scene, but if you're reviewing the game itself, i'd talk more about how the game's mechanics and extremely attentive design made a game that was bound to be loved by everyone.

casual players had and still have tons of fun with it because of really obvious design elements like free movement and ring-out based gameplay. And there's also slightly more subtle things like ledge invincibility and the amazing range of wake-up attacks, which are much more commonly used by more casual players since they're less practiced at teching and also tend to be hella aggressive; that's the kind of thing that stops the average player from feeling helpless or extremely pressured where s/he would be in most traditional fighting games. And beyond that there's even more behind-the-scenes things like crouch canceling and how shielding "buffers" in basically any situation if you hold it during an animation, which are interactions that come up a ton even if the players don't realize what's happening; i even see stray l-cancels in basically any match where i watch two non-technical players from my friend group, just as a product of trying to shield when they realize they're going to whiff—which is presumably the "safety-net" that the designers intended to create with z-canceling in ssb64.

and it's because of this really good design and detailed set of mechanics that the super-enamored more experimentative and sort of zealous players were able to discover so much and create such an amazing competitive scene. there's definitely stuff in competitive melee that's extremely bizarre or unintended or more often just unforseeable from a design perspective, but the majority of it is just the core design of the game, which somehow translates really well at every level of play from kids party to EVO. and that's i think for a lot of people the really special thing about melee.