Wasteland 3 - Review @ Kordanor's Gaming Lair

The issue generally is, that you read faster than you speak obviously. My reviews are written first and the narrated for the video. So written reviews generall have the advantage to transport more information in less time. Ofc what you don't get is the visuals and sound, which only a video can really provide.

Indeed. And with written reviews, you also have the advantage that it's easy to skip(or read really quickly) the parts of a review you find not relevant (ie multiplayer) or interesting.
 
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Indeed. And with written reviews, you also have the advantage that it's easy to skip(or read really quickly) the parts of a review you find not relevant (ie multiplayer) or interesting.

On the other hand, because I write them first, and narrate them afterwards, without just using footage and saying "here you can see XYZ", you can in theory download it as mp3 and listen to it as podcast ;)

In fact for games which have some relation to "retro" I "often" send the review to retrokompott.de who feature it in their podcast.
 
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I must be in the minority as I get most of my news in video format nowadays.

Yes some videos can get a bit long but at that point I'm just listening to the audio or prefer a timestamp list. I'd say 10-15 minutes is a good target for most viewers.
 
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I finished the game and enjoyed it. A little better than than the first, but not a classic IMO. Needs some balancing and more things to do with the vehicle, which is basically useless outside of 2 battles.

The game does run smoother since the last couple of patches. I kept it installed and will return to it, only if the DLC adds to the endgame. I'm not a 'replay the whole thing to do some added side quests' kind of player.

Spoilers...

I chose not to side with the former legacy Ranger and figured I'd get screwed, but the ending was actually quite satisfying.

Play it.
 
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The Vehicle is actually quite overpowered. But it's like it either is super strong or it sucks.

The weapons are hit or miss. There are some very powerful weapons, but for the longest time in the game they are rather meh.

True strength for most of the game is just the option to run over enemies.

But yeah...you can only use it in a hand full of fights outside of random encounters (which are mostly won by driving over your enemies)
 
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On the other hand, because I write them first, and narrate them afterwards, without just using footage and saying "here you can see XYZ", you can in theory download it as mp3 and listen to it as podcast ;)
It's a fine line with prepared speech, when does the video content actually add something relevant to what is being said, and when does it come as a distraction? And on the other hand, it must be difficult to stitch relevant videos to the speech (or time the speech to the planned content).

In this review, it seems you have gone as far as timing the video, so that action or interesting NPC dialogs trigger on cue, just at the right moment. Did you spent a lot of time and effort just for the planning of the review, or is that good improvisation?

Regarding the format, I'm fine with videos if they actually show something, not so much when they repeat some random footage in a loop. I think it's easier for many people to just watch than read, actually, it's less straining perhaps? Text reviews are fine too, you can easily pick what you want as @vanedor; said. Note that it's possible to have chapters in the video, or pointers in the notes, to allow viewers to pick what they want (yes, more work! :D).

Podcast on the other hand… I'm not sure. It feels a little weird to listen to something and not using the eyes, as we're used to getting most of the message through the vision channel (and we probably lost the habit of listening to the radio long ago).
 
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Note that it's possible to have chapters in the video, or pointers in the notes, to allow viewers to pick what they want (yes, more work! :D).

Yes, that might be worth considering. I like E-readers, and this guy does extremely in depth reviews which I find useful, but he breaks everything into chapters in the timeline. Quite likely I would have never watched his videos if I couldn't have easily jumped to the parts that interest me.
 
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Did you spent a lot of time and effort just for the planning of the review, or is that good improvisation?
I do the narration first and then I am looking for fitting video snippets. They either come from my Let's Play (in this instance the computer hack getting stuck) or are recorded specifically for the review. As I want to do a German and English Review now and I guess that Germans are more familiar with seeing English footage than International Viewers seeing German footage - and I record my LPs in German, I mostly record everything specifically for the Review now.
In some cases I only need content showing "generally" what I am taking about. Like the intro for example. In other cases there is specific timing required. For example the shot where I am talking about the Character system. In these cases I copy the narrated files over to another PC, have the stuff played, and then record a couple of attempts to click on stuff at exactly the right moment, so all fits together. I first do this for the German Version and if the English Re-Cut is then off by too much, I record the same snippet again with different timings. Timing was exceptionally similar in both of my dual language reviews though. I just had to record some additional fillers for some gaps which was rather trivial.

But you can imagine that this will be much more problematic in games where you cannot replicate situations. Roguelikes for example where you cannot just go back to savepoints. These are then a mix of PITA and much simpler. PITA because its super hard to replicate, much simpler because in some cases you just got to accept that it's not possible to get it better.

Note that it's possible to have chapters in the video, or pointers in the notes, to allow viewers to pick what they want (yes, more work! :D).
Ah, yeah, used that before, but didn't think that it's super useful in Reviews. But for people only interested in the conclusion I could at least add that.

Podcast on the other hand… I'm not sure. It feels a little weird to listen to something and not using the eyes, as we're used to getting most of the message through the vision channel (and we probably lost the habit of listening to the radio long ago).
Totally agree. But it depends on the situation. If you are playing a grindy MMO for example, it works great. Or if you are doing a repetitive job at work. Or if you are on your way to work by bus or car.
 
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Ah, yeah, used that before, but didn't think that it's super useful in Reviews. But for people only interested in the conclusion I could at least add that.
It's probably useful for long reviews or if there are specific chunks that may not be everyone's cup of tea (like the multiplayer part mentioned before), 20 minutes-ish doesn't scare me, I'd rather watch it whole if I'm curious about a game, and I think that's just about the right duration for that sort of video. Now, for long and detailed reviews or retrospectives like NeverKnowsBest's for example, I'm glad I can jump directly to the 1-hour part which interests me most ;)

The "conclusion" bit made me laugh, it reminds me of a few lazy professors who were only reading the conclusion of those long papers we had to write!

Totally agree. But it depends on the situation. If you are playing a grindy MMO for example, it works great. Or if you are doing a repetitive job at work. Or if you are on your way to work by bus or car.
That would be a good way to kill time in those long commutes ;)

Thanks for the insights, and thanks for taking all this time so we can have quality reviews! :)
 
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I played and finished it and I was not a fan. It had some fun moments and areas, but the story never really hooked me and the ending was a disaster. I won't go into spoilers, but I developed two characters through almost the entire length of the game only to have them both "not in my party" because of decisions I made. The problem is I did the exact opposite of what they both said I did or didn't do so in a couple minutes what I'm guessing is either a bug or some of the poorest rpg reactivity I've seen in a while wasted many hours of a run that I hard to force myself to finish in the first place. These games aren't awful, and W3 was miles better than W2, but they aren't a truly worthy successor to the great isometric rpg's of the 80's, 90's or early 2000's.
 
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