Introduction

Review: Dell XPSGen2
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Brandon: In my opinion, your entry desperately needs a proper intro that introduces the product being reviewed. It would also be nice if you had headers for your paragraphs, so the header for your first paragraph would be something like “Chassis” and your next group of paragraphs “Display” etc. I also think you should provide your own benchmarks instead of relying on someone else’s. You could’ve used free programs like 3DMark, PCMark, and SiSoft Sandra for that purpose. A little more depth would have been good as well, for instance, you never listed the complete specs of the system being reviewed – components like the HDD and CPU were left out completely.

Overall it’s a decent user review or mblog post, but not up to the level of a professional review, more depth and a coat of polish is needed.



Space: The final frontier by cptcaveman
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Brandon: With comments like “There were many set backs such as having a black person and female at that as an officer, a Russian, an Asian pilot, an alien science officer, but despite all this he still kept going on and on” you really do come across as a caveman. The original Star Trek series was groundbreaking in this regard, it wasn’t a setback, and I think Gene Roddenbery would agree. I also don’t see how your entry will inspire game developers, as you don’t provide any feedback on how their games can be improved. For an excellent example of this, check out millroy’s post “Dear Star Trek Legacy”.



FPS Girl in an MMORPG World
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Jakub: I continually find myself surprised by this entry. Given that I’ve never seen anything you’ve written before, that may be an odd fact but it’s best explained by your inconsistency. You’re hit and miss on the humor, batting about .500. Lots of foul outs that amuse but don’t inspire a smile, a couple of strikes, and a couple of decent hits. Of more concern is your inability to look past “I”. Granted, this is a personal experience entry, but you really make it far too personal by constantly talking about yourself. Try talking through your character. Your grammar isn’t bad, but you do make some strange choices. One afternoon, at my local store, I picked up a copy of a computer journalism magazine known as “PC Gamer”. “PC Gamer”? Do we really need the quotes? Are you contemptuous of PC Gamer, or simply introducing it as a marvelous new oddity? You’re just going to make poor Vederman cry if you keep writing like that, he’s a sensitive guy you know.



Tomorrow Comes Today
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Jakub: I respect your writing in a technical sense and you do a good job in avoiding a rant, but I just can’t buy into your argument at all. Your logic is sketchy at best and you don’t support your statements with any kind of serious authority. Gaming is more expensive now than before? Are you certain about that? I remember my parents paying almost $5000 for a 486DX/33 with 8MB of RAM, a 15” CRT, a 1MB S3 video card and a whopping 120MB hard drive, just over a decade ago. You can get a Dell XPS 710 with a quad-core CPU/GPU setup for that kind of money now. Game prices have remained remarkably flat over the past fifteen years. The in-store cost of a PC game lags significantly behind inflation. In your paragraph about Gears of War, you effectively punch a huge hole in your argument yet never address it. I’ll give a B- for the writing but an F for logic.