One of the most popular forms of content across print media, blogging, YouTubing, streaming, and podcasting is the “review.” Writing a review is a fun, yet challenging process that many creators go through every day. How does one get started writing these then? Do you have to be an expert on that form of media, a veteran with 15 years of more experience discussing these topics? Nope, anybody can write a review! The quality, depth of knowledge, and impact of those reviews may differ, but anybody can write one. My personal favorite kind of review to watch, read, or listen to is a video game review, so this lesson will focus on writing reviews for video games. If you’d like to see a guide on reviewing other media, like movies, books, or music, let me know in the comments below.

The first and arguably easiest step to writing any review of any product is to select what it is that you are reviewing. There are billions of video games in this world, for example, so choosing one to review is not as easy as it sounds. In video game review culture, there are a few major themes among what games get reviews made about them.

The most mainstream kind of review for any medium is reviewing recent releases. The goal of these reviews is in part to capitalize off the relevance in pop culture that any new thing has for its 15 minutes of fame. These reviews are limited, however, by their inability to cover change or improvement over-time by a game or predict the long-term someone playing for more than a month has, since these reviews are popped out within a few weeks of the release. This is especially devastating for video game reviews, as games are (usually) the only medium that consumers can expect to update and change overtime and one of the only mediums where the expected viewing time can be longer than an entire day.

So, another popular style of review is to review retro games, focusing on nostalgic picks or “forgotten gems”. These reviews have the advantage of giving the reviewer and the audience ample time to know the source material, allowing for a far greater understand of the full depth of the game, and cutting any chances of “spoiling” something new. Unfortunately, unless you piggyback hard off a nostalgic classic with a pre-existing fanbase, like anything with the words “Super Mario” stamped onto it, smaller creators will struggle to find an audience for that video.

The final major category of game review is the most recently added: indie game reviews. Much like the film world’s love of potentially pretentious movies made on shoe-string budgets by a tiny team, many of the most cultured gamers and game reviewers are passionate about games that come from developers with nothing but basic coding skills and an idea fueling them. These reviews have the benefit of covering obscure retro games forgotten to time AND new hot darlings that released just hours ago. However, the drawback to indie games is that they are indie games. Even more so at times than the retro game format, a game that one guy made in his garage and posted for free online needs to be something very special to draw attention, if you don’t already have a sizable audience. Popular Let’s Player “Markiplier” uploads videos almost weekly about very small games no one has heard of, but his subscriber count is already in the millions, so its easier for him to pull views in. Regardless, my recommendation is to either write reviews on all three of these categories, giving yourself a varied and diverse portfolio to work with, or finding yourself a niche that you can really lean on, like the infamous “Angry Video Game Nerd” and his focus on retro games building his brand as a stereotyped old nerd, or the reviewer “Caddicarus” and his previous focus on PlayStation games entirely, be it retro or modern.

Once you have decided what game you want to review for whatever reasons above appealed to you, you must now begin researching for and writing the review. There is one major recommendation I have for anyone reviewing a game, that some people really don’t like: take notes. It can hurt the pacing admittedly of your experience, but taking notes of what you like, dislike, notice, or struggle with in your playthrough will build a great foundation for the review. If you have the time and patience, I recommend playing the game multiple times from start-to-end, so you can spend a full playthrough experiencing it like a normal player, then going through again with a reviewer’s eyes and pace.

Once you’ve taken your notes, the research outside of the game begins. A very popular trend in video game reviewing is to spend the introduction of the covering the backstory and development process of the game. This can set the stage for an infamously bad, underperforming cult-classic, or beloved successful game in minutes for your audience. The research here can be simple, sweet, and shallow, covering just the origin of the game, when it was released, and how it sold/was reviewed, or it can be an in-depth video essay, deep diving the developers’ history.

Once you’ve got the research on the backstory to the game and your own thoughts on the game, you can begin writing the review! The script itself should be written in the order you plan on presenting the review. A recommended strategy is to break a review into categories. A few commonly used categories are Development, Plot, Characters, Gameplay, Graphics/Art Style, Sound/Music, and a Conclusion on your final thoughts on the game and a hook for the viewer, similar to the classic five paragraph essays you wrote in Elementary School. This is not the only list of categories that a video game review can have or the only order they can be in, but it represents an order that is popular and logical, especially starting with backstory, characters, and plot, and ending with your final thoughts. It also presents a list of popular and important things to consider discussing in a review.

Using the notes you’ve taken, form your own opinions and critical analysis of those aspects of the game you deem worth noting, flaws and successes alike. It’s recommended to add a bit of humor and personality into the review, as reviews like these generally get better audience retention and reception than purely critical and “lifeless” reviews. Do your best to be fair to the game and think about things from the perspective of both a player and a developer. Finally, end the video with your own conclusions. This conclusion stereotypically ends with a review, like a 5/10 or four stars or something, but this has fallen out of fashion with many audiences and reviewers. The most important aspect of this conclusion is just for you to get your thoughts on the game in a clear and concise summary audiences can walk away with, as well as honestly deciding whether to recommend this piece of media for your audience to check out for themselves.

Do you have any games your interested in reviewing? Or are you not much of a gamer, and would be more interested in me applying this process to film, television, books, or some other form of media? Let me know in the comments below! If you learned anything today or enjoyed what you read, please share this with your friends so we can all be a little bit smarter and nerdier together! As always, I’d also appreciate comments and suggestions from you! If there’s anything you’d like to see in a future post here, let me know!