Talk:Harold Halibut

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Harold Halibut/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Vrxces (talk · contribs) 00:15, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: PresN (talk · contribs) 20:28, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Review time! I review by writing my thoughts on the article out as I read through the article.

• Lede seems short; it also doesn't really summarize the gameplay (no mention of the point-and-click tasks or overhearing conversations)
• "Players navigate the interior districts of the Fedora" - you haven't said what the Fedora is; presumably the ship, but you have to introduce that outside of the lede as well.
• How big is this ship?
• "Fedora I... was sent... encounters... is stranded" - you have three tenses in two sentences; given that all of this is backstory, it should probably all be past tense
• Is there no explanation in-game for how a generation spaceship was launched in the 1970s with modern technology (PDAs)?
• "The player is Harold" - the player character
• "including their views on whether to leave the Fedora or stay" - aren't they stranded at the bottom of an ocean? How would they leave the Fedora?
• "and return to home is discovered" - is home Earth?
• " Harold is placed in a unique position to make a difference in the future of the ship and its populace." - this reads like marketing copy that is trying not the spoil the plot; what does he do that changes the story?
• If there are six chapters, what distinguishes them? I'm not getting a sense of the overall plot here. For a game that the first Steam review calls "95% plot, 5% gameplay", I would expect a much deeper discussion of what the plot actually is.
• Does he discover fishy before or after he "make[s] a difference in the future of the ship"? If before, this should be in chronological order.
• "Harold also discovers the original mission of the Fedora may not have been as essential as its inhabitants believe." - what does this mean?
• If the devs started in 2012, and the game came out in 2024, isn't that 12 years of development, not 10?
• "Originally conceived to be more reliant on puzzles, Hekimoğlu stated that this approach was abandoned..." - as worded, this says that Hekimoğlu was conceived to be reliant on puzzles. Maybe "The game was originally conceived to be more reliant on puzzles, but according to Hekimoğlu this approach was abandoned..."
• Steam is a salesfront, not a platform; was the game released for PC, Mac, Linux?
• It feels odd to have the pre-release festivals only mentioned at the very end, instead of around the time of the kickstarter in development.
• Also, it couldn't have been announced at 2024 Gamescom if it had been show at festivals for seven years at that point. Was it just the release date was announced?
• Avoid single-sentence paragraphs
• You've linked the second instance of Edge instead of the first
• There's two big problems with the reception section. The first is an overreliance on 1 or 2-word quotes in every sentence- these should be paraphrased in general. This dovetails into the second problem, which is that you're making each sentence be for one review, so it's just "Review 1 said X. Review 2 said Y. Review 3 said Z.". Try to combine similar thoughts by reviewers together into sentences to avoid that. This isn't a deal-breaker for GAN, but it would make the section, especially the big narrative paragraph, much more readable.
• Sources seem fine. --PresN 20:28, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your review comments, really appreciate it. On the plot comments, agree that there's a slick and frustrating vagueness to how I've written the plot section that could be improved. Unfortunately, that is because the sources, understandably for reviewers faced with a game that features hours of cutscenes, largely avoid trying to wrestle with what is going on in the game. Given unsourced WP:VGPLOT is fine, and that the game's strong plot focus warrants it, this is an instance where I may as well just play the game and flesh out this section. I don't see that taking profoundly long but if it's inappropriate to leave a review in limbo for a while, happy to discuss. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 23:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

No worries about time; I have a review that's been poking along for months- as long as you're putting a good-faith effort towards working on it, I'm not bothered about deadlines. And yes, VG plot sections don't need references, for exactly this reason- sources (reviews) aren't going to give full plot summaries to use as citations, so you have to just implicitly source it to the game in order to accurately represent the story. --PresN 00:21, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

@Vrxces: Hey, reminder of this. --PresN 02:05, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Apologies, I've had some personal issues come up. Please feel free to close for now. I value your input and will certainly update it before renominating. Apologies and I do sincrrrly appreciate your review. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 02:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Okay, closing for now. --PresN 13:03, 27 May 2024 (UTC)