Jerry Buckner & Gary Garcia has worked together for the longest time and is well known for their National hit tune "Pac-Man Fever". My father brought up that song very often when I talked about arcades or Pac-Man and I heard the song a lot from watching videogame history documentaries. Buckner has informed everyone on their site that Gary Garcia has, sadly, passed away yesterday (Thursday) at the age of 63. I couldn't find any information on how he passed, but the fact that he did is sad enough. Though the duo, who are well known for their novelty albums based off of arcade games of the 80's, hasn't been consistently on scene in the music industry the past 20 years, they did do a re-recording of their songs in the late 90's early 2000. I heard Pac-Man Fever was added in Rock Band recently this past summer, but I'm not sure on that. The last song they wrote and recorded was actually in the past 2 months called "Found Me The Bomb" done for game review site "Giant Bomb". Giant bomb will be distributing the song for the community on their official site. RIP Gary Garcia.
Source: Youtube Channel DeadHippieMan
Official Site: http://bucknergarcia.com/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckner_%26_Garcia
Giant Bomb: http://www.giantbomb.com/
As for the change in style of reviews, I want to change the way I review games. I currently grade based on: Graphics, audio, gameplay, and then sometimes story & replay value leading to a vague score (though I usually balance it out to give the overall score the points I really wanted to give). I've come up with a new system last night that might work better as I found that some games that look good, and perhaps even play well may not be that fun. On the other hand, there might be a game that looks terrible and lacks quality but is a lot of fun to play. Sure I separate that between Graphics/Audio and Gameplay, but they're rather general and I feel like I'm leaving a lot out. So here's the new style I'm going to try out:
Aesthetics - Graphics, Audio, and Presentation: So instead of separating graphics and audio, I've put them together as they work hand-in-hand. This category affects: art assets such as textures, sprites, models, effects, user-interface, menus and how they affect the game; audio such as music, sound effects, volume balance, engineering, and the way they affect the game.
Buttons - Controls: This category will judge various hardware to software implementation that affects the gameplay such as key mapping, character/object controls, interface, motion control, ease of use, and/or bad design. I'm mostly taking apart what I used to dump everything in "Gameplay" and looking at it a bit more organized.
Concept & Content - Design: These will be the core aspects that determine what the game is like and how well they work. Story, level design, goals/objectives, core concept, modes, characters, innovation etc. will be discussed and dissected to determine what made the game good or bad.
Duration - Pacing, length, and Replay Value: This is one I don't talk about enough in my reviews. If the game has great replay value, I'll add in Replay Value; however, all games have a pacing or duration that makes or break them. Some games feel like they're dragging on and on and makes it feel more tiresome than entertaining. Other games has the player progress through the game seamlessly. And then there are some that have such great replay value that you'd play it over and over again.
Fun - First impression, Entertainment Value, and Last Impression: I honestly think a lot of people (sometimes critics too, but not all) forget about this when judging a game. I hear a game reviewed based solely by its "graphics" or "innovation" so often that it makes me wonder why some of these people even play videogames to begin with. This category determines my first reactions to the game, whether I enjoyed it or was more frustrated, and how I felt after finishing it, if I complete it at all.
After these 5 categories have been looked over, I'll round them up in an overall score like I usually do. I've played a few bad games, a lot of average ones, and quite a few good ones. But I'm hoping that I can give a better outlook on these games from now on and be able to give a more definitive score. This does help me as a game designer after all. Anyways, the category games were chosen for an easy order to remember: A, B, C, D, F; these are the letters of the obscure letter grades, but it's easy to remember and use in my reviews. I will be doing some reviews next week, so I'll get to test out this new method and see how it goes.
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