Chi Kong Lui's blog

GameCritics.com is issuing an open invitation to the gaming community to submit original game reviews to GameCritics.com. Submissions will be rated by the community and staff and the best reviews will be published on our homepage.

Along with our new mission and tagline, we're also introducing a new game review format. Starting soon, all of our reviews will contain the following features:

Title of Review

HIGH What the critic felt was the high point of the game.

LOW What the critic felt was the low point of the game.

WTF Description of the funniest and/or most unexpected moment of the game.

With the Internet getting faster and noisier, and the hectic pace of life today, we recognize that not everyone has the time or patience to read through a 1000 word game review. Adding a title to the review serves as quick introduction to draw the reader in and rather than do a dry bulleted summary of the review, we cribbed an idea from The Onion AV Club and gave it our own twist with the HIGH/LOW/WTF points.

Body of Review And yes, the magic rating will still be here.

Not much is going to change here. We will continue to avoid writing reviews that try to quantify the monetary/time value of a game, which we feel is an impossible and meaningless task since each gamer brings a unique set of expectations and values that cannot be matched by any one critic. Instead, we feel our opinions and thoughts are most useful and interesting when trying to determine if a game is good by conveying and qualifying our personal experiences during gameplay and what it means to us in relation to own lives and world-view.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via [publisher/retail store/rental] and reviewed on the [game console]. Approximately x hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed x times) and x hours of play to multiplayer modes.

After GerstmannGate and in light of other questionable business practices in the video game industry brought to the forefront by Video Game Media Watch, the Sore Thumbs blog and others, we felt strongly that more transparency was needed and having additional disclosures is a step in the right direction towards restoring reader confidence. In short, we want to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.

Parents: Questionable content in the game that parents may want to be aware of before letting their kids play it.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing: Content addressing the auditory aspects of games and how they may impact play experiences for the hearing impaired.

We are eliminating our Consumer Guides and integrating the information that we felt still had value to the standard review format. Since most readers do not recognize the difference between game criticism vs. the "is this worth your time and money" consumer content, separating the review and consumer advice only caused confusion and hurt the overall visibility of the writing.

These are the only points in the review where we step out of own perspective because we understand that parents and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing have very specific needs and concerns that we can properly address.

We've put a lot of time and thought into developing this new review format. Look for its debut in all our upcoming reviews and let us know what you think.

When it comes to the Internet, change is the only constant. It happens in an instant and permeates our lives so quickly that we don't even realize how much it impacts how we communicate and interact with people. With the advent of Web 2.0 exploding in 2008, we at GameCritics.com felt it was a good time to take a look at ourselves in relation to the reality of content today to see how would could evolve and contribute to the new socially-driven Internet.

With that in mind, I'd personally like to introduce our new mission statement and tagline.

Our Mission: To elevate the quality, culture and perception of video games as contemporary arts and entertainment through game criticism and community development.

We will accomplish our mission by presenting a diverse range of perspectives from authors and gamers of different backgrounds in order to provide readers with insightful, useful, and entertaining content on video games and their growing presence in society.

Our old mission statement didn't properly convey our values and our passion for video games, and the concept that criticism can be beneficial to a community. Not only does the new mission make our goals more clear, but it also recognizes that this isn't something that a small group of individuals can accomplish in isolation. As the saying goes, it takes a village and this new mission serves as an invitation to those in the gaming community who share our passion to join us.

Our Tagline: Games. Culture. Criticism.

After expanding the scope of our mission, it became clear that "Smart Reviews" from our old tagline felt too limited in its ability to describe our editorial drive. "Serious Gamers" had started sounding too elitist, exclusionary and dull. By exploring the "Culture" of video games, we hope that our content will continue to be intelligent and insightful, but will also acknowledge a more personal and emotional side of the video game experience and how it touches our lives.

So now that we've made this announcement, it's time to go to work. Be on the look out for more changes, new features and hopefully more content on GameCritics.com in the coming weeks and months. We look forward to hearing your feedback and we hope you'll join us on the journey.

When I read that No Hype Reviews was "packing it in", being a fellow an independent site owner who also focuses on game reviews with integrity (there aren't many of us out there), I couldn't help but feel sympathetic towards his plight. It's a situation that I'm all too familiar with.

The Xbox 360 became the hardcore gamers' console of choice by creating a robust online play space and filling its library with slick-looking, tried and true, formulaic games with mature content. The Wii captured a new generation of casual gamers by redefining the control scheme with gimmicky motion sensors and offering family oriented games and applications that were accessible to the non-gamer. Nearly two years after the release of the PS3, I have difficulty in describing what the strengths of the PS3 are and who it's for because Sony hasn't developed a clear brand position. Is it the console of choice for gamers who want a Blu-ray disc player?

With all due respect to Mr. Fils Amie, when you trumpet—a game about collecting furniture to decorate your house and writing letters to other cutesy animals in the town—as your shining example of what "core" gamers are expecting, what we have is a failure to communicate.

At E3 2008, Microsoft unveiled a line-up of products designed to appeal to the more casual gaming audience that Nintendo currently dominates with the Wii. The miscalculation on the part of Microsoft is that they think they can appeal to the masses by providing something useful like Netflix connectivity and online chat parties or something that is supposed to be an improved experience like Lips, which is a refinement of the singing/rhythm game.

On the second week after my injury, my back was about 80 percent recovered and it felt like a good time to do some light workouts. In addition to resuming my power walking, I thought the low-impact/resistance exercises in Wii Fit would be a good way to ease back into my weight training.