I'm sure that every single one of you fine folk here at Gameleon are much more experienced in writing reviews than I am, so I guess (hope) you wouldn’t mind helping me write my first review…Right? :D

Since Metal Gear Solid was recently released on the Playstation Store, I decided to seize the opportunity to buy, play, and review one of my favorite games. I wanted to make this into a “retro review”, if you will.

Anyway, what are things that you always keep in mind when writing reviews and considering I don’t live in an era where certain things in this game are thought to be something hip and new (graphics and what not), what should I say about them? Should I rate them as though I did live in that era or what?

Thanks guys!

Read a lot:
Read a lot of reviews. See what other authors do and see if you can draw some inspiration from them. That's not to say that you shouldn't develop your own writing style, and it's certainly not to encourage plagiarism, but you'll get a good idea of what constitutes a decent review. Go to Metacritic.com and look up reviews for Metal Gear Solid; read through high, medium, and low reviews to get a feel of what others think of the game. If you have the time, read books and magazines to expand your vocabulary concept of a good writing style.

Write a lot:
Keep writing. Even if your first few reviews suck, if you keep trying, you'll be writing good reviews in no time! Proper grammar is also a must for any professional environment, try writing everything, including instant messages, with proper grammar.

Many reviewers keep a notepad with them while playing a game to be reviewed to keep track of anything important they come across. I haven't found that this is necessary for myself, but then again, I usually take a very long time to write reviews.

Keep things in perspective:
Writing retro reviews can be difficult when you're surrounded by cutting-edge technology in games. Play some other PS1 games if you can, just to keep yourself in perspective. MGS really broke many storytelling and gameplay barriers that we take for granted these days. I was genuinely impressed when I played the game again a few months ago at how well the game held up! Some things like the lack of any fist-person mode other than free look can feel a bit dated, but again, you need to put things into perspective. MGS blew the minds of pretty much every person who played it back in 1998, just make sure you realize why it did that.

I'd avoid talking too much about how the graphics have aged well or badly, or how they hold up compared to modern games. It isn't irrelevent, but (in my opinion) what matters is that for 1998 they were quite special, and on reading your review I imagine people won't be making the retro purchase for the games' graphics.

Infact, if you can get a hold of magazines from the time, it's fascinating to read how excited people were in MGS's previews and reviews. I seem to remember it was pretty special to have every single cutscene rendered in real-time rather than playing pre-rendered graphics (as beautiful as they are) in Final Fantasy.

For a standard review I would outline it in a way similar to writing an essay in school. The first paragraph should contain the basic information such as when the game came out (or when it's coming out), publisher, developer and a brief rundown on what is good and bad about it. The next paragraphs elaborate on those good/bad points and the final paragraph restates your main points followed by your recommendation and a score (if you use one).

A retro review is a little trickier to me. Chances are you're not going to review an old game that you hate and readers may not want to read a recent review of a terrible game from 10+ years ago. I would try a different angle for your Metal Gear Solid review. We know it was a great game but a retro review needs to take on a different format than contemporary reviews. Graphics, framerate and other technical stuff like that aren't necessary to mention in this case. Maybe look at what MGS has done as a concept in terms of storytelling and how it evokes emotion from players and why that was so successful.

I'm basically saying instead of writing the standard review where we pick apart what makes the game flawed from a technical and modern perspective, try to focus on things that you can't make better with code.

I create a small check-list for myself of things I cannot leave out of the review, usually while I'm playing the game. Talk briefly about how the graphics we're special for their time and maybe even make a slight reference to how much the graphics have changed to MGS4 style. But maybe only a sentence on it.

Because MGS is a legendary game and everyone already knows its excellence you'll need to put some kind of spin on the review to keep the readers hooked. Don't review the game entirely but rather what it is, how it changed stealth titles and all the jazz. Focus on what makes the game great rather than talking about the technical aspects (Graphics, Sound, jaggies)

Something else you might want to do is check out the games coming before and after MGS1 (starting with Metal Gear and ending with MGS4) and see how MGS1 changed things. MGS2 is similar to MGS1, with a few changed aspects and more polish, MGS3 brings a whole new mindset to the game, still featuring similar gameplay, but with much different ways of playing and things to watch out for. MGS4 is completely different from MGS1; other than certain key similarities, the games play much differently. Metal Gear 2 (not MGS2) focused more on stealth than Metal Gear 1, and MG1 was more of an action game.

Perhaps try meshing a retro-review with a full feature, something like "How MGS changed everything." Do some research, and you might have an amazing story!

Be honest. It's an older game that still holds true and stands the test of time. Keep perspective and time accurate, since it's old "was released," "had," "was," etc. Also remember, come to it with a clean slate. Act like they might've tweaked something so you have to examine the game as a whole and if it works. I actually have a column that's just about to have its second installment published soon that's reviewing mostly older games (examining gaming and aspects of gaming where people said it went wrong) and that is the way I go through.

Before I started writing I didn't read a lot of reviews and so my first review wasn't really good. Still I had some positive comments that I had potential so I start to read more and more reviews and wel... see the difference between the first and the second (http://www.insidegamer.nl/members/38439/memberrecensies , note that it's in Dutch). So my tips would be read loads of reviews and start writing some reviews, you don't have to place in on the internet first but let it read by friends and/or post it here. Work on your technique's and - the most important thing - listen and [b]use[/b] the critics that have been given. Good luck!

As for the game itself, note that it's an old game and don't say stuff about graphics and sort - since that isn't a valuable part of the game anymore. Comparing it with the rest of the serie and how it has been evolved is also a good way to show the (in)difference with, for say, MGS4.

If you have the luxury of time (which most of us sadly don't) give it a full 24 hours before you proof read your work. You'll find that there will be some awkward sentences and structure that you simply don't like the next day. Wherever possible I always leave it 24 hours before proof-reading.

If you've got someone around you handy, make them read the review as well. If it doesn't keep their attention, then something's wrong. Reviews need to keep the attention of the reader and if someone says it's boring, typical, going over old ground then it needs reworking from a different angle.

All of these are great guys!

I'm going to start writing the review tomorrow.