An Update on the 365//365 Review Project

Hey guys and gals!

Hope you’ve all been enjoying the project so far. It’s been a pretty bumpy road since I put up my first update on the status of the project, and what to expect from its future. While there’s definitely no plans to abandon ship (I’m currently at work with the second half of this project, which may prove to be quite daunting) I’ve decided to tweak a few things with what I am doing. Let me first share with you what the changes and tweaks will be (all changes begin after Day 100) –

1. There will no longer be any reviews labeled “Quickie”. Either the review will be four paragraphs minimum, or as long as I felt necessary for the game in question.

2. Starting with Day #101, I will be introducing a radically different format, which will be featured for one full week, and then twice a week from there. Power Paragraphs, which will bear a [PP] label, will be a review done in one paragraph, with a focus directly on the game its self, with little else in-between. More on this a little later, including why it will become an addition to my line up of reviews.

3. Retro Re-Reviews [RRR] are on a brief hiatus. I had hoped to complete two a month, but when it became a bit problematic to even complete one without falling behind on my own self-imposed deadlines, I decided to put them on a back-burner. I have two that are both 25% and 10% complete, which I plan on working on shortly.

4. Video reviews and Collaborations are on the same back-burner as the Retro Re-Reviews. Video reviews are bit too labor intensive for me to consistently complete, and it sort of clashes with the mission of my project being 365 reviews for people to take a few minutes a day to read. Collaboration reviews will appear sometime down the line, and really isn’t that difficult to get going.

5. Comparison Series will continue on a once a month basis for the most part. There’s more than six in my queue right now for the second half of the year, so you’ll see two during one month, or a couple months. Themed weeks will be one a month as well, other than my upcoming All Time Greats week being followed up immediately with PP week.

There’s a few reasons as to why I’ve adopted the Power Paragraph format. The main reason is due to the fact that I slowly realized how much of a workload I have ahead of me, I was not going to keep ahead of the curve if I kept going with my long-winded critiques. Then there’s a whole issue with coming up with fresh ways of opening/closing reviews. I really don’t want to start dipping into past material and recycling it. For some games, there’s really not a lot I could have said about them, without sounding forced, so a review in one paragraph would explain exactly what I want to explain. Finally, it’s also a different way to approach a review, by limiting myself and sticking with the core elements, rather than having it drawn out unnecessarily. Some might tink its a cop out, but in order to maintain the health and integrity of this project, a change like that was needed, and should add a new angle to things.

Lastly, I’d like to leave you all with a list of upcoming themed weeks, as well as Comparison Series, up until August –

** all subjected to change **

Comparison Series:

Day 081: Perfect Dark N64 vs 360

Day 108 – 109: Street Fighter II SNES vs Fighters History SNES

Day 141 – 143: Super Star Wars vs Super Empire Strikes Back vs Super Return of the Jedi

Day 208 – 209: The Legend of Zelda vs Golden Axe Heroes

Themed Weeks:

Day 094 – 100: All Time Greats Week (random seven titles from my all time favorite games list, with my all time favorite ending the week, which will also be review #100)

Day 101 – 107: Power Paragraph Week (explained above — this will be one week with reviews consisting of nothing more than one paragraph)

Day 129 – 135: Worst Games Ever Week (random seven titles from my all time worst games list, with the worst game I’ve ever played on the last day of the week)

Day 157 – 163: Resident Evil Week (reviews of Resident Evil 0 on the Gamecube, 1-3 on the PSX, Code Veronica on the Dreamcast, 4 on the Gamecube and 5 on the 360)

Day 185 – 191: Import Week (seven random games that are not NTSC-U, meaning they’ll be PAL or NTSC-J games)

Day 214 – 220: Square Week (seven random games published or developed by Square/Square EA/Square Enix, with only one game having ties to the RPG genre)

** all subjected to change **

There you have it, folks! If you have any questions, comments, concerns, egg rolls you wish to send me, or anything in general, you can always leave a comment here. You can also follow me on Twitter @Jas0nVelez if you’re into that Twitter thing. I’ll leave you with a few screen shots of some upcoming reviews (minus the captions from the reviews they are in). Enjoy!

Final Fantasy VII

Batman Forever: The Arcade Game

Mario's Tennis

Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix

Final Fantasy III