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Hey! Welcome to Pabs Reviews (name pending)!

Before I begin this, I wanted to give some background to why I want to write reviews for some of the media I consume.

A little bit more than a week ago, I had a craving.  A craving to play a JRPG.  I wanted over convoluted menu screens, confusing and overly-complicated mechanics, a story so overdone if it were a steak you'd demand a refund, awful self-indulgent character designs.  I wasn't looking for a Michelin 3-star meal, I was looking for shitty, overly salted, greasy pizza from a dirty local joint.

The Humble Store was having a summer sale, and I went hunting for a JRPG.  It didn't take very long for my search to lead me to the Idea Factory publisher sale.

Just going by these thumbnails, I knew, I found the nug.  I was completely infatuated with these awful game names: Fairy Fencer F Advent Dark Force, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3 V Generation, Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart.  At what point do you look at your game name and think, "That's enough meaningless words tacked onto the game title."

We've reached peak Japanese nonsense.  I was ready.

With so many titles to choose from, I decided that I should pick up the cheapest and best reviewed game of the bunch.  Admittingly, I didn't really do intensive research, but also I wasn't looking for a masterpiece, I was looking for a guilty pleasure.  I felt like reading the bullet points many reviewers leave at the end of their reviews should be good enough.  Quick research led me to Fairy Fencer F.  I saw IGN give it a 7.3, which they labeled as "GOOD"  GOOD was good enough for me.  Fun combat and fun characters?  Sign me the FRICK up.  The story is boring?  That's fine, I'm not expecting Citizen Kane, I'm just here for a fun time.

A fun time was not had.

The single bullet point of "Boring story" did not prepare me for the nonsense they pulled halfway through the game.  Without giving spoilers away, it was a story that was so lazy in execution,  it bled into the gameplay and ruined that.  I found these "Likeable characters" to be so one dimensional and boring.  The combat was so tedious, it made me wonder if I was playing the same game as this reviewer.  I won't go into detail about the game here, the main take away is that I didn't agree with this review one bit.

So what should I take away from this experience?  Well, its not that IGN shouldn't be trusted.  That's not it at all.

VideoGameDunkey earlier this year posted a controversial video onto YouTube about the state of game reviews, embedded below.

While I don't agree with everything he says in the video, he brings up a point about putting faces to game reviews.  His example that he uses in the video above is a film critic by the name of Armond White.  While he doesn't really agree much of Mr. White's reviews of movies, he understands his tastes, his preferences, what he likes and dislikes.  His reviews carry a certain weight to them.  When Mr. White, who has a history of liking superhero movies that have historically not been well received, when he doesn't like a movie like Suicide Squad, it means something.  What that means to you, that's for you to decide.

I don't know anything about the person who reviewed Fairy Fencer F on IGN.  I don't doubt she is qualified to write about video games, nor do I think her take on FFF is necessarily wrong.  What I do know is that she and I have very differing opinions about what makes a game "fun".  Her definition of what is good and fun is just as valid as my definition.

Game recommendations from personal friends and internet personalities that I am familiar with have always meant more to me.  When one of the fine folks over at Polygon.com suggest a game to their listeners, I know what to make of it.

I'm not knocking review sites like metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes which averages a score from numerous reviewers.  They're important in determining how a piece of media is overall received.
I guess what I want to do is to create more personalized reviews of media.  While you and I may have conflicting views, I'd like it if you were to read one of my meandering posts about a game or movie, you'd come to understand how you would feel about it as well.  I want to write a review that doesn't just boil down to bullet points at the end of a long text post.

tl;dr I played a game that I disliked so much I want to complain about it on the internet.