Welcome to FinallyGotAroundTo

It’s important to know whose perspective you are getting for these game reviews. Who am I? What do I care about? What do I like and dislike? Hopefully, this can serve as a brief primer on what to expect from me, and in turn, how many grains of salt to take with my reviews. But I always recommend taking at least one.

Get to Know the Critic

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom by Nintendo

These reviews are for you. As someone who loves video games, and has been told he is half-decent at writing, I believe I could be a valuable resource in the decision to purchase a game or not. But keep in mind that these reviews are based on what I value in a game and my personal opinions and perspectives, which may not always align with yours. My review does not mean a game is bad or good, it just means that I either enjoyed or did not enjoy the experience. Understanding this and what I enjoy in a game will hopefully help you make an informed decision before spending your hard-earned money and precious time.

Speaking of precious time, I don’t have a lot of it. This site is far from earning any revenue as of yet, and that means I will need to spend most of my time and energy on other work (reading and watching my other projects is always appreciated).

The point is that I won’t be able to review every game, especially not all of them as they come out. Hence, the title of the site. I plan to always chip away at my ever-growing backlog of games that I would like to write about, and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Hopefully, you don’t mind revisiting some noteworthy games from the last few years, and perhaps ideally, you will learn about a few great games that may have flown under your radar.

Now that’s not to say I won’t get inspired to review a game shortly after it launches, or sometimes even beforehand if the developers are kind enough to send me a review copy, but I’m not going to expect that to be a regular occurrence. If that does happen, I will not let that kindness impact my opinions of the game.

So for now, it is important to point out that this site will not be the place for a comprehensive and exhaustive aggregation of reviews for every current game release. This site will focus on reviewing games that I think look promising or interesting in some way, especially if I feel the game deserves more attention. So just the fact that I choose to write about a game means that I believe it is worth talking about in some way, not just that it was released and I am obligated to cover it.

If you want me to take a look at a certain game that you think has flown under my radar, please feel free to send me a message or leave a comment.

What I Enjoy in a Game

It may not come as a surprise since I am a writer, but I enjoy a good story. I enjoy good characters, dialogue, or the understanding that sometimes dialogue isn’t needed to tell an interesting story. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2 have incredible dialogue, writing, voice acting, and motion capture that all combine to tell an incredible story. Then there is a game like Cocoon, which has zero dialogue or even text to read and still captivates me for the full five-hour run time. Every story is different, and what works for one story may not work well for another. So there is no right or wrong way to tell a story, it just comes down to how the method works for the story being told.

Visually, I have similar feelings. A game’s visual style should correspond to the individual game and the story being told. Games should not all be striving for one ultimate visual style. Baldur’s Gate 3, Dave the Diver, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom all have distinctly different visual styles, but all stand out as some of the best games of 2023. For me, much like with storytelling, there is no right or wrong way to present a game visually. There are only ways that work or do not work for what a game is trying to accomplish.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to actual gameplay. Video game genres are very nebulous, and these days most games tend to combine elements from several genres rather than fit cleanly into one. Even within one genre, there are usually many different styles that games can take on.

So here’s a rapid-fire litmus test of sorts for a bunch of big genres.

Generally a Fan Of: Action, Adventure, Horror, RPG

I Wish I Was Better At: Fighting, Platformer, Strategy

Not Usually For Me: Shooter, Simulation, Sports, Survival

This is not a hard and fast list of course. I have been playing Sons of the Forest with some friends lately which has a lot of survival elements in it, and it’s been a great time. Likewise, I just played through the demo for an upcoming game called Anger Foot which is a first-person shooter and it was a blast. But certain mechanics will slow me down. If a game involves chopping down trees to get wood or planting and watering crops my eyes will glaze over.

Also, I want to point out that in writing this I felt that Action and Adventure were the two most vague genres out of all of them, and I think that’s probably why they are often lumped together into “Action-Adventure.” This doesn’t add anything about me, except that maybe I like to share random thoughts.

Indie isn’t a genre (or is it?) but if I had to choose to only play big-budget AAA games or only indie games, I’d probably choose indie. I would miss The Legend of Zelda though.

I don’t like doing something repetitive and tedious without getting something worthwhile in return. I don’t like games that take themselves too seriously. I don’t like games that take away my choices and my creativity. I don’t like games that take no real skill or talent to succeed. I don’t like games that rely too much on luck and leave no room for improvement. I don’t like feeling like I’m button-mashing.

I enjoy when my choices matter. I enjoy when I am allowed to be creative in solving a problem. I enjoy both taking my time on a tough challenge and being rushed into a high-action situation over and over until I get it right. I like a game that is not afraid to challenge me but gives me the ability to see what I did wrong and shows me how to improve. I like a game that has a unique art style and memorable characters or creatures. I like feeling like I have accomplished something when I put down the controller. I like games that are cleverly self-aware and poke fun at the common conventions of video games. I like games that take an original idea and run with it.

I think that covers most of it. Feel free to leave any comments below!