Entry #100: What's In A Review?

 When I first started this blog, some of my initial entries were about user reviews. Now, I'll provide a brief look at some of the major types of reviews, and how to do each well in terms of length, tone, the amount of spoilers and other points.

Informational Review

Informational reviews are the kind of product reviews you'd likely see in professional publications, or left by users on sites like Amazon.com. These evaluate the work in question and tell you whether or not the reviewer recommends it.

The tone should be straightforward and informative. A bit of humor can spice things up, but it's best to keep the review mostly serious.

Since the reviewer knows nothing about the work, the review should keep spoilers to a minimum, generally avoiding talking about anything that isn't common knowledge. For example, a review of Danganronpa V3 can mention that the game involves 16 high schoolers trapped inside a school together, but shouldn't mention the identity of the first culprit.

The review should be relatively short, generally no more than a few hundred words or a few minutes for a video review. After all, your readers are generally looking for a concise and informative piece, especially since they will likely seek out additional opinions on the work, 

Analytic Review

Analytic reviews are, as the name implies, essays that express an opinion on the quality of a work or otherwise make a point about it.

Like informational reviews, they should take on a serious and businesslike tone, since communicating clearly is important.

However, while an informational review should forgo unnecessary spoilers, the analytic review should instead go into as much detail as possible. For example, a review of Danganronpa V3 might discuss the twist at the end, so not only should a reviewer who does that review feel free to spoil the twist, but the review should also discuss any and all scenes from the game that support that point. For example, if the review defends the twist, it should mention all the scenes foreshadowing the twist.

The review can be much longer, potentially thousands of words or tens of minutes. However, I wouldn't recommend going much more than an hour; I'm hesitant to watch informational reviews that are much longer than 20 minutes unless I'm very interested in the topic..

Entertainment Review

These reviews tend to be rather humorous in tone, often parodying the work in question.

These reviews should feel free to take on a silly or snarky tone, as long as they do so in an entertaining way. The last thing the creator of a review like this wants is to be boring.

Like with analytic reviews, spoilers are fine, since the reviews are usually aimed at people who have viewed the work before, or at least don't have any interest in seeing it.

The review can be as long as the reviewer sees fit, but I'd generally recommend slightly shorter reviews unless one has a lot of material to work with, lest the reviewer end up boring the viewer.

Conclusion

Reviewers should not only understand the work they're reviewing, but also know what kind of review they would like to make and how best to write them. They should also be clear readers understand what kind of review they're providing, so they know what to expect and whether the review is what they're looking for. Doing so will help newcomers make an informed decision on whether a work is worth their time, people who are familiar with the work learn more about the author's opinion about it and people in search of a laugh enjoy some humor related to the work in question.

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