When is a game review not a game review? This isn t supposed to be one of those sound-of-one-hand-clapping, thought-provoking Buddhist questions, I really want to know the answer. I just finished reading through G. Turner s gem of a story about playing Silent Hill 4: The Room and the question is bothering me.

You see, Turner s story in The New Gamer is just that, a very experiential piece of writing about the emotions and thoughts that swirl through a gamer s head as they play a game over time. But why don t the people who read Turner s piece or even Turner think of the story as a review?

Would it be a review if Turner tacked a heavy-handed opinion to the end of the story? Maybe that the first half of the game had potential, but that it fell flat on its face near the end. I don t think so.

I don t think you need to blatantly summarize your opinion in a pre-chewed paragraph of "this is good and that is bad" to make what you ve written, analysis. Reading Turner s story about the emotions the game inspired is more than enough to give me a taste of the game and certainly a idea of what the writer thought of it.

The problem with many reviews is that both their writers and readers expect a formula. They don t want to be challenged, instead, they want to have the ideas swirling in the writer s head synthesized and explained. But critical thought, in its truest form, should be something that inspires others to think critically, not just accept what has been handed to them.

Silent Hill 4: The Room [The New Gamer]