Talk:Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Vrxces (talk · contribs) 02:10, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Great to see this game nominated. I'll take this one on. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 02:10, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Started the review below. Feel free to cross out or comment on anything as you go. As ever I'm mindful some of these enter the territory of personal opinion. Note I will follow up on some other aspects of the review, including doing a source check.

Review
Does the article conform to the general standards of WP:VG articles including the WP:MOS? Mostly. Plot sections usually follows gameplay. Sections covering development, promotion and release are usually merged but there's enough content to be no big deal. Given the length is sufficient and the potential for significant expansion of the reception section as discussed below, I'd recommend considering subdividing reception into 'Sales' (if it can be found), then 'Reviews', 'Accolades' and 'Retrospective reception', given some of the reviews are contemporary, and some of what's in the 'Legacy' section is less a legacy and more retrospective praise for the game.


 * Switched the plot and gameplay sections. I don't want to split up reception because MOS:LAYOUT (one of the few MOS pages that apply to GA) says that subheadings shouldn't be overused to sort individual paragraphs. The big ugly alien  ( talk ) 06:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Fair call! Where the VG MOS and the general MOS conflict on GA standards, stands to reason to use the latter. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 07:29, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Is the article generally well-written? Yes. I could suggest some stylistic choices around prioritising active over passive voice and making drawn-out statements more concise, but these are not particularly critical to the GAN. One paragraph that stands out to me is the last paragraph of the reception section, which lists random comparisons raised in reviews to other works and media. This strikes me as a bit WP:INDISCRIMINATE and could be condensed to just stating that "Reviewers found the motifs of Psi-Ops to be reminiscent of other creative works, such as [X], with comparisons drawn between the game and Second Sight, a first-person shooter with a similar premise". Especially when the comparisons aren't corroborated by other sources, it's not really that significant to point out.


 * I've removed that last paragraph. Since it's just one person, it's probably undue. The big ugly alien  ( talk ) 06:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Is the article broad enough in its coverage? Mostly. Psi-Ops received impressively broad reviews and there's quite a lot of WP:VG/S sources that are missed in the article: extant online reviews are: 1UP, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Game Informer, Game Revolution, GamePro, GameSpy, GameZone, Official Xbox Magazine (available here), Team Xbox, and PALGN. If you are adding these sources to the template, make sure to keep it to about ten, prioritising the most high-profile ones. You may also like to organise the review section thematically when adding more review coverage as discussed in the WP:VG/MOS. If there are plenty of review sources yet to be included in the article, I wonder if there is more information out there that can provide more depth on development without relying on the Cinelinx article? I'm happy to assist with looking.


 * At a glance I didn't see any "main aspects" in those reviews that aren't in the article, but I'll take a closer look at them soon either way and any relevant details. The big ugly alien  ( talk ) 06:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Agree - poor framing, you're right this isn't an issue with breadth as the concept is represented in the GA criteria. Given there's only three contemporary reviews cited, pretty closely intermingled with retrospective reception, I think there's some merit in broadening the sourcing to verify and illustrate that the points raised are representative of the tenor of critical reception upon release. There's an opportunity to even split the two types of reception to make this much clearer, but as with the thematic paragraphing, that is fairly outside the scope of the GAN and not necessary to do now. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 22:24, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I went through the reviews you found and decided to rewrite the reception section entirely. Out of curiosity, what was your method for finding those reviews? Did you look specifically for archives of 1UP, GameSpy, etc? The big ugly alien  ( talk ) 06:22, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for doing that, I recognize that was quite a lot of work. There's a reliable source list and search engine, but I tend to use (1) aggregators including Metacritic, Opencritic and MobyGames, and then (2) manually search entries in the Internet Archive. I'll do a quick citation check and flag any issues I come across but if not that seems to be it for the review. Trying to tone down the pedantry. Great work! ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 07:08, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Fantastic, the citations, particularly for the development and legacy sections, seem spot-on with no issues. I think there's not really anything else to add that would hold up a GAN at this point. Thanks for taking on the additional reviews in earnest. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 07:15, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Are media and links properly attributed and do not have copyright issues? Mostly, but there are some issues. The link to a download for the game on a file sharing website may be a WP:COPYVIO: just because the publisher freely released it on their website does not mean that third party sources necessarily have the license to distribute it, although I note there's sources suggesting it was released for free. Best to avoid anyway. Not sure about the fix link, but at any rate Wikipedia isn't really a file sharing directory. Best practice is for screenshots to have a description outlining why they are necessary to visually illustrate something in the game, but this is a minor issue.


 * Removed the links. The big ugly alien  ( talk ) 06:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)