User:Glebbos/Left 4 Dead 2/Remchar88 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

I am peer-reviewing user Glebbos's work.


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * The current draft I'm reviewing is here (it's in a personal sandbox; I can't find it in a distinctive sandbox anywhere else).


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * The current version of the article can be found here.

Evaluate the drafted changes
(Compose a detailed peer review here, considering each of the key aspects listed above if it is relevant. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what feedback looks like.)

So far, based on what I was able to look at, there don't seem to be any edits made. They seem difficult to make in any substantial way; the page is listed as high as B-class, and other than being a little bulky and confusing in places, it does seem pretty thorough. That begin said, I will do my best to be helpful in this review.

Lead

The lead section looks good. It's concise and covers all the sections, as far as I can tell. Unless you plan on adding a new section, I would leave it as-is.

Content

Everything seems mostly relevant and up-to-date (I saw some 2020/2021 sources used, although in a few places relative dates were unclear; that may be something to work on). Everything seems to belong, and the only thing that might be missing is a section on themes or an expansion on the concerns about the violent content. There are a few peer-reviewed articles on it (you can find them through the SFSU library pretty easily). In general, the biggest problems with content here is that it's long-winded and in places redundant or confusing. I'll explain that more in "organization."

Tone and Balance

There is more reliance on interviews and sources from Valve than is most effective; Valve would have an agenda to promote the game. A little more on critical or other forms of review could help balance this out. The sections on the controversies in particular seem to highly favor the game, somewhat defending it (particularly in the racism allegations, and on the whole a lack of explanation about the issues with mature content and violence). You might consider trying to find more sources to flesh out these sections specifically.

Sources and References

Most things are backed up, but as mentioned most of the sources are from Valve specifically, and a lot are just confirming aspects of gameplay. As far as I can tell, because it's pretty dense, the sources are accurately reflected and the links to them work. There are peer-reviewed sources, however, that you could pull from, including some very recent ones, particularly focused on videogame violence and thematic elements of the game. These are worth looking into, to help balance out the citations.

Organization

The breakdown of the content is well-sorted; the sections and subsections make sense, and seem to be reasonably well organized. As mentioned before, the only section that might be worth adding (rather than just expanding existing ones) is about the themes in the game. The biggest issue is that it is confusing to read. It's a very long and bulky article. Everything from "Development" on is chunked in a way that makes it relatively straight-forward and accessible, but the "Gameplay" and "Plot" sections confused me, largely because of the crossover nature of the game. I couldn't always tell which survivors were being referenced, and while I understood the mechanics of the game, the plot arc is poorly explained. The "Story" subsection is where most of the confusion is for me; I had trouble figuring out the flow of the narrative. It might be easier to break it down into bullet points or something similar, with the name of each section of gameplay bolded, followed by a concise summary (preferably without lots of references to the other sections of gameplay, which kept tripping me up). I would also recommend giving anything that wasn't released as part of the initial gameplay its own subsection, with a reference in that subsection only where it falls in the timeline. As I said before, there's not much I can think to do with this article otherwise.