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I think we've talked a little bit about thesis statements here before, but to elaborate for any new people:

If you remember way back to highschool, you probably remember having to write essays with the structure of "Intro paragraph [last sentence is thesis statement], supporting paragraph, supporting paragraph, supporting paragraph, conclusion." That's basically how a review should be written.

If you were like me, when you were actually in high school you probably hated writing like that. Number one, it was too formulaic -- it felt soulless. Number two, why do you need a conclusion? You've already said everything you wanted to say. Why say it again?

First, it doesn't have to be THAT formulaic. (Most obviously, you don't need exactly three body paragraphs for every essay -- that would be ridiculous) Your thesis statement doesn't NEED to be the last sentence of the first paragraph. In some cases, you don't even need to blatantly write it out. But you should always have one, and the review should be structured around supporting it.

As for conclusions, sometimes you truly don't need a conclusion, if what you're writing is short enough and obviously to the point. I tend to think of Ebert's review of Predator as not having a conclusion. On the other hand, I guess you could interpret the 3rd to last paragraph as summing up (None of these logical questions are very important to the movie. "Predator" moves at a breakneck pace, it has strong and simple characterizations, it has good location photography and terrific special effects, and it supplies what it claims to supply: an effective action movie.) -- which is an example of how you can have all the highschool ingredients, but don't need to use them quite so rigidly.

BUT, if you want to talk about any side issues at all, you really need a thesis and conclusion to give things their proper weight. Like FO said, is a "bad" death animation really such a big flaw? It's almost impossible to believe that anyone would seriously hold that opinion. But that review doesn't give any indication to how important that is. The guy doesn't like Secret of Mana, so he thinks the more flaws he mentions, the stronger his argument becomes.

Which brings us to the thesis statement. The thesis statement should be STRONG. It's strong by being SPECIFIC. "Secret of Mana is a bad game" could be a thesis statement, but it is a weak one, because it doesn't really say much. "Secret of Mana is a bad game because it has a lot of little problems that eventually erode the overall experience" is a little better, but you'll notice something: To support that thesis, it's not enough to list the little problems. You also need to make the case that little problems can add up to a big problem. I still think that's a fairly weak thesis.

To use a couple of my own reviews as examples:

Dynowarz.

I took a little freedom with this review because it's so short -- I didn't explicity mention the thesis, and I don't have a blatant conclusion. But there still is a thesis. The thing I keep hitting over and over, even in that little space, is "Dynowarz has bad play control".

"His machine is a useless, ungainly weapon. ... ineffectual, clumsy robotic dinosaurs ... slow, stupid and lumbering ... motionless ... awkward dinosaurs ... the dinosaur move[s] slowly, its normal attack has no range, many of its special weapons can't hit enemies near the ground, it can only have one (slowly moving) projectile on the screen at once, and it hesitates a bit before jumping. ... trudge ... none require coordinating jumping ... awkward hesitation before jumping. "

It's there over and over again. There's no mistaking that I thought that was a big problem.

Aria of Sorrow is a more standard review. The implied thesis from the very first paragraph could be "Aria of Sorrow is unoriginal." You also could say I blatantly stated the thesis in the last sentence, "Aria of Sorrow is no substitute for Symphony of the Night." The first statement is related to the second, though, because AoS is the 3rd sequel to SotN.

That review has an intro, lots of supporting paragraphs, and it sums up. It really needed to sum up, because I'm talking about all these things throughout the review, eg., the story, the magic system, and I need to make it clear how those things fit. It's not so much that I talked about the story because I need every videogame to have a Final Fantasy style story, by itself the story might not be that big a deal, but it's one particular example of how it falls short in comparison to SotN.






What you'll notice if you read many reviews is that very few of them have any structure or a strong thesis, and they consequently tend to ramble or address trivial things.

Going back, strictly speaking, my thesis for the Dynowarz review wasn't EXACTLY "Dynowarz has bad play control." That's a sort of generic thesis. Rather, the point of the review was to try to describe exactly what Dynowarz's control was like. That's another reason I didn't explicitly state the thesis.



Using the expression "thesis statement" might make it sound like like we're talking about something abstract or academic, but really all it means is that a review should have a point, and if you're saying something in a review, there should be a reason you're saying it. If you don't like Secret of Mana, but if the game's death animations don't contribute to your dislike of the game, why mention them? (Or, if they DO contribute to your dislike, Why? Bearing in mind that it's not obvious why something so dumb should contribute)

Because they never heard of the "adventure" genre.

(Maybe there could be some legitimate confusion since it seems like "adventure" games means something different on the PC -- for some reason, on the PC it seems to mean something like King's Quest. Something I would qualify as a "text adventure" or "graphical adventure", though it would be nice if a better label existed)

I don't think the Zelda games even HAVE involved stories. Compared to Metroid, maybe. But half the games in the Zelda series have the archetypal "rescue the princess" story.