My goal is to offer an unbiased take on how games look and play.

Why should you listen to some rando on the internet? Well you probably shouldn't, but here's some small 'About me'-type info that will give you some background:

My name is Shawn. I have been playing games since the early 1990's with my first system being the Atari. I have fond memories of playing that one tank game as a kid. I then remember the family getting a NES and playing Duck Hunt with the laser gun and Mario. Eventually I progressed to a Sega Genesis, Playstation, PS2, Xbox, and PC over the course of the next 15 years. I guess the here point is, I have been playing games forever. I know what constitutes a good game versus a bad game.

When I was in my teens, I had a subscription to Electronic Gaming Monthly and read EGM religiously each month. I loved reading the game reviewers thoughts and how they came to those conclusions. For a long time into my early 20's, I wanted to get into journalism. In the end I majored in STEM in college, but I still kept my love for writing close to me.

And here we are. Steam has given me an outlet to live out my early desires to analyze games with a critics eye. I try to take each positive or negative element of a game into perspective as I write about it.


I hope in this way that I provide somewhat useful information to anyone wanting a bit more information about games before purchasing. I'm also generally open to chatting with anyone that agrees or disagrees with my opinion and try to leave comments open on most of my reviews.

Rating Scale

I rate games on a 1-10 scale with no decimals. I do not use any math to determine the final score or scores in each area, just how I feel based on 5 being the average. In general, numbers can be considered as such:
10 - Near perfect/must play
9 - Excellent
8 - great
7 - good
6 - above average
5 - average
4 - below average
3 - poor
2 - bad
1 - awful/avoid


The areas are:
Content (Game world/Narrative)
Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty)
Graphics (Quality/Technical)
Audio (Sound and Music)
Replay Factor (Longevity)

I tend to weigh gameplay (mechanics) and content as the most important aspects of a game.

Currently playing

You can visit my profile on Howlongtobeat.com to see what I'm currently playing as well as my ridiculous backlog
https://howlongtobeat.com/user/Synik/games/playing/1
If you'd like to suggest I play a game immediately, just reach out and tell me, I'll try to accommodate :)