Talk:BioShock 2/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Etriusus (talk · contribs) 01:40, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: Hello, I'll be the reviewer for this GAN. Below is the GA criteria that I will use to evaluate the article as a whole. Any recommendations will be listed at the bottom. Please note, I am writing this at work so it may take a bit of time for me to get the entirety of this review out, assessments will be added piecewise. I'll ping you whenever I finish my initial review.

Template for GAN Templates and Tools for my own convenience:  Done

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Common errors: WP:CITELEAD, Wikipedia:CITESTYLE, WP:PUFFERY

Earwig

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1. It is reasonable well written:

• the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct
• It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

Very well written. I see no outwithstanding issues, I will be giving a more in-depth dive but the outward prose looks good so far. Etriusus (talk) 23:40, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable It contains a reference section, presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;

• All inline citations are from reliable sources;
• It contains no original research;
• All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:
• It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

For the purposes of video game articles, plot generally does not require citations. Some of the citations come across as extraneous and unnecessary. This should be addressed prior to passing the article. There are also citation-needed tags present.  Done Review of the citations looks good overall, with a few tweaks needed. Ultimately, there should be some compromise.

Earwig is having a proverbial stroke upon assessing this article. There are entire paragraphs that come up as copyvio's, that being said, this appears to be a blog that pulled from Wikipedia and therefore not an issue. I will double-check this  Done. There is a minor section that also comes up that'll need to be addressed.

3. It is broad in its coverage

• It addresses the main aspects of the topic;
• It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

Page has improved substantially since its last GA review. Prior issues were predominately around the amount of coverage in this page, which appears to be adequately addressed in this review. No other expansions seem necessary or practical without getting into unnecessary detail. This section is well done and I commend those who have been so vigilant in correcting these issues.

4. Is it neutral?;

• It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to different points of view.

No issues noted. Reception appears to be in line with WP policy and I've crosschecked with Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games for their guidelines on video game articles. Etriusus (talk) 20:46, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

5. It is stable

• It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

No ongoing edit wars or instability. Etriusus (talk) 02:33, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images, where possible and appropriate;

• Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:
• Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions

Images look good, fair use rational is in order. No copyright violations, good captions, all images are appropriate. All images follow established guidelines for video game images. I would love to see more but understand this is neither necessary nor practical. Etriusus (talk) 02:33, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

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Recommendations

This is a summary of what needs to be done, detailed points are listed above.

hulking, please remove per WP:PUFFERY

There are 3 citation needed tags that need cleaning up.

Why does that art section have in line citations without a link/in two different formats? Is this intentional?

BioShock 2 also deals.. The list has an inconsistent citation scheme. Either list the citations out next to their respective theme or cut out any extraneous citations.

BioShock 2 was revealed... This whole paragraph has two citations per sentence, is this necessary?

:In the Reception section, the citations need some work. There appear to be a few WP:OVERCITE violations, namely the Metacritic score likely does not require 3 citations. Please review the use of so many citations, most sentences don't require 3-4 citations.

Hey User:Etriusus, thanks for reviewing the article. I've added citations for the [cn] tags (simply forget to add more detailed ones since they all came from the same source, my bad.) The citations in the Art section are to the same book repeatedly, so rather than have a bunch of identical citations with page numbers I just used a single one with {{rp}}; it's the only print source used as such (and there's no URL for it.)

As for your complaints of overciting, I'm afraid I'm going to push back on it. Clauses with multiple citations at the end of them have multiple citations because they draw from multiple sources. The plot section has no citations; the setting section does, because it's filled with background material not directly or easily sourced from the plot itself. The Metacritic statement has three citations because it's linking to three different URLs to verify it, and the reception section has multiple refs because they are summarizing critic commentary and need to demonstrate which critics. WP:OVERCITE is an essay, and I believe in erring on the side of making it easy to verify where material comes from (not to mention none of the examples in OVERCITE actually apply to this article—it's not ref-bombing, it's not repeating reprinted information, it's not repeating itself multiple times.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:54, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: Thank you for the clarification. You caught me before I was finished with the review but thank you for being so attentive. I'm someone who generally prefers to keep citations to a minimum/what is necessary, and seeing so many citations per sentence did raise a red flag. If the amount is justified then I see no issue with leaving it as is. Etriusus (talk) 23:53, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm genuinely surprised that the Metacritic score was the same for all 3 releases. That sourcing looks good.

@David Fuchs: I've finished my review of the article. I've thrown a few minor edits that need to be cleaned up but once that's done, the article will be good for GA sign off.

the player character in the first game please specify that this is Bioshock 1, it is implied but not stated in this paragraph.

"As this sequel is an extension of the first game's storylines and characters, there are direct contrasts between the extreme politics of Andrew Ryan's objectivism and the extreme religion/politics of Lamb's collectivism", he writes. "BioShock 2 specifically asks players to question all sides of debates when extreme stances are taken, and asks players to weigh their decisions in an alternate and complex history." BioShock 2 Earwig is picking this up as a copyvio.

Adjusted the above two (added BioShock 1, and cut down on the length of the direct quote.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 01:30, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Separate the reviews for the PC, Xbox, and PS in the review infobox (similar to what Bioshock does) would cut down on confusion and fix the overcitation issue. I know that the review was a 88/100 for each platform but the infobox does not specify this.

Would you be able to supply an archive/readable link for the Schiesel, Seth (March 5, 2010) source, it is paywalled.

Critics often highlighted the gameplay changes as improvements on the original. The 4 links at the end are excessive. The rest of the paragraph supports this idea enough. It is equally appropriate to expand these out into their own sentences. Source 103 is used twice in this paragraph, where it fundamentally serves the same purpose. Per our earlier conversation, I agree that some of the 2-4 citation sentences are fine as is but this one should be fixed.

I've separated the review scores and tweaked the gameplay paragraph. As for the Schiesel ref, the NYT is behind a registration paywall; you can get around it if you disable Javascript in your browser but otherwise there's not really an option as far as I know. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:45, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: Thank you for working on the article and putting up with my hectic schedual. With that last round of edits, I've passed the article for GA. Congradulations. Finally Bioshock 2 can join its predecessor. Etriusus (talk) 02:33, 10 January 2022 (UTC)