Talk:Sonic the Hedgehog 3/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: PresN (talk · contribs) 21:28, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Review will be up in a day or two. --PresN 21:28, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

PresN, still planning on finishing? Tezero (talk) 18:12, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, been busy this weekend. --PresN 19:03, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for taking so long; life's been busy. Here's this; I'll get to your review of my FAC when I can.

Lead

• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is redirecting

• Done. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "However, this concept was abandoned..." - second half of the sentence is awkward; would be better as "However, this concept was abandoned early into development as the team did not want to change the Sonic formula too radically for a sequel." Sonic should be italicized since you're talking about he games (and their common elements), not the character

• Done. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Second paragraph is a bit strange- you say it's a commercial success (and it is), but then say it "only" sold 1 million copies compared to 21 million for the last two combined; try to reword it to make it clear that 1 million is still really good, just not as phenomenal as the last two

• Done, and reworded. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Re-reworded. --PresN 02:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• GameCube is redirecting

• Done. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Plot

• Robotnik, Sonic 2, and Super Sonic are redirecting

• Done all. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Tails and Sonic are never linked here; you should link things the first time they are used outside the lead as well as in the lead

• Done. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "He is also..." - 'he' is ambiguous here, specify it's Knuckles

• Done, and reworded. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Italicize the Tornado, since it's the name of an airplane (MOS:ITALICS)

• Done. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "Sonic travels to a platform on the Death Egg, fights, and defeats..." - better phrased as "Sonic travels to a platform on the Death Egg, and fights and defeats Robotnik..."

• Used "Egg, where he" since the comma technically wouldn't be grammatically correct. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "Island - leading" - should be an mdash (—), not a hyphen

• Done. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Gameplay

• You need to specify early on here that the game is split up into levels, with two acts each level; as it is, readers must infer it from when you mention the bosses at the end of each act

• What? But it says that: "The game takes place over six levels ... each divided into two acts". Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Apparently I need to work on my reading comprehension. Or get more sleep. --PresN 02:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "2D, side-scrolling" - no comma

• Done. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "Through the latter choice" - In the latter choice

• Done. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• (facetious) where the heck do the badniks come from, if Robotnik just crashed in a small aircraft?!

• Hmm, never thought about that. I assume they get around and cause mischief wherever they please, given their presence in some games in locations where Eggman never appears. Tezero (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Development

• "were mainly responsible" - "were the main creator of"; this changes the meaning to be that the design doc was mostly by them, instead of that they mostly worked on the design doc (and not much else)

• Agreed; done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Mention that the game was made by, you know, Sega

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• ", after the team" - "as the team", like the lead

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "However, as time constraints" - this sentence wobbles on and on; split it in half

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• non-volatile RAM is redirecting

• Done. Odd; I've never seen a hyphen between the R and A before. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "The song was used both in the game adverts, and released as a single" -> "The song was both used in the game adverts and released as a single"

• Done, and rephrased for AmE. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "James Hansen of Sonic Stuff Research Group states" - "has stated"

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Even in direct quotes, you still cut out the all caps - "ALL, BUT" -> "all, but"

• Really? I believe you, but where'd you get that? Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• I had it slightly wrong; MOS:QUOTE says to basically strip all text formatting that's not in the WP style; it does, however, say that words that are all-caps'd for emphasis you can replace it with italics or bold ("other unusual forms of emphasis (colored highlighting, all caps or small caps, etc.) should likewise generally be normalized to italics or boldface")

Ports

• GameCube is redirecting again

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• The first paragraphs is one sentence; merge it with the next

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• The first sentence/paragraph splits up the elements with semicolons... except when it uses commas - "Sonic & Garfield Pack (1999) for the PC,[32] Sonic..."

• Done that one, but didn't notice any others. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "but does not track progress in the game post-completion..." - I have no idea what this means. Can you play the game post-completion? You haven't mentioned that before...

• Rephrased for clarity. Where should I mention it that you can play the game after beating it, though? That's a pretty standard feature. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Reception

• "Similarly to its predecessors" - "Like its predecessors" (or "similar to", similarly is an adverb but Sonic 3 is a noun)

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Consensus now is to roll GameRankings to the nearest whole percentage (78%, not 78.33%), since the inputs are whole percentages at best; it's all sigfigs if you took high school chemistry. Related to this- it's optional but nice if you append "(X reviews)" in the table after the MC and GR scores to say how many reviews went into that average.

• Rounded. I've always assumed it was merely an issue of giving too much detail for the reader, which I've always thought was ridiculous but didn't feel like challenging. Technically sig-figs shouldn't matter since you're adding the totals, not multiplying them, but I see the point - I'd rather not include the number of reviews, though, since it's a slightly volatile total and could call into question why we're including these reviews and not others. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Sega Magazine is redirecting (also in the table)

• And in the citation - done all. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "...better special stages and is not only..." - tense conflict with the rest of the sentence, should be "was not only"

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "Thomas stated that..." - restate who Thomas is; the last time you mentioned him it was in the context of the remakes but now it's the original game. Same for Whitehead.

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Don't start a paragraph with "however"- there's nothing for it to play off of. The "also" makes it even worse. Start he paragraph "Some critics felt Sonic 3 had innovated too little from previous Sonic games."

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Optional: I've already forgotten who Humphries is. Consider changing the bare names to be "Humphries of Hyper" or "Hyper's Humphries" or "Hyper reviewer Humphries" or "Writing for Hyper, Humphries said", etc.

• Done the first. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "enjoyed its new power-ups" - its is ambiguous, try just "the new power-ups"

• Done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "Many aspects of the game's level design were praised. Electronic" - JimmyBlackwing just sharpened his knives at the thought of this at FAC. Replace the period with a semicolon. Same for the other bare statements like this, but this one jumped out at me as easy to modify

• Originated as that last part being a separate paragraph; you wouldn't connect a topic sentence to the first piece of evidence using a semicolon. Done, though. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "use of wordless cutscenes to effect a coherent story" - props for using "effect" correctly as a verb, but "create" would be cleaner

• Is it that rare? Erm, done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "well received, though somewhat less so" - than what? The visuals?

• Yeah, done. Tezero (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Legacy

• "Issues 33 and 34 of Sonic the Comic, and issue 13" - no comma

• Done ☯ Jaguar ☯ 19:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• "For Sonic's twentieth anniversary" - italics

• Done ☯ Jaguar ☯ 19:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

References

• Pretty sure it's Nintendo Life, not NintendoLife

• Fixed ☯ Jaguar ☯ 19:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Redirects for GameSetWatch, US Gamer, and Sega Magazine if you want to fix them

• All fixed ☯ Jaguar ☯ 19:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Magazine references really need publishers, and ISSNs if you can get them

• Done. I also noticed that Game Revolution and Kotaku weren't linked for some reason; might've been because those references were copied and pasted from Sonic 1 or 2, where they corroborated the same information, and in that article they weren't the first instances of sources from those sites. Tezero (talk) 21:56, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• If you're only going to link the first use of a site in the references, make sure it is the first- refs 29/30, for example

• Fixed that one and another extra link of GamesRadar I saw. Tezero (talk) 21:56, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Is... is US Gamer just EuroGamer with a reskin job? Huh.

• US Gamer is a division of Eurogamer, so I've just redirected all links to Eurogamer ☯ Jaguar ☯ 19:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Ref 54- The Magic Box is not an RS. Their methodology for figuring out game sales numbers is suspect as best, and "magic" at worst

Images

• All three non-free images need better rationales - specifically, they need a better/longer explanation of why that image is adding to the article, beyond "it's a shot of the gameplay" "it's a shot of the special stages" - check any video game FA for examples

• Alright, PresN, done with that and, if I'm not mistaken, with everything now. Tezero (talk) 18:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

--PresN 04:59, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

For what its worth, "The Magic Box" is currently identified as a WP:RS at WP:VG/S. I've always used them in the past and had no problem, though I can't say I've dug real deep into it or anything. Sergecross73 msg me 18:01, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I was gonna say; if it's somehow not an RS, it needs to be stricken from a lot more locations than here. Tezero (talk) 18:38, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Wait, TMB is an RS? Why did I think it wasn't? I don't know how I combined it in my head with VGChartz, but I guess I did somehow. Striking that line. --PresN 18:56, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

GA: Pass! --PresN 19:31, 5 February 2015 (UTC)