Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/GTA - Amish Country
GTA - Amish Country[edit source]
Comments: Just Entering First Comments - Byron,June 6, 2010
| Humour: | 4 | Ok, I'll just start by saying that this kind of article is a pet hate of many Uncyclopedians. Over the years we've had tons of pages called GTA: (insert funny place name), and it's getting older all the time. Given that you're a relatively new user, you probably weren't to know this, so don't worry too much about it. What you've got to work on is distancing it from all those other terrible articles. Fortunately, it's already one of the better ones I've seen, so I believe with a bit of work you should be able to manage this. I should warn you though that no matter how hilarious it becomes, most of the users on here will probably think twice before even clicking the link to read it, due to the fact that they've already heard the joke a million times.
Ok, so what improvements can we make here? As far as concept goes, I don't think there's a lot you can do, so I'll just talk about humour and concept here in the same section (they're pretty closely linked in my criticism anyway). What you have to move away from is simply focussing on the fact that you've set GTA in a funny location. Just talking about a fictional game isn't enough to be funny, you need to use the invention to comment satirically on the subject matter - either video games, Amish culture or both. For instace, something I thought showed promise was the joke you made about "hitting cars for extra points". This is bordering on being interesting, as it kind of pokes fun at the Amish stereotype of hating modern technology. Another part I found vaguely amusing was where you listed the platforms it was released on. Again, this is heading in the right direction as it makes fun of the old-fashioned culture. Where I think you went wrong here was having the game released in the 19th Century. I thought it would be much funnier if you made the game the Amish response to violent and immoral modern culture, typified by videogames such as GTA. This would allow you to use much of the material you have now, but also allow for some sorely needed expansion. You could go into detail about the Amish production company who made the game, and how they released it on their crappy platforms (and still make that joke about it being better than the Playstation, which was giggle-worthy). To get an idea of this kind of humour, I suggest you take a look at this. It's a pretty funny article that makes jokes at the expense of old-fashioned people in the same way you're hinting at in yours. Another thing you could do is satirise the GTA games themselves, as you don't really do this here. Unfortunately I'm not really an expert on this, as I haven't actually played one since GTA: London. But if you do your research on this (and on Amish culture) I'm sure you can come up with loads of things to make fun of. Just any little illogical conventions and overdone tropes you can think of - like the way you could lose a whole squadron of cops just by repainting your car (does that still happen?), or the player's tendencies to disregard the missions and run around random killing people for no reason. Think of something humorous from your own experiences playing the games, and explore that. Something that people can say "Oh yeah, I've been there!" about. The article seems very rushed, and I would imagine you haven't spent very long working on it. I strongly recommend How to be funny and not just stupid here, not that you're being that stupid, but just because it's an invaluable guide on writing comedy. If you try the suggestions I make above, you should be able to get rid of the briefness, and go into more detail. A lot of the article just skims through the details without getting to the meat of why it's funny. Your character section is the best example of this, where you basically list a load of characters without telling us anything about them, who they are, or what their place in the story is. Then you go off on a random tangent about Christian Bale, which really has no place here. I wouldn't deem the character section that important, it's just something to think about while working on the article as a whole. If you write as much as you can on a subject, you'll always find more jokes popping up by themselves, so just try it and see what you get. |
| Concept: | 3 | I don't have much else to say here. Pretty low marks because it's not a particularly imaginitive or original idea. Still, it has it's saving graces. I think the main thing to do here is try to make your made up game seem more realistic. A lot of it at the moment is nonsensical. A good example of what I'm talking about is where you talk about the soundtrack. You talk briefly about the songs on the soundtrack, but then contradict yourself by saying it's not available on any format. As I'm sure you can see, this doesn't make sense. Try something like "Because the Amish have no technology, the soundtrack is played by a troupe of accordian players, who come free with all copies of the game." Do you see why this is funnier? It mocks the very idea of Amish people making a game, rather than resorting to random humour. This won't be the last time you hear this here, but random humour is very bad!. Again, HTBFANJS should have some tips on avoiding such pitfalls, something we all do from time to time. Of course, I'm not telling you what to write, as long as you're happy with the article then you've done a good job. I'm just trying to anticipate what the rest of the userbase will make of this (and be wary that many of them of a lot older and crueller than I am). |
| Prose and formatting: | 4 | While your spelling and grammar are generally fine, your prose, like your humour, seems a little rushed. You need to just slow down, take your time when explaining things, make sure everything's clear and think carefully about jokes you can make. I struggled to understand what "shunning" was for instance, and couldn't really figure out what you meant when you said "the more virtues you can display, the nastier the game". Obviously if readers can't understand what you're trying to tell them, they're not going to care much for your jokes, however funny they may be. It can also get a bit listy in places, like the parts where you just reel off names of characters or song titles, without tapping into the humour that no doubt lurks within. Try to avoid lists as they don't get to grips with the subject matter, and tend to be a bit predictable. If it helps, try reading your work aloud to get a better idea of how prose can flow. Also, why not check out some of our best of, if you haven't already, as they are all good examples of clear, concise language. That's the key here; clarity. Try to be clear, keep your sentences simple yet don't make it obvious where the joke is going. Do this and you should be fine.
As for formatting, there are a couple of things. You make a strange habit here of putting spaces both after and before your full stops and commas. You only need them after, not before. Also, for paragraphs you just need one line to separate them. I notice you've been using the <br> tag. This isn't really necessary for a normal line break. It will look a lot tidier if you just put a blank line between them. |
| Images: | 2 | You could really do with some more images. I appreciate how hard it is to find images sometimes (particularly for a made up game), but having no meaningful pictures really detracts from the article. If you expand and develop the text as I've suggested, hopefully some more ideas for images could leap out at you.
Even the images you have aren't that great I'm afraid. The first looks very ameteurish. I recommend either working on it further yourself or getting someone else to do it for you. More pictures of the Amish platforms would be nice, maybe one of them playing it? Of course, it's up to you where you go with it. |
| Miscellaneous: | 3.3 | My average score of the article. |
| Final Score: | 16.3 | So like I've said, the concept itself is inherently flawed. With an article like this, it's hard to go anywhere particularly interesting or original. But I have hope that it can be salvaged (although not without some hard work). I sincerely hope you can find some really exciting edge to this and set it apart from all the other articles of this type. Whether you work further on this or move on to your next project with a better idea of what you're doing, I hope I've been of some help. Or, if you choose to ignore me completely and go off in your own direction, that would also be fine. And remember, if you're not satisfied with the review you can always submit again. If you want any further help from me, leave me a message and I'll see what I can do. Thanks. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 01:14, June 13, 2010 (UTC) | |