I do a lot of review writing, and when you review as many videogames and movies as I have over the past seven years or so, it gets a little challenging to keep things fresh. If you’re not careful, you can end up blathering on about Mulberry trees just to keep yourself amused and avoid the cliches that are part and parcel of review writing.

I can’t count how many times anymore that I’ve had to review a videogame and talk about an RPG battle system that is not really essentially all that different than the other 200-some RPGs I’ve reviewed over the years. But it’s been a lot of them.

The best thing I’ve found is to contextualize the reviews, setting them into some sort of historical perspective. However, that can get tedious as well after a while; but for now, it’s my best current solution.