Talk:Killcount

Official NRC Review
Ah, time for another NRC review. What do I get to review this time? Ah, Killcount. I know some people like it, but I'd never actually read the thing myself.

First off, let's be clear on one thing: this sounds too much like TEG. Dozens of beings plucked from their homeworlds to compete in a game? This is something I've seen before. More than once. And although the purpose of this game is to defeat the Baterra instead of simple entertainment, it seems like that was just slipped in so as to make it a FTTD contest. Fighting the Baterra is one thing; fighting one another to see who will fight the Baterra is another. It seems impractical and contrived.

But that isn't going to be the point of this review, so let's move on.

So—another story "inspired" by The Hunger Games. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much; although I haven't read the original, it seems to me like most of these BIONICLE-themed spinoffs probably aren't nearly as good as the book. But this one is actually pretty decent, though there are several things I would like to point out.

The first and most glaring problem is that of the writing. Now, I understand that your native language is Dutch and not English (although your English is, quite frankly, awesome for a non-native speaker), it seems to me like it could be a little more sophisticated. My points are below:
 * Summarization. Instead of summarizing an action (i.e., "he slayed one of the five Baterra surrounding them") you could do a description ("In a sudden movement, he whipped around and sliced across with his sword, cutting a diagonal slash through the Baterra armor like butter...").
 * Short. Unsophisticated. Sentences. ("The Toa raised his sword. He charged his energy in the blade. The energy pulsed in a glow.") It would help to combine them, or, even better, lengthen them so as to give more detail.
 * Redundant redundancy. Also, there are some things that don't make much sense ("Fangs emerged from his long, razor-sharp teeth." What?) where it seems you may have confused their meanings or something. I don't know.

OK, now that we've gotten that over with, I'll move on to the second major problem: characterization. The plot is all right, though I'm kind of worried about this story having the same problem as TEG, where there are almost too many characters to keep track of. But TEG mainly focused on deepening the characters of only a few (Nightwatcher, Fairon, Shardak, etc.). I don't see any characterization happening here. Nil. Again, something that should be worked on.

So, what do I think of it? I think this is a story with quite some potential (admittedly, almost cliche by now, though) and it could be much improved by working on the writing points I mentioned above. This isn't bad, but it could admittedly be quite a bit better.

Grade: B

Sli cer   Out  04:40, December 8, 2010 (UTC)