Hey there! This is Jobocan. This may seem like a whole new website, and that’s because it kinda is.

Previously I was running a blog called The Save Points, which started back in 2008. It originated as a project between friends where we’d be several people reviewing games and doing different kinds of posts. We started with 4 people (and added a couple more early on). After not too long people other than me stopped writing for it and it became pretty much a solo site, and visually had not updated in a long time. We experimented with many scoring systems, different kinds of posts and, overall, it was just something for me to have fun with.

That site had domain name issues recently (unfortunately not long after I posted a pile of year-end posts like GotY 2020 and my most hyped games for 2021), where it wasn’t renewed and thus expired. I took a while during that to figure what I’d do, either wait 65 days for the domain to be buyable again, or just make a new website and start entirely from scratch. So… here we are! I do have the old site archived on my side but I doubt I’m bringing any of it back.

Just thought I’d introduce how I’ll do things here. Read on!

WHO?

I’m Jobocan. Jobocan (pronounce it however you want) is an old semi-nonsense nickname I’ve been carrying around and using since high school. I’ve been playing games since the 80s on a variety of platforms, I develop websites, I watch anime, I collect games and… that’s about it. I’m just some dude who likes games and likes talking/writing about games. This is something I do entirely for fun and that’s all I really care about in the end. I’ll stop writing about games when I get bored of doing it, and I doubt that’ll happen. If I can somehow get paid to do this, I’ll gladly accept, but I have no idea how I’d even do that and I don’t really care to do it. If I get no one commenting on posts, that’s fine by me. If I do, awesome.

WHAT?

I was thinking about what to call the website, and I decided I’d keep it simple. Jobocan, that’s me, and I’ll write game reviews. Of course I wanted to have fun with it, so I was thinking about having a fun tag line, and my british writer buddy randomly throws me an acronym for my nickname: Jovial Outlook Based On Centuries Analysing Nonsense, or JOBOCAN. It makes a strange amount of sense. So there, my new site is JOBOCAN Game Reviews. It offers a jovial outlook based on centuries analysing nonsense.

I’m still pretty much deciding on a few things as far as reviewing games. Writing style, formatting and all that stuff. I used to separate reviews in a pretty simple way: Intro, Presentation, Gameplay and finally my Overall thoughts. I’m wondering if that’s a bit too formulaic, so I might start changing that style around a bit. One important note is that I will not score games. We’ve tried that before (in many different ways) and it never worked. Scoring is dumb. A review should stand on its own feet without an arbitrary number added to it. What does 9/10 even mean? I don’t know. I’d say basically no game deserves such a high score, even some of the games I really like. So instead, just read the review and try to gleam from it what I liked and didn’t, see if it interests you. Simple enough, eh? Maybe what I don’t like about a game is something you do.

My reviews will tend to focus pretty heavily on gameplay, as it’s obviously the most important thing in literally any game. It’s what makes games art that is different from any other medium. I don’t care about this other stuff much. A game can be good with bad presentation (graphics, audio, story), but it can’t be good with bad gameplay. I try to talk about most gameplay mechanics in a game that I think are worth mentioning and how they interplay with other elements. AS lot of reviewers tend to not take the time to understand gameplay mechanics, which is how you see so many bad takes. Or they care about things that don’t matter.

As for what I’ll review… anything I play. I tend to play a decent amount of games from a decent range of genres, though I like my action games, RPGs and platformers. There’s some styles of games you probably won’t frequently see me review, like RTS games (which I think are super cool but I suck at them). I also don’t tend to play online multiplayer games, so don’t expect much on that end from me (the only exceptions have been Splatoon 1 and 2, Rocket League and Overwatch, and all of those were pretty short-lived). I tend to focus on Nintendo platforms and PC (that way I can play most noteworthy games that come out on the “next-gen” consoles and all the Nintendo exclusive stuff). I don’t yet have a PS5 as of this writing, as I’m waiting for it to actually have games (it doesn’t) and for it to actually be available to buy (honestly, not a bad thing it’s so unavailable since I’m missing on literally nothing). Generally I will only buy games I legitimately want to play, so if I review something negatively, it’s largely gonna be because it didn’t reach my expectations, or is genuinely bad. I don’t hold any dev to a different standard, if someone makes a bad game, they’ve made a bad game.

Games don’t specifically need to be recent for me to review them, they just have to be new for me. Sometimes I have nothing new to play so I grab some old games that I didn’t play before and review those instead. Why not, old games are just as relevant and important to review as new ones. I do like to talk about old classics as well.

Swearing is totally a thing here, but it only happens when needed. My writing style is basically the same way I’d just normally talk about something. Professionalism is for the weak. Games are supposed to be fun, so writing about them should also be fun. If a game isn’t fun, it should still be fun to wreck it.

What about other posts? I’m thinking maybe I’ll start throwing out more rants, something I wasn’t doing THAT much in the The Save Points days. I’d rant from time to time in certain game reviews (I’d make a separate section of the review specifically for ranting), I’d rant when I’d do reaction posts to big presentations, and I’d do a big rant about which of the big game console manufacturers suck when I’d do the year-end posts too (usually Sony… they’re not very good, generally).

One I do all the time is previews for upcoming games in the following month, basically a release list with my impressions. So if we’re nearing the end of February, I’ll do a post about the games coming in March. I’ll split by platform (a section for multiplats and a section for every console getting “exclusive” games, or releases that the other platforms aren’t getting yet, or got before), and order by release date. I include all sorts of games, but not every game. There’s just too much crap coming out on Steam to be worth talking about, so I highlight games I’m excited for, games that will be popular regardless, and some niche things in-between that either I’m hyped for or that other people might be.

And at the end of every year I do the generic Game of the Year stuff, though I try to highlight a lot of games, that are actually good (unlike a certain game award show).

If I think of some other interesting things to post, I will. I don’t do video content, I have no intention to start (and if I were to do so it’d be in Vtuber form probably… if I could get someone to make me a design and 3D model).

I’m not super good at reviewing non-game things, so it probably won’t happen. I definitely can’t review music, and movies… it depends. I’d need to find something worth reviewing at all, which is pretty rare nowadays. I wonder if I even reviewed Sonic when that came out last year, I legit don’t remember. If I played more board games I’d definitely review that, but I basically haven’t touched one in years now.

WHEN?

Whenever I feel like it!

I do like previewing the big games coming out every month, which I do a couple days before a month starts, so around the 24th-25th every month I try to post about upcoming games that I find interesting for whatever reason.

Game reviews come whenever I finish the games I’m playing and get a moment to write about them.

Rants can come whenever, I tend to write those for a very long time, editing them for months on end and then never actually posting them… maybe I’ll start actually posting them more or something, I dunno.

I try to get “reaction” posts for events on the same day the event happens, I tend to write my reactions as I’m watching and that’s what I end up posting (after some editing for readability and writing some overall thoughts and rants about said events). So E3 is usually a pretty heavy week of posts, but that’s if E3 remains a thing. Things like Nintendo Direct and Playstation State of Play are maybes, depending on how big they are. I tend not to talk about those every time they happen, unless they give me something to rant about… and Nintendo Directs don’t seem to be a thing anymore, so… eh.

Overall

This is a new start, where I’m keeping none of the old content I still have and going in entirely from scratch. Might be a good time to experiment, who knows what I’ll do. I’ll definitely improve on the visuals of the site and add some functionality here and there.

I dunno, maybe I’ll bring back some old posts from the old site from time to time… The Save Points Throwback? It’s an idea!

My first posts? Probably reviews for Atelier Ryza 2, Cyber Shadow, Grindstone and Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. Already building up a backlog of reviews. And I’ve been holding back on a few things in the The Save Points days so I’m sure I’ve got plenty to do for a while. And of course the release list for March coming later in the month, and reviewing everything coming out this year that seems interesting… I should be plenty busy.

I’m here to have some fun, so let’s go!