Poll: Can a review be valid if the reviewer did not finish the game in question?
- Thread starter Lord Doomhammer
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as many have said, yahtzee is more of a critic than a reviewer, and he isn't necessarily giving a review. however i think if the game is so bad that you don't want to finish it, you can make a pretty safe assumption what the whole review will be like.
"The First Two Acts suck so badly I can't force myself through the third, and I'm being paid for it." Seems like a pretty informative review.
You can review a game without finishing it, yes, but you cannot critique a game without finishing it. A review is, for all intents and purposes, a buyer's guide - here's (hopefully) enough information about the game to give you an idea whether or not you should spend your money on it. A critique, on the other hand, looks at the game as a whole to determine whether or not it's successful in any regard. (A game might be a storytelling success without actually being any fun, for example. Or perhaps it's visually stunning, but the controls are broken.)
Of course, the definitions of "review" and "critique" are in the eye of the beholder. But that's my take on it.
Of course, the definitions of "review" and "critique" are in the eye of the beholder. But that's my take on it.
No, it speaks to the quality of the game itself. I know I played through about 2 hours of FFX and realized that blitzball was stupid, as was Waka, or whatever his name is. I've never picked it up again, and I know for a fact, and tell everyone I meet, that this was the death of the FF series, and one of the worst games ever. If a game is so bad that you cannot stand to play through it, there is no way the end makes up for it. Period. That's like saying, "Man, I'm glad I'm being stabbed repeatedly, it'll totally be worth it because my funeral is going to be SWEET!"
It depends on how accurate a review you want. If you want to know that the final stretch is a bit of a letdown after all the epic that happened the whole rest of the game, then yeah... Listen to someone who actually played the whole game. If you just want to know if the game plays smoothly, then a critique of the first hour or two should be enough to point out how interesting the environment is or how buggy the AI is.
Honestly, I'd rather hear the critique of people's first impressions rather than slog through a game that only gets "Good" ten or more hours in. Chances are I'd have lost interest before then if there's nothing else to be impressed by.
Honestly, I'd rather hear the critique of people's first impressions rather than slog through a game that only gets "Good" ten or more hours in. Chances are I'd have lost interest before then if there's nothing else to be impressed by.
It's hard to say. Normally a game's mechanics don't majorly change as you go through, but sometimes certain things do. I remember with Heavy Rain he said that while it's not the best excuse, it does get better over time. Kinda wondering if he would have had such a positive review if he didn't take the time to go through the whole game.
Doesn't matter enough to be a breaker on its validity. If a game is so bad, I'm just to uninspired to finish it, that should say more than if you finish the game, still didn't enjoy it, and then have only more bad stuff to say.
Really, games like that one sonic that had you saving the princess thats into anthropomorphic bestiality and the retarded little demi-god Mewtwo wanna-be Silver (I forget the name, I tried to repress the memory of its existence)? So bad, I just didn't bother... It was unpleasant, and I didn't wanna keep playing, so what does that say about the game when I talk about it to another person?
Really, games like that one sonic that had you saving the princess thats into anthropomorphic bestiality and the retarded little demi-god Mewtwo wanna-be Silver (I forget the name, I tried to repress the memory of its existence)? So bad, I just didn't bother... It was unpleasant, and I didn't wanna keep playing, so what does that say about the game when I talk about it to another person?
Some games can take upwards of 40 hours to complete. A reviewer like Yahtzee, who has a new video review every week, probably has to beat games around two times. If a game is terrible, there is no reason to continue playing.
I have an old PS2 racing game called Powerdrome. I've put in 3 hours into it, if that. I would NEVER recommend it. It's terrible, there was no speakable story, and wipeout did the same idea better and earlier.
I also have S.L.A.I. I've never beaten it. Always get really far in, but it just...goes...on(granted it doesn't feel like filler, but then it's hard to find time, then I stop, then I forget the story, then I restart, and I'm back at the beginning). But I highly recommend it. The mechanics are solid, the customization is fun, and building a perfect mech for your play style has a certain appeal.
Extra Credits pointed out that games reveal most of their mechanics in an hour (playing like a designer). In a game like New Vegas, where teh bugs can be so intrusive, I feel a first impression review is okay. A game like MindJack (which I've played some of, and it's pretty bad) should not have to be played through. Games getting better over time is no excuse. I shouldn't have to play FF13 for 30 odd hours for it to get better.
Yes, he should have a first impressions/90% impressions tag like the Witcher Review, but I feel it's still a legitimate review (critic for Yahtzee). A professional review should finish 99% of the games they play. But if a game comes across like Two Worlds one, a review should be able to say no. There's no reason to dig through crap (say, 10 hours of time) to find a redeeming quality (in the last 30 minutes). Especially when other games are much better, or at least have some sort of polish.
If the gameplay changes to drastically in the last few levels, then that's just seems cheap(New mechanics can be introduced/focused on (Half Life's Gravity Gun after all others are removed) but just changing gameplay doesn't sit right with me). Again, playing for 7 hours in the hopes of a good last one shouldn't be necessary. Now, if it was around the halfway point or slightly earlier, that would be fine. But the last few levels just seems wrong.
Say, Mario getting a beam gun in the last world. Would seem out of place no? Or God of War III's First Person camera.
Here, let me touch on an item that draws much hatred from the escapist.
I should be able to pick up twilight, read half of it, and say it's not for me. I should be able to tell my friends it is not a good book. I might say I only read the first half, but the point stands. Another example: Walking into a comic store, reading three pages of a comic, and putting it down as not for you.
That poor dog
Ok, the was captcha english FREEDOM (in bold). I didn't know computers like Braveheart.
I have an old PS2 racing game called Powerdrome. I've put in 3 hours into it, if that. I would NEVER recommend it. It's terrible, there was no speakable story, and wipeout did the same idea better and earlier.
I also have S.L.A.I. I've never beaten it. Always get really far in, but it just...goes...on(granted it doesn't feel like filler, but then it's hard to find time, then I stop, then I forget the story, then I restart, and I'm back at the beginning). But I highly recommend it. The mechanics are solid, the customization is fun, and building a perfect mech for your play style has a certain appeal.
Extra Credits pointed out that games reveal most of their mechanics in an hour (playing like a designer). In a game like New Vegas, where teh bugs can be so intrusive, I feel a first impression review is okay. A game like MindJack (which I've played some of, and it's pretty bad) should not have to be played through. Games getting better over time is no excuse. I shouldn't have to play FF13 for 30 odd hours for it to get better.
Yes, he should have a first impressions/90% impressions tag like the Witcher Review, but I feel it's still a legitimate review (critic for Yahtzee). A professional review should finish 99% of the games they play. But if a game comes across like Two Worlds one, a review should be able to say no. There's no reason to dig through crap (say, 10 hours of time) to find a redeeming quality (in the last 30 minutes). Especially when other games are much better, or at least have some sort of polish.
Yeah, I always found that annoying about stories. You can only speak about it in vague terms, but you can't say that a certain moment is cool. I understand why, it just seems odd to me.Marter said:
If the gameplay changes to drastically in the last few levels, then that's just seems cheap(New mechanics can be introduced/focused on (Half Life's Gravity Gun after all others are removed) but just changing gameplay doesn't sit right with me). Again, playing for 7 hours in the hopes of a good last one shouldn't be necessary. Now, if it was around the halfway point or slightly earlier, that would be fine. But the last few levels just seems wrong.
Say, Mario getting a beam gun in the last world. Would seem out of place no? Or God of War III's First Person camera.
I should be able to pick up twilight, read half of it, and say it's not for me. I should be able to tell my friends it is not a good book. I might say I only read the first half, but the point stands. Another example: Walking into a comic store, reading three pages of a comic, and putting it down as not for you.
That poor dog
Ok, the was captcha english FREEDOM (in bold). I didn't know computers like Braveheart.
Yes, it can. Reviewers may have time constraints to finish their reviews (do you really want to wait 200 hours of gameplay for a review of Elder Scrolls?). Besides, the game not being good enough to warrant a full playthrough is valid criticism.
Like 90% of the polls I see, the wishy-washy "depends" answer seems the best fit for me. If a game is so bad in your opinion that you just can't bring yourself to finish it, that says something about the game from that reviewer's perspective, even if it is anecdotal to an extent.
Like Yathzee himself once said "it's perfectly valid to dismiss a game, if the first few hours are aweful". AND "I've never accepted 'it get's better later as an excuse'". Which I think is perfectly fine, I mean, if I were to play a game that had the first part suck the penises of a 100 different animals and then have a second part that is "allright", then I'm probably not going to give it a good score either way.
I agree however that if you stop playing the game before it's finished you might miss out on something, I mean you learn from everything, even bad things. AND you won't be able to comment on the ending of the game. So yeah, it seems kinda lazy, but apparently Yahtzee isn't a reviewer anyway so it doesn't matter.
I agree however that if you stop playing the game before it's finished you might miss out on something, I mean you learn from everything, even bad things. AND you won't be able to comment on the ending of the game. So yeah, it seems kinda lazy, but apparently Yahtzee isn't a reviewer anyway so it doesn't matter.
From what I understand, reviewers are often writing reviews of games they haven't finished playing... they just don't admit it in the reviews.F-I-D-O said:
Seem to recall The Escapist doing an article about this where the writer talked about how he used cheat codes to play through various bits and often ignored huge game-killing bugs because the game developers swore up and down that this stuff was fixed in the release version of the game.
In a lot of ways, Yahtzee acts more like a proper reviewer than what's found elsewhere in the video game industry. I've read tons of reviews from the likes of Roger Ebert which had little to nothing to do with the movie in question. I think one of his reviews was all about the things that ran through his mind while watching the movie, because the movie in question was so bad that it didn't hold his attention.
Well, let's use Yahtzee's latest review as an example. Within minutes of play, Mindjack is clearly a piece of crap and no matter how much you play into it, it's highly unlikely to turn into Killzone 3 with servings of chocolate cake and poontang within any span of time.
I believe that for insignificant, off-the-radar games such as Mindjack, it is valid for a reviewer to form an opinion of a game without finishing it, especially if it proves to be an painful waste of time.
Major releases, ie. games where more people actually give a shit however, different story.
I believe that for insignificant, off-the-radar games such as Mindjack, it is valid for a reviewer to form an opinion of a game without finishing it, especially if it proves to be an painful waste of time.
Major releases, ie. games where more people actually give a shit however, different story.
I'm sure someone has said this in the 4 pages, but time is money.bibblles said:
Yahtzee is employed by The Escapist to review games, write articles, and possibly other stuff as well. He may have a life ect, we don't know, but the point is, everyones time is valuable to them, and if Yahtzee believed that the game was not going to get any better, then by not finishing it he's saving himself some time and effort to allocate elsewhere.
There are huge extremes in this subject as well, such as, should Yahtzee have to finish a game 100% to know how good it actually is? I say no. Likewise, should there be a logical minimum for each game? Probably. But pretend for a moment 'Tetris' was brand new and none of us had heard of it, Yahtzee could probably sub it up in 30 minutes / 1 game. It's circumstancial, and in this circumstance, he had made up his mind and was done with it.
Quoting Extra Credits here, you can be able to understand the mechanics and quality of a game by the first few hours of it. No need to finish it if you know it sucks, even if it "gets good" towards the ending that dosent make it a good game.
Well when your excuse for not finishing the game was that it was so bad that i wasn't having any fun, i think that actually says a lot for the game. I mean the point of the game is to be entertaining, if at any point it is not entertaining then it is not doing it's job properly. I'm being a bit over-generalistic in saying that, i know. Dieing is rarely fun in games, i'm not sure you can call horror games entertaining either (it just doesn't seem like the right word you know?), and there are other things done that are overall beneficial to the game as a whole that do not immediately give you the giggles. But if the game is so un-fun that it causes you to stop playing it, I think we can assume there are some serious design flaws. Even if the game in question was building up to an epic finale, if it fails to get you there then it fails completely. It might as well not have included content that you can't (or have to rip your hair out in frustration to) access, no matter how good it is. I think that at the point of the game Yhatzee was in, he had a pretty good idea of what the game was about and the only thing he missed was the conclusion to what sounds like a poorly written story.
There's a correct answer to this. That answer is YES. Why wouldn't it be?
EDIT - Some elaboration:
Provided a reviewer cites valid reasons for his judgment (i.e., he isn't making stuff up) and explains why he didn't finish and/or why the segment of the game he did play is in fact enough to make a call on the thing as a whole, a review is totally valid.
I didn't finish Tales of Vesperia, but I could give you a very... colorful review of that game that I'm certain would be 99.6% unabashedly accurate and indicative of the... unique experience the average non-fanboy would have with the game.
EDIT - Some elaboration:
Provided a reviewer cites valid reasons for his judgment (i.e., he isn't making stuff up) and explains why he didn't finish and/or why the segment of the game he did play is in fact enough to make a call on the thing as a whole, a review is totally valid.
I didn't finish Tales of Vesperia, but I could give you a very... colorful review of that game that I'm certain would be 99.6% unabashedly accurate and indicative of the... unique experience the average non-fanboy would have with the game.