Armature reviewers? Probably not. People who get paid to review? Definitely. It's your job, it's the sucky part of your job, you get money, shut up. Yahtzee as a reviewer? He can do whatever the hell he wants. It's not like I actually would be insane enough to base a purchasing decision of Zero Punctuation. That's entertainment.
Poll: Should a person reviewing a game finish it?
- Thread starter Breno
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A "professional" reviewer should play enough of a game in order to experience the majority of a games content in order to write a informative review. A reviewer's job is to help the reader decide wither or not said game is something they want to buy, rent, play or avoid. Reviewers can be subjective so long as they are informative.
It really depends to me. I'll excuse a reviewer once they've played 30 hours into a game or they've beaten it. If it's got a multiplayer component, then 20 hours on the campaign (or completion) and 10 hours on multiplayer. Yes, it's a reviewer's job to review the game, but they have lives, too. I don't expect them to put in more than 40 hours a week -- 30 or so hours of playing and one workday of writing a review. If it's a video review, then I can be more lenient on the play times. As a friend of mine said about one of the more recent Final Fantasy games, "If it takes 20 hours to start getting interesting, I'm not going to play it."
To me, a reviewer not finishing a game after only playing it for a few hours should be an option on the table, too. But it has to mean something. It would mean that the game is so atrocious, it's gameplay so terrible that said reviewer isn't willing to put any more time into it. The problem crops up if reviewers resort to it even slightly often. To this day, I think there's only two games I've picked up in my entire life that I wasn't willing to finish. Those were Shaq-Fu and Command & Conquer 4. Two games in 20 years of gaming (I started out by getting my ass kicked in Tetris by my cousin when I was 3) isn't a bad average.
To me, a reviewer not finishing a game after only playing it for a few hours should be an option on the table, too. But it has to mean something. It would mean that the game is so atrocious, it's gameplay so terrible that said reviewer isn't willing to put any more time into it. The problem crops up if reviewers resort to it even slightly often. To this day, I think there's only two games I've picked up in my entire life that I wasn't willing to finish. Those were Shaq-Fu and Command & Conquer 4. Two games in 20 years of gaming (I started out by getting my ass kicked in Tetris by my cousin when I was 3) isn't a bad average.
A good game can never be made by it's ending alone. On the contrary if it is good you will want to see the ending, even if the ending in question is lousy (ie cliffhanger). As long as the reviewer has experienced the primary elements of the game then it is fine. If they are good he/she will play to the end. If not it doesn't matter either way.
If they want to be taken seriously by me they will. You have a job. Do it. You review games for a living. Suck it up.Breno said:
No. as long as you've played a game enough to get a good feel for it then that's ok. I mean how do you review massive sprawling RPGs, or games like WoW? How about online focused gameplay like Call of Duty?
The truth of the industry is that there is only so much time to review a game. If your review isn't out within a week of release then it is worth a lot less to your company. If you have an early review copy then that's great, but what if you don't?
The truth of the industry is that there is only so much time to review a game. If your review isn't out within a week of release then it is worth a lot less to your company. If you have an early review copy then that's great, but what if you don't?
If the story is a BIG part of the game itself then, yes, a person should ABSOLUTELY finish the game to know the whole story.Breno said:
Is it unfair to judge, say, Witcher without playing through it? Yes, the story and the world are integral parts of the game.
Is it unfair to judge Saint's Row 2 or Call of Duty without finishing them? No. Because no one gives a toss about the story. It's all about the gameplay and that's the ONLY thing you need to experience to get a handle on the game.
honestly, if they can't get though 5 mins of the game without chucking it out the window, thats enough of a review for me
Especially if the game is only 1-3 hours anyway.jacobythehedgehog said:
OT: It really depends on the genre and the length of the game. I could understand someone not 100% completing a RPG giving how much is in them but I would be annoyed if they didn't finish a shooter. This is because most shooters now are less than 6 hours. Although if it is really bad well then the extra hour won't change your opinion.
Exactly what I was thinking. Imagine forcing a reviewer to complete a 100 hour game. It's fine for a game you can complete in 10 hours or less, but not a huge expansive RPG. I'm not sure how much they should play, though. I guess they need to play enough to get the basic idea.blackdwarf said:
If after playing through a chunk of the game you find it to be so terrible or boring that you can't even handle playing it through, I highly doubt that the rest of the game would have painted a different picture.
Let me give you an example: Glover. It's a pretty mediocre game, where you fight through some levels so that you can restore some wizard's magic and stop your turned-evil glove. I played through the first four worlds before getting so utterly bored that I used cheats to see the other worlds.
You never get any upgrades, there's never any interesting changes in game mechanics, and the bosses are always annoying. I eventually looked up the ending and discovered that it's even less rewarding than the playthrough itself.
So what, since I didn't sit through every single level and every single boss, I'm not entitled to think it's a mediocre game?
Or hell, Quest 64. It's repetitive, cutscene-less, story-less, and if you didn't talk to anyone besides the required starting text and bosses, you wouldn't even know wth was going on. The game's abysmally long and offers no help whatsoever. I came close to beating it before my memory card became corrupted and deleted the save. It's a bad game. Me not finishing that last 10% does not make it any less true.
Similarly, a reviewer should give it their all. Keep in mind that a reviewer is playing games because they have to, not because they want to. They might not like the genre they're being forced to play, the controls might be retarded, the story might be bollocks, and a whole bunch of other factors. You the gamer pick out games that you think you'll like based on what the game is about and what the gameplay is like.
If you're a JRPG fan, for example, you don't go and watch Yahtzee to see if he thinks your game is good. You know he hates all JRPGs. If you're a Witcher fan, just give up: Yahtzee hates your game. It's not a crime that he couldn't make it to the end of the game. If I hate a game, I stop playing it. If reviewers were forced to drag themselves through games, even if they couldn't beat a certain part due to difficulty, their ratings would lower even further.
It's like when I started watching Inuyasha. I made it a few seasons in, and at that point decided that I needed to finish it. I was too deep in to stop. I struggled through to the end, hating every character, every decision, every joke, everything. You know how I felt about it at the end? I hated it even more because the ending was just a final pile of shit to add to the "fuck you" pile.
So no, no a reviewer shouldn't be forced to play through utter shit if they think it is utter shit. I figure this topic has two reasons for existing: Either you're a Witcher fan who is upset that Yahtzee didn't praise your Witcher series, or you're a DNF fan upset that reviewers everywhere hate it.
Witcher doesn't hold your hand, yadda yadda yadda. I know. I'm not a big fan of games that are dark, gloomy, miserable little piles of brown. I do like a vast amount of complexity in a game, and I probably would give the series a try, but the apparently huge emphasis on boobs turned me off altogether. I don't get what is so utterly amazing about the game.
DNF is shit. Everyone knows it's shit. The only people screaming that it isn't shit either never knew Duke, love them some modern FPS bullshittery, or are so retardedly immature that they find the decade old jokes hilarious. Quit yer crying. The results are in: the general consensus is that it is shit, and no, playing through the entire game will not make it less shit. Unless the final cutscene is Duke being forced to mature and realizing that his ego is too inflated for his own good, I don't see how the ending of the game will possibly be so utterly different from the rest of the game that it'll be worth struggling through all the garbled bullshit that comes before it.
Actually, there should be a name for this. The Final Fantasy 13 Syndrome. We can call it FF13S, or Ffies. Saying "it gets better" after playing it for some absurd amount of time when the first massive chunk of it utterly sucks is not a good reason to keep playing. A good game hooks you in from the start with the best of what it's got. Making you struggle through for 40 hours to get to the "good" part is bad design. A reviewer can safely assume a game sucks if anyone who isn't a diehard fan won't be clawing people down to suffer through a shitty beginning just to get that little nugget at the end.
Let me give you an example: Glover. It's a pretty mediocre game, where you fight through some levels so that you can restore some wizard's magic and stop your turned-evil glove. I played through the first four worlds before getting so utterly bored that I used cheats to see the other worlds.
You never get any upgrades, there's never any interesting changes in game mechanics, and the bosses are always annoying. I eventually looked up the ending and discovered that it's even less rewarding than the playthrough itself.
So what, since I didn't sit through every single level and every single boss, I'm not entitled to think it's a mediocre game?
Or hell, Quest 64. It's repetitive, cutscene-less, story-less, and if you didn't talk to anyone besides the required starting text and bosses, you wouldn't even know wth was going on. The game's abysmally long and offers no help whatsoever. I came close to beating it before my memory card became corrupted and deleted the save. It's a bad game. Me not finishing that last 10% does not make it any less true.
Similarly, a reviewer should give it their all. Keep in mind that a reviewer is playing games because they have to, not because they want to. They might not like the genre they're being forced to play, the controls might be retarded, the story might be bollocks, and a whole bunch of other factors. You the gamer pick out games that you think you'll like based on what the game is about and what the gameplay is like.
If you're a JRPG fan, for example, you don't go and watch Yahtzee to see if he thinks your game is good. You know he hates all JRPGs. If you're a Witcher fan, just give up: Yahtzee hates your game. It's not a crime that he couldn't make it to the end of the game. If I hate a game, I stop playing it. If reviewers were forced to drag themselves through games, even if they couldn't beat a certain part due to difficulty, their ratings would lower even further.
It's like when I started watching Inuyasha. I made it a few seasons in, and at that point decided that I needed to finish it. I was too deep in to stop. I struggled through to the end, hating every character, every decision, every joke, everything. You know how I felt about it at the end? I hated it even more because the ending was just a final pile of shit to add to the "fuck you" pile.
So no, no a reviewer shouldn't be forced to play through utter shit if they think it is utter shit. I figure this topic has two reasons for existing: Either you're a Witcher fan who is upset that Yahtzee didn't praise your Witcher series, or you're a DNF fan upset that reviewers everywhere hate it.
Witcher doesn't hold your hand, yadda yadda yadda. I know. I'm not a big fan of games that are dark, gloomy, miserable little piles of brown. I do like a vast amount of complexity in a game, and I probably would give the series a try, but the apparently huge emphasis on boobs turned me off altogether. I don't get what is so utterly amazing about the game.
DNF is shit. Everyone knows it's shit. The only people screaming that it isn't shit either never knew Duke, love them some modern FPS bullshittery, or are so retardedly immature that they find the decade old jokes hilarious. Quit yer crying. The results are in: the general consensus is that it is shit, and no, playing through the entire game will not make it less shit. Unless the final cutscene is Duke being forced to mature and realizing that his ego is too inflated for his own good, I don't see how the ending of the game will possibly be so utterly different from the rest of the game that it'll be worth struggling through all the garbled bullshit that comes before it.
Actually, there should be a name for this. The Final Fantasy 13 Syndrome. We can call it FF13S, or Ffies. Saying "it gets better" after playing it for some absurd amount of time when the first massive chunk of it utterly sucks is not a good reason to keep playing. A good game hooks you in from the start with the best of what it's got. Making you struggle through for 40 hours to get to the "good" part is bad design. A reviewer can safely assume a game sucks if anyone who isn't a diehard fan won't be clawing people down to suffer through a shitty beginning just to get that little nugget at the end.
As long as they feel they got the whole experince of the game is trying to offer. But I think you need to get the right person for the review. One reviewer may not enjoy a specific game all the way through, however another may love it and give it 5 stars or what ever. Also if the game is just so bad that they just can't go on, explain the reasons in the review.
Also alot of you are slaging off the Witcher 2 review on Zero Punctuation. He's describing his experince, and if he's not having fun, he's not having fun. Everybody has different ideas of what fun is. I like to walk around my local woods listening to The Prodigy full blast. But some of you may see that as boring. Different taste's for different people.
Also alot of you are slaging off the Witcher 2 review on Zero Punctuation. He's describing his experince, and if he's not having fun, he's not having fun. Everybody has different ideas of what fun is. I like to walk around my local woods listening to The Prodigy full blast. But some of you may see that as boring. Different taste's for different people.
Being good later on is no excuse to be bad at the start.
No, I do not think people need to finish the game before reviewing.
No, I do not think people need to finish the game before reviewing.
But it did made a game that was "ok" become a "must buy", you cant explain that!MaxPowers666 said:
EDIT: I do understand if the game is complete crap but either way he is getting paid, just do the job and dont come with excuses to not do it. Its lazy and unprofessional.