Reviewers Should Finish Games, Says Zampella

[VanityGirl]

Respawn co-founder and former Infinity Ward boss Vince Zampella says that there's nothing more frustrating than reviewers not completing games before they write about them.

You mean people like Yatzee? HEYO!

If you're PAID to review one game every week, then you should be able to finish it. MMO's may have different rules, but most other games should be finishable.
Your should at least give a game a 6-8 hour courtesy period of play, this would allow the critic to get a general grasp of the game at least.

What happens when critics/reviews don't finish games:
They may do the "judge a book by its cover" and play the first 30 minutes of a game and totally write it up as generic and bland.
Red Dead Remdeption could have been given awful scores if people just judged it on the first hour or so, because quite frankly, the first hour was bland. Once the lasso was obtained, however, the game took a turning point for the better.



But back on track, if a reviewer finds a game terrible, well that's too bad and they should suck it up. They are being PAID to do their job. Sorry, but if they don't like having to play the bad games as well as the good ones, then they should find a new profession.

END OF STORY.

 

[Humble85]

Sorry, but that should be obvious: A game takes longer than two, maybe two and a half hours. Except for the occasional XBLA title most games exceed the average movies' length by far. Movies work distinctively different from games, as do books and music. Every medium has to be treated according to its needs.

While I agree that seeing every texture and element of a game does not seem necessary to review one fairly, your comparison does have a flaw. While with movies you do have a limited time, books, among other text types, can be incredibly long (especially when we speak of entire series like, say, The Wheel of Time, at 13 books long) and reviewers should still read the whole thing in the view of many people, because a twist might occur in the end that makes a very simple plot suddenly genius. (I mean, really. Does the phrase "would you kindly" mean anything to you? Exactly.) Games don't require more time than other mediums necessarily, but there are such standards to uphold for reviewing with those mediums. Why should game reviewers have it easier from their critics?

Game reviewers should not have it easier - no one said that. Just give reviewers the time they need to finish a game and everything is fine, at least in my book - but that is not really the case, is it? I am not familiar with literature reviews, but I`d guess you get an appropriate amount of time to read and write about 600+ pages. If it were 1000+ pages, you would probably get a couple of days extra, or wouldnt you? I really dont know, but I think that would be the sensible thing to do.

Sure, there are universal standards of quality, but there are also specific standards for each medium which you cant hold to another, simply because a game is different from a book and a LP is not a DVD. Games dont require more thime than other mediums necessarily, but in many cases they do.

And "would yo kindly" doesnt mean anything to me . But Wheel of Time is a book series; each book would probably be reviewed seperately, one of them having about 600+pages (?). When they first came out the books were definitely reviewed consecutively. Reviewing the series as a single unit would take a lot of time, yes, and any writer would be given the appropriate amount of time to do so - at least I hope.

But I agree that reviewers should aspire to finish a game, it makes for a better review. It is just the question if this can be done in a given timeframe. And this timeframe has to be adjusted to the specific needs of games as a medium. As long as you dont have a number of pages, like with books, or the fixed amount of playtime, as with movies or music, this is always going to be a problem per se. Then considering that games have extremely variable playtimes, some of them even neverending...this is complicated. It just doesnt really compare to books and movies.

What if, for example, the first hour of a game is terrible, but afterwards you're opened into a free, incredibly fun world that would earn a ten if the first hour was left out? You'd count both together in a review with proper time devoted to the subject, and you'd still criticise that first hour, but you'd still be fairer about the game than if you'd stopped at minute 59 of gameplay. Sometimes it is precisely that which makes a difference.

Well, I sure hope no reviewer out there would spent as little as one hour with a game If they did, they need to be fired. One hour, in my opinion is ridiculous. For me it must be at least around 80% of the game to form an substantiated opinion. After that time you can, as a player, expect to having been introduced to every significant part of the gameplay, every interesting feature. After this point, theres not much left to influence the verdict. Even if the twist of the millenium should come up by this point and the last 20% of the game were utter brilliance, it wouldnt save the game if the previous 80% were pure crap.

 

[Blackbird71]

All I can say is that if reviewers would actually finish the games, then I think fewer games would get away with slapping on half-done endings because they were running behind schedule.

As it is, the typical reviewer rarely gets to the ending, and as such it becomes the easiest part to skimp on. But for the player, going through a good game only to find a lackluster finish is rather disappointing and frustrating.

 

[Grey_Focks]

I'm sorry, but no. I'm gonna agree with Logan on this one and say that reviewers should "fully investigate" a game, but asking them to "finish" the game for a review is unreasonable, and yes I realize that sounded dumb.

You can't compare reviewing films to reviewing games, because they are just completely different experiences. When you go to see a movie, it's a single 1-2 hour experience that the customers have no input on. Compare this to a game, which can be anywhere from a 5 hour long campaign, plus god knows how many hours for online, or a single 20-30 hour epic, both cases requiring multiple sittings, usually across multiple days.

One needs a couple days to possibly a week or so to finish, the other needs only an afternoon. It's just a matter of time, and comparing the two review processes just isn't fair.

Oh, and you can tell whether a game is good or bad based on, say, 5-6 hours of solid play people. "But what if that only covers the tutorial?" Then the game in question has bad pacing.

 

[ninjajoeman]

sounds like every fox news report.

 

[reachforthesky]

There's this concept called extrapolation. It says that when a pattern is formed, it is reasonable to assume that pattern will continue. If the first five hours of a twenty hour game are spent running through linear corridors dragging yourself through dull repetitive combat, there's no need to drudge through the rest of the game on the assumption that the next 15 hours will be orgasm-inducing. It's the developers job to make a consistently fun experience.

Reviewers should write about their experience with the game. If a game was so frustrating that someone who is paid to play video games couldn't stand to continue, chances are the average player will be less generous anyway. If a reviewer decides to skip the latter parts of games due to deadlines or some superfluous reason, he will likely not make it as a reviewer. If a reviewer doesn't finish a game and remains successful, it is because there is an audience that agrees with him.

TL;DR: It's your own damn fault if you make a game that people don't want to finish. If a reputable critic didn't finish your game the blame does not lie with him.

EDIT: the funny thing is, this bozo would never complain about someone who played only a fraction of the game and formed a positive opinion of it based on it, even if he had less of a reason to do so than someone who quit playing out of frustration.

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

yeah i'm sorry i've played plenty of games that i realized halfway through were shit. and that i didn't want to go through the pain and misery of sticking around to the end. I also have done the opposite.

I played red faction gurilla warefare hoping that it would get better because the idea was so awsome. No such luck. By the third act i was only playing becasue i had come this far might as well finish it but after doing so i can honestly say that had i stopped playing halfway through then i'd proabley be a slightly better person. oh sure there would always be that part of me that is nagging to know how the crappy game turned out but by denying that temptation i'd be building character. as opposed to killing a part of my soul by finishing it.

I think halfway is good enough. If a reviewer has come halfway and they hate the game then they should be able to turn it off. Even if the second half is gold and diamonds it's too late. you should have killed the frist half and just made the game out of the second half. The fact that you couldn't understand this just goes to illustrate how bad the project was and thats too bad for them. It's no skin off the reviewer's or the average gamers teeth.

 

[AwesomeFerret]

ZP on Monster Hunter Tri springs to mind here.

 

[AwesomeFerret]

Respawn co-founder and former Infinity Ward boss Vince Zampella says that there's nothing more frustrating than reviewers not completing games before they write about them.

You mean people like Yatzee? HEYO!

If you're PAID to review one game every week, then you should be able to finish it. MMO's may have different rules, but most other games should be finishable.
Your should at least give a game a 6-8 hour courtesy period of play, this would allow the critic to get a general grasp of the game at least.

What happens when critics/reviews don't finish games:
They may do the "judge a book by its cover" and play the first 30 minutes of a game and totally write it up as generic and bland.
Red Dead Remdeption could have been given awful scores if people just judged it on the first hour or so, because quite frankly, the first hour was bland. Once the lasso was obtained, however, the game took a turning point for the better.



But back on track, if a reviewer finds a game terrible, well that's too bad and they should suck it up. They are being PAID to do their job. Sorry, but if they don't like having to play the bad games as well as the good ones, then they should find a new profession.

END OF STORY.

Please, PM Yahtzee and tell him that. No offence to him, but he doesn't seem to have grasped that yet.

 

[Darmort]

So... let's go complete Final Fantasy 13... expect the review in three weeks when I've finished it. You need it within a week? No can do boss, gotta complete it. That Zampella fellow said so.

Really? In terms of an RPG like Dragon Age or Final Fantasy, this just isn't possible to do to get the review out on time. It's a good idea, okay concept, but just... doesn't work.

 

[taltamir]

This should really have a "within reason" attached to it...
To make a movie analogy...
If a reviewer wrote "After watching the first 10 minutes of movie X I can tell that it is <praise/condemnation>" they are being tossers,
But what if a reviewer says "After watching the first 10 SEASONS for show Y I can say that it is <praise/condemnation>"

I do think that reviewers should try to finish games when at all possible, but many games have artificial length padding that forces them to take weeks to finish...

Also, yahtse made a very good point here... you should always finish the game before declaring it GOOD because it can always take a turn to shitville. But you shouldn't have to before delcaring the game to be a turd... although do be fair and point out that you didn't; and make a good effort... aka "after 30 hours straight of gameplay I can say that fallout 3 /oblivion/Almost every JRPGs is one big turd... I didn't finish the game, but only because I couldn't stomach burning more time on that horrible POS"

 

[wizzerd229]

Yeah....so how DO you finish an MMO...or TF2...or The Path

Even a linear structure like Fallout 3, how long would that take? Yahtzee would be down to one game every two months.

wait, fallout 3 is linear?