Reviewers Should Finish Games, Says Zampella

[hawkeye52]

as probably mentioned many times before there are some games that you cannot say you have fully finished to review that take a good 100 hours at least to complete due to the sheer amount of side quests and additional content and so therefore you need to draw a line and say i will play up to this and evaluate how much this game has entertained me. this line could be on linear rpg's such as the FF series or call of duty could be to finish the storyline and maybe do a later review on any of the additional content.

however non linear rpg's (oblivion, fallout 3) you could set again the goal that you will complete the main storyline or if its a relatively short storyline say you will play up to say lvl 10 or 15 then review.

then some games cannot be completed since they are not story based or driven at all (see company of heroes) since they are mainly online and so you again have to set targets of again reaching lvl 10 or play certain amount of games then review.

this does not excuse however if a game plainly sucks and has no entertainment value as it has failed to do what it said on the tin and that is entertain and why should you subject yourself to this. granted there must be a minimun limit to this say 2-3 hours of game time since anything more could be torture and generate mindless boredom within you and set the mood for the rest of the game. as i found with FF13 due to the lack of having to do anything in combat (lost oddyssey nailed it by keeping to the original FF combat of turn based rather then this stupid flashy crap that seems to be infecting the final fantasy series as of late)

TLDNR

in a short sentence just set yourself a target for playing the game both minimun and maximun amounts and keep to these targets unless the game is either exceedingly great or shit.

edit
on zampella and game companies ofc they are going to try and discredit any game reviewers who say their game is shit because they want people to buy it and they will try anything to suceed in dissuading the general public from listening to these peoples particular opinions. i myself dont listen to most game reviewers and more rely on my own judgement and past experience of games like them and also look at user reviews since most reviewers i swear are paid by the company to say its good i mean look at how many reviews put MW2 in a good a light as opposed to bad and the same goes for bad company 2. i also listen to yahtzee a little bit by picking what he sees as shit and what his main gripe is then minimizing that and thinking about it overall. in other words if he rips the living day lights out of it then its a no go. if he moderately kills it then a maybe. if he cant find much wrong with it and resorts to old game gripe classics then its worth a good look

 

[veloper]

But what about a game as long as Fallout 3 or Oblivion...and it sucks? It's kinda nasty to say that a reviewer should have to stand the assault of that game for, say, 15 hours on end. That's mental. And besides, there are not enough game reviewers around so that every game could have a reviewer attached.

Dumb game revieweing should be out, but this...well...

That is their job. That is why they get a paycheck every week. If it sucks and is hard maybe it will start separating the wheat from the chaff.

This is one of the few positives about the achievement/trophy system. Find their gamertag and you can see how far they did play before the review and judge accordingly.

Good luck finding a reviewers gamertag. Some may use the same handle, many don't.

And what would you expect to gain anyway? If the first hour is shit, it's a sure bet the whole game is like that, and even if it got decent, that's still no reason to bite your lip for an hour.

I have played lots of games that sucked at first but got better. Magna Carta 2 off the top of my head. I almost shut it down during what I lovingly refer to as tutorial hell but after the first hour or so when the game opened up and let me play the way I wanted it was a different story.

How many games have you played that were solid gold from beginning to end?

Tons of games that started good, but got worse, but never a bad game that became good. Recognizing garbage is easy.

 

[mjc0961]

It's a good idea in theory, but in practice... Well let's just say that if you pick up a turd like FF13 that takes 20 hours before it gets to the "good part", I think it's fair to turn it off after 10 or 15 and say "this is terrible game design, save your money by not buying this game."

 

[chronobreak]

Sometimes I don't like my job either, sometimes there are deadlines that are tough to meet, but I nut up and get it done. Finish the games, try out the multiplayer and whatever other features there are, and if you can't handle that/don't have time, than either the reviewing industry needs to shift, or other reviewers with more time or competency will take up the reigns.

 

[veloper]

Sometimes I don't like my job either, sometimes there are deadlines that are tough to meet, but I nut up and get it done. Finish the games, try out the multiplayer and whatever other features there are, and if you can't handle that/don't have time, than either the reviewing industry needs to shift, or other reviewers with more time or competency will take up the reigns.

Work smart. If you got deadlines to meet, don't do the things you don't need to do.
Nobody is interested in the fine details of a piece of trash.

 

[Treblaine]

Well if you complete 80% of a game and find it to be mediocre trash... is there any way the last 20% could redeem it?

Even if the last 20% was absolutely amazing how could the critic recommend the game as much if anyone who gets the game based on that review would have to trudge through 80% of sludge firsts?

It's not going to change something significantly to not play every 100% of the game, especially games that are more an "experience" like GTA where I think the overwhelming majority never get close to finishing... and really you are playing Nico's criminal career, that doesn't end (you dies, only to wake up in hospital), it just keeps going.

See, games are games, but it they are LIKE anything they are like a TV series more than a movie; a series of plots and events connected together with many book-ends within the overall story-arc giving you an opportunity to leave it and then come back to.

 

[RandomMab]

I disagree. I see where he's coming from but horrible pacing, excruciatingly long tutorials, and the promise of good quality eventually does not excuse a game. There are also some severe time restraints for reviewers. Furthermore, a good game shouldn't typically play completely different every 5 hours.

 

[Blackjack 222]

If you review a game you need to make it to endgame content(like for WoW or GW/review each race so that shitty starting zone doesn't influence the entire review) or unlock all the equipment(like for Tf2). More importantly stop taking bribes and lying your fuckin ass off that mariokart was the best game of your life you dickwad.

 

[snave]

I think it depends on the score. For anything that scores 50% or less, a mere few hours should suffice really. A second opinion here on the first hour may be warranted just as a safety net. Yahtzee's "Guitar Hero" analogue is damned spot on. For anything over that a good 16-20 hours, with at least 8-10 devoted per play mode; two work days plus a little more depending on enjoyment. For 80% or higher then yes, it should be definitely be completed, however, I suspect that for legitimately high rating games, this is probably the norm, even if the extra play is in the reviewer's own time out of pure enjoyment. But we all know precise 80% and 85% ratings pretty much imply money exchanged hands and the review is kaput anyhow.

Exceptions to this would be games not aimed at mainstream audiences, such as a historically accurate naval strategy game or a flight sim. where a specialist reviewer is really needed. I suspect any specialist reviwer would be adept at knowing when to call it a day for their chosen niche.

 

[Jumplion]

It can really depend on the game itself.

As other people have said, how do you finish an MMO? That's not including the fact that MMOs constantly change with updates and such, so you're going to have to play hours of the game just to get a good idea of it.

What about huge-ass RPGs? Those things can take hours if not days to finish, and sometimes you miss out on a lot of the content. Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, they're all huge games, and it would be unfair to just stop half-way in the game and declare that it sucks because there's always something around the corner.

What about broken games? Well, there's no excuse for them, suck it up.

On the basic level, I agree with them, reviewers should finish a game before reviewing it. But when you dig deeper into it, there's a few extra layers in the onion.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Then again, the reviewer is under a lot of time-related stress to get the review out ASAP, and when you're only receiving the game a week or so in advance of its release, it can be difficult to properly assess all of its elements, particularly if it's an RPG or a similarly story-driven game. This means that the developers need to give the games to the reviewers in proper time - which means no eleventh-hour patches - or, indeed, release-date patching, a particular problem for PC gamers.

Then again again, the drive to get that review out first is really just the publication playing it's role as the most enthusiastic puppy in the kennels in front of the PR man, hoping to get taken home for a big old advertising contract.

Major publication videogames reviews are essentially debased into uselessness anyway, because they're just an extension of the advertising campaign now.

 

[Fortuan]

Yahtzee is a good reviewer but I have to agree that maybe he should span out games since games he didn't finish he gets incomplete information on i.e. Monster Hunter Tri.

 

[Silva]

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?

One thing is certain - it does help the quality and synthesis of a review to finish any text before writing the review, and therefore reviewers should at least aspire to finish a game before writing. Many reviews desperately need more time spent in a game to get a fair verdict, and I think that these industry people are right to point out that this is a growing issue. And if the reviewer has had a limited time with the game, then it should be an ethical consideration alone to tell us that this is the case. Yeah - it might make people go read elsewhere. And so they should.

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.

Does anyone here saying reviewers should finish the games do actually review games themselves? And I dont mean in a kind of hobby way - maybe to put it up on these very forums - but maybe for an ezine with a deadline and all that stuff? Its easy to say games have to be finished when you have all the damn time you want. But when I get to review a game my boss gives me 5 days to do it.

As a journalist in the making and a writer, let me tell you, I know about deadlines. But that doesn't mean that there should not be every pressure on professional reviewers to make serious quality before that deadline. Even if that means getting three other people to finish the game and give them their views as the review is written minutes before the deadline.

Frankly, that kind of research-first priority is often preferable from the consumer's point of view (and indeed, to any editor concerned about their release's reputation) to the article being written in a very literary and beautiful way the day before, but in a much less informed context. Any journalistic textbook will tell you this for any kind of article, including a game review. The facts are more important than the art form, because you're trying to inform people with a review, not enchant them. That's secondary.

So I think that while the games industry has a vested interest in saying that reviewers should finish a game before they review it, I think that it would help everyone if writers followed this advice much more often.

The game usually come one day late, so whats left are 4 lousy days to play the game and write the freaking review. That is simply not enough time to finish some damn epic RPG or explore a whole sandbox or what have you not. If the game cant unfold itself, show me all its precious features and establish a compelling story within the first 10 hours, then it just fucking fails! Stop whining about reviewers missing important stuff in your game and make games that dont keep the cool shit up until the very end...

I definitely agree that there should be some high quality stuff early on to keep people interested. But at the same time, there is a need to acknowledge all the qualities in a text in a review. Otherwise it's not a review, but rather a sorta-view. But to be direct, I think that when it comes to games, which are often longer as you say than most texts, bosses should try to give as much time as possible (i.e. more than is usually given) for writers to play a game then write the review. This is as much a management issue as it is the writer's problem. As usual, it's good to see the industry taking a hard look at its counterpart in the media world - they need to be kept honest just like any designer does.

 

[KaiRai]

I still haven't FULLY completed Oblivion all these years on.

Get damn close though.....

 

[Silva]

Is that why Dragon Age got great reviews? I always wondered...
[sub]The first few hours (origins) were great, but fell off considerably as time went on...[/sub]

Short answer: yes. And this cannot be pointed out enough.

Long answer: this happens to games like Dragon Age all the time. People release them with a few hours of great gameplay and every reviewer who hasn't at least used cheats or something to get to a later point in the game and see if that's also good gets tricked into thinking that it's great. It shafts the designers who just suck at opening sequences, and boosts those who cheat and get lazy on the later levels because "less people will play them".

 

[Pearwood]

Well using the example we're all thinking of with Zero Punctuation I'd say in some circumstances (i.e. only having a week to play the game and write the review) there's a reason for it. If someone is writing to a deadline say a month in advance then yes anything less than a full playthrough is ridiculous.

Having said that the first hour or so of a game does make or break it and that should be reflected in the review.

 

[maninahat]

They might as well insist that consumers finish the game as well, even if they really dislike it and want to pack it in. Why should we require reviewers to live up towards some arbitrary rules that we would never obey? What I want in a reviewer is someone who likes games and plays them like an ordinary person does. That means giving up on a game when it is clearly too shit or frustrating to keep playing. I don't see the goddamnned point in them having to eat all the way through the shit sandwich before telling me not to take a bite.

 

[samsonguy920]

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.

Exactly. Just another case of developers not being happy with criticism about their beloved game.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

That's a fair point, but reviewers don't always have enough time to do so.

 

[GhostLad]

Assuming the reviewer gets paid for what they do, the factor of whether the game is dull or bad shouldn't decide how much or little they explore of it. It's your bloody job, stick it out. Next week you may get paid to play an awesome game.

I agree with Zamparella that a good baseline expectation of a game review is that they have tried to complete the main storyline. Sidequests, faffing about mini-games and such can then be covered at need (and should ideally be so, if briefly). Aside from FF-type games where grinding for hours is required to pass certain parts of the game, most sandbox-type games will have a main storyline completeable within a few days, if you aim just for that. For instance, knowing whether a game that advertises "multiple endings" displays any significant variation in those endings, or whether they are just cosmetic details, is valuable knowledge in terms of replayability. It is something I'd like a review to tell me, especially if they don't live up to their promises.

If this target cannot be met, and I fully appreciate that deadlines and other tasks may get in the way of that, the review should simply state so, how much was done, and maybe why. A review is an informed opinion, and for that to matter the reader just need to know the basis this opinion was made on (besides the assumed "I review games for a living and know what to look for"). I would be perfectly happy with a review that says "We have only played about halfway through the main storyline, because we also had to cover the multiplayer part" or some such.