"You Must Have Liked It If You Finished It"

[madwarper]

If a game gets so bad that you don't want to/can't be bothered to finish it, then that's really all you need to know. "This game was so shit that I couldn't finish it", is a perfectly valid opinion.

I never said it wasn't a valid review... Because, you're not trying to review the entire game, just the portion you played.

But, if you're going to try to say the entire game is shit, you had better play the entire game.

Besides, how many games can you think of that were bad for like 60% of the duration, then suddenly became excellent? If a game's development produced 50% crap, it's a pretty safe bet that the other 50% was crap as well.

As safe of an assumption as you think it is, it's still disingenuous if you try to represent the entire game as shit if you haven't played it and thought it was shit for yourself.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

You saw every part of the screen at once?

Yes.

As Holmes would say, "You see but you do not observe". Having the whole screen in front of your eyes does not mean you consciously absorb all that is happening. Your eyes will pick something to focus on and other things will be excluded.

You know the intention the author had while writing each word? You were there during the development of how the entire game fits together, every 1 and 0?

Intention/development are irrelevant. You're offering your opinion on what is there, not what was meant to be there.

You claim that the ends justify the means?

I disagree. The intention and development of anything are part of the whole. Without knowing those you cannot know the whole.

If you haven't seen the watched the full 100 minutes of a 100 minute movie, you can't rightfully comment on the whole 100 minute film.
If you walked out after the first 10 minutes, you can only offer your thoughts on the first 10 minutes.

A film is more than the sum of its parts. Of course I can comment on a 100 minute film, the whole of it, without having seen every second. A film's turning point can be less than one second long. To use the example given of The Usual Suspects, can you tell me the exact second that the information given alters the earlier parts of the film? Do you need to?

On an earlier comment: Yes, I have read the Simarillion. A long time ago. I've basically forgotten everything about it. What point were you trying to make with that?

Because I specifically mentioned the Valaquenta. Which is one of prologues to the Quenta Silmarillion.

Yeah, Quenta has no meaning to me. Well, not no meaning but I doubt the one you want it to mean.

 

[madwarper]

As Holmes would say, "You see but you do not observe". Having the whole screen in front of your eyes does not mean you consciously absorb all that is happening. Your eyes will pick something to focus on and other things will be excluded.

You presume much about me.

I disagree. The intention and development of anything are part of the whole. Without knowing those you cannot know the whole.

If they had intended it to be there, it would have been there and not on the editing floor.

And, you always have a chance to form a new review when the release the Ultimate Extended Final Unrated Director's cut edition.

To use the example given of The Usual Suspects, can you tell me the exact second that the information given alters the earlier parts of the film? Do you need to?

Spoiler

When Verbal stops limping.

Yeah, Quenta has no meaning to me. Well, not no meaning but I doubt the one you want it to mean.

So, yeah. As you said, you've forgotten everything about it.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

As Holmes would say, "You see but you do not observe". Having the whole screen in front of your eyes does not mean you consciously absorb all that is happening. Your eyes will pick something to focus on and other things will be excluded.

You presume much about me.

Naturally. Because my understanding, as well as yours and anybody else's, in incomplete as I cannot perceive the world through all viewpoints at once. Also, nobody observes the entirety of the screen upon seeing it. Holmes could but he was intentionally written as being able to do more than any one person can. There's simply too much information present for it all to be retained.

I disagree. The intention and development of anything are part of the whole. Without knowing those you cannot know the whole.

If they had intended it to be there, it would have been there and not on the editing floor.

And, you always have a chance to form a new review when the release the Ultimate Extended Final Unrated Director's cut edition.

Due to your imperfect understanding, you fail to see my meaning. Remember English classes in school where you discuss what the author meant with passage X or sentence Y? And how it can only be speculation because the author's long dead and you can't ask them? It's like that. Since you weren't there you can't know.

To use the example given of The Usual Suspects, can you tell me the exact second that the information given alters the earlier parts of the film? Do you need to?

Spoiler

When Verbal stops limping.

I was asking for a timeframe like you'd see in the corner of the screen. Without looking it up. X hours, X minutes, X seconds. That sort of jazz.

Yeah, Quenta has no meaning to me. Well, not no meaning but I doubt the one you want it to mean.

So, yeah. As you said, you've forgotten everything about it.

Naturally. I'm still wondering what the relevance of mentioning it was. Frankly, if it was important you'd have asked what the meaning it had to me that I remarked on was.

 

[Gearran]

This is painfully faulty logic, up there with "you must have liked it if you ate it all" and other such nonsensical crap. "I finish, therefore I like" is not even remotely sensible. Just because I finish something (I'm going to use a particularly painful example in the Twilight book) does not mean I like it. It means I want to be able to say I finished it, therefore I have a fully informed opinion on the subject (I finished the Twilight book because I could then say I'd read it and then list of why it was such an enormous waste of paper and ink). Completion does not indicate enjoyment. Completion indicates a dedication to finishing what you started. Expressing enjoyment indicates that you enjoyed it.

 

[In Search of Username]

Similarly, someone can't say the Silmarillion was boring if they stopped reading half way through the Valaquenta.

Of course they can. They stopped reading because they were bored.

 

[m0ng00se]

outside of the argument on the nature of perception (which is getting increasingly muddier, guys), i don't think finishing something you hate means you liked it.

i have to sit through shitty tv and movies with my friends and girlfriend all the time. at the same time, if something has madoka syndrome where it's kinda boring until you get to the end and you realize that it was a conscious decision and makes sense for the story and in hindsight it's all like "daaaayum", you can't blame me for ceasing to give a shit somewhere in the middle and then never going back.

i bought some truly terrible filler comics just to keep weird holes out of my collections, and i read them because i bought them, i've stopped paying attention to things that were promised to get better because they weren't good when i stopped caring. i think both are totally fine

 

[Siege_TF]

I didn't enjoy my last trip to the dentist, but I damn well finished it instead of quitting in the middle. Poor analogy? I didn't tell the dentist to stop when she got to a part of a tooth that wasn't frozen and give me another shot of Novocaine either. I could have, the dentist would have obliged, but I'm a die-hard, and that's an attitude I take to a lot of games that I don't hate, but want to complete for completion's sake. I COULD Youtube it... I COULD drive off the Golden Ears bridge. I'm not gonna. I don't play games to watch games (or drive to kill myself), I play them to play them (and to get from Point A to Point B), and I'm going to finish them if I can.

Only truly loathsome or tedious games are the exceptions.

 

[Dosbilliam]

Nope.
In my opinion, you can't rightfully offer a view, be it positive or negative, of a property as a whole unless you consume it as a whole.
Else, you're only forming a partial view of the part of the property you did consume.

That would be dependent on what you're commenting on, though. I can't speak for the storyline of Magicka, but the gameplay was interesting and I probably would have enjoyed it more had the developer even heard of the word "optimization" when it came to playing that game on a laptop.

Similarly, someone can't say the Silmarillion was boring if they stopped reading half way through the Valaquenta.

Read the what now?

You claim that the ends justify the means?

That's a terrible use of that phrase...-_-...you should have gone with something like "The destination made the journey down the Too Human road worth the hammer?"



To give my own opinion, I disagree with the initial statement of the OP with one example: Gears of War. Every second I had to listen to or deal with Marcus' voice made me want to rip his eyes out and shove them down his throat, but I finished that game. Oddly enough, today I finally got around to finishing Bulletstorm, and THAT game was extremely enjoyable. My guess is that having a main character that has an emotional range beyond "grumpy" and "angry" more than likely helped with my reception of it.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

Ah, that old adage. Used mainly as a counterpoint by fanboys who are offended by a dissenting criticism. It's a load of bunk, obviously. I can easily say that Dead Island was one of the worst games I've ever played, yet I finished it multiple times (don't ask why, it's a long story). I can say the same for any number of games that I felt the urge to finish just so I could uninstall them and bury them in the basement of my subconscious, never to be dug up again. That goes for books, t.v. shows, and movies too.

"You must have liked it if you finished it" should immediately invalidate the opinion of anyone who uses it.

 

[Vausch]

Nope.

In my opinion, you can't rightfully offer a view, be it positive or negative, of a property as a whole unless you consume it as a whole.
Else, you're only forming a partial view of the part of the property you did consume.

See that's wrong.

A game has to stand strong on its first 5 minutes, that's the time that a person will be engaged and likely will paint their impression of the game. If a game is terrible for 3 hours and you can't finish or find it an absolute slog to get through, you're well within your right to put the controller down and say "I can say I found the game incredibly tedious/the controls incredibly frustrating/the story incomprehensible/etc. for the time I played it. I can't recommend based on my experience".

The ability to finish is a very important part of any medium, if someone can't finish something because of the subjet matter or a problem in it, the creator did something very wrong. Heck by your logic, Steel Batallion : heavy Armour can't have any reviews at all because the game is virtually impossible to play.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

But then you get people going on that 'you didn't finish it so you can't talk about it.'

As for your Uncharted example:

Did you buy them day one?
Did you get them as a gift?
Did you get them separately?
Were you desperately bred when you played them?
Did you feel cheated out of your money by buying an inferior game series and want to get your monies worth out of them before throwing them away?

 

[Guffe]

Well not really, I can play through a game if the story if interesting and I want to see it develop even if the rest is shit. and if only the story is good and everything else is a minus, then the game is shit.

Also teachers made me read book I thought were bad back in school, I had to finish them to make a good work based on said book and finish it even if I didn't like the book. So no, it doesn't always apply.

 

[chinangel]

there is a really, really bad martial arts game on the PS2, fairly obscure I think. It's name is Bujingai, and you play as a chinese martial artist. The fight scenes are...passible. Ranging from bad to just...eh. But what really kills it is the last level. Not the enemies, not the difficulty. THE CAMERA!

The level is loaded with precision jumps and the goddamn camera keeps deciding to assassinate you! It took me a week to finish that level and beat the final boss.


In the end, it was more about the fact that I had sunk too much time into the game to give up now.

 

[KeyMaster45]

I sat through M. Night Shayamalan's The Last Airbender to the very end. It was so bad I felt a little ill after I left, and I'm not even a big fan of the series it spawned from. I hated every last agonizing minute of the film, but I stayed because by god I was not going to waste that $8 ticket by walking out.

 

[madwarper]

A game has to stand strong on its first 5 minutes, that's the time that a person will be engaged and likely will paint their impression of the game. If a game is terrible for 3 hours and you can't finish or find it an absolute slog to get through, you're well within your right to put the controller down and say "I can say I found the game incredibly tedious/the controls incredibly frustrating/the story incomprehensible/etc. for the time I played it. I can't recommend based on my experience".

Did you read what I wrote?

There's nothing wrong with a partial review. Just watch Yahtzee's review of FF13.

He openly admits he's only played about 5 hours of the game and comments on how others have told him the game gets better 20 hours in.
Yeah, still not a point in its favor, but still he has to decency to not try to bullshit like he actually tried playing that portion of the game.

 

[DugMachine]

Yes. I've read the Twilight saga just so I can say they are shit. Yes, they kept me reading but that doesn't mean it's good literature.

 

[madwarper]

Now if I had never listened to a country song, and said I didn't like the genre it would simply be ignorance. First hand experience comes with opinions, weather the experience is partial or whole.

Judging an entire genre after only listening to a few songs is still speaking out of ignorance.

It would be like if I took your single post and your misspelling of the word "whether" to be indicative of your comprehension of the English language as a whole.

 

[s0p0g]

that really is kind of a stupid argument (and one i luckily never heard), because most of my friends and ol' me "have" to finish the game/book/movie/even series (i'm looking at you, Battlestar Galactica... you started off so nicely, but then went too much space-soap-opera :/ ), unless they're so bad that they almost cause physical pain xD

also, a part of me usually hopes that it get's better again at some point, if it went downhill - (almost) everything deserves a chance, aye?