Poll: Can a review be valid if the reviewer did not finish the game in question?

[loc978]

Cherry picking to make a point here, not necessarily aimed at you, and some would say my point is semantic, but...

Yahtzee is a comedian that reviews games.

...Yahtzee isn't a reviewer, he's a critic (technically synonyms, but not if you take the second definition of critic in Webster's: one given to harsh or captious judgment). He doesn't "review" games in the traditional sense, he nitpicks them in a humorous fashion.

 

[Austin Howe]

A thousand times yes. A reviewer should try as hard as possible to finish their game, but if they feel so compelled to quit, that's a negative against the game, and a perfectly legitimate one. There are exceptions, though. Yahtzee quit in the middle of MindJack because he couldn't beat a boss, not because it was hard, but because he didn't know how. I'm not saying that game is any good, but that's just lazy, Yahtzee, look up a walkthrough.

 

[DkryptX3]

I've have games I've played and thought they were crap after the first 20minutes... 20 hours later "I want those 20 hours of my life back". Overall though a review can still be valid if they explain why it was not finished and also state that it wasn't finished. I mean if you wanted to review something like Gothic 2 or Fallout 3, would you have to get a full 100% completion to review it?

 

[kebab4you]

Well, I would say it kinda depends on how far they get and if they comment anything about the story. So in Yahtzee´s case in his latest review, yes. It seemed like he got far enough to at least try all the game elements and didn't like it(can't blame him).

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I've already answered the question, but I'll bring it up again. It isn't about the reviewer. It is about the reader. It is a reviewer's responsibility to give potential consumers the best impression of the entire game as possible. While a single reviewer might give up on a game in the middle of it, his readers, already interested in said game, expect answers. How is the metagame? Does it hit its stride later? Any mechanics that take off later in the game (aka the combo system in Hperdimension Neptunia)? It is the reviewer's job to inform his readers, not to entertain himself.

As a reviewer, Yahtzee informs his readers just fine. I'm sure playing the game to completion every time would be a nice advantage, but it's not an obligation. Sure, it's unprofessional of Yahtzee, but Yahtzee was never really much of a professional to begin with.

If we're specifically talking about MindJack here, Yahtzee's message has been pretty clear: This game sucks. If you were playing it, you would have quit too. Everything else is entertainment value. It's perhaps one of his least opinionated reviews.

In my original post I said he didn't count. He is a comedian first, a critic second, and a reviewer third. I'm talking about the actual reviewers who are objective and approach the job seriously.

 

[Alluos]

If that were the case, then if someone were to not finish a game because they didn't like it, it wouldn't be a valid opinion.
As long as they play the first half or so, I'm fine with that. Most games have very little else to offer after that point.

 

[radioactive lemur]

Absolutely. You don't need to play more than 5 minutes of a game like WET to know it's terrible. Similarly MGS4 and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 were retardedly awesome first minute of gameplay in. Some games take a bit longer, but I've never changed my opinion on the quality of a game after playing more than halfway through. I've never played a game that got better or shittier as it progressed. Chances are, if the first half is 8 on the fun scale, it will be 8 throughout.

 

[GiantRaven]

Chances are, if the first half is 8 on the fun scale, it will be 8 throughout.

Not always. I've played far too many games where the developers appear to have just plain given up when they get near the end. I understand it's probably because of deadlines, and is somewhat out of their control, but it's still irritating.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

Reviewers rarely have the free time to finish every game they start, especially solo reviewers. But by playing for several hours can give them a good foundation for judging their graphical prowess, mechanics, and other facets that may not be attached to the plot directly.

 

[Elandin]

Of course it validated, if I asked you to sit at a desk for 8 hours straight doing paper work, but saying that at the end of it I MIGHT let you do some solitaire, AND you have to pay money first, would you want to take that offer? It's fine for a game to be end game heavy (see World of Warcraft) but if a reviewer gets so bored that they can't finish it, it might not be professional, but it's still fine.

 

[FernandoV]

Now since yahtzee is such a celebrity here, I feel the need to call him out on this.

i find this claim funny seing how most of "Yahtzee related threads" are about how he is "Wrong" or "not as interesting/smart/funny as everyone else claims he is" which leads me to believe you are either trying to latch on to his name to promote your thread, or... no actually thats it, you are trying to latch on to his name to promote your thread!

and i find it even more funny, because its one every so many minutes, which would make him the least popular guy in the web

this poll is interesting in its own right, there are many MANY ways of looking at it, but you feel the need to bash on some guy that got famous because he made some videos in the web??, this trolling scheme always falls flat in its back because well, NO ONE CARES ABOUT YAHTZEE

that said, YES i think people can review a game without finishing it, i have, my brother haves, my sister haves, you have, EVERYONE and its dog haves why? because we can always give our opinion (read REVIEW) and if in our opinion the game was more painfull to be played, than to, say, i dunno, turn it off and never play it again, well thats one opinion.

besides i´m going to let you in on a little secret, Yahtzee is... come closer!, Yahtzee is an "entertainer" his reviews are meant to be as offensive and shocking as he can make them he has said so himself seeeveral times in previous videos, also, he actually criticizes the games because no one laughs at a game being praised (again, his words), the amazing thing is that in every thread made about him EVERYONE says something along this lines, but still people "think" they are deffending him instead of pointing out that no one should take him seriously

for reviews? genuine reviews? whatch the main page untill it says "REVIEW: KILLING KILL KILLA´ LXVII: THE KILLER" then click the link and read that!, THOSE are genuine reviews.

I care about Yahtzee. And I don't really believe we can define Yahtzee so narrowly as either a reviewer or a comedian. He plays a game, tells us what he likes and doesn't like and makes some jokes in between for the sake of it. He's not exactly reviewing the game; he's simply telling us what he noticed as far as gameplay mistakes; story blunders, etc.

 

[OldGus]

Also, bear in mind, Yahtzee's a video game CRITIC, not a REVIEWER. Some might say that's splitting hairs, but reviewers have more of an obligation to see everything the game has to offer because they're (Supposed to be) the professional teams of players that each give their own opinion. A critic is a single individual who recounts his personal experience with the game, kinda like how your friend tells you that he rented X game over the weekend and that it totally rocked or sucked.

This is true, and it often cuts a different way, in that on more than just an occasion, reviewers are often given "incentive" to give a certain game a good review. On the other hand, critics are often never asked to review a game, especially not by publishers.
With Yahtzee in particular, I think he actually does have some reason to split hairs and not have to play a game all the way through here. Unless I'm mistaken, his job at the escapist (reviewing/critiquing, split hairs now) video games, is kind of a part-time thing, where a big chunk of work goes to the writing end for both of the Punctuations. In addition to that, a social life, and conventions, he is also taking care of that bar of his. I'd say, especially having to do a review every week, he does have a little lee-way to stop playing some games after, say, 10 hours or so. Maybe 20 for the longer ones. I mean, do you really expect him to finish a game like Two Worlds in a weekend? It took me 3 days (with my full-time job, so maybe more like 10 hours total) to finish everything in the demo! Keep in mind the professional reviewers, its their full time job, and they work for monthly publications usually. Often with more than one person playing. I like to think that makes a difference.
Now as far as my own personal view of reviewers, let's see... if its in their contract that they have to finish a game, MMOs excluded, then I say yes, they have to finish the game. That being said, its merely a contractual obligation. Just like you can give a review of WoW based on 2-10 hours of gameplay, and maybe a little help from a higher level friend so you can see what there is there, a game that is sufficiently similar for the first few hours will probably be similar until the end. If its not interesting, if its boring, if its just sucking your soul out while you're playing, then yes, you can stop and just write the review after a certain time limit. If its in your contract that you still have to finish, I say consider a new contract, but in the meantime, find some alcohol and friends to poke fun at the game with, cause you're in for the long haul now.
This comes down to tolerances. I like to think I have a fairly high tolerance. I'll, hardware allowing (I've actually had to stop playing a game and not been able to get back to it because of hardware,) play a game for at least 40 hours if I bought it. If I genuinely enjoy playing it the way the developers intended, if I can enjoy it playing ways the developers didn't have in mind, usually involving mates and booze, yeah, I'll keep that game and keep playing it. Hell, I've got DOS games that I'll still pull out and play. But, if a game is not fun, if I can't make a game fun, then bye bye game. And I think a lot of gamers are the same way, a lot of them just won't give a game 40 hours to be good. So with that audience in mind, a game reviewer does not have to complete a crappy game to say it is a crappy game.
Now on the flip side, if a game is excellent for those first 10 hours, great, whoever buys the game will at least have 10 hours of fun from it. But, I think the reviewer should keep playing for longer to see if it stays fun. In fact, (though not as standard as "is this game fun") I think another standard for a rating for a game should be how long you can play the game with it still being interesting, and have that one baseline of say 12 hours or something similar be the 1 mark. If it can't make it that far, then go ahead and give it a zero. But, if you've played all weekend to the exclusion of food and lovers and the game is still interesting, you're either addicted to Warcraft, or the game is good. If you pick up the game again another night days or weeks later, can clearly remember where you are and what you were doing last, and still enjoy it, I think that game deserves a 10. Regardless of if you've finished or not.

 

[sunsethorizons]

I want honesty here: How many people here actually ENJOYED playing the Twilight Town introduction with Roxas relative to the rest of the game?

I'm going to take a wild guess and say absolutely no one. At all. It's cool to look back on it as you get to the end and see what the big picture in the story is, but as a tutorial it went on waaaaay too long and was quite arduous. If I hadn't been a stalwart KH fan before I started playing, I might have gotten fed up and quit before the good bits.

And also, on that note, Half-Life 2 doesn't give you a gun until the 3rd or 4th chapter (can't remember, it's been a while) and that doesn't stop it from being one of the better games out there.

That being said, I think after having played at least half of a game, you can generally get a good idea of what the rest will be like. And if it takes 20 hours to get going (*cough* FFXII *cough*) then I don't really think that's a point in its favor.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

I think there's some merit to, 'I couldn't be assed to finish this game'

Kinda speaks badly of a game that can't hold your attention/to tiresome to want to play any further.

 

[IvoryTowerGamer]

I'm glad we cleared that up.
And welcome to the Escapist!

Thanks! =)

It is the reviewer's job to inform his readers, not to entertain himself.

Sorry to keep nitpicking, but I really don't think that any serious reviewer would ditch a game early simply because they aren't being entertained. If they really are serious about their reviews they'd probably play until they thought the game was irredeemable before stopping.

Perhaps that's where some of the disconnect was coming from earlier. I agree with you that it's unprofessional for a reviewer to stop playing a game for selfish reasons, but I also believe that it's possible to thoroughly evaluate a game without finishing it. Heck, even Extra Credits pointed out that most game systems can be fully understood with less than an hours worth of play time.

 

[Qizx]

Yes the review CAN be valid but it all depends on the game in question and why they stopped playing. It can be an honest review if someone says that the game was simply too terrible to handle and too broken to fully play. However I do strongly believe that one should finish the game before reviewing and I do find that it lends your review much more credibility.

 

[Yureina]

Having done reviews a little bit myself, I found that you could get a pretty good grasp on a game after having played it for the first few hours. In that sense, you don't really need to finish a game so long as you play enough of it to get a general idea. On the other hand though... I do think that they should try to finish the game, since then they are able to review the whole product, and not just what they themselves played.

 

[Netrigan]

Yes the review CAN be valid but it all depends on the game in question and why they stopped playing. It can be an honest review if someone says that the game was simply too terrible to handle and too broken to fully play. However I do strongly believe that one should finish the game before reviewing and I do find that it lends your review much more credibility.

This is one of the reasons I find player reviews more helpful than professional ones.

For longer games, it's pretty much a guarantee that they've not experienced all of the content. They very likely haven't finished it. Worse, they might be playing a really pre-release version and trusting the developer will fix the major issues for the proper release.

Or take a game with significant multiplayer content. Unless there's a major beta going on, the reviewers are playing it with other reviewers and developers. The game could be completely broken, but they'd likely not know it, because they're just hopping into games and fucking about a bit. Within a week of the game's release, fans will have a laundry list of fairly serious complaints, few of which would have been broached in any professional review.

Video game reviews are a very different beast from other entertainment reviews.

 

[HentMas]

I care about Yahtzee. And I don't really believe we can define Yahtzee so narrowly as either a reviewer or a comedian. He plays a game, tells us what he likes and doesn't like and makes some jokes in between for the sake of it. He's not exactly reviewing the game; he's simply telling us what he noticed as far as gameplay mistakes; story blunders, etc.

yes of course, he is a human being after all, its just that i find it funny that people have so much rage over him because of what he does, he didnt finished the game? BLASPHEMY!!!!, he didnt liked the game i liked? BLASPHEMY!!!, he is bashing a game for forgetable flaws? BLASPHEMY!!!, i watch his reviews and more often than not i agree with what he says, i remember that i played "Alone In The Dark" and stopped playing exactly at the same stage he did, because of the same things he said!, and his "review" wasnt even out, of course i laughed my ass of when he reviewed the game because i could relate to it, its the people that "blind" themselves on certain things they like that cant posibly imagine a guy that rants about a game on the web is right, i mean, i loved Fallout: New Vegas but i didnt liked the exact same things he bashed about in his review, i didnt liked "Saints Row 2" even thought he praised the game to bits, but i recognize that what he said was true (funny and what GTAIV should have being), the way he says them is what makes his "reviews" funny.

i like his show, but i woulnd put up a "shrine" around him, i agree with the things he says, and i believe he is exagerating most of the time, but bottom line, if he didnt liked something that i did liked i wouldnt care because after all its his opinion, and everyone can have his own opinion about anything.

there are hundreds of haters on this site, but they are the ones that take him too seriously, the others that i have seen dont "praise" him, they just laugh at his reviews nodding and saying "so true" and often point out that he "exagerated" somewhere, or that he missed an important part of the game, and funnily those are the ones that actually like him!

i laugh at the guys that say "EVERYONE ELSE TAKE HIS WORD BLINDLY" because i have never seen anyone here that genuinely deffended him or actually said "HE IS THE BEST REVIEWER EVER".

that was my point