"You Must Have Liked It If You Finished It"

[elvor0]

I hated FF13, but one day I will finish it. Out of spite. I refuse to feel like I've been defeated by that game.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Well I mean I got mind-numbingly bored of Arkham Asylum about halfway through and I finished that just because I felt obligated to, since I spent money on it (albeit not much) and I had already invested time into it. If you get somewhat invested in something either financially or timewise, it's only natural you'll feel like you have to finish it. Now if you hated uncharted, bought uncharted 2, hated uncharted 2, and bought uncharted 3, it might be subconsciously one of those guilty pleasure things.

 

[KOMega]

Perhaps you liked uncharted on some level, and playing through it you were waiting for it to get to satisfactory levels of enjoyment.

By the end, it did not occur, and so you may like it on some level, but it is under what you perceive as satisfactory.
And you would never truly know if you liked something or not unless you finished it.

If there were games you liked before finishing them, they had already reached a greater level of enjoyment much sooner than uncharted did.

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.

If in the first 5 mins. for example you decide the game has not drawn you in or engaged you enough, you will make the assumption the rest of the game will also not reach your expectations or that if it does, the time invested to reach it is not worth it. We all have some form of cost/reward calculation done whenever we decide if we like something or not, just not as consciously as everything else.

 

[game-lover]

Does it count as finishing if you just jump straight to the end? Skip who knows how much content and all that?

I know that can't happen with videogames but books and movies on DVDs give you that option. Because I can tell you right now, I've done that many a time.

But no, I don't believe that logic. It's dumb. And can probably be refuted who knows how many times over.

 

[Drakane]

My answer is yes. Yes you can play something through to the end even though you didn't like it. And yes, you played it through to the end because you liked it. It is a matter of perspective.

As a personal example, I will use your example of the Uncharted series. I have played two of the games through and part of the third. There were aspects of the games I really enjoyed, but there were several aspects of the games that I thought were really crap. The good parts (story and parts of game the play) weren't enough to make me over look the bad parts (other game play aspects and camera issues) to make me say it was a good game. It was a good enough game.

 

[WOPR]

Not really... I mean I 100%'ed SSBM and hated the everloving crap out of it...
For me at least I'd say it's not so much "You have to have liked it if you beat it" BUT "You should beat it if you liked it".

I like DMC (the old ones) but I never beat them, I look back and notice that they're not really on the top of any of my lists so I think it's fitting when a game compels you to complete it.
Either it's really good and you really enjoyed it.
Or it's absolutely terrible and you want to see how bad it can get.
OR it has you hook/line/sinker into playing it more and more no matter how much you may or may not hate it (...For my friends that pay/play WoW)
ORRR you think you enjoy it, until you're done then you reflect and go "that wasn't near as good as I thought it was..."

EDIT: Oh my bad, I did complete/beat DMC3 (just not as vergil) and DMC4. just not 1 or 2... havn't played much of the new one... felt just... made me feel dirty...

 

[WOPR]

I hated FF13, but one day I will finish it. Out of spite. I refuse to feel like I've been defeated by that game.

Don't do it bro, I finished it and felt empty, the game didn't beat you, it tricked you! Leave it and move on to greener pastures... *snips*

I'm still throughly convinced that the only people that like FF13 are either.
A: fans so obsessed that they even loved Crystal Chronicles.
or B: Girls whose first FF game WAS 13 because anything before 13 was popular when gaming was a "nerdy toy for boys".

(I say this because out of the 40 or so people I know locally who play video games, every last one of them hated it... except the girls who hadn't played any other final fantasy games ever... and the one dude who has a replica gunblade hanging over his bed)

 

[Elfgore]

I watched all of Girls Bravo and Shuffle! and I really didn't care for them. Girls Bravo was just plot black hole that sucked any plot that was attempted at the end of each episode. For Shuffle! I just stuck around to see who he went with (one of the few harems that choose a girl I dislike for the protagonist to love) that's it. I didn't care what was going on in the plot, I just wanted to get it over with. But Shuffle! has a great opening, hell that's the best part of the show.

So I agree with you the logic behind "well you finished it so you must like it" is just a really bad excuse to say, "I'm right you're wrong".

 

[madwarper]

I've heard enough country songs to know that I don't like the genre. Earlier you said that I would have to listen to every single one of them to have an opinion. Ever tried to listen to every song ever written in a genre that is decades old? It is literally impossible. So unless I'm understand your point wrong, not a single person can have an opinion on music genres.

Do you not see the difference between "All country music is bad" vs. "All country music I've heard is bad"?

One is making a sweeping statement about an entire genre of music, that if you haven't heard every song of the genre you're making assumptions about them. The other is a mere opinion on the few songs you have heard.

If genres don't fall under your point, then lets take the discussion back to games. Have you ever played an open world game, or mmo? I'll use Skyrim as an example. Do I have to complete every quest, talk to every npc, raise every skill, go into every house/cave, get every shout, encounter every enemy, use every weapon, etc just to say that I liked the game? I've put hundreds of hours into Skyrim, but am very far from completing these tasks. I have not completed the property. So even after all the time I've put into it, you are telling me that I don't have the right to have an opinion on it?

Maybe it'll help if I use smaller words... No. I did not say that, I never said someone can't form an opinion.
However, when they form an opinion, it should reflect what they experienced.

If someone played Oblivion and only did the main quest, they're likely would have been bored by the quests.
If someone played Oblivion and only did the Assassins/Thieves guild quests, they're likely have been intrigued by the variety of the quests.

Neither opinion is invalid, but neither is reflective of the game as a whole. Each is only reflective of their individual experience within the game.

 

[madwarper]

Do you understand why songs are lumped into genres? It's because they have a very similar sound. Bands in the same genre are often indistinguishable from one another. It is perfectly acceptable, in my opinion, to dislike a genre as a whole because you know what to expect. This only applies if you are familiar with the genre at hand.

Hahaha. Laughable and wrong.

I don't appreciate your condescending attitude,

I don't appreciate having to repeat myself for the umpteenth time to someone who doesn't bother reading what I wrote.

You are now backtracking on what you said.

Wrong. Since you quoted me a second time, you might want to take this opportunity to actually read it.

If you did not play the whole game, you can't rightfully offer a view of the whole game.
If you only played part of the game, you can only rightfully offer a view part you did play.

 

[madwarper]

This is NOT what you said in your first post.

So, either you never bothered to read my posts, or lack the ability to comprehend them.

You have changed your opinion on the subject at hand.

Wrong. Let me color code it for you.

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.

If you did not play the whole game, you can't rightfully offer a view of the whole game.
If you only played part of the game, you can only rightfully offer a view part you did play.

I believe this means that I have won the debate.

Believe what you want.

 

[Atmos Duality]

"You Must Have Liked It If You Finished It" is a popular retort to people complaining about certain experiences that said people have completed/finished. Do you agree with this logic? Why or why not?

I disagree.
My opinion of a work can change over time; even after I finish it.
The subject isn't limited to games either.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

I think a lot of people finish things just because they want to see where it goes, even if its terrible. The best example I have is that trilogy of books that continues the story of Willow. They were crap from the beginning but I forced myself through all 3. Of course I learned my lesson, I am now more willing to put down games and books that I hate.