Editor's note: I've always felt an obligation to readers to play a game to completion before reviewing it. I do see where Eddy is coming from, but I always have a lingering thought that until I get to the end, I still might not have seen something significant to the game. One thing I am sure of, however, is that honesty is always the best policy, even if it garners some undesirable feedback. Where do the rest of you weigh in on this issue? -Jay
I recently caught up on Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's 2010 Zero Punctuation videos and found myself wondering if I might actually agree with a dismissive statement he made. For his review of Final Fantasy 13, he could only muster himself to play it for a much shorter period of time than many would expect. He prefaces his review by saying, "So for what it's worth, here's a review of the first five hours.You might call that unprofessional. I call it efficiency."
Normally, my problem with Yahtzee is that he really does seem to be genuinely pessimistic and narrow-minded, while I prefer my game culture discussion to be optimistic and analytical. Even if it's all just an act, like the Angry Video Game Nerd (who's actually a pretty nice guy, I hear), many of his followers take his words to be 100% true despite his clear intention of humor. He's hilarious, no doubt, and I can't watch a single one of his videos without literally laughing out loud at least once. However, his entire act is based on hyperbole. This works brilliantly because he nurtures seeds of truth into trees of hilarity. He's clearly intelligent and thoughtful, but he seems to also enjoy wading in the crass and dirty. While I do love his work, it is comedy. Truly looking at the games medium with such an eye of pessimism would disable us as a culture from appreciating this art form.
Now, here's the thing: In this case, I totally understand where he's coming from. I reviewed Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers earlier this year and could only stomach five hours of the game before I had to put it down. The game was not actively horrible; I just didn't feel that the fifth hour provided anything genuinely different from the first four. I was just spinning my tires in place. If I wrote my review after the first three hours it would've been the same, and I have a feeling this would have likely held true even if I played it for ten. The process was similar to playing a puzzle game for review, encountering all the gameplay modes, and realizing that all you have left to enjoy about the game is the actual experience of playing it.
With Crystal Bearers, though, it seems that the developers intended for me to keep going through the same mediocre motions for the sake of the story -- which, unfortunately, failed to grip me in any way. I got a lot of heat over my review because I did not finish the game, but I feel that if a game leaves me completely disinterested after five hours of playing it, this very fact speaks volumes. The problem I face is that readers criticized my review not for what I wrote, how I phrased it, or anything concerning my style, but solely for the fact that I was honest about not completing the game. Mind you, this was a fact that I did not have to divulge; many reviewers are not as forthcoming.
Let me be clear: not all professional game reviewers actually complete all the games they write about. However, before you try to tell me this in unacceptable, please consider the perspective of the writers. If you feel reviewers must complete a game, any review of World of Warcraft is automatically invalid because it has no defined ending. How many hours must one play of Tetris Party Deluxe to write a "legitimate" review? Three? Five? Ten? Do I need all 240 Stars in Super Mario Galaxy 2 to have an educated opinion? What difference does it make? Ultimately, why should it matter if someone plays a game to completion if the last twenty hours did not impact their review in any way? If their efforts at arbitrarily adding that bullet point of "I finished the game" only served to kill more brain cells and require more energy drinks to stay awake long enough to finish it, then what good is it doing anyone?
The point I'm attempting to grasp at is this: I think Yahtzee may be right for a change (the only other time I agreed with him was when he said that Shadow of the Colossus is 'damn good'). Maybe we as game reviewers -- amateur, professional, or whatever -- should be honest and upfront with our readers. How long did you play that game? What difficulty setting and control scheme did you use? Did you spend time with the extra modes such as competitive online or co-op? So many of these details are clearly left out of professional reviews, and yet they can certainly impact what a reader might think and what the critic thinks. Yahtzee, for example, only ever reviews single-player components of his games but he is truthful about this fact. So, if he dislikes Modern Warfare because he thought the campaign sucked in his, maybe his review isn't very helpful to you if you really like online multiplayer.
Here's my hesitation, however: my efforts at being honest only seem to gather more flames and hate than anything else. I recently reviewed Transformers: Cybertron Adventures and admitted to actually deriving some pleasure from Michael Bay's interpretation of the franchise. A reader commented that they stopped reading when I indicated that I "only started being a fan because of the Michael Bay movies." That is the truth, though. I got burned for being honest, despite my opinion being no less relevant or valuable. Is this good or bad? Being honest inevitably means more narrow-minded readers will refute what we say, but it also means that we can distinguish our review from others out there to provide a more specific and, ideally, helpful review. But is it worth it?
It's pretty frustrating and discouraging when I feel like I could have left my Crystal Bearers review exactly as it was but merely omitted how long I spent playing it from the text and magically the same words would hold more legitimacy and none would be the wiser. This means that if we truly want game reviewers to be more efficient in reviewing games and be straight with us, we as readers need to be realistic in what we expect. Instead of deciding "This person played Final Fantasy 13 for only twenty hours of their life, their opinion is garbage!" we need to acknowledge that they formed an opinion based on the amount of time they played it. Then we need to make a decision as to how useful this opinion is instead of completely dismissing it. If the first few hours of a game fail to motivate a reviewer to continue playing, that should be a sign in and of itself, while a game that keeps them hooked for forty hours should consequently illustrate through example that they enjoyed it. It's the content that the critic experienced and how well they convey that experience that should matter. If reviews were honest with these facts it could potentially be more efficient for everyone.
I'm by no means saying "Hey, let's never finish games for review. Who cares?" because that's just lazy. I do force myself to finish even bad games from time to time -- but only when I feel motivated enough to do so or because they change just enough that I feel I might miss out on something worth commenting on otherwise. Sometimes, though, enough is enough, and our time is better spent starting to review something different instead of forcing ourselves to slag through hours of repetition that will change nothing we write.
Next time you read a review at IGN, GameSpot, 1Up, or Bitmob ask yourself, "Does it matter how long they played this game, what modes they played, or whether they played multiplayer or not?" I feel that the only reason the gaming community holds such unrealistic expectations of game reviewers is that most of them do not do a good job of disclosing this information up front. If both sides were more honest and realistic, we'd all probably enjoy game reviews a lot more.
