I’m ready to have my mind changed about anything that I’ve long held to be true.
Such changes can occur at any time, as happened earlier this week when a reader began to convince me that today’s seemingly generous game reviewers actually dole out too few perfect scores.
Another core tenet I’m at least considering abandoning: the belief that game reviewers need to finish games.
I’m not comfortable changing my mind about this. I happily finish the games that I think are important. That means I finish a lot of games each year, even though I don’t review any of them. And if I didn’t finish, say, “Metroid Prime 3” or “The Phantom Hourglass,” what would I know of each game’s major final-hours gameplay twists? How could I talk confidently about “Mass Effect” without having triggered at least one of its endings? How else would I know that the fantastic “BioShock” stumbles to the finish line, a failing worthy of a penalty?
Surely, games must be finished to be reviewed — or even to be discussed authoritatively.
Yet something N’Gai Croal wrote on his blog a couple of days ago prompted me to question my belief.
And when I learned yesterday that Variety’s Ben Fritz hadn’t finished — probably hadn’t even played half of — “Grand Theft Auto IV” before reviewing the game for his Hollywood publication, I knew I had to ask some questions of them and of myself.
On Monday, Croal published an essay about how games are misrepresented in most mainstream game reviews. He reminded his readers that he views games as “fundamentally non-narrative” and urged critics to discuss the feel of playing a game rather than just detailing its features or describing its story:
The essence of game cannot be found in a plot summary or in a catalog of its elements. So we need to find a way to talk about games that can engage the mainstream while educating it–truthfully–about what the experience of playing each individual game is actually like.
He praised Chris Baker’s review of “GTA IV” in Slate for doing it right.
Ever interested in messing with N’Gai’s theories, I wrote in a comment:
Something for you to grapple with: by rejecting the view of games as a narrative medium and by encouraging the kind of excellent criticism seen in Chris Baker’s piece, you have raised the question of whether it is relevant for a critic to complete a game.
What is the meaningful end of a game? When is the moment when a critic can step away and say “I think I’ve got it; time to write up my thoughts.”?
… your standards suggest a compelling second approach: by focusing on experience, who cares about the end? By rejecting the importance of narrative, you’re entertaining a different view of game structure and a different prioritization of what needs to be played and discussed in a critique or a review.
Following that, I learned that Fritz hadn’t finished “GTA IV” before writing his review. Telling him that I was open to new standards, I asked him for his take on the completion issue.
He told me that he had played a final copy of the game for more than 20 hours before his review ran and made more than 70 mission attempts (some of them failures, of course). He had reached all areas of the city except the final third of its landmass, the New Jersey-inspired Alderney. He also played some side missions, some multi-player and took lots of notes during the three days that elapsed between receiving the game and running his review.
Here’s Fritz’s reasoning to me about reviewing the game without finishing it:
Do I think games should be “finished” to review them? Ideally, in most cases. But in an open-world, multi-player game like “GTA,” completing the story doesn’t mean you “finished” the game in any real sense. Would a review of “GTA IV” in which the writer finished the story but did nothing else be more complete? I don’t personally think so.
So I thought it was important to take time out to explore and try other things, which of course deducted from the time I had for story missions. I don’t think the comparison to books and movies is particularly valid, since they’re linear media that take a pretty predictable amount of time to complete. Depending on the type of game, your skill level, how much detail you want to see, etc., a game can take 5 hours, 20 hours, 100 hours, or infinity.
Bottom line: I’m very comfortable that I saw a broad cross-section of what “GTA IV” has to offer, went deep into it in certain places where I thought getting detail was important, and wrote a solid review.
If you’ve gotten further than Fritz did in “GTA IV,” you should read his review and decide whether you think his write-up would have been improved had he played on. I’ve played further — I’ve attempted more than 100 missions and completed 54% of the game — but I can’t pass judgment yet since I don’t know all of what I’m missing.
Note that Chris Baker, he who was praised above, also said he hadn’t finished the game before writing his Slate piece.
I’ve been interviewing game reviewers a lot recently for a series of articles about the reviewing process. Until a couple of days ago I hadn’t even considered the idea that people could write worthwhile reviews without completing games. None of the veteran reviewers I talked to in the enthusiast press seemed to think so either. But now… I’m wondering.
Is completing a game still key?
Or would you rather your game reviewers spend their time and focus their writing on other things?
May 8th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Do restaurant critics need to eat every item on the menu? Do they even have to finish everything on their plate? As best practice they do go to the restaurant in question on two separate occasions and they bring a friend to increase how much they taste. Could game reviewers have a similar rule of thumb?
May 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am
If N’Gai is right, and we need to be reviewing games experientially, then this *would* seriously call into question the need to finish the game. We would never put up with a movie review from someone who didn’t watch the whole movie, becuase I think it’s safe to assume that most movie goers will stay for the whole thing as well.
But playing GTA for 20 hours, unlocking the middle island but not the third, doing some multiplayer and some side missions and then kind of walking away? This might be rough for a completist to hear, but I’m pretty sure that reflects very many (most?) people’s experience with a GTA game.
I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate game reviewers who finish the games they cover, and unlike N’Gai, I don’t think we should treat games like they are a non-narrative experience (I liked better his notion that narrative elements worked in concert with visual and gameplay elements). I don’t think anyone would forgive a review of Portal, written by someone who quit after the companion cube level because they got the gist of it, but then again, that wouldn’t reflect most people’s experience with the game (as assumedly, most could find the 4 hours it takes to finish it). But with GTA… eh, I don’t mind.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:30 am
I think it depends a lot on whether people are playing in good part to see where the game is going. This tends to be the biggest issue in RPGs and adventure games. That said, if a game makes a reviewer sufficiently frustrated that they want to quit before they finish that’s fine, they just need to say so.
For more sandbox-y games, I’d definitely say a wide spectrum review is preferable to one that includes the ending, so skipping the ending is probably fine so long as you’ve experienced the bulk of the game play.
I guess the rule of thumb would be “if the ending sucked, what my opinion of the game significantly change?” If not, then you’re okay.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I agree that it depends on the game, although in the majority of cases, I still think reviewers should really try to complete the game. Remember the Games Radar review of Enchanted Arms, where the reviewer clearly didn’t play past the first few “tutorial” hours of the game? (I’ve read the defenses and the excuses made for that review, and I don’t believe them for a second.)
In GTA, you pretty much know what you’re going to get. But what if, once you opened up the final third of the world, something crazy happened and you got Crackdown-style super powers? A professional reviewer would have to mention that, or at least allude to it, or risk complete loss of credibility.
As long as the reviewer is honest and up-front about how much of the game they played, I’m not entirely against the idea of reviewing a game without finishing it. But I’m still not sure I’d be able to fully trust their opinion.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:52 am
As a practical matter, I have a hard time believing that game reviewers do finish every game they play! Games are sprawling and deadlines are tight. That’s just life.
But let’s talk about the principle of the thing. Ideally, you’d want the reviewer to have experienced 100% of what the game has to offer. This isn’t a concern that even comes up when you talk about movie reviewers, book reviewers, and so on (well, except when Maxim is reviewing a new Black Crowes album). A game asks a lot more of the consumer in terms of time and effort. There’s another key difference, though: Only when reviewing a game does the reviewer’s action actually change the thing he’s reviewing.
That’s not a small distinction. When ten people see a movie, they’re seeing exactly the same visual frames, hearing the same lines of dialogue, and so on. When ten people play a game, there’s an infinite number of possibilities of how they’ll experience it. Somebody who passes over the first goomba in Super Mario Bros is having a different experience that somebody who squashes it. In the case of Grand Theft Auto, it’s safe to say that each of us has had numerous in-game experiences that are unique to us. Our style of play, to a large extent, determines what the game is. That is manifestly one of its purposes. And it’s one of the challenges game reviewers face. They have to express their singular experience in a universal way.
With that said, obviously the narrative in GTA is a big, big part of it, and it would be preferable to play it through it to completion. But I have to side with Fritz here: If the reviewer focuses on completing the campaign at the expense of the myriad other choices he has, then you could make a strong argument that he’s short-changing the game — and his readers — in certain key areas. How useful is focusing on the story to the numerous people whose interest lies in exploring the city, or causing all-purpose mayhem? There may not be a one-size-fits-all solution for readers.
Sometimes not finishing a game is a legitimate part of the process, too. As in: “This game was so terrible that I could not keep playing with my sanity intact. I would not wish this on my worst enemies.” On the flipside, what about games that don’t really end? At what point is it safe for a reviewer to say he’s done with World of Warcraft, and here’s his score? Does he have to get to level 70 first? In the case of Grand Theft Auto IV, are we saying someone needs to kill all the pigeons before they can render a fair verdict?
Ultimately, what matters most in a review is transparency and honesty. A reviewer should make a good-faith effort to play the game as fully as possible. His description of the game should make clear how he went about playing it, and point out what avenues were left unexplored. And he should own up to where he fell short. I think there is a point before completion in most games that qualifies as “enough,” but it’s different for each game — and, likely, for each reviewer.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I think it’s easier to forgive not finishing a game that’s as unusually enormous as GTA. This is a game into which you could put 50 hours and still not complete the story missions. Add in the multiplayer, and it’s pretty amazing how much content you’re getting.
Reviewers are obviously under deadlines. Sadly, the game review biz seems to run under the same model as the film review biz, wherein reviews are expected on opening day. This just isn’t tennable.
It’s understandable that reviewers might start thinking along the lines of, “Well, I’ve seen enough amazing content to equal 3 or 4 high rated games, so it has already earned an A. Anything else is just gravy.”
However, if I were a reviewer, I’d certainly be uncomfortable doing this, without explicitly admitting such in my review.
I’d just feel like kind of an ass speaking with any authority about something I had no knowledge of, without admitting that in my review.
Games are not movies. The idea of a film critic seeing the first half of a 5 hour movie, and then writing a glowing review of it, because that 150 minutes was terrific (and longer that most movies), is obviously problematic.
For a game like GTA, this seems like less of a problem. The narrative might be what some people are playing GTA for, but really, it’s kind of thrown in to justify the missions.
If a reviewer thinks that SO FAR a game has enough great content to justify an A, I guess that’s fine, but they really ought to be explicitly clear about this.
I wouldn’t mind reviews based on partial completion if they included a caveat along the lines of, “This thing is massive. I’ve put in many many hours and am not even halfway done. Perhaps it will #?~% the bed with latter content, but so far, it’s given me as much enjoyment and wonder as 3 or 4 conventional AAA titles, so I’m comfortable giving it an high score. Now I’m off to explore the rest, and I’ll followup later.”
May 8th, 2008 at 11:39 am
This is the best review of the game I’ve read so far:
It is spoiler free, yet captures well the spirit and wonder of the game. It also happens to be written by a guy that didn’t finish it, but he explicitly mentions this:
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary
/games/2008/05/gamesfrontiers_0502
A lot of the fun of GTA is the thrill of discovery. Many reviews written my the industry press sort of ape Ebert’s written movie reviews, in which they give away WAY too much of the plot, for my comfort.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Absolutely necessary. Sure, it sucks that you must play a 40 hour game in a short period of time - that’s a major problem, but it needs to be dealt with in another way.
Some games break down half way through. Some people loved Uncharted, but hated the ending. Wouldn’t that affect you? What if you had only played the first half of Crysis, not realizing the second half of the game devolves from fantastic open worlds to okay corridor shooting levels where Space Aliens are suddenly involved?
May 8th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I think a lot of it comes down to what a player is looking for when they play a GTA game. Personally, I’m more interested in the plot and characters of GTA4 than I am with running around doing random stuff. Others are more interested in tooling around, causing mayhem, and seeing just what you can and can’t do in the game. There’s certainly a place for different kinds of reviews for different people. I’d prefer a review where the writer played til the end of the story so he can give his impressions of it (the consensus of reviews I’ve read is that it’s good, better than the previous games, but nobody’s comparing it to a Bioshock or Portal).
I think sandbox and MMO’s present particular problems to game reviewers because reviews have been copying the format of movie or book reviews to a certain extent. Games are almost always viewed in the context of their narrative, with graphics and other technical points also being considered. GTA doesn’t fit well into that mold.
Some reviewers stated they spent a marathon session with the game playing it start to finish. They experience the story and much of what the game offers, but a criticism is that the reviewer wasn’t playing the game like normal people play it. They didn’t have the luxury of getting bored or frustrated with a mission, they just had to push through it. It changes the experience for them even more so compared to other people.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
A food critic may not have to eat the whole enchilada, but would I want to read a critical piece by someone who has not finished the whole book, or the movie? What if you only review games based on the first level? The first chapters of the Fellowship of the Ring sucked hard, but the book is written well overall.
If one watched the first hour of the Godfather Part 2, the reviewer would of never know that Michael killed Fredo.
If we only played the first level of Half Life 2, we would of missed the ending, escape from Ravenholm and so on.
So games are meant to be played all the way.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Obviously any game review becomes richer the more of the game the reviewer has experienced, but let’s be real: if your editor hands you something like GTAIV with three days until deadline, you’re not going to finish story mode unless you never go online or ?$%?~ around in the way real GTAIV players will. I commend the guys who did excellent reviews without finishing the game, because they played the game the way a real player would, as an explorer who was juggling other real-life commitments.
And what does completing “story mode” in a more linear game even mean? Even linear titles not have tons of optional content waiting to be unlocked while you work on seeing the credit roll. Did you finish Shiren the Wanderer because you saw the credits after clearing Table Mountain, even though the game has six more dungeons to experience after that? Are you done with a Disgaea after you see the credits roll, even though there are usually around 10 endings and countless secret post-game goals? Of course not. Nobody who buys the game stops there! Yet reviewers stop at the credit roll for these sorts of titles and feel just fine about themselves, and end up writing distorted, stupid reviews.
The idea that even mainstream reviewers are always completing games before submitting their text is a lie and an illusion. For a modern game, playing until the credits roll is a completely arbitrary and meaningless standard of “completion”. The gold standard should be playing the game as much as possible, in the way you feel most people would want to play the game, before your deadline hits you. That means NOT stopping when you see the credits roll, but testing the multiplayer, testing the optional levels/dungeons, testing the post-game. Your review isn’t valid without that, so don’t go patting yourself on the back for completing games before review unless you’ve done that.
And sorry, if you think any printed review of Halo 3 or GTAIV from the enthusiast press is valid, you’re kidding yourself. These guys reviewed the game by being locked in a hotel room with it for about five days, unable to do anything else, networked to about two dozen other journalists. Is anything about that relevant to the way any real person - with a life, job, school, maybe a family - is going to play the game? No, it’s ridiculous. Maybe you saw most of the content in the game, but you still have no f—ing clue how the game is going to perform in the hands of real consumers who don’t have Microsoft footing their bills for a week. That’s an invalid review, in my opinion.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
When you review a movie, you are locked in dark lit room and are meant to watch the whole movie. If the game has a story, Half Life series, Halo series, GTA series, Bioshock, MGS, and Portal, the reviewer has to finish it. Of course games like FIFA 08, Burnout Paradise, and Team Fortress 2, one has to play enough to atleast explain the mechanics of the said games.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Beppo, I think you’re setting WAY too high a bar here. You seriously think a reviewer should play a game so extensively that he sees every ending? Take a game like Mass Effect. By your standards, a reviewer would have to play through it at least six times so he could experience every class (I think there were six, but there may be more). But it’s even worse than that, because an RPG like Mass Effect also has multiple paths depending on what decisions you make in certain missions. You say that “No one who buys the game stops there,” but I can tell you that I stopped playing after one playthrough, as did most of my friends. You might be an obsessive completist, but you are definitely in the minority of gamers.
As for your criticism of reviews from the “enthusiast press,” I think you’re being a bit naive. Every medium works this way. Do you think book reviewers buy their books at the bookstore like everyone else? No, they usually get unproofed galleys a couple of months before the book comes out. Do you think movie reviewers see the movies in the theater like everyone else? No, they usually see them in studio screenings with PR people and other critics. I don’t see how that makes their reviews less valid.
And how far do we have to take this idea of playing it “like a real person plays the game”? Should the reviewer have his 5-year-old interrupt him every 10 minutes, should he have his wife get pissed at him for playing instead of helping put the kids to bed, should he play the game in his underwear, should he play drunk or stoned just because that’s how a fair number of “real” gamers will play it?
May 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Beppo said (about the gaming press):
Maybe you saw most of the content in the game, but you still have no f—ing clue how the game is going to perform in the hands of real consumers who don’t have Microsoft footing their bills for a week. That’s an invalid review, in my opinion.”
I don’t entirely agree with this. I guess it comes down to what you want from your reviews. If you’re looking for consumer advice of the “buy this…don’t buy this” variety, then maybe it becomes important that the reviewer try to approximate the “real world” experience that an average gamer (whatever that might be) might have with the game.
I guess I prefer reviews in which any pretense towards objective consumer advice is pretty much chucked out the window at the onset. I prefer reviews in which the reviewer says explicity “Here’s MY take on it. Here’s what I got a kick out of, here’s what I disliked, etc…” This inclusion of personal views is a no no in most journalism, but I don’t think it should be avoided in game reviews (or movie, food, or music reviews either). So much of our tastes is subjective. Why pretend otherwise, especially when doing so might hurt the reviewers ability to talk sensibly about the game?
The more sort of honesty about their own circumstances in playing the game, the better.
If they are sequestered to a room with the game for 5 days and are in a rush to get through the main story missions, sure, their experience will be different than that of the vast majority of players, but this doesn’t invalidate THEIR viewpoint. They just need to say as much in their review (as many early reviewers did) instead of PRETENDING to have some sort of objective, and complete idea of the worth of the game, or how you, joe gamer, are going to experience it.
I’m interested in whether a game is worth a damn (the grade), but beyond that, I want interesting, thought provoking, or at least funny criticism (the review). I don’t want to read a plot synopsis or a summary of every play mechanic. Maybe a little slice that illustrates part of what you’ll be doing in the game, but not a full, spoiler heavy summary.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I think the expectations are different because publications serve different audiences with different interest levels in the subject matter. So I don’t expect the people covering games for mainstream outlets to finish them and think that they can give a valid opinion of a game without always playing to completion. However, I’d feel like I was cutting corners if I wrote a GTA IV review before completing the story, trying all the multiplayer modes, and seeing what other extra missions the game had to offer outside of the main story.
But then there was Dark Sector, a game I played around halfway through and reeeeally didn’t want to keep playing. At what point should a reviewer throw up his hands and say “I have enough things to dislike about this game to give it a low score and get it out of my life?” I flirted with that idea, but ended up trudging through the rest of it before writing anything.
Old habits die hard?
May 8th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Perhaps there are some games that can be reviewed without completion, but I think its a mistake to review GTA IV without playing through it. In my own play through, I found the originality of the game wore off as a I completed the missions, and fundamentally the game just felt like a high-def version of the previous games.
I enjoyed the game quite a bit — liberty city and the music selection were fantastic. Nico made a great character, and the improvements to combat were welcome.
However, I think GTA IV suffered some of the strange gameplay quirks as the previous games, and the cover system wasn’t as smooth as reviews led me to expect. I think much of the hype about how this is a fundamentally different from the previous games was misplaced. The single player experience seemed like a high-def version of the previous games.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Do the games needed to be completed to 100%? In most cases, no. Does the main campaign need to be played to completion and all side/multiplayer modes sampled? Yes. Like someone mentioned above, a reviewer who does not finish the main campaign or story of the game could miss a place where the game falls apart or really makes a turn for the better.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
A good movie critic will watch the movie twice, once during the screening for reviewers at a local theater (not flown to hollywood for the premier event) and again with the public crowd.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
This isn’t so much a theory as it is already a practice. I understand there are time constraints with reviews, so I can hardly blame them…
But I can’t tell you how many RPG reviews I’ve read where it’s clear the writer got maybe 5 to 8 hours into the game. Two examples:
1.) No overhead map at all in Lost Odyssey. This is complete BS, it appears for the first time about 10 or so hours in.
2.) Gamespot’s review of Digital Devil Saga in which they lament how the voice overs always sound like they’re “emotionless”. Except this is a major plot point in the story that is explained and starts rectifying itself maybe 6 to 8 hours in.
There’s countless examples of this. I’m not going to delude myself into believing most reviewers finish anything unless they feel it’s worth a very high score (if they like the game, genre, etc.) because otherwise they would have probably not played it to begin with.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I think we all continue to be hamstringed by this notion of games as a solely narrative experience or as something comparable to film, which is presented (if not necessarily experienced) in total and roughly in the same way to/by everyone.
I think when it comes to experiencing narratives in games, there is a sliding scale by which different genres should be judged differently. There are JRPGs out there that conform to the standard “completing this dungeon will reward you with this story cutscene” structure. Becuase the “output” of the game, relative to your inputs, is largely the story that it presents, I think it is quite valid to judge the game heavily on its merits in this regard, and thus reviewers would hopefully play through the game to completion of the narrative (if not the game– i.e. till the end credits).
But let’s say a game like GTA does fall apart at the end, or the missions become repetitive, or the narrative drags. If most players don’t make it this far in the storyline–that is, do not experience the game this way, should “finishing” the game be essential to a review (particularly a mainstream one) that strives to describe the gameplay experience? And isn’t a game like GTA about a lot more than the narrative anyway?
Most of the mainstream reviews of GTA IV I’ve read have judged it almost singularly on one aspect: the construction of Liberty City as a gaming space and the players emersive role in it. It kind of makes you wonder what GTA IV is “about.” If you really take seriously the notion of a “sandbox” game, then shouldn’t we judge GTA IV by the quality of it’s sandbox? No one judges fighting games by the ending you get when you complete the arcade mode with each character, or by the animation you get when you win the stanley cup in NHL 08. Why should it any different for a game like GTA? To take an extreme position, most of the storyline missions in any GTA games are just contrived tutorials for how to best use the sandbox, no? And if you feel you’ve sufficiently learned how to play in the sandbox, is the ending of the game an essential element in the review of it’s strengths and limitations as a sandbox?
Or, to complicate the topic further, is an un-completed game worthy as an object of criticism (this being separate from a review)? I haven’t finished GTA IV yet, but I still feel like I’m able to critically engage it in a meaningful way (in ways that I would not be able to critically engage a film of which I’d only seen half). Perhaps I should be more sensitive to the anxieties of Mr. Totilo in this matter?
May 8th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
You know what also works about Slate’s review? The reviewer is clear as to how far he got into it and how much is left to do.
I’d be a hell of a lot more OK with reviews that made these points. But it’s especially clear that reviewers do not want to give any concept that, you know, maybe they can’t finish 10 60 hour games… so they brush that aside and apply a final, damning score or comment on a game that they can’t reverse or append.
And I think that’s shitty.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I’ll agree with a few of the comments already made that reviewers should be up front if they did not complete a game or play certain modes. Maybe that can be made part of the ’standard’ for which we can hold reviewers to (I played this game for ‘x’ hours, I was unable to test the multiplayer functionality before press, etc.).
May 8th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
It hurts my brain to read a lot of the neogaf comments, I hope you dont take them to heart
May 8th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I completely disagree with this article. Factors such as hype and the general feeling of ‘newness’ will overshadow all objectivity when reviewing any game without completing it. N’Gai and the rest who justify this method of reviewing seem to be making excuses to the gamers that they owe their jobs to. Reviewers have to check out the entire product if they’re going to be fair not just to gamers but to the developers of the game as well. Case in point: again, GTAIV. It’s pretty obvious to someone who isn’t affected by the hype to see that the game looks and plays quite similarly to its previous iteration, and its graphics and gameplay aren’t even next-generation, with a lot of flaws that cause other games to normally lose more than a point or two when reviewed. GTAIV gets away with it, because of the massive hype that accompanied its release; because it’s the game that game industry pundits can flag to their non-gaming mainstream buddies as the game that makes the industry that they work in seem ‘cool’ and ‘hip’. It makes no sense that the game got the reviews that it did; all player feedbacks I’ve read from players who HAVE finished the game, indicate that GTAIV is not the revolution of gameplay that reviewers have been parading all over the Internet; rather, the brand is a product of hype created by an industry that is constantly trying to create an image of ‘cool’. Simply put, the game is more of a ‘9′ and not a ‘10′. And yet game journalists, awash in the sea of freebies, goodies and perks that Rockstar likely sent their way, were blinded by the hype and gave it a 10 anyway. In many cases, Grand Theft Auto IV is even less fully featured than its previous sequel, San Andreas, and yet this game is supposed to be ‘better’?
This article is just another example of how game reviews are becoming less and less reliable. Feedback from other real gamers on the internet (who actually have to buy their games, which spares them from being influenced by the hype train), is far more reliable. It’s messier to go through forum feedbacks and one has to filter through the gunk and filthy language, but one can get a far better picture of a game’s quality in this manner. In the end, game reviews are just another opinion anyway.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
@scytherage: I haven’t justified anything. Stephen posed a question in the comments section of my Newsweek blog, and I have yet to be able to respond to him because I’ve been busy with other stuff. I doubt that I owe my job to gamers, because I write for a general interest magazine. And I’m not making excuses, because I’m not a reviewer, nor do I position myself as such. I wrote an *essay* about Grand Theft Auto IV in which I made it clear that I had only played 10 or so hours of a game that can last anywhere from 40-100 hours.
Part of the problem here is that the terms reviewer, critic and journalist are all too often used interchangeably. (I’ve done it myself, so I understand how it happens.) Here’s the way I see it: a reviewer helps you figure out whether or not you should buy a game; a critic helps you think about a game that you’ve already bought; and a journalist reports about newsworthy people and events surrounding the games that we play.
I consider myself a journalist and a critic, not a reviewer, and if you read the Vs. Mode critical exchanges that Stephen and I engage in monthly, you’ll see that we generally make it clear how much of the game we’ve played as we’re discussing it. And no, I don’t feel as though I need to play an entire game to be a critic, any more than I don’t expect a TV critic to have watched the entire season of “The Wire” before they write their “reviews” at the start of the season. Can it be helpful? Of course it can. Maybe it’s even desirable. But what I strive to do is write thoughtfully about the parts of the game that I have played, and as long as I’m not deceiving someone about how much of the game I’ve played, it’s up to readers to determine whether my opinions and observations have any merit.
I agree with your underlying point about the vibrancy of the discussion about games that goes on in forums and on message boards. Not because they’re more objective–there’s no such thing as objective when it comes to art and entertainment–but because they do a better job of capturing the journey that is playing a game, rather than trying to sum things up from the destination. Here’s what I wrote about this point, when discussing *reviews*, in the comments on my blog:
“[Reviews] don’t capture the way we talk about games with our friends or with complete strangers, whether face-to-face or online. Game reviews are a strange hybrid of product assessment and movie reviews, and I’ve felt for some time now that the form is no longer up to the task of getting at the essence of the medium. I’m not saying that the traditional game review doesn’t have its place, because while I’m privileged enough to have publishers send me their games free of charge, the average person should be able to get the assistance they need to determine whether or not to buy a particular title. But as a writer and blogger, I’m more interested in speaking to the person who already has the game; in helping them think critically about what they’re playing. And for that, I think that blogs, message boards, podcasts–and hopefully, Vs. Mode–are better ways of achieving this goal than traditional game reviews.”
Any common ground here, scytherage?
Cheers,
N’Gai
May 8th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
My balls are sitting idly either side of the fence, though I’m tempted to fall into the “don’t care if it’s finished or not” category. Some games I’d argue should be completed before reviewing, others, I wouldn’t care about and honestly, I couldn’t point to examples because it depends on how the individual reviewer handles the topic and what the game is.
In the case of games such as JRPGs which can take weeks to complete, and open-world games such as GTA IV - as argued above - I’d say as long as the reviewer has a solid grasp on the content and features, I don’t care if they completed the game or not.
If anything, I’d like game reviewers, especially online reviewers, to be given a week post game completion or post writing the review to let the games impact really sit in. I think it would be more important to give a reviewer time to reflect on the title, completed or not, before they throw up the review.
Reviews need more context. How do you feel about the game a week after completion? Were you happy with it? Would you go back? Initial reactions and lasting impressions change; writing a review immediately after playing doesn’t help anyones decision making and prohibits proper critique in favour of “purchase now or rent?”
May 8th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Daniel Purvis: thegamechair.com, before the owner realized that running a full-fledged gaming review site was getting in the way of having a life, had something called “progressive reviews”. A reviewer would write several articles as he or she played a game.
I miss it.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
@N’Gai
Do gamers want a critical essay of their game before being released? Game reviews seem to fall to the same pattern as technology and car reviews, a huge list of features, experiences with the product and the recommendation to purchase or not. Is it hard to believe that some people want that with their games? Personally, I need both, is the new Iron Man game worth my time or what are other peoples’ experiences with GTA4.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
“He also played some side missions, some multi-player and took lots of notes during the three days that elapsed between receiving the game and running his review.”
I can’t get over this one. There should be a disclaimer on most reviews stating, “The following describes the experience of the game played continuously for x number of days while trying to meet a deadline.”
I see the above as a bigger issue than whether or not reviewers complete the game. I don’t think I’d enjoy playing GTA (or other games) as much if I had to finish the game by a certain date, and thus had to play it even at times where I didn’t feel like it because of said deadline. Party games are the same way. I appreciate games like this more when I come back to them when I feel like paying, at that may take a long time between play sessions.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I bet a lot of readers expect reviewers to “play the whole thing.” They don’t want to think that a movie reviewer walked out of the theatre halfway through a film for a snack, or to drop the kids off at the pool, and let that gap slide.
Like a travel writer reviewing an island destination: Readers/watchers might expect the person to explore an extensive variety of locations and services, testing out many different conditions. Not just the local Hilton.
Readers kind of expect their critics to bear the burden of playing the ?%#@ out of a product. If it’s “done” and reviewable, using it as fully and completely as possible. Talk about the replayability, let alone beating it once. Readers feel it’s their entitlement, while it’s the reviewer’s responsibility. There’s a relationship there.
But you know how it goes. You can reach a point of comfortable saturation where you have a damned good idea of the game, without having reached final credits or 100% complete.
It’s a perception thing. People love to hear about game length and developers are still more than willing to slap a number on it and make that number public. At which point it enters the value proposition. So if the developer is telling folks that they can get about 40 hours out of the game’s campaign, and a reviewer has played half that much before grading it, isn’t the reviewer guilty of something?
Like everything in life, it all comes down to the details. Some games can and should be played to completion by the editor before he or she grades it, while it’s unnecessary or impossible for other titles. A good reviewer will make the correct call and guide their readers in the right direction, thanks to his or her mastery of the subject matter.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
While it’s true that some games can be reviewed without being completed, this mainly applies to games that don’t contain an evolving plot or storyline; puzzle games for instance. You could probably review a game like Iron Man without beating it too as 60-70% of the way through it’s clear what its flaws are however there is always that chance that the last level will make up for some of the lesser missions. In the case of a No More Heroes, Heavenly Sword, Uncharted etc. you have to beat the game to critique it since the “end” factors into the overall quality of the piece. Mo More Heroe’s and Heavenly Sword have climaxes that really define the overall quest and finality (or not) of the series. GTA IV is an interesting case since most of us had only a day or two to “review” the game. I put in 30-40 hours for my review sticking to moving the story along but I felt I really had to dig into the game to see its overall depth at the same time, and so I went on alot of dates, and hung out with the boys often. The fact that the cabaret acts evolve, or what happens if you order up a 3rd lap dance show the games insane amount of content. It was also necesary to open the entire island and witness some of the games dramatic twists (too bad the fashions never really deliver a “cool” Niko). Honsestly, while I knew the game was going to deliver a killer ending based on my review time, I knew it was superb at the 10-15 hour mark. This is a very special case. GTA IV is a marvel of an achievement. The sheer amount of content and AI is insane, not to mention the fact that Rockstar managed to give Niko dynamic collision (his body adapts to slopes etc.) and leaning animation. Truly a gargantuan task. Also…once in awhile, especially with a game like this, I don’t want to rush to the end. I know a masterpice (for its genre) when I see one. This is one to be cleaned out and savored over time. Interesting topic. Reviews are so case sensitive. After 16 years I still find myself struggling with tech versus emotions. At the end of the day I believe its all about the experience; how a game makes me feel or succeeds in relation to its target demographic. That’s about 3 cents worth.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Not to be snippy about this, but there’s a practical impossibility here. I don’t particularly care whether we call ourselves and others reviewers, critics, or journalists. Personally, I get paid to write. If I’m writing interviews, I guess I’m a journalist. If I’m writing feaures, I guess I’m most likely a critic.
But let’s talk money shall we. Hands up anyone who’s finished World of Warcraft? You know, played every character class and race through to completion? OK, that’s the absurd. Nobody would ever, ever suggest that WoW can’t be reviewed. We’d expect the writer to perhaps dabble in all the classes, maybe play 20 hours in a preferred class, and if they’re lucky, have a chance to play some stock higher level characters with the developers help.
So back down a notch - Oblivion. I’ve put in over 100 hours, and never completed the main quest line. Let’s say I had focused in with laser sights and spent 50 dedicated hours into the game. Who here thinks that I will be well compensated at a professional rate for those 50 hours, plus the 5-10 it would likely take to research, write and edit. Rarely, rarely is this going to happen.
This is why, to be blunt, reviewing games is a crappy, crappy job. I don’t claim to now the ins and outs of every part of the business, but I do know the hourly rate that good freelancers can charge. I can guarantee you they are not being paid for 60 hours of that rate to pen a 1500 word review of any game.
So in short, you get what you pay for. If you want really good writers to do completist reviews of your games, then you’d better start buying 10-dollar-a copy magazines in a hurry.
I do think it’s important that writers/journos/critics/reviewers provide context, and this is done far to rarely. It’s important whether you play a game at a studio or in your home, in the dark or under flourescent lights, alone or with friends. All of these things not only set the tone for the review, but also provide reference points - “ah, that’s not how I play.”
But I also think that reviewers write for target audiences, and a very, very small percentage of people will play through the entire GTA main storyline.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
You’re correct there.
Games writers certainly don’t charge by the hour to achieve 100% in games for their employer, else they’d be completing all their games without question, and… they’d be loaded.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:20 am
All but one of our editors are full-time and are paid pretty fat salaries. We feel honored to be reviewing games so, 95% of the time we beat the games. MMOs and 80-100 hour-long open-world games are the exception of course. But they’re so subjective…not to mention that with many MMOs you can get by without really playing. They really defy scoring. One thing’s for sure WoW is hella dated. I could never hang with those crude models and architecture.
I wouldn’t hire a freelancer to review a game he or she couldn’t finish. Thats where having a savvy EiC comes in. When I do give one of our 2 freelancer a “huge” game–which is rare–there’s always extra cash or time applied. Our mag is 6 bucks and you definitely get more than what you pay for. We kill ourselves making it, working an average of 60-80 hours a week to ensure our readers are getting the genuine article, at least as it pertains to our views. If a freelancer didn’t give me his best due to his words to cash ratiio, well, you’ll never see that in our mag. These developers work too hard. Making a game is tough business these days. They deserve the best reviewer suited to their game giving 110%. Coming up from 8 and 16-bit games are so easy too. It’s hard to “die” in most games. Anyone is free to write whatever they want but truly knowing and understanding every aspect of game development should be a requisite to write any review outside of Brain Age. Not so many years ago game journalism was a very exclusive club. Now it’s it’s a free for all, the result is a media that’s way off balance.
May 10th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Depending on the purpose of the review I don’t think it is necessary to attempt to complete a game. I say attempt, because, as Julian Murdoch’s example of Oblivion or WoW illustrates, it’s impossible for one person to experience everything that another gamer may experience.
For example gamesforlunch.blogspot.com spends an hour with a game while writing with the purpose of determining whether the game is worth playing past that hour.
Hours of play become more important depending on how much a review is trying to determine if a game is worth the purchase price, however, the evaluation of worth is flawed because in many cases it is quantified. Many gamers believe that a numerical score or letter grade is important because instead of presenting impressions of a game, reviews are throwing words behind a number.
There needs to be more space for reviews which instead try to engage gamers in evaluating a game as opposed to going through a checklist, maybe then gamers will be less prone to looking for numbers.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
The only things that would make the most sense, to me, are these:
-Reviewers do not need to beat any game that they review. However, they should break down what they play of the game — time played, approximate percentage done, etc. The reader can relate to the reviewer more easily, and he/she can also take the reviewer’s opinion with a more distinct value.
Basically, keep it ‘objective’, not ’subjective’.