Community Call: How Long Should a Reviewer Play a Game?
February 23rd, 2010 | Written by Andrew Giese | Topic: Culture, Industry News, Social Commentary
[UPDATE: It has since come to my attention that Justin Calvert was not the actual person at Gamespot who reviewed Global Agenda, he only addressed the complaints. Their review has been pulled.]
I once knew a guy who said that if he wasn’t into a book by the end of the second chapter, he would put it down for good. Can the same be said of a video game? Recently Gamespot Reviewer Justin Calvert got in some hot water for his review of Global Agenda, because he had only played it for six hours. As a reviewer myself, I don’t even think I can completely answer this question, but here are some thoughts.
Is playing an MMO for only six hours long enough to know that you hate it? Maybe. Apparently Mr. Calvert thought so, giving Global Agenda a 5.5/10. The Global Agenda community obviously disagreed, as they dug up his character and pointed out his lack of play time and dearth of achievements as evidence he had not been thorough enough in his review. But if you look at the other two reviews out for the title right now on GameRankings, it has received a 3.6/5 and a 6/10 from two other reviewers. Were they not thorough enough either? Perhaps, but I’m betting against it.
The thing is, if a game has some really great content but I have to slog my way through drudgery and triteness to get to it, then it can never be a ‘great’ game. I have some serious respect for the reviewers that give games 5 and below out of 10. While we get to spend a few minutes reading and laughing about the game’s design flaws and comic glitches, the reviewer actually had to put up with them for hours to get to the next area. Either the reviewer will put his or her head down for the next eight hours and burn through what feels like an eternity of mediocrity, or they break at some point and say to themselves “Why should I, after six hours of gameplay, expect things to magically turn around and suddenly become enthralling?”
I respect that fans of Global Agenda feel like Mr. Calvert wasn’t thorough enough, but as a reviewer myself I feel myself siding with Justin. I’m asking you, community, do you think you would wait until you beat a game before telling your friends whether it was good enough, or do you think after six hours you could say to them, “Don’t buy this game, it’s no good”? I certainly fall in the latter group, though there are exceptions to consider such as if a game is an RPG with a noted 40-hour story mode.
But hey, I said I don’t think I can completely and definitively answer this question, so I would like to hear some thoughts from everyone else. How long is long enough before you can pass judgment on a game? Obviously it changes from game to game, but is it primarily time? Quests/Missions completed? Content unlocked? Post a comment below with your thoughts!
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Comment by Chad Awkerman on the February 23rd, 2010 at 6:38 pm
I feel it's different for different genres. MMOs will probably take more than six hours of game play to do a decent review, however readers can't expect a reviewer to cover every single aspect of an MMO, even if they played 10, 20 or 40 hours. I have, however, never reviewed an MMO.
I have reviewed mostly single-player RPGs, and in most cases, playing 30-ish hours is good to get a decent slice of all the game play the game has to offer. Most reviews don't go into story specifics because they tend to avoid spoilers. I can tell you that after about 20 hours of Mass Effect 2, I could have written my review for that game exactly the same as I wrote it after 40 hours of game play, just because I saw every aspect of game play in that first 20 hours that is contained in that game.
A shorter game, say Heavy Rain, for example, you can probably play a lot less to give a decent review. Although, with a game that short, why not finish the whole thing, especially since a large part of the game revolves around the narrative?
It is really a judgement call on the reviewer's part. But for the subject at hand, while I don't necessarily fault Mr. Calvert for only playing a few hours before doing his review, I would think that an MMO would call for more than that to give a decent idea of how things really are. I would be lynched if I wrote my Mass Effect 2 review after only playing six hours.
Comment by TonyP on the February 23rd, 2010 at 6:44 pm
There are certainly some games where playing for 6 hours is just unacceptable, such as an RPG. It would be nice if all games were like Grand Theft Auto and noted your completion percentage, as I think that's the correct gauge for grasping the quality of a game and can aid a reviewer.
Ultimately I believe it's in the best interest of both the reviewer and the reader that a review play a substantial portion of the game. It ends up aiding the review. Let's say, for instance, a game starts slow but really picks up halfway in. That could not only boost the score appropriately, but be addressed in the review itself.
"This is the tale of two games: the first is a 5-hour borefest replete with cliches and mediocrity, while the second is a 3-hour extravaganza with some of the best mission design we've seen in the genre."
Our recent review of Heavy Rain is a great example. Chris notes that some people might find the introduction of the game boring, going through mundane tasks like watching your kid do homework. But if you continue on, you'll find an interesting and unique gaming experience. I'm not sure how long that sequence lasts, but what if it lasted a significant amount of time? Could we have had a Global Agenda moment?
Comment by Danreb V. on the February 23rd, 2010 at 6:44 pm
As someone who's been reviewing games since the 8th grade and has over 200 reviews published, I can say that it really depends. I mean–when I first started, I wouldn't review a game until I finished it.
Oftentimes, there are games that are so predictable in pacing that you can review it after about at least 5 hours of playtime–examples would be the first Uncharted and last generation's Prince of Persia titles, or even the handheld versions of Ace Attorney.
Nowadays, a lot of games are so open-ended that you have to spend quite a bit of time to understand the patterns and pacing you'll get. Demon's Souls for instance was instance was extremely hard to review because nuances in gameplay would show up just about every time you pick the game up.
I wanna say the bare minimum is 2-3 hours. (Especially with sports and puzzle games). But when you get up there in the genre ladder (I'm not even going to mention MMO's), you gotta be prepared to go well over 15 hours of gameplay.
Be that as it may, bigger publications get more money the earlier the review is out. We're not about that here. Sometimes we won't even have a review out until two weeks after its public release, but you can bet we're spending that time trying to get through each game properly.
Comment by Andrew_G on the February 23rd, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Agreed, Danreb. Open endedness = more time for reviews, and when you have 6 article deadlines to meet, maybe you don't spend the amount of time you should on one game. Luckily we don't have that problem (yet).
Comment by Andrew_G on the February 23rd, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Haha, yes you would
I think the thing that differs the review of Global Agenda from a review of most other games is that Global Agenda is apparently not very good, accordingly to current reviews. Does this justify the fact that Gamespot only spent 6 hours on it? Would the review have improved much after more time? I guess the reviewer could be more thorough in his/her criticisms, and back up the claims with their time-played. It's hard to say.
Comment by JoshS on the February 24th, 2010 at 5:43 am
I agree that it is different for certain genres, but if you have an obligations to your community and fellow coworkers than you should put in your best efforts. A site like Gamespot that may not lead the market in traffic but still gets enough to have an impact on the video game community should have taken more precautions for an action like this not to have taken place. An MMORPG is a massive game and as such I think Gamespot's 30 hour rule is good enough to understand what the game has to offer.
Comment by Isaac on the February 25th, 2010 at 1:09 am
I believe all reviews should display a disclaimer showing just how much of the game was completed and how long on what difficulty. For example the GameCritics reviewers all do this and they usually give several reviews of the one game.
I don't think you can review a game accurately until you finish it simply because the way a game ends ultimately defines your experience of the game overall, a great ending or endings can wash out alot of the frustrations that may occur during the game. This is a problem though when dealing with MMO's because they don't really have a beginning or an end and these days with updates a review at launch may not be reflective of the game in 6 or 12 months time e.g. Burnout Paradise.
Comment by Themilkman on the March 16th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Great article guys, keep it up!