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.

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.

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?

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.