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Are Game Reviewers Lazy?
Joseph Olin, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, thinks game reviewers should play through the entire game before delivering the final verdict.
"My pet peeve is that game reviewers are lazy," he told Shacknews. "Not all, but in terms of the reviews [something like] 'This game isn't as good because let's compare it to that game over there and that game was great.' Who gives a, you know, bleep?"
"How can you review a game, how can you give a comment about a game like Grand Theft Auto IV, that has 40-plus hours or more of gameplay, if you've only spent 2 1/2 to 3 hours playing it," he added.
Olin said that's like critiquing a movie after watching the first reel. "I don't think that's fair, or is it accurate."
Journalists for mainstream publications recently tackled the idea that games need to be finished before review. Following the release of GTA IV, Variety's Ben Fritz said he didn't finish the game.
"Do I think games should be 'finished' to review them? Ideally, in most cases," he said.
"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."
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
If you look at it from a different way and call the reviewers 'critics' - as they are usually called for other forms of art / entertainment, you realize that the in the gaming industry they are not critic enough.
Why? my answer is because there is not a lof of people who have been playing a new game every other day for the last ten years - which is how much it takes to make a good book, movie...critic. And the ones that have are maybe on management positions at magazines, go into game publishing / programming or hole up in their room with all the copies of FFseries and a ton of ramen. The job of game reviewer / critic is not paid enough and not respected enough to allow people to do it seriously. And than you cannot expect them to. Makes you wonder why the few of them are.
And, to be the advocate for the other side, most of the games we play now are so much better than the ones we played 10 years ago that it is hard not to praise them. Take a person who has driven a Ford in 1980s, give him a new Ford and ask him what he thinks. He'll probably say the new Ford is the best car in the universe.
the majority of game web sites, specifically high profile one's like 1up, IGN, Gamepro, Gamespot, EGM, are littered with lemmings all handing out more or less the same scores across the board for nearly every game [especially the Triple-A ones] so i'd call them all worthless, not lazy.
GTAIV is a, if not THE, perfect example of what i call the lemming syndrome. the number of 'perfect' scores alone is embarrassing, indicating an enormous and clear predisposition of judgement before the game was even played, let alone finished. was i surprised? not at all but it further emphasizes just how ridiculous the situation has become.
that's why people like Ben Croshaw are so refreshing. it's not because he mercilessly tears games a new one, it's because he's not afraid to regardless of how high-profile a game might be and he doesn't give a *&# whether you or I agree with him or not. this industry desperately needs more people like him if it's to be taken seriously and appreciated as art. Jeff Gerstmann was fired for his honesty, unfortunately, during his review of Kane & Lynch but has since landed back on his feet over at Giant Bomb.
i don't recommend games to anyone, they're simply too expensive now. the only thing i'll ever recommend is a rental...and well...those Ritz Bitz w/cheese...and the Venture Bros...and the GameTheory podcast, of course!
GTA4 is a good example though as this game got reviews that simply were too positive. Essentially, it was raining solid 10s - and while the game is good, it's definitely not perfect.
I definitely think reviewers should play a majority of the game - if they don't beat it due to a deadline, that's understandable though. However, two and a half hours into a game does not give you enough leverage to judge it, in my opinion. I also agree with Thom on the importance that some people give these reviews.
Reviews arn't the be-all and end-all of games. The real problem is that they're far to heavily weighted. Expecting them to be an exact science is asking (and assuming) too much. Reviewers should play a decent amount of a game to be able to give a realistic impression of it and to put into the wider gaming context, however completeing every game is far too much to ask. How does he expect reveiwers to, for example, complete games such as the Final Fantasy's which can take upwards of 100 hours just to finnish the story (multiply that many times over for 100% completion).
Of course he's right. The net allows anyone to review games. In some instances this is good but it also means a lot of sites that are in it for the money just knock out game reviews like it's nothing (or, like Kotaku, take one solid story and chop it up into 3 bits of news which are a bit shit on their own but pads out their site to make it look busier) and oddly enough most games reviews match the company hype and come off like an advert more than anything else.
The fact is if you can't be bothered to finish the game to review it then the game probably wasn't that good. We wouldn't accept this from book or movie reviewers but we seem to think it's ok for game reviewers to do it. I think that is because more gamers are teens and kids than everyone is willing to admit to and kids don't care about making a well informed decision.
I agree with the waiting till a game is complete. After all, how do you review something that isn't final yet? Game reviewers (the good and reputable ones) should be given a copy of the game to play and write a review at least say a week ahead of time and write their review based on at least 1/3 of the game because, as we all know, some games start out slow (Secret of Mana/Evermore anyone?).