Do you have to finish a game to appreciate it/make a final call?

[zeello]

It depends if by finish you mean FINISH or merely beating the story once. Beating a game is not enough. You have to finish it.

Many users online state they just play a game once and that's it, which infuriates me, but I guess if many gamers do this (and it's reasonable to suppose that in fact MOST gamers do this) then that should be the way a game is judged.

Hypothetically games serve a purpose, it just depends what that purpose is. Different gamers may have different standards.

Can I purposely not do something

Technically no. This is an attempt to artificially make the game better or worse.
And although you say purposefully not doing something, the same applies to purposefully doing something.

(my example might be we have probably all seen kids use the starter pokemon and steamroll the game where the entire point of the game for some is to build a team)?

it may be that both are valid strategies especially if either strategy is accidentally approached by the player without either player making a concerted effort to warp the game experience into something they knew it was not

If I get to the final boss, decide the final boss is a four hour grind and then just watch the end on the internet does that change anything?

The fact remains you have deemed the game unworthy of being finished.
It's like if a nongamer watches an entire playthrough of a game on youtube. They may say the loved the game afterwards but their actions indicate that the game, to them, was unworthy of being played. The nongamer offers only empty praise.

I'd much rather have a reviewer state exactly how much of the game he's played so i can form an idea of what's contributed to his experience.

Reviewers are generally not going to do this because 1) they have deadlines, and it's in their best interest to gloss over how little of the game they've played or the fact they played on the lowest difficulty, and 2) because reviews are written in Reviewese rather than making plain statements about the game or their particular experience. In fact, stating things specific to the writer or their experience is a massive taboo since it shatters the illusion of objectivity--It reveals the obvious fact that a person who played a game and writes about it can ultimately only write about themselves.

A "final call" or opinion/review of a game reflects a personal experience...as a reviewer you have to play to reveal as much information as you expect your audience wants to make their own decisions. If you gave up on Okami after about 20 hours thinking it was amazing you'd have totally missed the fact that the developers forgot they needed to end the game any time soon, and as such your final verdict would neglect the way the game tends to drag on.

An unfinished game CANNOT BE CONSIDERED GOOD. It's a one way street imo. Because aside from the obvious fact that you didn't even finish the game which is obviously not a vote of confidence.. ("so good, you won't even bother finishing it"(TM)) ..it means you don't know whether the game becomes a stinker later on, which is all too possible.

In fact, the whole point of a game is that it starts out easy, gradually becomes harder and harder, until it reaches its maximum difficulty. You cannot judge a game without experiencing this narrative to the end. The most difficult parts of the game are going to be its final parts, which is therefore the true test of the game's ability to structure its difficulty--a very basic and obvious (but not always simple) requirement of being a damn game. Simply put unless you beat the game you can't make any comment on its difficulty.

A preview, a quick look or a full review are three different things. Reviewers just need to be transparent....perhaps Magna Carta Tears of Blood (PS2) got amazing after the 25 hour mark, but i'll never know because it's one of the few games i've abandoned because it was terrible in every respect. Terrible combat (which i can safely say remained similar for the part of the game i didn't play), terrible VA (again i doubt it changed), terrible art design (ditto), dull plot (this may have improved although i believe i played enough to judge it). So my review would feature the caveat that MAYBE it got amazing, although my experience tends to indicate otherwise.

The issue is not only whether the game would have gotten better, but whether it would have gotten amazing enough to make the first 25 hours worth it. It's possible to give the game the benefit of the doubt but still rate it poorly. Imagine giving a game two ratings, one rating for if the rest of the game is more of the same, another rating for if the game picks up afterwards... but if both ratings are low or about the same, then it doesn't make a difference now does it. The only difference is when the rest of the game actually has a chance at redeeming the overall package and you are curious to see it.

What about the reverse situation though, where a game starts amazing for the part you played but at some point after you quit it all falls apart.

If the game is amazing why didn't you finish it?
Case closed.
You saying the game is amazing is empty praise if you didn't finish it. It's hypocrisy. It's like telling people that a badly designed budget car with terrible safety rating is a great car, but you don't actually drive it yourself except maybe once.

That's kind of sidestepping the point of the topic - How much do you need to play? You may have a deadline to write a review and only play so much of it before you submit.

Then that makes me an asshole. I'm arguably not doing a service so much as merely trying to keep my job.

It feels unrepresentative of the package to write off a game for everyone (as a reviewer) if you've abandoned the game based on your limited experience.

It is somewhat reasonable if you abandoned the game because it is terrible.
If the game is good then it is somewhat irresponsible to praise it because your audience will presumably play the game to its conclusion (whereas you didn't) and they may find that the game is not that good. Your audience becomes the guinea pigs which is precisely what the whole review shtick was meant to avoid.

As a reviewer i think that final judgements that are to be disseminated have to be more fleshed out than personal opinions.

"final judgments" should not be made before (or within 2 days of) a game's release. If such a thing as a "final judgment" should exist at all then it is the sort of thing that technically could be made years after its release.

It goes without saying most of all that "final judgments" should absolutely in no way ever be made on a deadline. That by definition is not what a final judgment is. The proper term for that is "judgment call".

I don't think the first few hours of a game represents the rest of it.

For example, I dragged my way through for the first few hours of Live a Live (I'm using this as an example as I'm pretty sure you played it) and I almost dropped it due to how boring found it. I initially chose the wrestler character, and found the game lacking up to that point. I enjoyed most of the other characters and the second part of the story, though.

Would you think I should be able to call it a bad game, had I dropped it, despite only particularly disliking one out of seven completely different stories, which I started with due to my own choice?

You are missing a key point here. Why the hell did the game let you pick the wrestler character?

 

[Drink the Bleach]

Ever stopped watching a bad movie before it was finished?

 

[zeello]

I'd use Final Fantasy Tactics as an example of this. Initially it can be horrible for new players, but once past that initial bump it turns out to be one of the greatest SRPG's around.

There is a saying: First impressions are the most lasting.

If you're reviewing a game that you've dropped because you didn't like it, you're reviewing part of a game and not the whole thing

Technically you are reviewing part of the game also. You're reviewing just the part where you've already completed it. The state of mind of having beaten the game and reflecting on it.

If a game is good contingent solely on having completed it, and you've completed it, then is an egotistical statement to say the game is good. Of course YOU think it's good, since you're someone who completed it. But not everyone is someone who had completed the game, and perhaps (this next part is really deep) not everyone is someone who ever will.

 

[FAST6191]

This appears to be something you have strong opinions about zeello, and I dare say mine differ somewhat on basically all counts there.

What is "FINISH"ing a game then? I seldom rewatch a long form video (film, TV, whatever) or reread a fiction book. Music is an odd one and even board games/collectible card games I have seen have something of a limited shelf life for people, something even board games are starting to toy with. Multiplayer? Do I have to review public servers or can I roll with friends on private ones?
What about something like Sonic? Strictly speaking I need the chaos emeralds to finish the game/get the good ending, however this means I need to do the bonus levels (which I may or may not like) but could get to the end of the final zone otherwise. Of course no chaos emeralds means no super sonic and that is a fairly different mechanic which you can actually use in levels.

Artificially make a game better or worse and an accidental strategy. For the former I have argued some similar things for using cheats (did we play the same game). I am not sure I can praise an accidental strategy over actually thinking about the game systems, to my mind then not doing so is actively not playing a game. That leads into a very messy field though -- you might have very fast reactions but if my knowledge of maths (and all games really are maths, not to mention mathematical fields like game theory) might beat you. Of course I have never IV/EV trained a pokemon, have I not played pokemon?

"It's like if a nongamer watches an entire playthrough of a game on youtube. They may say the loved the game afterwards but their actions indicate that the game, to them, was unworthy of being played. The nongamer offers only empty praise."
Can a blind person offer an opinion worth having of a film then? A deaf one? Games are increasingly seen to have auto play/can't fail type options and I hold this is a very good development in game development. Even books use visual metaphors.
Likewise I do not think your analogy holds any water really.

Going back to the three hour grind what if I do actually mean grind an at no point am I in any real danger? I have also had games do a quick time event for what is technically the final boss (Wet being one of the more notable here). Leading us into the next point what if I have proven, mainly by playing the game up to this point, that I can do the actions required to finish the game?

"The whole fucking point of a game is that it starts out easy, gradually becomes harder and harder, until it reaches its maximum difficulty."
There is a concept well known to developers of everything really (very much so for book, game and film makers) that you instead get the best results when you start out, pull back for a little while, ramp up, pull back a tiny bit and then go for the big finish. Or if you prefer this is why "all action, all the time" does not sit so well. Do a search for story tension graph.
On final test then what about Half Life 2? The game's end sequence junks many of the mechanics the rest of the game spends its time teaching/using.

Outside of some very limited circles I have never encountered it being taboo to state your background or personal experience with a review.

I stories I have had "but this was the bad behind the previous big bad" happen to me many times and I seldom like it (some series of 24 being about the only things to do it well). I can have a perfectly fine arc as far as I am concerned ruined by this, however if that point comes 20 hours into a story I can happily drop things there. If I have to consider any 6-7 game to be good then three times that would do for me. You say no though and OK, what if I later learn the dramatic twist was actually the publisher saying make it longer and none of the devs/story writers/whatever wanted that? I am not big on a single artist (in film I believe it is called auteur theory) for a big project like a game or long form video concept, indeed even books have editors and no author worth their salt will dismiss that a good one has a net positive effect on the craft as a whole (there may be a super genius author out there somewhere, most aren't though).

 

[zeello]

Can a blind person offer an opinion worth having of a film then? A deaf one?

Can a non-blind, non-deaf person? What differentiates an opinion worth having as opposed to an opinion not worth having? (rhetorical question... save time.. don't answer it)

If you were to argue that an opinion should cater to a specific group of people (or majority of people, which is sort of a specific group of people) then obviously by your logic a blind or deaf person does not apply, unless that specific group of people you were catering to includes blind people and/or deaf people, which it probably doesn't because the differences in taste between a blind person and a non-blind person are irreconcilable.

Games are increasingly seen to have auto play/can't fail type options and I hold this is a very good development in game development.

Problem is you cannot say to have played the game if you had used one of these modes. This falls under artificially making the game a different experience than that of other players.

Even books use visual metaphors.

Not sure what this is an argument for. Metaphors = sentences comprised of words that invoke meanings/thoughts, correct? That is what a book is supposed to do in the first place.

You say no though and OK, what if I later learn the dramatic twist was actually the publisher saying make it longer and none of the devs/story writers/whatever wanted that?

This is arguably irrelevant because 1) you don't know what the devs/writers wanted, 2) even if you did, they didn't get what they wanted, so what they wanted means jack squat.

The game's end sequence junks many of the mechanics the rest of the game spends its time teaching/using.

You DON'T KNOW what a game's end sequences contains until you've PLAYED IT.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Here's how it works for me:

Gameplay > Music > Graphics > Story

If the gameplay is fun and functional then that's mostly what matters to me because that's what I look for in video games, not for an amah-zing story or stunning graphics (although sometimes they could be better here and there).

 

[cracker]

I have loved many games but haven't finished them to completion due to either having so many games I want to try or for dicking around in them (GTA series especially).

I'd like to add another twist to this question. What about when cheating is involved (built-in or game accessory/binary editing)? Many think it ruins the game, some think it doesn't matter, and the rest think it makes it better. I'm just wondering what some of the members think about this.

 

[zeello]

I have loved many games but haven't finished them to completion due to either having so many games I want to try or for dicking around in them (GTA series especially).

I'd like to add another twist to this question. What about when cheating is involved (built-in or game accessory/binary editing)? Many think it ruins the game, some think it doesn't matter, and the rest think it makes it better. I'm just wondering what some of the members think about this.

The issue is the same. Whether you pick easy mode, or use a fight stick, or wait for updates to be released, or use a cheat device, or play it while drunk, or anything you do to make the game better or worse than it would have been otherwise, it creates the same dilemma just to some extent.

Obviously if you cheat to beat the game then you cannot say the game is good because some might argue (and reasonably so) that you haven't played the game. Whereas some people might use save states and insist that they've played the game. The widespread access of save states of might be an argument in their favor because at that point the distinction of whether save states are used or not gains less significance. For example let's say everyone has a cheat device. Then cheating becomes more ok because when reviewing a game your audience can be presumed to access to a cheat device. Basically it's a popularity thing. Cheating isn't wrong because "cheating is wrong" but because it can be presumed that most other people wouldn't cheat. If it's no concern to you what other people do, then not only does it not matter whether your cheat, it doesn't even matter if you use the game disc as a sex toy and call it game of the year.

 

[FAST6191]

Can a non-blind, non-deaf person? What differentiates an opinion worth having as opposed to an opinion not worth having? (rhetorical question... save time.. don't answer it)

If you were to argue that an opinion should cater to a specific group of people (or majority of people, which is sort of a specific group of people) then obviously by your logic a blind or deaf person does not apply, unless that specific group of people you were catering to includes blind people and/or deaf people, which it probably doesn't because the differences in taste between a blind person and a non-blind person are irreconcilable.


Problem is you cannot say to have played the game if you had used one of these modes. This falls under artificially making the game a different experience than that of other players.


Not sure what this is an argument for. Metaphors = sentences comprised of words that invoke meanings/thoughts, correct? That is what a book is supposed to do in the first place.


This is arguably irrelevant because 1) you don't know what the devs/writers wanted, 2) even if you did, they didn't get what they wanted, so what they wanted means jack squat.


You DON'T KNOW what a game's end sequences contains until you've PLAYED IT.

Your original post used a non gamer watching, that would seem to then be someone that had not experienced what would be argued to be crucial elements of a work. Blind and of deaf people can still experience a story, I hold it is no different here.


Defining game gets to be tricky but meaningful choices would usually crop up in it any definition of it, any one of those choices could well mean I played a different version of that game to someone else. Games also have things that are quite literally sandboxes,... wonder if I could make a choose your own adventure book sandbox.

"Their hair was white as the driven snow" is considerably less potent if someone has never seen snow so as to have a frame of reference. A film without audio can be quite a different thing as well, it can even be better if the audio score was changed from. Horror films are often a good example but for a nice one have a look for shows edited to be without a laugh track. Going another way there is something like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- for most that saw it the film was a nice example of wire fu, should you be able to speak Mandarin though (and not watch the over dubbed version of it into Mandarin) then you will see Mandarin bordering on the comically bad at points (many of the actors speak Cantonese as their main language or main language from that part of the world).

On 1) such things can be fairly obvious, more than a few places have a behind the code type news stories/interviews, director's cuts are not so common in games but commentaries are . 2) is an interesting position to take, what if I spin it another way and ask what happens if a film/TV show/book is cut down the middle for a market -- give or take the previously on bit I then end up with two works that are usually described as "all build up and no payoff" and "all payoff with no buildup", in the case of books this has been known to quite literally happen in certain markets. However should I watch/read the lot back to back can I be said to have experienced something differently? Back on director's cuts they do not happen so often, DLC does though and in many ways that can be functionally the same thing. What about something like http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/cf2/cf2.htm ?

In my hypothetical hours long battle earlier I could have played ten minutes of it, confirmed it was like earlier battles and seen the rest. Equally my hypothetical example is probably something that would get called a RPG (characters level and whatever else), what if I had ground before the boss and made it a cakewalk as such things were not scaled.
Likewise I have been known to hack a few games, such a thing can mathematically demonstrate what a game's end sequence contains and beyond that I am still not sure why watching it and not holding an active controller for it mean I do not know what it is.

The issue is the same. Whether you pick easy mode, or use a fight stick, or wait for updates to be released, or use a cheat device, or play it while drunk, or anything you do to make the game better or worse than it would have been otherwise, it creates the same dilemma just to some extent.

Obviously if you cheat to beat the game then you cannot say the game is good because some might argue (and reasonably so) that you haven't played the game. Whereas some people might use save states and insist that they've played the game. The widespread access of save states of might be an argument in their favor because at that point the distinction of whether save states are used or not gains less significance. For example let's say everyone has a cheat device. Then cheating becomes more ok because when reviewing a game your audience can be presumed to access to a cheat device. Basically it's a popularity thing. Cheating isn't wrong because "cheating is wrong" but because it can be presumed that most other people wouldn't cheat. If it's no concern to you what other people do, then not only does it not matter whether your cheat, it doesn't even matter if you use the game disc as a sex toy and call it game of the year.

"play while drunk"
Sleep deprivation is my chosen method of mind expansion. However am I supposed to get into a normal mental state, such a thing gets kind of tricky to define for me and nigh on impossible if I have to do some kind of normal over a societal section. However you did say grouping earlier so perhaps that comes back.

As for play on easy mode then what is normal mode, does that not fall into "what the developer wanted" territory and thus we go back to the publisher led stuff. What if I had pressed the "don't play the airport mission" button in whatever COD I am thinking of -- it was right there as a choice at the start.

Popularity huh, I would argue less that you have not played "the" game an more that you have played a different instance of it. Moreover cheats, fightsticks and more are probably not out of reach of most people playing games -- small sums of money, usually readily available and probably easy to trade some dead weight in your game collection for if you are that broke.

Going savestates. Say I use them in a manner that makes them functionally no different to passcodes, because I have skipped 30 seconds in a UI does it change things? I do deliberately take the time to review a UI in a game and a less than stellar one does bring things down, I would probably point at mario kart and its forced grand prix modes rather than being able to mix tracks (a trivial change for a UI programmer, indeed smash brothers has good stuff here).
However passcodes were often not quite like that -- in road rash I would lose my held weapon that would not have been lost otherwise, some megaman games might see me lose an energy tank. What if I had just left my console on all night/over dinner instead (such a thing not being an uncommon story at all, I have even heard stories of that being an introduction to the world of the uninterruptible power supply)?
Speaking of megaman the ones I played had things you could not get if you did not do things in a certain order, or indeed things that were far easier if you had done as such (one of the GB titles had a section that was hard unless you had water rush and could sail under it if you did). Should I have played it in such a way that I missed out on several energy tanks do I then get to call later sections hard because of it?

 

[zeello]

On 1) such things can be fairly obvious, more than a few places have a behind the code type news stories/interviews, director's cuts are not so common in games but commentaries are .

No, no, no, and absolutely not. It's not obvious first of all. It's just your projection. Obama is obviously a muzzie communist. Second, you are basically proposing that in order to judge a game we must know in detail what each of the staff member's intentions were. But if so then it would be effectively impossible to judge games. Third, what you "know" is nothing more than hearsay. The horse's mouth, as it were, is the game itself, and it it were any other way, we would not even need to play the game in order to review it, but just listen to interviews.

2) is an interesting position to take, what if I spin it another way and ask what happens if a film/TV show/book is cut down the middle for a market -- give or take the previously on bit I then end up with two works that are usually described as "all build up and no payoff" and "all payoff with no buildup", in the case of books this has been known to quite literally happen in certain markets. However should I watch/read the lot back to back can I be said to have experienced something differently?

Obviously if you experience the entire series of something you will experience it differently than someone who read only a single installment or read the installments out of order. I think it is reasonable for me to declare that experiencing the complete series (or subseries) and in order (order should mean order of release, typically), should be given precedence. Any other combination of experiencing the series (e.g. reading book 2 then 3 then 1, or reading book 1 then 3 and never reading book 2 at all, etc) are completely arbitrary. Exceptions could be made if there is a commonly occurring exception. For example if most people read book 2 of something but never book 1 or 3, then it would be perfectly logical to write a review of book 1 directed at people who read book 2.

Likewise I have been known to hack a few games, such a thing can mathematically demonstrate what a game's end sequence contains and beyond that I am still not sure why watching it and not holding an active controller for it mean I do not know what it is.

Potentially you know what it is, but the fact you put yourself above actually playing it can be taken as a vote against the game. If you think it is a good game, then that is potentially fine, and ok to share your opinion, however it is sort of the thing that you might almost put a disclaimer on at the end of your opinion "I did not finish the game but almost did and hacked to see the ending" and let people decide for themselves.

As for play on easy mode then what is normal mode, does that not fall into "what the developer wanted" territory and thus we go back to the publisher led stuff.

Yes but what if the dev wanted you to play on hard or easy, rather than normal? We don't know, but more importantly, we don't care. The game has normal, and therefore that's normal and we should pick that. Also, if we're supposed to take into account what experience the developers wanted, then they were idiots for giving us a choice.

What if I had pressed the "don't play the airport mission" button in whatever COD I am thinking of -- it was right there as a choice at the start.

But what the hell is a "don't play the airport mission" button?

Moreover cheats, fightsticks and more are probably not out of reach of most people playing games -- small sums of money, usually readily available and probably easy to trade some dead weight in your game collection for if you are that broke.

Umm.. the issue has nothing to do with cost. Playing Jak & Daxter on PS2 using only your feet would cost you nothing extra but that doesn't necessarily mean you would do it.

Going savestates. Say I use them in a manner that makes them functionally no different to passcodes, because I have skipped 30 seconds in a UI does it change things?

You made the game better than it actually is, even if marginally so.

However passcodes were often not quite like that -- in road rash I would lose my held weapon that would not have been lost otherwise, some megaman games might see me lose an energy tank.

Ok, so you admit that save states make tangible changes to the experience.

What if I had just left my console on all night/over dinner instead (such a thing not being an uncommon story at all, I have even heard stories of that being an introduction to the world of the uninterruptible power supply)?

If you say it's not an uncommon story then you've answered your own question.

Speaking of megaman the ones I played had things you could not get if you did not do things in a certain order, or indeed things that were far easier if you had done as such (one of the GB titles had a section that was hard unless you had water rush and could sail under it if you did).

Isn't that the whole point of the Mega Man games? You can play the stages in any order and if you play one that is too hard and get a game over, you can revisit it later and just choose a different stage in the meantime.

 

[Foxi4]

I don't think you have to finish a game from cover to cover to appreciate it. A game should be fun from start to finish - it's the fun that drives you to complete it. If the game just isn't fun, there's no point in playing it.

 

[FAST6191]

Obvious in this context was by all known storytelling conventions it would have ended here. I could run the risk of falling short and the developers could have been trying to buck convention (and failed perhaps) but that would be one I am willing to take.

Every person involved and their opinions, perhaps not. If several key staff say things though I am inclined to listen.

Interviews alone would not be enough and are not vital either, however the context they can provide are not something I am prepared to dismiss at all. Authorial intent and desire do mean something, see also people take something to be satire when the author was serious (most commonly it comes up in terms of hate speech but there also instances where a language course completely missed what the author was trying to do). Alternatively there have been several instances where a work has been cut short but finished in one form or another (comics, animation, simple script dump....), that risks getting off topic though.

To "put myself above" I say "never underestimate the lengths I will go to so as to be lazy", if you have ever had a relative drive across town to save a few pennies on an item then I am like that with my entertainment. Equally I have played a lot of games, seen a lot of long form video, read a lot of fiction, stayed awake long enough in classes to be told about story structure and on and on, "this is like that but with...."

On 2) that risks ignoring authorial intent again. Especially in a world where sidestories, prequels (both things I seldom partake in) and publishers have been known to cleave things in two for a given market. Popularity has its appeals but I am not sure it is something to be considered, if only because I want to have fun in life and if by doing a bit of my own remixing I can head down that path then I would be foolish to not do it. The option to "make my own fun" has long existed in games too, hell make a drinking game for something and you can do it for most things like that.

On COD

Spoiler

There is a mission in one of the modern themed titles where you shoot up an airport full of civilians, the game says at the start something like there are missions that the player may not want to play because disturbing, press button to not play it

I am not sure I can call difficulty modes a bad thing or even that radically a different thing given how they often play out in games. On normal mode being the normal thing I guess this is an instance of words mean things, I am having flashbacks to doom era stuff though there modes were just that.

In the end it seems we have somewhat different opinions and bases for our respective logics, I can not say I will be adopting any of yours any time soon but the OP was a request for such opinions and yours does seem to be a considered one.

Cost was the only real potential barrier to cheats/fightsticks/whatever and I argued it was not an issue. To that end everything like that is readily available if you are in a functioning society and can read a guide no more complex than the systems exhibited in most games.

On savestates I dare say you are cherry picking things and that was just some games and still things I could work around (by leaving my console on, which only ran up my power bills by a few pence at best on old consoles).

Point of megaman, possibly or possibly not. I have potentially played a different game to you though and you seem to place some considerable stock in that.

 

[Black-Ice]

yes. yes you do

 

[FAST6191]

yes. yes you do

Care to elaborate? Can I play it for a couple of hours to get the systems and then watch the rest in video form and have it count?

 

[Black-Ice]

Care to elaborate? Can I play it for a couple of hours to get the systems and then watch the rest in video form and have it count?

playing the 1st hour of a game and saying the whole game is shit is ignorant.

 

[p3rand0r]

well for me , if its boring and dull i dont even waste my time playing its, but if the game its a little addicting i usually finish it and then do a little review about the story ,if it will be in my favorites, so in the beginning is the gameplay then the story , but the story is the most important thing for me , for a next version purchase !

 

[Foxi4]

playing the 1st hour of a game and saying the whole game is shit is ignorant.

Playing a game for 1 hour and not having any fun at all is a waste of time.

 

[Black-Ice]

Playing a game for 1 hour and not having any fun at all is a waste of time.

Also true, doesnt make my statement any less valid

If you cant finish the game, you have no business making judgments on the whole game.

 

[Foxi4]

Also true, doesnt make my statement any less valid

If you cant finish the game, you have no business making judgments on the whole game.

Of course you can - if the game is not fun and broken from the get-go, it's a bad game. If I need to play the game for X hours before I get any entertainment out of it, it means that the game is poorly designed.

Sure, the extra 40+ hours can make a difference between "abyssmal" and "passable", but you've still spent 40+ hours being bored out of your skull - the good climax doesn't change that fact at all. Why would I play a boring game that may or may not have some pay-off in the long run if there's thousands of other fun games to try?

Unless we qualify by means of "it's a great half-game, because the first part is insufferable", I just don't see the point. The game is either good or it isn't, really.

 

[Black-Ice]

Of course you can - if the game is not fun and broken from the get-go, it's a bad game. If I need to play the game for X hours before I get eny entertainment out of it, it means that the game is poorly designed. Sure, the extra 40+ hours can make a difference between "abyssmal" and "passable", but you've still spent 40+ hours being bored out of your skull - the good climax doesn't change that fact at all. Why would I play a boring game that may or may not have some pay-off in the long run if there's thousands of other fun games to try?

So i could walk up to your front door, not like your door, or your gate or doormat and walk away saying your whole house is shit without going inside?
If I need to go inside to like it, its poorly designed