I read an article recently on Sarcastic Gamer in which a miffed game reviewer complained about the notion that you need to complete a game before you can review it.
He came up with this soup analogy, which I’ll focus on for my summary (I’m paraphrasing, and I’ll attempt to labour the point as much as he did):
“If I’m delivered a bowl of soup in a restaurant that sells soup (probably other things too, like chilli beef or bacon sandwiches, but let’s assume I’m just having the soup as a main or perhaps a starter), I know what that soup tastes like on the first spoonful (depending on the size of the spoon, it may not need to be filled – 3/4 of a dessert spoon, for example, would provide an adequate sample).
So I take my first sip of the soup, and it tastes like dog shit (I may specify a breed and/or diet later). I don’t need to eat the entire bowl of the shit flavoured soup before I’m qualified to warn people not to eat it, because it tastes all shitty.
Why would I eat the rest of the soup? Why do I need to?”
And so on.
Here’s the thing. Videogames (post Space Invaders at least) are in no way analogous to bowls of soup. Soup is constant. Soup barely changes its flavour from the first sup to the last. It’s soup. Either the ingredients have been chosen and prepared into a pleasing diffusion, or they haven’t.
Videogames, however, can and often do change throughout the experience. The first 2 hours of Assassin’s Creed? Awesome. The fifteen in the middle? Horrid. Repetitive. The last 30 mins? Vaguely interesting.
Another oft-touted argument, this time from the other side of the debate, compares videogames to movies – a much more apt comparison, I’m sure everyone would agree. It’s obvious. Both are visual mediums, they usually employ broadly similar narrative structures, they’re relatively new and in their formative years were considered sub-art; unworthy of the attention lavished on proper art like poetry or theatre. While film shook this attitude off a long time ago, gaming is still subject to such derision.
If Jonathan Ross or Roger Ebert only watched half a film, most would quite rightly consider them unqualified to review it. The same applies to videogames, surely?
But…
I think that argument is far too extreme in the other direction.
What about reviewing a TV series then?
There are many many TV shows I dislike. Same goes for everyone. I can’t stand Stargate: SG1. I feel perfectly justified in saying so, based on the few episodes I’ve endured. I don’t have to watch ALL TEN SEASONS just so I can say “nah it was shite” with a degree of authority… but by the same token, if I hadn’t at least seen one episode or two, deciding it’s shit would be pretty silly and assumptive on my part.
Which brings me, finally, to my point. Sorry for rambling. As much as I hate to adopt the middle ground (my god do I hate fence sitting), it seems to me that you don’t need to complete a game in order to review it. You just need to have played enough. Enough to get a feel for the tone, the essence of it. Maybe half way, 2 thirds, something like that. A geed few hours worth anyway. I’ve read some reviews of games I’ve completed, and been pretty convinced that the so called professional game journalist writing it barely made it through the first training level, which is ridiculous, but I wouldn’t dismiss someone’s opinion outright if they’d only played, say, 10 hours worth..
I usually try and make a point of completing at least the story mode of a given title before writing my review. But I’ll admit it here and now, sometimes I don’t. Whether it’s because I’m pushed for time, or I simply feel I’ve played enough and have no desire to continue (very rare), it happens.
…anyway, all I’ve gone and done is come full circle and agreed, ultimately, with the Sarcastic Gamer article. It’s just that I really REALLY had to say something about how fucking retarded that soup analogy is.
wooblebooble
- Jim
