Rogue Galaxy / The Globe and Mail

“One of the worst things a film critic can do to a movie is to walk out in the middle of it; it’s a condemnation of a work that they consider so awful that it’s not worth staying until the end to see, at least, if it gets any better.

It’s therefore an unfortunate probability that I’m going to have to ‘walk out’ on the game after a number of hours, without having seen it to the end. The question is, of course, is if I want to run back to it the minute the review is finished.”

The conundrum of how long you have to spend with a game before you can consider yourself to have seen enough of it to review it is one that I imagine most game reviewers struggle with. Are you only fit to review a game if you’ve seen every part of it, or can you stop early if it’s terrible or broken? What if you like it, but you’re play it so much in such a small amount of time you get bored of it?

Who knows? All I know is that it just seems to be a “don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of situation; few reviewers reveal how long they spent with a game, and to play a hundred hour game to completion for one review would be slave labour, even if you’re having fun, unless you’re paid ridiculous wages (unlikely.)

I decided, after a number of hours (in double digits) with Rogue Galaxy that I liked it quite a bit, because by then I’d learned that the story was terrible, the world was cheerful but cliché, battles were clumsy fun, and I wanted to continue playing it. Seemed fair enough to me!

In other news: Radiohead’s Jonny thinks Dokutusu Monogatari is “a work of art.”

February 8th, 2007 : Reviews, The Globe and Mail