Reviewers "trolled" by Yamauchi's damage test!

[binary solo]

scottie said:

For the 2nd time this week (and the second time in my life) I feel the need to defend IGN.

Reviewers CANNOT play games in their entirety. Well, some games they can - those that last about 6 hours. The majority of reviews are done to make money, which we cannot blame them for - everyone needs to eat. How long would you guess it would take to full experience every facet of GT5? It's just impractical to expect a reviewer to sink that much time into a game, especially when they need to get the review out as soon as they can, in order for it to actually be useful to anyone.

 

When reading reviews (and I do hope you read reviews in their entirity) you must always be aware that the reviewer did not play the game as much as you will over your  life.

That's a funny sort of defence. Should movie critics base their movie reviews on the first 20 minutes of a film only? Should theatre critics base their reviews on only the first act of a play? Even in a crap movie/play/concert/whatever reviewers stay for the whole show...nearly always. Reviewers should be let of fthe hook merely because games last longer? I don't think so.

If a gamer is expected to put 40 hours into a game then a reviewer should do as much. It's only 1 week's work at 8 hours a day for a 5 day week. Man, give me a job like that, I'd be happy to do it. If a reviewer wants to throw out an early review for the website hits, then call it a first impressions review without giving it a score...Hey I think at least one reviewer did exactly that, because he realised he couldn't justifiably give a review score without putting a lot more time into the game. There's obviously some integrity in the review community.

GT5 has been around long enough that reviewers should know playing a cursory few hours of the game doesn't give you the complete experience. I don't expect a reviewer to get the platinum trophy (or the Xbox equivalent in achievement, or whatever the Wii has) before reviewing the game, but I do expect them to play it to some sort of completion. Noting that for GT5 and some other games the notion of completion is a somewhat nebulous concept.

I also notice the VGC review for GT5 isn't up, I wonder if that means our own reviewer is putting more than a cursory 6 hours into the game. I've come to expect quality reviews from this site and it looks like GT5 will be the same.