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Here’s an interesting story about someone being called out for a review of a game that made it obvious to at least one reader he hadn’t finished the game. Gaming Today chimes in with some decent commentary on if it’s totally necessary for one to actually finish a game to know if it’s any good. Andrew, the writer of this analysis points out that you don’t have to finish your dinner to know if it’s bad. The thing is, your dinner probably won’t get super exciting coming down to the end that could totally make up for the massive amount of lame you had to suffer to reach there – an obvious discrepancy.

I suppose it goes without saying, but reviews are personal opinion. There are always going to be people that disagree with a review, like me and anyone giving a Tekken game lower than perfect score, but I digress.

Certain games, like RPGs, tend to start off slowly and get gradually better as you go along. (I think they plain suck, but for journalistic integrity I’ll go along with it.) So maybe instead of assigning any game to a reviewer, should certain people should specialize in genre-specific reviews? It would make sense to have someone who understands what to expect from an RPG to review than someone who will get bored in the first 10 minutes and totally write off the game.

Of course to combat that, something should be said about a game that doesn’t draw in a person from the get-go.

At the very least, I think games should be completed, depending on the genre. A fighting game I can get the hang of after playing for an hour, most likely, but the same can’t be said for all other games. At the very least – finish the game.

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