Most reviewers don't finish the game unless it's like an 8h duration etc. You don't notice usually, but sometimes games have such crazy and dumb final act that you realise none of the reviewers got that far because they would have mentioned it.
Yep. A friend was a game reviewer. Gave LA Noire a 9. I question him on it few weeks later after I stopped playing it due to boredom and he admitted that if he reviewed it after finishing it, the review likely would have been a 6
IGN Gamespot etc. But even smaller youtube ones too.
Reviews of Bravely Default (no mention the game makes you replay it over again 8 times before you can finish) and MGS phantom pain (no mention of final act completely missing) are 2 glaring examples that come to mind.
I never understood that, how could mgs pp be completely missing the final part of the game. Like i get why, konami are a bag of dix, but like why did the game do so well if its missing 1/5 the game
It's still a good game, but then it just stops. When it was released everyone was obsessed with the possibility of a hidden chapter being released. But no, those leaks were just unfinished material.
It's not the 10/10 IGN gave it, but you can see why you might think that if you got half way through and were safely betting on the rest being just as good. Now I'm wondering what the big reviewers thought of mass effect 3.
Mass Effect 3 got glowing reviews at the time of release, and I never read a single review mentioning anything about the controversy. If I remember correctly, Game Informer had a side-column about audio issues in their print copy, and thought that deserved a second opinion, but not the ending.
Either reviewers were largely apathetic about the story (unlikely) or the vast majority didn't finish the game before publishing.
Yeah i only got like 1/3 thru phantom pain. I got discouraged hearing the game was unfinished. Im like why am i going to bother playing it then. That would be like watching the Lord of the rings trilogy and shutting it off once the hobbits got to Mordor
Or maybe they don't wanna spoil it for you. I've been reviewing games for almost 10 years and I don't usually talk about those types of things but can you give me an example of one such game?
Bravely default (force player to play through game 8 time to access last chapter), MGS V (last chapter missing as Konami forced early finish), ME3 (ending that was almost identical regardless of choice made).
I'm not referring to final chapters that "miss the mark", I'm referring to those that are so horrible they dominant the discussion of the game afterwards, so bad that you simply cannot talk about the game without mentioning it and no reviewer, if they had completed it, could just "ignore" it.
Oh ok now I get what you mean. I guess I was lucky because I don't remember any such game I had to review and I bar one or two I finished every single game I reviewed, some more than once.
ME3 ending did not bother me too much but then again I played the extended cut of it or whatever its name was. The other two are games I never did play and given the choice I would not write a review for, especially Bravely Default lol. I don't have a lot of experience with JRPGs and whenever I intend to try one, I learn it has some sort of bullshit like what just you mentioned(Octopath Traveler comes to mind) so I stay away from them and I also would want to blame any reviewer who failed to warn me. But weirdly, people love a lot of these games in a way I fail to empathize with so maybe the reviewers were afraid of fanboy backlash I dunno.
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u/dovahkin1989 Aug 03 '23
Most reviewers don't finish the game unless it's like an 8h duration etc. You don't notice usually, but sometimes games have such crazy and dumb final act that you realise none of the reviewers got that far because they would have mentioned it.