Sony Santa Monica says’ GOW3 is much longer then 8 hrs!’
While Kev is at home liquored up to the gills playing through God of War 3 for our review Ken Feldman of the GOW3 team has thanked the media for the great support the game has received. (93% on MetaCritic no less.) One thing he did have a little problem with is the reported run time of the game. Check out the below post on Godofwar.com’s forums.
Hey Guys,
Reviews are awesome, we are humbled as developers. I think around 40% are perfect scores, unbelievable!!!
The one issue that has irked me is some reviewers are listing this as an 8hr game. This is not an 8 hr game, the fastest play tester on normal mode took 12 or 13 hours during the final play through – the fastest!
I have no idea why or what the motivation is to put out misinformation.
-Ken Feldman
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Hmm this leads me to my theory that a lot of reviewers don’t actually complete the games, they just play most of them, nothing majorily wrong with that if they cover the basics but they just need to fess up and say they did not finish.
Good point Gunn and I did notice that Terra Corrupt didn’t complete FFXIII yet you guys have it “reviewed”. Do you think that he should have played the whole thing instead of selling the public a half-baked worthless review?
I just figured he stayed up all night and finished it :p Terra you rogue. Sam and max is the only game I didn’t 100% finish the campaign of before reviewing but the big sites have no excuses it’s their full time job!!!
fucken lol
One thing I would say about the whole “not finishing a game to review” thing is that it’s not actually an industry norm anymore. Too many games. Most reviews are more “impressions” then full length reviews, otherwise you’re winding down too many paths and annoying people with book-length epic tales of every little software niggle that annoyed you and the winding, pubescent story of a boy who became a man.
What annoys me more is when someone gives a review 5/5, 100%, A+ or whatever and hasn’t completed it. How can you possibly give your seal of approval to a title that you didn’t like enough to finish?
Plus it should be pointed out in Terra’s defence, after just Reading it (Jesus terra you know how to write a long review) he does mention that he hasn’t finished it yet.
Hey, im a long time reader here and i gotta say im with totalchimpgh on this one (weird name). I read that FF13 review and i thought it was pretty bad that he didnt finish the game before reviewing it. I thought it was a pretty messy review anyway but thats not the point, FF13 is a 30+ hour game and i dont care how much of a fan the reviewer is, its still not a fair assessment of the game in my opinion. Im 20hours or so in on the 360 version and i dont even know how i feel about the game yet. The reviewer obviously wanted to release the review as quickly as the game came out. Id happily wait 2 weeks for a fair and just review. Speaking as a big RPG fan, i think the review is a bit of a disgrace, dont care how big or small your blog is. Gunn you are right to a point, reviewers shouldnt review games they dont finish. But i disagree with you Gunn when you say there is nothing majorly wrong with it. By reviewing a game you didnt finish your lying to your community and the people on google who find your review article online. If IGN or Kotaku or any of those professional blogs publsihed a review and said they didnt finish it, there would be a holy war on the web. I dont care if its your full time job or not. If your good enuff to write for a blog you should do it seriously like. Didnt ye get a bunch of nominations for irelands blog website awards recently?? I should hope this isnt the nature of every other review and preview on this site or by that author or anyone else. Otherwise, im off elsewhere…………..im not trying to be a videogame know it all or have a go at your site, its just that like i dont like the idea that people are rating things they havent finished or played properly, its a complete joke, you wouldnt stand for it on another blog so why should i stand for it here like?
“FF13 Fail!” (another strange name!) I would say you’re both right and wrong. While yes, it’s stinky not to finish a game before reviewing it… it’s also worth noting that the reviewer (whoever they are, whatever site it is) isn’t necessarily lying to you. It depends on the content of the review. Like I said, most reviews these days are just impressions rather then full-on reviews with proper context for opinions.
Also it’s worth noting IGN have a huge staff to review games, and even they don’t always finish them. And Kotaku rarely review games, instead they pilfer bits from other reviews and create frankenreviews.
I know that Kotaku do the frankenreviews, im aware of that, they label what they liked and what they didnt, but none the less, i find it strange that your site FF13 fan would admit to not finishing the game, sure the lads on IGN, destructoid etc are paid writers and reviewers but they would never say now we didnt finish the game but heres a final review score, i completely understand that no one can be expected to know every single detail of a game back to front before they review it, if that were the case ud have to play heavy rain back to front about 8 times before you saw everything. I guess im disappointed cause ff13 is such an AAA game and the review score is in my opinion invalidated by the lack of finishing the main story. You seem to be quite confident that the guys at IGN etc dont play games to the end, just give general advanced impressions. If this is the case, then your after unearthing a major contemporary gaming scandal and we should all take to the forums and vent our anger and rage.
If you dont mind me asking you, i see you put white knight chronicles review up on your site tonight, a game that as you rightly mention is 60plus hours….you then say that you played it so we dont have to, so tell me, did you play it the 60 plus hours? Did you finish the main story? You suggest further on that it isnt 60 odd hours you though at all…as a matter of interest, how many hours did you spend gaming with WKC before you compiled your review?
Id agree with f13 and kev, his point is that how can you really review a game if you haven’t finished it. their might be a massive plot shift at the end of a game that could change your opinion, it probably could have been relabelled as a preview. but on the other hand any site that reviews say star trek online/ warcraft has obviously not finished the game. yet their happy to call it a review so why cant terra.
I think if though you come to the site for a review it should be start to finish. In terra’s defence it’s an impressions blog and not what I would call a review as he states he hasn’t completed it yet.
First off let me say that no one’s “mine” or “the site’s”… I’m very welcoming to people posting things (I’ll reference the register button at the bottom of the page).
The second point would be that everything here about Tera and his (in my opinion, rather excellent and compelling) review of FF13 is some sort of odd topic here, because he states quite clearly he’s 15 hours into the game. In my opinion, anyone who’s jumped 15 hours into a game has enough grasp on it to write a fairly comprehensive review. If they want to revisit with a part deux later, that’s all good!
As for WKC, I went from start to finish (though I didn’t do anything other then the main plot) in about 30 hours. I don’t actually know how many, but it’s around that mark. Each evening since I got it in the post… basically! The devs said it would be a 100 hour game, but for someone like me who disinterestedly blasted through it could probably take 20 hours… I’m just not used to RPG style so it took me a bit of extra work. In reality the only RPGish games I play are Oblivion, Fallout or STALKER…
Kev in defense of Kotaku they only do Frakenreviews AFTER they give their own reviews. For instance, they reviewed FFXIII not long ago and today put together a Frankenreview. Just saying, mate.
Oh I wasn’t criticising Kotaku at all. They do more Frankenreviews then reviews though… or at least that’s how it looks
Just saying. And if I were to throw my two cents in here I thought the FFXIII, while pretty long, read very clumsily. At the halfway point I pulled myself through it. I thought it was terrible.
I can tell im wasting my breath here. The integrity of the modern day review has to be adhered to, otherwise how do we know if what were going to spend €50 odd is any good, if, as you suggest, reviews can potentially be just better than general impressions. If the likes of IGN etc, as you suggest, are guilty of these advance general impressions instead of actually finishing games and getting their hands dirty on a game well then im done with reading reviews…and all the millions of gamers who read the IGNs of this world should be informed of your insider views kevin…..before i buy a game on the 360 or PS3 or a portable or whatever, i read a bunch of reviews, mainly from one of the big sites or some other sites that i actually trust, this impressions thing dosent rub off on me one bit….we all cant get free games in the post……fight amoungst yourselfs, im off to bed, work in the morning..
Big sites are the worst for bad reviews. Trusting them, as such, with your money is ludicrous. Do you not remember Geoff Guerstman being sacked from gamespot for giving a sponsor title a bad review?
Also, it’s worth noting most of our games do not “come in the post” free. FF13 didn’t, either.
Jeez I go to bed early on a Monday night and when I get up theres bedlam!
FFXIII Fail, Sir you seem like a man of great integrity and I applaud you for that but also a little naive – the reality is that, dodgy stuff goes on in the media and in life all the time (I recommend a healthy does of the the wire, season 5). I can only speak personally and I can say that besides my Sam and Max review I have completed all the games I reviewed ( I red ringed during Sam and Max, I was near the end as it turned out but some helpful internet research let me know what the last 45mins was like). The thing is, as Kev mentioned – 60% of the time a game we review is bought off our own back. Terra bought or stole the game himself and is (if you follow the site) a massive FF fan, he obviously wanted to post a review and got a little over excited. I was the same with Halo: ODST and Batman but thankfully those games didn’t run the 45+ hours that FF does and I was able to complete them the weekend they came out and review on the Monday. Its not a major deal really, your still getting an opinion well versed in all thing FF’s and should be able to guage if you would buy the game or not by his opnion if you are that way inclined.
Also to people who said Terra’s review was all over the place, you obviously never read any of his other stuff :p
On the topic of people not reviewing games on the big sites, this is a topic that pops up now and then on podcasts (I listen to LOTS of gaming podcasts) one that sticks in my mind was Fear 2. On the 4guys1up podcast a few months or so back one of the cast was talking about how it was apparent that almost no one who had reviewed Fear 2 had played the game to completion and were working off or were getting there info from other folks reviews, I think there was a mele move missing from the games beginning that only got introduced about half way in; but many reviews gave out about the fact that it was missing! Proof if needed that these things exist, not to mention Guns point about the GOW3 reviews.
Thankfully I haven’t been given a turkey to review yet (though I still have to play Toy soldiers) but then again I wouldn’t be going out and paying money for anything that isn’t a sure thing and I suggest you guys do the same!!!
@FF13 Fail,
I actually didn’t say they shouldn’t review games they have not completed, I just want them to indicate if they did or not, I’m happy to read preview/impressions of games, it can be enough at times to convince you.
And Terra did mention this, but probably should have called it “first impressions” or “review part1″
Okay, Okay…. It seems like this has stirred up a little hassle.
Fact is, I like to Update reviews as I go along. Notice that at the end, there is a stub reading ”As of review conducted March 13” or whatever. I ain’t finished with the review, not by a longshot
I WILL update it (maybe not here as people has gotten upset over it, and that’s the last thing I want to do).
Again, sorry if I upset anybody, its not my intention when posting stuff.
Terra did you get in touch with Ronan? TodayFM Press rep was looking to speak with you about the review.Drop him a mail ya mad thing!