The "I've only played X hours of this game" statement in a review would be good. Right off the bat the reader knows whether you've finished it or not.
Wojit said:
Yeah
In truth, I'd have to vote against that. As long as you're not reviewing Fallout 2 based on the Temple of Trials or something, one can usually get a good review from 50% of a game.
Personally I'd try to finish it in most cases, but it often would just not work
The only problem with that is if the game's last 50% is dodge. Like Thief 2. GREAT game. That last level is horribly designed though. It's nothing like a well-made cathedral/mechanical/bad guys lair. It resembles more of a hack job made by someone who's having their first attempt at level making and just wants to throw everything in there for the hell of it.
Anyway, my point is, a lot of games have a great beginning and middle but they lack in the ending department (FO2), something which can be missed in reviews. Also, some RPGs can become repetitive after a while (all the quests end up being variations of the same thing, no uniqeness). Playing it all the way through lets you pick up on that.
If you want to review a game that you haven't finished yet, I'd strongly consider another review once you have finished it or at least updating your previous pre-liminary review to a better completed one. I think a lot of this will start to bear on the sites reputation. If you publish unfinished reviews it looks bad and brings your reputation down. Particularly when it's an RPG site and as I understand, you'll also be reviewing good little games that aren't mainstream. The kind of things that really need to be played through to the finish.
Writing a review on an FPS after only playing 50% is different to writing a solid, good quality review on a genre of games that, in most cases, take considerably longer than 1 weekend to complete. Overall, most RPGs offer much more game time than other games and in my experience, people usually want to buy a good one that'll last them for a month or two. Hence, they'll really want to pick their product. A good review will help them do that.
I agree though, in some cases, completely finishing a game properly can take too long for a review to be written. Considering most good RPGs need to be played 2 or more times in different ways in order to gain a full respect for what it has to offer, like playing Arcanum as a good guy, then playing again as an evil character and having Virgil wig-out on you. It's the things like that, that in my completely worthless, non-member, not involved but saying stuff anyway, sitting on the outside, bitching opinion, will gain the site a strong and loyal following.
