I still get a thrill when free games come pouring through my letterbox but there is a downside to reviewing games. Actually there are a few reasons that it occasionally sucks. First off sometimes the games you get sent are total turkeys. In April I got sent a bumper load of turkeys. My first review for Boom Town was Stormrise and despite having the Creative Assembly (Australia) name on it, the game was a real-time strategy disaster for the PS3.
I also got sent Gobliiins 4 an inane, antiquated point and click adventure for the PC which was painfully bad. If you’ve been reading the blog you’ll know my opinion on point and click adventures.
As if they weren’t bad enough another game that landed on my doormat was CID the Dummy for the Wii.
I always feel a bit bad for criticising games, I know how it feels from the development side and a bad review can be seriously dispiriting if you’ve worked on a project for months or even years. The thing is you have to be honest, I always try to imagine how I would feel if I actually spent money on the game in question and having bought several terrible games over the years it never fails to piss me off.
You also have to actually play through the game in order to give it a proper review and that can be hard going. It takes willpower to keep playing something you are really hating but then that’s another thing that stirs up the vitriol.
Even when you are playing a game you enjoy, the pressure to hurry up and finish it can be annoying. You’ll find yourself thinking about what you are going to say instead of just enjoying the game. At the end of the day it comes down to opinion, there is no real evaluative standard that can be applied across the board.
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