Within the first fifteen minutes of playing a video game, I can tell if it will be good. I have yet to decide whether this is a useful skill in the context of adult life.

Services like Steam and the XBox Live Marketplace have effectively streamlined the process of consuming game demos, often before a game is available for purchase. This strategy is part of any publisher’s winning marketing plan. Let the masses jump on the game to provide free word-of-mouth advertising, and then watch them argue ad infinitum in every corner of the internet, since no one can be proven wrong. This is the ideal way to arrive at launch day. The review scores hit the usual aggregate sites based on the media’s preview copies, and people rush to the stores not just to get their hands on the game, but to prove everyone else wrong.

I am not usually such a person.

I have played and reviewed many demos since the inception of this website. In fact, I find myself relying on them more for the 360 than when I was solely a PC gamer. New PC games don’t stay expensive due to the high shelfspace turnover at electronics and even specialty retailers, whereas console games seem to retain their price a lot better^[1]. When I’m thinking about a new game purchase, reading exaggerated reviews and watching video samples of the game in action aren’t enough.

This makes the demo extremely important to someone like me. And once I start making notes on my first impressions of a game, it’s hard to stop. Most demos I’ve bothered to play provided me enough information to settle on an opinion. I knew the games weren’t going to get any better. And in the case of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, I was ensnared by nostalgia in the hopes that I would be playing Ghostbusters III. I wish I could say that was true.

Then there was Batman, a license that wields even more brand power, arriving in the form of Arkham Asylum last month to an unsuspecting audience. There was suprisingly no hype to speak of; no previews out of the usual. The demo was made available two weeks prior to the full version’s release. It caught a lot of people off guard, myself included. Everyone was excited over the possibility that a video game starring Batman was actually good. Naturally, the initial impressions were positive – and they spread.

I played the demo the week it was available for download and was prepared to post a negative review based on my impressions. There is no way the game should be receiving overwhelming praise. Except something held me back. My experiences with the game felt unfinished.

Surrounding myself with the opinions of people I know and who had played the full version, my suspicions were confirmed: the Arkham Asylum demo was terrible.

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Now that proper BioShock 2 video previews are circulating instead of scanned magazine covers and wild fan speculation, I can’t help but feel like the gaming public is being duped and they don’t even realize it. Or maybe they don’t want to realize it, because BioShock has already been granted its lofty position as a new standard for video games, and no one dares knock it off its pedestal for fear of losing that anchor for cultural legitimacy. Even though I don’t share this opinion, I was willing to see this game through because it at least made an attempt at a philosophical statement, whether I agreed with its implementation or not [1]. BioShock may have failed as the game that showed such promise in its first 10 minutes, but at least it prompted a discussion that was not mostly Games-Are-Art wankery. And I’m not talking about how the game made you go out and buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged; I’m referring to the way it makes the “choice” in video games we love to complain about a mostly empty gesture. Maybe this statement was intentional; or maybe it was just an honest, unfiltered reflection of game design as it stands today.

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Beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, there is a hidden metropolis established by a megalomaniac tired of dealing with the confines imposed on him by the modern world. In the wake of a civil war that tore this city apart are the hordes of Splicers – humans horribly disfigured and disturbed by excessive self-inflicted genetic mutation. Plazas and hallways scarred by war and bedecked with posters advertising the use of these mutagens wait silently for the player, who will upset the stalemate in the battle for supremacy in Rapture and restore some kind of order. But to face the Splicers and expect to stand a chance, the player must do their own share of gene alteration – upgrading the ability to absorb damage, increasing physical prowess and gaining elemental offensive abilities. BioShock does its best to blend aspects of the first-person shooter with projectile spells, stat-boosting, and the point-and-click adventure games of old, creating an environment teeming with ideas inspired by the best of dystopian science fiction literature. It also reveals an engrossing story, and yet another argument against a society governed by an individual’s opinion on what is right without the checks and balances of the status quo. But somewhere among those many blood spattered corridors and in between the creepy ramblings of the 326th splicer I had to fight, the game lost me. Not for lack of interest I had gathered following its complex plot, but in the way it leaves its promise of moral ambiguity untouched, and leaves the player nothing more than an extremely attractive and original first person shooter.

Even though this review is a year late to the party, I can’t assume everyone has played and finished this game. I mention some significant plot points during the course of my analysis that will potentially ruin the entire experience, so please do yourself a favor and stop reading if you plan on playing BioShock eventually.

Another warning: this review is long. It is now the longest review I have ever written for Tales of a Scorched Earth. But that’s never stopped me before.

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Once again, PC Gamer displays their horrendous case of tunnel vision. Not satisfied with simply improving the quality of game reviews, they would rather change their review policy for the worse and then tell us that it’s a good thing.

First, let’s recap: sometime shortly after Kristen Salvatore came aboard as the new Editor-in-Chief, they published their original reviews policy:

It pledged that we would review only finished game code; that said game code would be from the gold master version the publisher uses to create the discs that end up in retail boxes or the equivalents; that MMO and multiplayer-only games would be reviewed in a setting that replicates the consumer experience; and that as such, we’d only review MMOs and MP-only games when we could play them against the general populace.

The problem, they say, is that they can’t wait for Gold Masters of the product that they are reviewing, so that the “general populace” (as Ms. Salvatore so coldly puts it) has a fair opportunity to gauge the quality of what they should be spending their money on.

Waiting for master discs and the opportunity to play an MMO against the rest of the world is making it almost impossible for us to get you reviews you can actually use to make decisions about what games to buy—the time it takes a publisher to replicate the discs and ship them to stores is so short, there’s not enough time for us to see the code in between. As a result, we feel like the quality of PC Gamer is suffering. Our job isn’t to just info-dump details onto you, but also to show you a good time. Doing that well means taking the time to craft our stories, and we can’t do that when we’re making eleventh-hour adjustments because a disc didn’t show up. In most cases, the difference between “finished code” and “gold master” is just Games for Windows certification, anyway.

So what, you’re worried about people that are buying games on release day not having enough information? That’s a bit arrogant in the age of Game Rankings and Metacritic, isn’t it? Anyone that can’t wait until the dust settles before throwing their money at the latest games doesn’t need to think about what they’re buying. They can figure it out for themselves (or not, and continue to waste their money on shitty games). The discerning gamer shoudn’t mind waiting a while for the reviews to start trickling in to make a more informed decision. Based on the last few issues I’ve read, there hasn’t been much “crafting”, anyway. Besides, this “new” policy isn’t – PC Gamer is basically confirming what every major gaming media outlet including themselves was doing anyway. I just have to point to their recent review of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway for an example.

And now, the affirmation of journalistic integrity:

Developers have no incentive to give us unfinished code and call it finished—after all, we’ll continue to harsh on any problems we find, and we do not re-review games.

No, they don’t. But you as a magazine have an incentive to produce quality reviews so people will continue to buy your magazine. I’m probably wrong, of course – people seem to buy your magazine no matter how bad it gets. Furthermore, in your reviews you also have the obligation to do your best to describe the product as it appears on store shelves, so the consumer knows exactly what they are getting into. This includes any DRM – something PC Gamer has gone out of their way to mention – but as far as I can tell this cannot be implemented in what the developer might call “finished code”. You aren’t reviewing the final version of the game anymore; you are reviewing a product that the consumer will never see.

I’ve always adhered to the philosophy that there is no expiry date on good reviews. Computer Games Magazine did it (perhaps the reason why so many felt it was overlooked on the magazine rack), and I do it here. I don’t care if the discussion is out of date: if it’s good writing or analysis, or a clear representation of what the game has to offer, people will read it and appreciate it and maybe even use it to base their next purchase on. Any print publication associated with the games industry is automatically out of date. We know this. Why not take advantage of the format, and stop trying to compete with internet-based media that are so desparate for advertisement clickthroughs that they live by the rule of “publish first, ask questions later”? Gaming magazines should abandon the whole concept of previews and news entirely, and leave that up to the glorified rumor mills so prevalent on the internet. Don’t shy away from publishing 2,000 word reviews that are thought provoking, or at the very least thorough. That kind of writing won’t just make your magazine better, it will help the industry itself gain a bit of respectability. Is it really so much to ask?

Instead, PC Gamer will continue to fool themselves into believing their publication is relevant in this increasingly competitive gaming media landscape by printing early or incomplete reviews in a bid to save what little credibility they may have with PC Gamers. The expectations for what constitutes a good review will continue to wane, and the “general populace” will wonder why their gaming magazine doesn’t represent what they’re buying anymore.

My association with adventure games is a tenuous one. While Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is my favorite game of all time, I haven’t actively pursued the genre in years. The last adventure game I played seriously was Microïd’s Still Life (2005), which was good, but mostly made me feel like I should have played Post Mortem (2002) first.

However, when I see headlines like “Why Adventure Has a Future” I take notice, because there’s nothing more entertaining than reading someone’s take on why they think an entire genre is safe from a fate that never seems to happen. It’s just too bad the article did nothing to usher in this new golden age of adventure games; instead, it just made me incredibly angry after being duped by an advertisement disguised as revelation.

Here’s an idea: let’s give the representative of a game publisher/distributor (ENCORE) a column at a very prominent gaming news website (EDGE online) where they can attach a sensational headline to something that amounts to no more than a press release to advertise upcoming games in their new product line (Mystery Adventure Games). It will be sure to get attention, and will actually do more to convince readers the exact opposite. It will contain insightful phrases like:

Adventure Games rely heavily on stories from literature, film, and historical events and people.

The games in question are Dracula 3: Path of the Dragon and Nostradamus: The Lost Prophecy, which obviously form the inspiration for such a statement.

Quickly reviewing the history of the genre, some of the best adventure games have come from brand new IP such as the Monkey Island series, the aforementioned Post Mortem/Still Life series, The Dig, and everyone’s favorite Grim Fandago. A bit of cursory research past writing the introductory paragraph in this article would have shown the author that there’s more to adventure games than full motion video and “interactive storylines”. Throwing a historical figure into your game doesn’t immediately make it more appealing (even if it’s the “first game ever” to do it).

Now for some focus-grouping:

Story-based game play lends itself towards non-teen; women based audiences, who have an appreciation for the genre and the story. Women tend to appreciate the character development, and interaction along with gripping storylines.

I think any gamer that’s been following the hobby for the last 20 years can appreciate those aspects of a game. And adventure games are not the only genre to adopt these tenets, either.

In closing, a relentless assault on my intelligence:

Well crafted Adventure Games will sell and what developers and publishers must keep in mind is that the key to making great Adventure Game [sic] is to deliver good graphics, game play and gripping story line. A good Adventure Game is as addicting as a good book but with the added bonus of story line interaction and eye catching graphics it is more than a book it is an Adventure Game.

The least ENCORE could do is hire someone who can string together a readable sentence to promote their games. Based on the aggregate scores at Gamerankings, it seems to me that neither game this article was designed to sell is doing very well in reviews. So why should any consumer consider these products? Because they are the unappreciated future of adventure games?

Like any PC gamer, I grew up playing mostly adventure games. Over the years the genre has been cast aside by the majority of game reviewers as niche, as the title that usually gets thrown to the interns. Adventure games need better advocacy, and not just by specialist sites like the excellent Adventure Gamers. Shameless promotional articles like these only serve to damage the reputation of the genre, by embellishing games that are obviously ill-equipped to represent it. Not to mention what it says about the editors at EDGE online.