Should Critics Finish Games Before Reviewing?

The question "should gamers finish games they're reviewing" pops up from time to time, kind of like the "games as art" fiasco. The answer is simple: It depends what's meant by "finish."

As in a multiple-choice test? Coding the encryption subroutines for a virtual-private networking application? Calculating the average air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow (African or European)?

Or indeterminately, as in "trimming the hedges," "scrubbing the latrine," or "examining the body in the morgue"?

You might argue finishing a game means finishing its story, but then you're just referring to a particular sort of game with a so-called "story mode." Remember, plenty of games don't. "Finish it" flag-bearers don't really mean Bejeweled, for instance, or Tetris. I've reviewed versions of the latter over the years, but never "finished" them in the sense that I passed some final, curtain-dropping level. (Does Tetris even have a finite number of levels? You tell me.) So there's the usual categorical problem: When you say "game," you're referring to a range of activities. Finishing Lucasarts' Grim Fandango--an adventure game with negligible branching--is world's apart from saying you've "completed" Lionhead's highly adaptive, morally mutable world in Fable 2 (PCW Score: 100%).

Factor in online play, competitive or cooperative, and miscellany like achievements and collectibles with unlockable bonus items and your responsibilities get even more obscure. No critic plays "perfect" games, so what amounts to "enough"? Bring up the start menu in most games and you're looking at a range of options--call them "features," like the extras on DVDs. Do they demand thorough investigation? You can watch the Criterion transfer of Citizen Kane and say you've "seen" the film without once invoking film critic Roger Ebert's triumphantly illuminating commentary. I've read helpful reviews of DVDs by respected critics who leave aside some of those extras entirely. Deciding what readers need to know depends on your priorities, something that's ineluctably subjective. In the case of the two-disc special edition of Citizen Kane's case, Ebert's commentary probably warrants critical attention, but the "rare footage from Hearst's San Simeon estate and Welles Historic War of the Worlds broadcast"? Maybe not.

Audience matters, of course, and used to be a helpful dictate in print where you could survey and react accordingly. Gauging that audience at a time when your story is as likely to wind up linked through a rabidly enthusiast forum as a politely casual one (usually by way of Google News) means your feedback's going to be mercurial. There's no right or wrong way to react to the Internet (okay, the wrong way would be trying to please everyone) so it's probably safest to stick with seasoned, honest advice: "Write what you know."

That said, just how much time testing Age of Empire III's multiplayer possibilities on Ensemble Studios Online is critically sufficient? Do you have to play as every civilization (of 18 total) in Civilization IV before putting pen to paper? Should you have fully-pimped level 80 versions of all the possible race and class combinations in Blizzard's World of Warcraft before scoring it?

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