It comes back to value

“As for me,” Brad continues, “even though I do get some games for free, I still buy quite a few games. The ratio of value to price is something that is never far from my mind. I try to be very conscientious of that ratio, and when I read reviews where a writer is giving a game a pass, it’s often pretty obvious that they haven’t put any money down.”

Yep, and replay equals value.

Brad doesn’t agree.

“This is one area where the individual preference I mentioned comes into play,” he says. “For me as a gamer, my taste is to play a title through once and then move onto something else. That’s not a result of being a reviewer, it’s just my particular play style, and has been so since the days of the 2600. I think it’s possible to divide players into several different groups, some of them having a tendency towards replay and some not. I’m definitely in that second category.”

Sorry Brad, I like your reviews but I’m not buying that. Shouldn’t a critic, to an extent anyway, put himself in the shoes of his readers? Because most of them don’t treat games like used kleenex.

He pre-emptively counters with the “I don’t have time” card.

“As a grown-up gamer with a family and responsibilities, I find that I don’t have nearly the amount of playtime that I used to. As a result, the time that I do spend gaming has to be of a higher caliber and coming back to games I’ve already finished just doesn’t pack the same level of entertainment for me as something that’s brand-new. My particular review style tends to favor innovation, tight design, and creativity. Replay isn’t even on the radar for me.”

I understand Brad’s point… I guess. But think of Madden. Think of epic Mario marathons, and Wii Sports tennis tournaments, and all the online multiplayer memories still to come, when Modern Warfare 2 drops in November. And think of that Guitar Hero song you spent all Christmas trying to perfect. “Repeat and improve” is still a core part of the gamer’s experience and, like in the world of cinema, the truly great examples keep us coming back again and again… like, oh, say, The Terminator… whereas the merely “pretty decent” stuff we’re more likely to passively consume, and then put down… like, oh, say, a season of an HBO original series.

Brad adds, correctly I think, that many games run out of new ideas long before before the end.

“I don’t appreciate sitting through filler or unnecessarily extended periods of repetition just so the PR folks can claim X number of hours on the back of the box,” he says.

Regardless, given the amount of good gaming product out there, I think most people still want and expect more than a few hours’ worth of fun for a 60-dollar outlay. At least I hope so.

Maybe there simply aren’t enough “don’t buy but definitely rent” verdicts. And again, maybe it has something to do with the “Buy this game online” affiliate links a couple inches from the review score on most of the major gaming sites. Hmm…

“Rent it” is what I say about games like No More Heroes, which you might have been tempted to throw back at me as a retort because I’ve written that I like that game a lot and think everyone should play it, despite the fact it’s over in 10 hours and isn’t really something I’d replay. Must-play + too short = rent.

It’s getting really, really tough to be the game that everyone’s talking about, with so much good stuff to choose from. And the truly great games generally, once purchased, get played to death. But there’s only a handful of such games… and then there’s everything else.

Aim high, and reap the rewards.

Still, only hardcore gamers log enough hours to even sample all of the stuff branded ‘great’ by the game critics. Those who game an average amount will never get to play all the 9s and 10s. This being said, why play anything that’s not great? And why buy anything that’s not going to stay interesting for more than a day or so?

Maybe I need to broaden my scope in terms of what I expect from a video game. Weirdly, I’m not sure if my standards need to get higher, or lower. Evolution in gaming has seen a shift towards epic story-driven games which is seemingly at odds with traditional “repeat and improve” gaming, which saw people stare at the same Pac-Man map for several hours at a clip. If so I’m torn, because I’m a fan of the story-gaming combination. I like the flirty interplay they have going on, and I hope they start doing it on a regular basis. They’re a good match.

Yet, once an epic story-driven game is over (and the story has been told) a lot of replayability points are lost, unless the game has a mini-game or and online mode or….. bing. Interesting Trophies and Achievements. something to appeal to that repeat-and-improve mindset.

I point to the original Super Mario Bros. to deconstruct the point. SMB is probably the most replayed console game ever. If the mario-bowser-toad-princess story elements were more fleshed out and the game had 45 minutes of cut scenes, would it enhance the sense of completion we got from beating Bowser in the correct castle? Would we still feel like another play-through or would we feel ‘done’? What do you think?