Games

[icycalm]

http://insomnia.ac/reviews/playstationportable/twelve/

Recap's thread:

http://postback.mforos.com/441648/31053 ... inden-psp/

And a couple more screens:




It's a shame about this game. I really wanted to like it. There's a chance it might slightly improve further in, but after six hours of boredom I just didn't care anymore. I am going to start Yuusha no Kuse now. I bet that's going to rock.

[Recap]

At least you have a pretty unique review in your site now...

Quite sad, though I'd honestly would like to hear from somebody who finished the game. It indeed surprises me that you wrote a "review" with only 6 hours of play. What if the game is 40-hours-long and has extra hardcore scenarios?

[icycalm]

At least you have a pretty unique review in your site now...

I think I have a few more than that! Mushihime Tama, Pink Sweets, Hokuto no Ken, etc... And they are ALL unique (well, the newer ones, at any rate) in terms of quality ;)

Quite sad, though I'd honestly would like to hear from somebody who finished the game.

Me too! Who knows how long we'll have to wait for that. No one knows about this game. Those who HAVE mentioned it seem to have got even the title wrong (Sengoku "Fengshenden", which sounds to me like a Chinese person's "transliteration" -- probably originating from Play-Asia or some such place).

It indeed surprises me that you wrote a "review" with only 6 hours of play. What if the game is 40-hours-long and has extra hardcore scenarios?

I was expecting someone to bring that up sooner or later. I am going to write an article on this subject, so I'll respond to you then. It's a fairly important question. How long are you supposed to play a game before you can review it? Can games really be "finished"? How do you finish basketball or Civilization? Etc. etc.

For the present case I'll just say that even if Twelve's final, say, five battles were the best SRPG battles ever made, that would STILL not have convinced me to spend even a SINGLE extra hour playing the kind of boring scenarios I played in the first six hours.

Bottom line is if I could have those six hours back I'd sure as hell take them, and that would be the only compensation I'd be happy with from Konami at this point.


PS. And really, I honestly do not appreciate your use of quotation marks on the word 'review'. Any way you look at it my review is a valid one -- wasting any more of my life on such a sub-mediocre game would have been nothing less than stupid.

[Recap]

At least you have a pretty unique review in your site now...

I think I have a few more than that! Mushihime Tama, Pink Sweets, Hokuto no Ken, etc... And they are ALL unique (well, the newer ones, at any rate) in terms of quality ;)

Well, let me rephrase that:

"At least you have a pretty unique review of an even more unique game in your site now..."

I was expecting someone to bring that up sooner or later. I am going to write an article on this subject, so I'll respond to you then. It's a fairly important question. How long are you supposed to play a game before you can review it? Can games really be "finished"? How do you finish basketball or Civilization? Etc. etc.

I guess you prefer me to wait for your article to answer that, then.

For the present case I'll just say that even if Twelve's final, say, five battles were the best SRPG battles ever made, that would STILL not have convinced me to spend even a SINGLE extra hour playing the kind of boring scenarios I played in the first six hours.

Sure, but what if only 1/4 of the game is like what you described? I know it's very unlikely, but 6 hours sounds like not too much.

PS. And really, I honestly do not appreciate your use of quotation marks on the word 'review'. Any way you look at it my review is a valid one -- wasting any more of my life on such a sub-mediocre game would have been nothing less than stupid.

Actually, those weren't intended to be 'quotation' marks, but 'emphasis' marks, just like these. This usage for the inverted commas is quite usual in Spanish, hence the mistake.

[icycalm]

For the present case I'll just say that even if Twelve's final, say, five battles were the best SRPG battles ever made, that would STILL not have convinced me to spend even a SINGLE extra hour playing the kind of boring scenarios I played in the first six hours.

Sure, but what if only 1/4 of the game is like what you described? I know it's very unlikely, but 6 hours sounds like not too much.

Well, let's just say it FELT too much. If I hadn't decided to review the game I would have quit from the 3-hour-mark, but I kept forcing myself to progress just in case things got better. But, as in gambling, there comes a point when you have to just cut your losses and quit. Life is too short, and there are far too many awesome games out there, to waste it playing some mediocre stuff for 40 hours JUST IN CASE the last hour -- or even the last twenty hours -- happen to be worthwhile.

And even if the last hour -- or last twenty hours -- DO prove to be worthwhile, that would still not be enough to wipe the bitter taste from my mouth of what I had to go through to get there.

Certainly, a reviewer who finished the game would in theory be in a position to write a more worthwhile review than mine. I am not denying this. It's just not going to be me.

[Molloy]

I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to review a game after 6 hours if it has proved dull and unsatisfying up to that point. Even if it was the best game in the world after the first 20 hours it deserves a panning for wasting your time and trying to bulk the game out with 'empty calories'.

[icycalm]

Q. How can you give a one-star rating to a movie you didn't sit through?

A. The rating only applies to the first eight minutes. After that, you're on your own.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... 50277/1023

Should have used this line!