Legitimacy of HoC reviews

When is a review not a review?

So last week I was in a conversation about Game Reviews and how reviewers are supposed to finish a game before they are allowed to post a review. This means that most reviewers play through games on the easiest setting to be able to finish the game. We questioned whether or not this effected the legitimacy of the review as most game are designed to be played on a medium or difficult setting.

The important part of this I realized is the reviewer does play the entire game before posting a review.

Now HoC has no such standard but I think we need one. To legitimize what little reputation we have. If (when) we become a more popular web site we will need to pay attention to these things.

Both Q-Bert and Swag posted reviews of Saints Row 2 with Paw ratings. Swag admitted to playing it only once. Q-Bert kind of skipped that important piece of information. Now my issue isn't that they posted their opinions of Saints Row 2. I am not surprised that they, and Stormblade, don't like it. You all know I do like it. This doesn't change the main issue here. Both of them called it a review and gave it a Paw Rating. If there had been no Paw Rating, there would have been no complaint. So HoC essentially reviewed a game without playing it. Positive or negative, the review is in no way legitimate.

If we had been more mainstream we would have been called out on it and the site would have been flamed, correctly, for reviewing a game without enough information or playing time to back it up. If you had posted a preliminary opinion, just an opinion or thoughts there would have been no problem. Similar to this.

Game Reviews at more legitimate sites are also done by reviewers who favour that genre. Action games reviewed by action game players, simulations by staff that play simulation games, as an HoC example, XBLA games reviewed by someone who plays XBLA games. There is absolutely no point in me reviewing Ikaruga because I wouldn't have liked it. This is why I didn't buy it or play it.

Now Saints Row 2 has divided our site and perhaps it shouldn't be the example here but it is the most recent game that has been reviewed by three HoC members. Q-Bert, Swag and Coxxorz with only one of them playing it enough to have an chance of legitimizing their review. Yes it was a positive review because he likes the genre and the game. Those clan members who pre-judged (*cough* Stormblade *cough*) a game shouldn't be reviewing the game and to be fair to some random person, he hasn't rated it and he has tried to play it some more to give it a proper chance. Unlike the two clan members who did post ratings.

So recommendations:

• we shouldn't use Paw Ratings unless you have put legitimate time into the game
• we shouldn't use Paw Ratings unless its a review
• we shouldn't call it a review if it isn't
• reviews should be separate stories not crammed in as comments to a pre-existing story
• we shouldn't demand Paw Ratings for anything less than a review
• reviews should, as much as possible, be in a genre you favour (or at least play)
• I don't think we need to finish a game to post a review but we do need sufficient playing time to support any official opinion
• whether we like it or not, anything we write represents herdofcats.ca
• second opinions are always good – even if in a genre you don't favour

Note: Separate from this story Coxxorz posted his own story on HawX and didn't use Paw Ratings, didn't call it a review and stated that he was "not a huge fan of flight sims." Coincidentally posting a story that supports the points I am making (trying to make).