Reviewing patched games?

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Atariboy
Posts: 956
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 11:07 pm

Re: Reviewing patched games?

Postby Atariboy » April 26th, 2017, 10:51 pm

Why can't you just do both?

Play for a bit without any patches, and then go and install them? You'll be able to see if there's major technical issues or if the frame rate went from choppy to smooth, allowing you to note the pre-patch condition in your review if need be, as well as experiencing the final state of the game. You won't experience the entire game in both states, but you're also surely reviewing games that you didn't finish for one reason or another anyways, settling for a healthy taste of the experience instead.

I don't see how it has to be mutually exclusive. Your traditional way is most useful for the extremely small minority of offline gamers out there and for people 20 years down the road. But by also not ignoring the state that 99.9% of people will experience the game in, your reviews will also reflect the state the average reader will experience the game in.

Herschie
Posts: 1183
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 11:44 pm

Re: Reviewing patched games?

Postby Herschie » May 8th, 2017, 9:28 am

Given the short development cycle for sports games, they deserve to be reviewed post-patch. For example, MLB The Show had an issue where starting pitchers were being pulled after the 5th inning no matter what, and now it doesn't have that issue.

Using gamers as testers sucks, yeah, but it saves the company money (Businesses are in it to make a profit, and there is nothing wrong with that), and we would never get new features if they had to spend half their development cycle testing the game.


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