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Old 02-26-2006, 01:21 AM   #16
Kurufinwe
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Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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The problem with reviews written at the time of the game's release is that they usually did not actually finish the game, or rather that they reached the end and failed on the questions (or had to cheat there). I remember the review in the French magazine Tilt, and it was exactly the same thing: 'ooh, looks great, sounds great, great protagonist, multiple endings possible to fail at the end (oops, that's what happened to us), yeah, it's fun'. It was especially true in France, where everybody was busy getting stumped by Maupiti Island at the time, and reviewers thought that this was the same type of game and that they just had to replay it while being more careful and taking notes to solve it. Of course, if they had done that, they'd have started noticing that the plot had more holes in it than actual plot...

It's always a problem when reviewing a game. I think a reviewer should always have played the game at least twice before writing a review, but he has to keep in mind that his readers probably only care about how it'll play for them on their first (and sometimes only) playthrough. This is espcially hard for me when reviewing old games, as I have usually played them several times, and may not play them with the same eye as the first time (this is also a problem I'm encountering with the review I'm currently working on...). For LB2, it is indeed possible for someone who plays it for the first time not to notice many of the flaws (though some are really impossible to miss); should I just have ignored the fact that they were there and say 'go on, play it, you'll have fun if you don't look too hard'? I decided against that, but it's never easy to answer that question appropriately.
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Last edited by Kurufinwe; 02-26-2006 at 01:28 AM.
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