I read the review for the upcoming release
Halo Wars and there were a few things that bothered me while reading it, so I decided to do some research to check on my suspicions.
Odd, I would imagine that you would get a bit more achievements finishing a campaign. Lets go on...
Huh, nothing about completing the game? Maybe there isn't one.
Now, that makes me think. How can you complete a game without completing such large chunks. Better yet, how can you review a complete game based off about half of one campaign?
"Perhaps if you could play a Covenant Campaign from the outset, it would be more enjoyable..."
I feel this is some kind of copy paste job of a review of Halo 2 because I didn't see anything in the achievements list that suggested there was a Covenant campaign. How was that part of the game?
In short, Destructoid, please don't pretend you played the whole game when you didn't. It's hard to take you seriously when you half-ass your work.
Achievement list courtesy of Xbox.com 
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This isn't necessarily an attack on the main idea of your post though, Joe. I'm sure Jim believes that he played a sufficient amount to warrant a review, but we should always remain vigilant about this kind of thing.
Good points, but check my Achievements. There's no Covenant Campaign, take my word for it.
I would wonder if the last two acts really have anything, though, that matter in the scope of the review.
Intruiging, and I'd be curious to know how Jim would respond to this.
Ultimately though, I don't think its a huge deal.
Destructoid is Jims Full-time job and as such, he is paid to play games. I'm not really trying to attack Jim directly, just saying that if Destructoid is going to review a game, play it.
The last half of the game isn't probably worth it, so he shouldn't have to play it? How about some fucking integrity or pride in what you do? Hell, to put up a review on behalf of a site when you're the appointed "Reviews Editor", you should play the whole fucking game, but considering this isn't the first time he's pulled this shit (see CoD:WaW), I can't say I'm too surprised.
Expect casual titles. You can pretty much play those for like 2 hours and review them as they are same damn thing over and over again.
"Well it seems to me that either Jim Sterling didn't like the beginning of the game and thus didn't play further..."
Oh definitely, not like it's his job or anything, right?
"...or like some of us, works for a living and needs to crank out as many of these reviews as possible to stay afloat in these dire financial crisis ridden times"
GTFO. Right fucking now.
That's pretty lame though.
In a perfect world, yes I'd always rather have it fully played.
But this isn't a perfect world and bad things happen to good people.
"It's not necessary to finish a game to give a reasonable review. "
That is retarded. Jim does Dtoid full-time. He gets to do what many gamers wish they could do. Sit on your ass all day, get review copies of games from developers, and write about them. He should be expected to at least complete the campaign of a video game before posting a review. That, or make an impressions post, which is what is post really is. It's mis-titled. Please tell me you understand because I feel like I'm crazy here. I don't get how you guys don't understand this. Dis-a-fucking-pointing.
How many times has Sterling mentioned the story? How about mention of the non-existent Covenant Campaign? The game is bland? How would he know these things and have a soapbox to stand on when he barely got halfway through the campaign? Theres also a lot of Multiplayer in there as well.
I see what you're saying, perhaps a little note mentioning how far the reviews were at time of writing would be nice.
It's an interesting question to ask though. If a game's first half is crap and its second half is sex on bread, can you really recommend it? And if the first half is so bad that you can't bring yourself to play through the entire game, should you not be allowed to tell people that the game is so bad that you couldn't finish it?
Please note, I'm not directly referencing Halo Wars here. I'm just imagining an 80-hour JRPG that is completely bland with an uninspired story and unlikeable characters. Even if you have a JRPG fan playing it, are you going to say that he must suffer through the entire thing before he can tell you it's bad, or if not, at what point is it okay for him to be able to call it quits and tell other people that it's not worth their time or money?
or maybe he played it on another account or his console wasn't online?
Is that how you play the non-existent Covenant Campaign?
I wrote as little as possible so there wasn't much to miss.
Very good spot, I appreciate how civil you have been in pointing this out where others would have just posted a senseless tirade of Sterling-Hate.
It takes a lot of power out of my argument when I directly attack and flame someone and I have a point to prove.
"I've played almost all I can stand of Halo Wars, which is just about enough to write the full review which will be hitting Destructoid tomorrow."
No Matlockery was even needed. I admitted I hadn't finished it the day before the review even hit, because I personally don't find that important. Of course, it's always great to complete a game before reviewing, but sometimes that's either not practical, or not necessary.
I'll be honest with you, I hated my time with Halo Wars. I find it dreary and dull. I was the only one available to review it and I reviewed it without prejudice, hence why I said it was good and didn't say "I had a shit time therefore it's shit."
Ideally, I would not have liked to have been the one to review Halo Wars. It's certainly not my chosen area of expertise and currently I am working 24/7 on a variety of review-based projects and Halo Wars hit at a hard time. I made a judgment call to get Halo Wars done and dusted. I was well into Act II and the game had pretty much played the same throughout. I personally feel I "got" the game enough for review.
Now, quite why there is "controversy" over this particular game of all games and not any others, I have no clue and am sure it's simply a case of your own personal curiosity as to how I review games. What we have here is a difference of opinion -- I believe I played enough to give my thoughts on the game, you obviously believe otherwise. That's your prerogative to do so and I'm glad you shared your thoughts.
Give Jim a break, you pitty fanboy
I never said the gameplay was lackluster, I said the gameplay was good. Unambitious, but good. Again, I played Halo Wars for several hours, not several minutes, and I stand by that as well. Once more, you are free to disagree with how I did things, but that's a difference of opinion.
I can understand the statement you could make of "there was very few people playing it at all at the time I played it," but as of this morning there were over 3000 total people who have played the game, and several people who have played enough of the online to get all of the online cheevos for the game. I find it poor to release a review of the game without even trying the other two playmodes of the game.
I don't disagree with the score you gave the game, but I do disagree with the way you came to the score.
You're one to talk, I've tried to keep personal opinion out of my post (not my comments of course), but it did come off as a personal attack to a degree. That couldn't be helped considering one person reviewed the game and I could only get my info from one source.
@Sterling
I apologies, I twisted your words there a bit. I just felt that a review of a small chunk of the game isn't a fair assessment of the whole product. Did you at least play a skirmish?
I agree with whomever said that 3/4 of a game is a good review mark. To be honest, I thought I was at that point since the game looked like it was getting into the final act. If you think I did the game a disservice or I was unhelpful as a reviewer, I'm sorry about that. I was really pleased with the video we cut and thought the review was decent, myself.
I shall certainly take your criticism on board though. A reviewer getting reviewed is at least karmic. :-D
Yarly. What Jim said.
While I personally wouldn't feel comfortable writing a review without playing the whole game, I agree that its possible to get a fair sense for a game without completion. Given that, sometimes you've got to call it a wrap when you're short of completion, for the sake of priorities and time effectiveness. Its an unfortunate reality in deadline based entertainment work, I think, and I'm not too proud to admit I've had to make that call several times in my career.
The mysterious Covenant Campaign *is* still an interesting assertion, though.
But I would ask of the people that have played Halo Wars all the way through: Is there really anything compelling past the completion of the third Chapter that would add or detract from someone's 1 through 3 opinion of the game? Not to stir trouble: honest question from thirst for knowledge! :)
I'd like to make another point, my name is Joe Cramer and not Ron Workman. I'm not his little tool, just his friend. I delayed mentioning his name because whenever anyone does, they lose all credibility on this site.
Honestly, it was a third party that caught your review and suggested to check the leaderboards.
But even that would have been passable - I doubt any plot twist or additional unit in the last level would have changed your opinion by the halfway point - if Jim had reviewed the other parts of the game. Like people said, multiplayer isn't touched upon at all, something that seems very important for a game like this, and I still have no idea what the hell the skirmish mode is. I like your reviews in general, Jim, but this was an extremely incomplete review.
Yes, but only to a point and that depends on what drives you to play the games.
You start unlocking skulls that help you about halfway. You start wrapping up as far as units and such go, getting a lot of cool units like the ODST Drop troops and the Vulture, a titan among air units. Also the story suprisingly picks up. I can easily see where it's boring as sin even until the last few, but it looks really good and has some interesting stuff at the end.
Same difference. Everyone on staff was comfortable with Jim's analysis, so we ran it. If you fact check his review and there was something completely inaccurate we'd be happy to correct it. This isn't a book report. Near completion is enough.
Indeed Jim works full time for Dtoid --- and writes almost 300 articles a month and contributes a fuckton of original content on the site. Jim's job isn't to sit around and complete video games to the brink; it is to reflect and discuss. He does a fantastic and consistent job despite not liking some of the assignments. .
If he addressed multiplayer and whatever skirmish mode is (I don't remember that in the review), completing half a game wouldn't be such an issue. As it stands, though, the review is far from "near completion." Not completing a relatively short campaign also led to inaccuracies, such as mentioning a Covenant campaign that is not present in the game. We know he's busy with a lot of Dtoid stuff, but this review was sub-par and barely addressed the main reason many people will be buying this, which is multiplayer.
What if it had an awesome twist ending that made everything come together? What if people walked out of The Sixth Sense, thinking it was dumb?
I have no problem with what happened here, as I think Halo Wars is a "story lite" game. I do think one sentence akin to "played to 3/4 completion" at the end or whatever would have cleared everything up.
Also, just over 50% is not near completion.
Don't get me wrong I think Jim has talent and is a good person but Joe nailed it on the head.
I've even read over his review and watched the video, but at no point does he actually make it clear that he didn't finish the game. If I talk to someone about the movie and he tells me the movie isn't fun, its two different things if that person mentions that they left or not. Burn after Reading is a great example where the whole thing builds up to the end and basically the worst climax ever, but delivered in a way that left me in tears.
Also, I'm trying not to attack Jim about his job or anything and I apologize about any comments that seem like it. I just didn't like the completely inaccurate comments made by the community who don't seem to know, care, or whatever reason they were side-stepping the point of the post.
This I don't understand. I played the campaign to completion, tried all multi maps (as far as I'm aware) and did the zombie mode. I played all of that.
It's a bit upsetting that the games aren't given much time, but it would also be nice to know that the final product wasn't fully reviewed. It's almost teetering between an impressions and thats kind of aggravating.