A rebuttal to Destructoids review of Halo Wars

Well it seems to me that either Jim Sterling didn't like the beginning of the game and thus didn't play further, 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...

I was under the impression that there is a Covenant campaign. Just because the things for Acts III and IV don't say so, they could easily be part of the Covenant campaign. Additionally, the "Beaming with Pride" Achievement specifically asks that you do something with a Scarab, so unless the Spartans can hijack those (I know they can at least hijack Wraiths), there is necessarily a Covenant campaign.

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.

@Dexter

Good points, but check my Achievements. There's no Covenant Campaign, take my word for it.

Well, that's an interesting bit of Matlockery you've done there.

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.

@Bleep

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.

Tubatic, are you fucking kidding me?

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.

Coming from someone who reviews games and worked a full time job (not currently), it is hard to play a game to completion especially when you have so many to play, but you do expect reviewers to play their games at least for several hours before reviewing them.

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.

@Bleep
"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.

srs bssnss

That's pretty lame though.

Meh, this discussion has been had on many a podcast. It's not necessary to finish a game to give a reasonable review.

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.

nice review of reviews bro.

@HALF LEFT

"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.

@Half Left

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.

@people;

I see what you're saying, perhaps a little note mentioning how far the reviews were at time of writing would be nice.

Repost from community emailer:

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?

Dexter, then you tell the readers you didn't complete the game and give your reasons why. Make it am impressions post, giving your impression of the game. You don't post/write reviews like that. Jim was completely wrong in posting that as a review when he didn't even complete half the game. I don't understand how you could say its acceptable.

I could not agree more

OMG BIAS!
or maybe he played it on another account or his console wasn't online?

@Linuxbuy

Is that how you play the non-existent Covenant Campaign?

I wrote as little as possible so there wasn't much to miss.

@Linux: Even if you are offline, the achievements update the next time you sign in.

After Jim's Lost Odyssey review I happened to stumble across his gamer tag so I took a peek. Inside I found that Jim hadn't even completed Lost Odyssey. I found it very strange but I think that as long as they play through at least 3/4 of the game that it's okay to review it if you're on a tight schedule. Even if a horrible game makes a complete turn around at the 3/4 mark I still would say that it isn't worth your money and should be heavily judged on the previous bit that was complete shit.

halo sucks anyway

Oooh a very potent post this one, I agree that in most cases at least the majority of a game needs to be played to give a proper review.

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.

@Puppy Licks

It takes a lot of power out of my argument when I directly attack and flame someone and I have a point to prove.

It's not that long a game, and as an RTS you should always finish the campaign on normal and play a lot of skirmishes and online to see what the full game is imo. No idea why he wouldn't have done it.

I never pretended to complete the videogame. In fact, I have stated many times in the past that I don't feel game completion is necessary to review a game. I in fact never even tried to hide the fact I never completed it. A quote from an earlier post of mine:

"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.

But why did you make so many points about the story and gameplay being lackluster based off about half the game?

@ the incredible edible egg

Give Jim a break, you pitty fanboy

I said the story was lackluster because the story was lackluster. I stand by what I said about the characters, and the fact that you need to already love Halo to get into the plot. I didn't need to finish it to see that, and again, if you disagree, that's up to you.

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.

AZN Joe is simply pointing out the fact that it seems a tad bit misleading for you to call it a "full review" of the game without even completing 1/3 of 1/3 of the game. There's skirmish modes (which allow to play as Covenant) as well as a full on multiplayer mode.

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.

@LMAO

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 played Skirmish for sure, to give the Covenant a go, and if you really want the sorry, sordid story, I suck as them and got my arse handed to me. :-)

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

at least everyone kept it civil in this little debate except you fetusmilk, you speak of truths untold until now.

@Cataract

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 honestly haven't played skirmish because I was trying to collect skulls. I was having a lot of fun replaying levels and messing around with skulls.

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.

I totally agree that you don't need to finish every game to properly review it - you don't need to play 100 hours of Persona 3 to tell people that it has a good story and fun mechanics, and you don't need to get every achievement in a difficult game either. If you get a good feel for the game, seeing the ending is usually quite unnecessary. That being said, if the story mode is so short that it's less than 10 hours, I find it hard to believe that you could have trouble finishing it for a review. This isn't a Zelda or Final Fantasy game, after all.

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.

@Tubatic

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.

I can understand the points made in this debate, but what if someone wrote a review of Bioshock before experiencing the plot-twist?

Have you ever walked out of a movie halfway and confidently told people what you felt the movie was like and why you didn't enjoy it? Do you need to go through 75 levels of Warcraft to properly review Lich King? Dude, come on.

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. .

@ Niero

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.

As far as the movie comparison goes...

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.

Here is the difference Niero, when you tell your friends about the movie, you tell them about how you walked out after a certain point.

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 know exactly what he means when he says he got a good feel for the game halfway, I don't even think I can argue the score, but is it really hard to invest 10-15 hours into a game thats reflected as the opinion of the whole site? It's not that long anyways and from what I understand, he did miss quite a large chunk of the game. It's the COD:WaW review all over again, skipping over large areas.

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.

"It's the COD:WaW review all over again, skipping over large areas."

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.

I was told that you ignored a majority of the multiplayer modes as well as the zombie mode.

You were told? Okay, but I played that game quite thoroughly before review, so I don't know where that one came from.

I don't know first-hand, but I was under the impression that multiplayer was covered very briefly, despite COD being a very strong Multiplayer game. I'm not really informed enough on that anyways and I shouldn't have brought it up.

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.