Recently I made a post regarding Amazon’s New World preview event and my experiences there. I got a lot of push back because having only played five and a half hours is apparently not enough time to give a first impression. I didn’t hit max level and do every single piece of content, so how can I have any opinions about the game? Part of me thought that it might be fanboy rage because I dared to say anything critical (despite saying overall that the game looks good), but it still seems worth while to examine the criticism.
In this post, I’m going to discuss the differences between a review and a first impression as well as what is a fair amount of time to experience a game before making some sort of judgement about the game or it’s systems.
After I wrote that intro, I paused. If my opinion was potentially incorrect, then how could I, alone, decide what is appropriate? So, I decided to crowd source some information. I posed the question in a thread in a gaming subreddit. “How much play time is enough to judge a game? – You log into a new game. You play for x hours. You make a decision about how the game feels, for you, and if you’d want to keep playing or not. Not long enough to give an in depth review, but enough to have your first impressions about what works and what doesn’t land as well for you. You’d feel okay telling your friend “yeah that game is ____”. How long is that? Does it vary depending on the kind of game? Any other factors I’m not even thinking of?”
From there… well, the answers surprised me a little – particularly after being told repeatedly that 5+ hours wasn’t enough to even comment on a game elsewhere. A couple of the comments referenced cost suggesting that it should be played regardless of quality to be worth the money spent. One person suggested that some strategy games might take as many as 5-10 hours to have played enough to know the game play. However, most commenters described anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours being enough time to judge a game – depending on the type of game and if it was free or not – with simulation games tending towards an hour or less and RPGs needing about 2 hours (one did suggest as much as 5 hours for certain ones). Not one commenter seemed to imply that over 5 hours would be absolutely worthless in terms of making a personal decision regarding the game. I suppose validation is nice.
It should come as no surprise that I generally agree with the responses to my query (except strategy games… not really sure why it would take 10 hours to see if the mechanics were fun or no). However, I wasn’t expecting that a non-insignificant portion of people wouldn’t even give a game an hour – particularly if it was free. For me, at least an hour would be needed to get a feed for the basic controls and mechanics of the game. At that point, though… it depends on how good or bad that is. If the controls are so clunky or counter-intuitive and the combat (or other main interface with the game world) is incredibly unfun to me, then I probably won’t enjoy the game even if other aspects are good. If the main mechanics of the game seem fine, then another hour or two to see how the game introduces other systems, characters, story, etc. For a shorter game, this could be half of the game. For a longer one, such as Skyrim, you might barely be scratching the surface. But if you hate the first 2 hours of Skyrim, you’re not going to love the rest. This is also, to me, part of the job of the game creator (or movies, books, etc) is to provide some sort of hook early on. Most people won’t play a game for days or weeks waiting to figure out the point.
Now, keep in mind, this is all regarding a first impression. A personal opinion of playability. If I wanted to call something a review then much, much more time would be necessary. For a proper review, “beating” the game would be ideal. For some persistent world games like MMOs, at least hitting max level and participating in all of the main types of content would be necessary. A review should be able to shed light on essentially any and every part of the game and at least have enough awareness to point out any areas that didn’t get tested (unavailable areas, niche options, or content requiring higher skill than the reviewer). A first impression is personal. A review (while will always have a bias), should be more objective and broader in scope.
In summary, I think it’s safe to say that a few hours is a reasonable amount of time to start judging a game, on a personal level, at least. And as one commenter said “Anyway, if you paid real money on it, try to have some fun somewhere. Money is money, y’know? Otherwise, if it’s just not really scratching that itch, just keep it on the back burner. Could come a time for it.“