How I review games ~~ Simply put;
Stability -- is a huge factor; after all - if the game crashes on a dime, then no game is worthy of high praise. I've played some fairly unstable games in my past that have been given high reviews yet are crash-fests such as the Civilization V series - I love Civ games, but seriously...Firaxis needs to implore better game testers and engineers and that is just 'one' prime example. Basically, if you see/read any of my reviews that I gave a 1 - then you can bet that the game is a crash-fest.
Story//Single Player -- is another factor for me. I've gone through all the 'competitive' phases so I don't need tacked on Multiplayer games to stroke my ego. In fact, most PC games multiplayer modes these days are terrible, most are significantly hacked. Any MP I prefer on consoles, sure - you 'can' still get hackers, but far less likely to run into them unlike PC multiplayer modes, come to think of it ~ I don't think I've played a PC game online that actually hasn't had hackers or cheaters - and that's pretty sad really. Congress should go with my idea and make hacking a criminal offense - send these script kiddies to jail =3
Fun vs Frustration vs Tedium -- Finally, the game has to be fun, after all - I play games for fun, I get enough frustration in real life. MMo's have the hardest time in the tedium department, basically if the game is a grindfest then, I'm just not going to bother these days. When you get older, your patience for grinds significantly diminishes. Trust me, this comes from a long time gamer who beat Ruby Weapon in the original FF7. These days, I don't even have half the patience required to grind to beat Ruby on PS1.
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