10-Minute Reviews

No, I don't mean I'll spend ten minutes writing the review or it'll take you that long to wade through one. Nope, my new 10-Minute Reviews are designed for other gamers like myself, who either don't have the time or the wont to play games that aren't going to be fun in the long-haul.

I've been a videogame collector since 1980. Yes, even as a penniless child I made sure to squeeze as many cartridges as my parents would bear out of my first system, the Intellivision. I must have had forty or so cartridges by the end. I had even delayed my entry into the home console market after playing a friends Atari VCS and reading the few gaming magazines of the day, know what Mattel had on the horizon. Once my habit was solely funded by myself I was a little pickier, and this was during my Amiga phase when I worked retail and had access to most games through the store or, ahem, other methods, particularly because of the amount of European-developed games for Commodore's brilliant but doomed box. I bought dozens of games for the SNES, Genesis, PS1 and N64 as the new generations rolled in, but as their libraries dwarfed the Intellivision's I wasn't in the same league of completeness.

I stepped things up a notch last generation with the Xbox. While I certainly bought and played my share of PS2 titles, and my favorites were all on that platform ( God of War, Ratchet & Clank series) except for Psychonauts (released later of course, but designed initially for release by Microsoft before they cut it loose), I loved the hard disk and crisp visuals Microsoft's first foray into console gaming provided, and the later released Xbox Live functionality sealed the deal. I went on to buy over 500 games, all of them new, and I played each one at least once to record details for a site I was developing as well as peace of mind (or delusion) I was getting my money's worth. Of course I wasn't, but such is the realm of the videogame hoarder. You can see most of my games in my Collection list, though with no way to sort and filter you'll have to take my word for it.

I'm doing the same thing with this generation, once again with Microsoft's Xbox 360, and I'm well over 800 games. I told myself this time I owed each game at least ten minutes, or until the first save point, whichever was longer. That way my wretched gaming skills might stumble into an Achievement and I could more successfully tell myself I got my money's worth (except for that horrendous Final Fantasy XI, forgot to cancel the subscription for a year). I haven't always been successful, many XBLA games are just too excruciating to hit ten minutes, but I've tried. And now I'm going to use this place as an outlet for my experiences.

It's not just time that leads me to this series, as with most things in life I'm quick to form opinions, and ten minutes in a game is quite generous as opposed to a TV show or movie. Often with a game it only takes a minute or two (my love for Heavy Weapon was cemented in seconds). Sometimes it's less as I loathe sports, strategy, racing and quiz genres but must feed my collecting habit with them for psychotic completeness. I will avoid reviewing games where the genre alone would grant no stars from me and focus on games that I thought, or hoped, would make me want to play them more. So given ten minutes I'll let you know whether I hoped to play some more, and run down major points that lead me to that decision. Hopefully this will be of some use to the game-buying public if not just my sanity.

I have posted the first review in this series, The First Templar, and will get a few more up before posting one for the game I planned to do first, Heavy Rain, as that game's fanbase will not be appreciative and I'm not ready for the "you just don't get it" vitriol today.

No, I don't mean I'll spend ten minutes writing the review or it'll take you that long to wade through one. Nope, my new 10-Minute Reviews are designed for other gamers like myself, who either don't have the time or the wont to play games that aren't going to be fun in the long-haul.

I've been a videogame collector since 1980. Yes, even as a penniless child I made sure to squeeze as many cartridges as my parents would bear out of my first system, the Intellivision. I must have had forty or so cartridges by the end. I had even delayed my entry into the home console market after playing a friends Atari VCS and reading the few gaming magazines of the day, know what Mattel had on the horizon. Once my habit was solely funded by myself I was a little pickier, and this was during my Amiga phase when I worked retail and had access to most games through the store or, ahem, other methods, particularly because of the amount of European-developed games for Commodore's brilliant but doomed box. I bought dozens of games for the SNES, Genesis, PS1 and N64 as the new generations rolled in, but as their libraries dwarfed the Intellivision's I wasn't in the same league of completeness.

I stepped things up a notch last generation with the Xbox. While I certainly bought and played my share of PS2 titles, and my favorites were all on that platform ( God of War, Ratchet & Clank series) except for Psychonauts (released later of course, but designed initially for release by Microsoft before they cut it loose), I loved the hard disk and crisp visuals Microsoft's first foray into console gaming provided, and the later released Xbox Live functionality sealed the deal. I went on to buy over 500 games, all of them new, and I played each one at least once to record details for a site I was developing as well as peace of mind (or delusion) I was getting my money's worth. Of course I wasn't, but such is the realm of the videogame hoarder. You can see most of my games in my Collection list, though with no way to sort and filter you'll have to take my word for it.

I'm doing the same thing with this generation, once again with Microsoft's Xbox 360, and I'm well over 800 games. I told myself this time I owed each game at least ten minutes, or until the first save point, whichever was longer. That way my wretched gaming skills might stumble into an Achievement and I could more successfully tell myself I got my money's worth (except for that horrendous Final Fantasy XI, forgot to cancel the subscription for a year). I haven't always been successful, many XBLA games are just too excruciating to hit ten minutes, but I've tried. And now I'm going to use this place as an outlet for my experiences.

It's not just time that leads me to this series, as with most things in life I'm quick to form opinions, and ten minutes in a game is quite generous as opposed to a TV show or movie. Often with a game it only takes a minute or two (my love for Heavy Weapon was cemented in seconds). Sometimes it's less as I loathe sports, strategy, racing and quiz genres but must feed my collecting habit with them for psychotic completeness. I will avoid reviewing games where the genre alone would grant no stars from me and focus on games that I thought, or hoped, would make me want to play them more. So given ten minutes I'll let you know whether I hoped to play some more, and run down major points that lead me to that decision. Hopefully this will be of some use to the game-buying public if not just my sanity.

I have posted the first review in this series, The First Templar, and will get a few more up before posting one for the game I planned to do first, Heavy Rain, as that game's fanbase will not be appreciative and I'm not ready for the "you just don't get it" vitriol today.

I could have told that game sucked without even playing it.

Wait, you're publishing these as user reviews? You should really make them into a blog feature, since you'll get far more out of it that way.

@clubside said: 

 I loathe sports, strategy, racing and quiz genres

If you're going to tell us that you don't like Dirt, Hot Pursuit,  Burnout or You Don't Know Jack then I will fight you. Bare-knuckle style, behind the off-topic forum after TNT. 

Interesting procedure for a review, I wouldn't expect any game to draw me in entirely within the first ten minutes. Will you update the reviews if you continue playing the game? 

Interesting procedure for a review, I wouldn't expect any game to draw me in entirely within the first ten minutes. Will you update the reviews if you continue playing the game? 

I'll just say that I'm not a fan of this idea at all. In Heavy Rain, the first 10 minutes are slow but it picks up to become a very good game. Same with inFamous. And Burnout Paradise. And just about every other good game.

And it can be the other way around. What about a game that shows all of it's cards early on, but doesn't introduce anything new. It's simply impossible to judge a game after 10 minutes. I think you have an idea of what you want to do, and I don't think I completely picked it all up by reading your posts, so maybe it will work. But as it stands now, there are a lot of flaws in your idea.