Do you actually have to play a game to know if its good or not?

[xDragonWarrior]

I was just wondering,do you really have to actually play a game to know if it's good or not?The only game experience you don't get from watching a gameplay video of a game is the feeling of actually playing it and the controls.I mean you don't need to have actually played said R-zone or Action Max game to know they're all terrible.So what are you guy's opinion on this and do you or do you not have to play a game to know if it's good or bad?

[Eltigro]

I usually have a feeling about games. I can tell by the genre or descriptions or whatever that I probably won't enjoy it. Now, it may be an excellent example of the type of game that it is, but that doesn't mean I'll like it.

 

Example1: Flappy Bird. Never played it. Saw about five seconds of a video of it on youtube and decided it wasn't for me.

 

Example2: Titanfall. A giant mech game. It might be good. Reading the back of the box says it is online only and no single player game. No thanks.

[desiv]

No, but you really do have to play a game to know if you'll enjoy it..

 

I've had games I was "sure" I'd like, and when I played them... not so much..

Same on the other side.. There have been games that I was sure would be stupid, and hours later I'm still playing...

 

You really need to play a game to know for sure..

 

IMHO

 

desiv

[Rhomaios]

I can usually tell. I'm rarely wrong, but sometimes pleasantly surprised...or unpleasantly disappointed. Still, with all the thousands of games out there, I'm surely not going to weep if I miss a couple that I might like but I, and many others, think are bad.

[cimerians]

I can usually tell but I have to really play it and not just a demo.

 

Sometimes looks can be deceiving for instance Dragon Age Origins didn't look like anything I'd be interested in playing. Looked like a LOTR knockoff but it turned out to be one of my favorite games.

 

Same with Dragons Dogma, I thought the demo was a travesty but my best friend was begging me to give it a chance and stick with it after a couple of hours and it turned into one of my favorite RPG's I've played in a long time.

[BassGuitari]

Looks can be deceiving.

[+Gemintronic]

Anything that looks like a first person shooter automatically gets a thumbs down. It takes force of will to give most modern games a shot.

[BydoEmpire]

Yes, to really know.

 

I do usually have a pretty good idea... however, a lot of times whether it's good or not is up to pure execution. How does it control? How is the difficulty ramp? The devil is in the details, etc etc etc.

[HatefulGravey]

I would think you have to play a game to know if you will like it. I know there are great games I just don't care to play.

 

It is certainly possible to pick a bad game without playing it.

[Austin]

It depends. If it's something like the Game.Com, once you get a whiff of that blurred screen and the usually terrible framerates the games have, I think it's easy to make a legitimate judgment. For the average game though that doesn't have such glaring flaws, I prefer (and think it's wisest) to not make a passing judgment without having spent some time with it first-hand. In many cases I will tell myself that I probably won't (or will) like a certain game, but won't say whether it's good or not for sure until I've played it, and in some cases played it to a certain point (for instance, some games start great, but end poorly, thus negating a positive recommendation).

[LaXDragon]

I would say, most of the time yes. You need to play a game to know how well it will appeal to you. I've seen plenty of cool looking games that I ended up not liking just because I didn't like how they "felt" to me.

[fiddlepaddle]

I can't stand to waste time watching a video of a game, and I love the feeling of discovery when playing a game for the first time, so that's how I test and judge.

 

Also, there are many, many games that are fun, even really exciting, for a short time, but once I learn a little more, become completely uninteresting. Others actually have intriguing gameplay, but the controls and/or feedback are so inept, I can't continue.

 

Then, there are those that seem really stupid, but I can't stop playing.

 

So, yes, I have to play it to know if it's good, or even not.

[CatPix]

There is two different things here... Do you mean that you have to play a game if you wanna know if that's a game fitting your tastes, or if it's really an universally good game?

 

In the second case, I think the answer it no. Good game are famous, or at least when you peek a bit in the Internets, you'll find what people think about.

But to know if a game fir your tastes... Sure there are elements that helps, such as the type of game. If you have tried multiple manic shooters and never liked them, it's unlikely you'll like even the "most awesome one ever made".

But sometime games can work despite (or because) of their flaws, or despite a genre you don't like.

I like survival-horrors, but I don't like FPS style so much.

But I tried "Echo Night : Beyond" whish is a futuristic survival-horror with FPS view and it's a nice game. Not a great game or anything, but I enjoyed it. (and yeah, the FPS might help some people to get more into the game, but It didn't work that way to me).

On another way, I tried "Fragile Dreams : farewell ruins of the moon" on Wii. It's a very stylized exploration games with some survival-horror and RPG elements (the developers shifted ideas multiple time during development).

At the end, you have a game with very stiff and almost broken controls, an almost useless system of life meter and items selection, but... If you like this kind of exploration game with gorgeous environments (the game really push the Wii hard) and an apocalyptic sci-fi setting, well, it's a great, excellent game.

 

On the other hand, being a fan of the original RE series, I bough RE4 when it was new.

I played it alot, until I gave up. I could feel that the game was great, an excellent game... But it was not the game I expected, and not even a game style I liked.

 

So there are games that many people will not like or that get bad reviews, but that you can enjoy, and great games that you'll dislike because they don't suit your tastes.

[+Gemintronic]

Anything that looks like a first person shooter automatically gets a thumbs down. It takes force of will to give most modern games a shot.

 

Just to be clear this doesn't mean all FPS games are shat. This means that my own personal bias is a handicap that prevents me from properly evaluating and enjoying some games.

[high voltage]

Of course you have to.

Why do you think here are so many Atari bashers, dissing the Jag and 7800 and 5200, they're all NES boys and they never even touched an Atari console

[godslabrat]

I would say you need to play the game to speak with any authority on it. I'm not sure why this is even debatable.

 

And you most definately cannot say a game is "bad" just because you read about it on an internet Top 20 list.

[DZ-Jay]

I can tell at a glance whether a particular game is something I would enjoy (perhaps due to the visual style, story, or genre). However, I cannot tell if the game is any good until I play it.

 

Of course, these are not hard and fast rules, more like subjective guidelines.