This is an honest, albeit talked aboot to death, thought. The title of the thread is a totally diff'rent and insane question.

It’s not fair to review a game that doesn’t have complete code. Other than that, review away.

Uff, don't open the door to another "when is code really complete" debate that has diff'rent answers for everyone!

Life isn't fair.

Review away!

Agreed. Just a personal preference thing. Feature complete sans bug fixes and balancing I guess. Like I would review TMNT right now but not Stranger Things.

Whatever you think the right way to review is your own. You'll never get everyone to agree so it's all kind of pointless to talk aboot.
EDIT: or "academic" as they say?

Sure it's fair. What's the option, to buy em all??

"The world needs ditch diggers too, Danny."

In one physical model, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.......in the opposite direction

Unbelievable

Thank you very little.

You need some quality time to properly review a game. Rough first impressions can be fun too.

If it’s ready to be sold for 6k+ then it’s ready to be reviewed.

And anyone can. Review away. I choose not to.

Its not that hard... Just qualify your review when you make it. Unless its stranger things... it won't matter what model or where you play that thing, people will understand why the review is negative.

And thus the problem, not everyone sucks at pinball Not everyone needs a game in their/friends' home to learn it, enjoy it, get a feeling for it. You don't have to be really good for that to happen either; not everyone is lucky enough to have home games to play and plenty love heading out into the wild to play.

I’m going to go review Wheel of Fortune right now just to defy your comment.
Bwahahahahahaha.

I don't know anyone who could hate a game on site but then love it at home. If that does happen then the initial hate was fabricated. The only thing for me anyway is that I enjoyed it on site then enjoyed it even more at home. Better sound, better atmosphere, better drinks and other things to enhance the experience, and by other things I of course mean an interesting hat or maybe some a new sweater, not drugs. Never.

Not every review needs to be the same. Most of them suck because they are exactly the same.

Be the guy who reviews games at bars and sucks at pinball and can’t hear the game and reviews that experience. It would at least be a different perspective, and for plenty of people, that’s how they experience pinball.

Pinball is sagging under boring, self-important, similar pundits who all try to do the same shit. What’s missing from this field is entertainment value. Trying to provide some should be the only goal, not being the 68th person making deep dive into the rules or analyzing every square inch of “world under glass” or obsessing about “build quality” or fighting a DCMA injunction because of the perfect sound coming from the perfect rig.

Why not?
Pinball began in arcades, a few games then move on to the next machine
it should not take reading an instruction manual to work out if a game is fun or not (looking at you LOTR)

Seeing as folks might use the reviews to help decide if they want to invest the money to buy a game, a review based on home use experience would be the most valuable. I don’t need a review to help me decide if I want to drop a coin in a machine at an arcade.

Definitely a factor, and why the ratings on pinside are particularly meaningless.

I don't know if it needs to be a home environment, and that potentially doesn't mean much either. Certainly a home environment is one of the only locatiosn where you can truly appreeciate the sound from the machine.

The real key factors are:

1 - Having someone explain the rules of the game, | OR | having enough playtime to really explore the game.
2 - Mechanically functioning 100%
3 - A good fast setup.

So many reviews are based on these large shows, where operators bring truckloads of machines, they don't always have time to set everything up well, and people trying to give the games a try just kind of get one play, and then you have other people waiting... yet so many reviews are based on these 'show' plays. ...

But I digress, it is what it is.. and that is why the ratings mean nothing

I don't need to bring a wwe into my house to know it sux