It’s been about two weeks now, and I’m unsure on how I’m doing with my resolution to not play “just OK” games.

At first, things were good. Loaded up Fable 3, suffered through the Games for Windows Live bullshit, game froze while auto-saving after about 30 minutes of gameplay, and I Noped right out of there. Then, having picked up a Punch Club code from somewhere, I decided to give that a spin. Spent about 1.5 hours “playing” Punch Club before realizing it was just not for me. Cross that one right off… but now it’s getting press and I’m starting to wonder if I gave it enough time.

Then there is my current game, Metal Gear Rising: Revengence. I played that for about an hour the day before, and got stuck on one of the early bosses and was pretty frustrated. “Time to drop this game too.” But… I didn’t. I came back the next day, cleared the boss with ease, and for all intents and purposes am having fun playing. Not fun enough to justify a full review, but certainly more than I was the day before.

While there are certainly games in which the opening gameplay is the same as the end, there are even more that are not at all similar. Like pretty much 100% of MMOs, for example. It is not as though I “owe” these games anything – this is all supposed to be about my personal entertainment, after all – but it has got me thinking about things. Is it really fair to judge a game by its opening hours? Am I fine with the possibility of missing out on an otherwise compelling experience based on basically a slow tutorial?

I suppose on that note, I shouldn’t be second-guessing my resolution just quite yet, eh?