Written by The TAG Team
With the final post for Myst, our blog has continued to grow and review many memorable games, some forgettable ones, and also some regrettable ones.
So a quick look back at what we’ve done so far (as of August 3rd):
We’ve played 274 games, not including the ones in progress right now. The breakdown:
Games played by Trickster (the early years of the blog): 45
Guest Reviews during the Trickster era: 2
Main line games after the blog became a community effort: 96
Missed Classics, which started after Trickster retired: 131
Out of these games, only 4 weren’t completed. Three have a status of “Abandoned” and another “Indefinitely Delayed”.
The first one was Captain Blood, which Trickster abandoned after 9 hours and very little to show for it.
Another was a missed classic by one of our early, more (ahem) colorful commenters, Kenny McCormick. The Scoop, a mystery game with an advanced (for the time) interface.
Next was Wonderland, played by another past commenter, The Mad Welshman. Circumstances beyond their control caused them not to be able to finish the playthrough.
Ilmari played Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness, and was unable to finish the game most likely due to a technical reason.
Which means we have a 98.5% completion rate, which isn’t too shabby! (We do have rules for reviewers abandoning a game after a certain number of hours, but we tend to be masochists and stick with it.)
Who's keeping score? We are, with an average score of 40 awarded to the games. The most common score? 30, given to 15 different games. The highest rated game? That's over in the left-hand column, along with the rest of the top 10. But some other notables:
- The lowest rated Missed Classic? Drive-In Adventure, checking in at 7. That beats the lowest main game, Psycho, which at least hit double digits for 10.
- The highest rated Missed Classic? Would you believe it's one of Morpheus's recent Japanese-language conquests? Urotsukidoji came in at 57.
If we break it down by game type, Main Line games average about 48, and Missed Classics about 31.
Not counting Trickster, 20 reviewers have played 229 games. Later this month, it will have been exactly ten years since Trickster’s last review, marking a transition to our current blog. Two months later, Aperama set the standard for all reviews to follow with their take on Countdown.
Our top reviewers? Tied for first place for completed Main Line games are admins Joe Pranevich and Ilmari Jauhiainen with 13 each, but if we count Ilmari’s unlucky attempt at Freedom, he takes the top with 14. Tops for Missed Classics? Joe Pranevich with 58.
As for interacting with the readers, the blog has posted 1595 entries (including this one), and the readers have commented over 28,000 times. That's an average of 17 comments per entry. There's no easy way to verify this, but it appears that the introduction post for Day of the Tentacle is our record holder, with 161 comments, and all the entries in that playthrough combine for a really impressive total.
As a way to meet and greet the readers, Trickster started a tradition of having them answer a few questions for the blog. The feature titled “What’s Your Story” has 54 responses. Is yours one of them? If not, please look over on the left-hand side of this page, a little bit down, and submit yours!
And if you’ve already taken the time to do that, then we can talk about time a little. The longest game we’ve played? Well, technically, when one reviewer took over for another on a review of The Legacy: Realm of Terror. But to keep it fair, let’s skip that one, and go to the 36+ hour ordeal that was Dungeon. Well, maybe not ordeal, because it looks like Joe enjoyed it, but... wow.
Short games? There’s a handful of missed classics that didn’t even last an hour, but the shortest main line game played for the blog was 1992’s Putt-Putt Joins the Parade, clocking in at just under an hour.
As for reading the blog? You'd think that the most-read post would be for one of our high scorers, but instead it's Alice in Wonderland, with a below-average rating of 33.
Speaking of numbers, it seems our time here is numbered, so tell us your thoughts!