I remember when I was a kid, games magazines would clamour for ‘exclusives’. Every cover would scream EXCLUSIVE REVIEW! at you, and every mag would somehow have the same EXCLUSIVE! coverage of the same EXCLUSIVE! games. It was hugely tiresome.

However, one thing that was apparent with games mags back then is the people behind them often played games for an absurd amount of time before coming to a conclusion about them. But with the shift to the web, the need to be first with reviews is coming pretty close to breaking the entire point of critical coverage.

As a case in point, I happened across a couple of reviews earlier today for two new iOS titles. These games were released last night, and reviews are already online, rating the games and providing buying information for the website’s readers. On reading the reviews, it’s horribly clear that neither game was properly tested, because there are inaccuracies throughout. There’s little point in naming the site, because it’s hardly unique in doing this kind of thing, and with readers demanding to know RIGHT THIS SECOND whether or not something’s any good, it’s hard to blame the editors.

It would be good to see sites have the balls to try a different approach, and only review games when they’re ready to be reviewed. This is what I do with iPhoneTiny. Even though the reviews are only 140 characters long, I aim to only review a game or app when I really know what I think about it. This is why some reviews are turned around a few days after a product’s release but others take weeks. Online, this could be a differentiator, and in print it’s ridiculous to not take this line—after all, any EXCLUSIVE! review within a mag’s pages has already been ‘outexclusived’ by myriad websites.