About the Site

Update: 2/12/08 A revised FAQ about Games for Lunch is now available on Crispy Gamer.

OK, what the hell is going on here?
Games for Lunch is a playlog. Every day I play one game for an hour and blog about my experience. At the end, I review the game based on the only real criteria that matters to me: Do I want to keep playing?

Why should I care what you think?
Well, I do have some experience reviewing games and covering the game industry as a freelance journalist. But that doesn't really matter. You should only care what I think as far as you agree with my tastes, which should become apparent after reading a few of the posts on this site. I also try to make these posts somewhat interesting to read for an outside audience, so you might care for that reason. If you don't, though, that's OK. There are plenty of other sites out there. Here's one. Here's another.

Why are you doing this?
Partly because I want a reference to remember what games I've played and what I thought of them when I first played them. Partly because I need some encouragement to increase my gaming knowledge by playing games outside my usual comfort zone. Partly because I want to show off my witty writing style to potential employers (E-mail me: kyle*DOT*orland*AT*gmail.com). Partly because it's fun!

Why an hour?
Because it's called Games for Lunch, and lunch usually takes an hour. Also, that's about all the time I feel comfortable sparing for what is just a personal project.

This isn't really a fair way to review games.
That's not a question. But you're right, playing a game for just an hour really isn't fair to the game as a whole. Still, I feel that with the vast majority of games, you've seen most of what the game has to offer after an hour. Sure, there might be some interesting story twists or new abilities/levels later on, but generally the gameplay of the first hour matches the gameplay of the last pretty well.

More to the point, if you don't want to play a game after just an hour, you can pretty safely say it's a bad game. If you do want to keep playing, you can pretty safely say it's at least decent, and can probably extrapolate at least a few more hours of gameplay fun for your money.

Reviewing games based on demos isn't fair either.
Still not a question. My only response is that if a game demo doesn't even have an hour's worth of content, it's probably not a very good demo (or possibly, not a very good game).

How do you get your games?
The only criteria for a game reviewed here is that it has to be a game I've never played before (or a game I haven't played for more than five minutes). Between evaluation copies I occasionally receive through my freelancing, demos available through Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and PC downloads, GameFly and GameTap subscriptions and the occasional game I actually buy, getting a new game every weekday shouldn't be a problem.

Will you review my game?
Sure! I'll review any game that you want to send or make available, either as a full game or a demo. E-mail me at kyle*DOT*orland*AT*gmail.com and we'll figure something out