On Champions Of Norrath, Forgiving Game Reviewers? 52
Thanks to Curmudgeon Gamer for its article discussing technical problems with PS2 title Champions of Norrath: Realms of Everquest, and why official reviews of the game didn't seem to mention those problems. According to the writer, who had been "experiencing frustrating lock-ups and hangs which have caused the loss some of my progress through the game", it turns out that "two of the reviewers did see the game hang and didn't mention it in their reviews." However, he argues: "That's a judgment call, really, and since each saw the problem precisely once I can understand leaving it out of the review", and ends by suggesting that "the real burden rests not on the shoulders of the reviewers but on the creators of the game and, potentially, the console itself."
reviewers are bitches.. (Score:5, Interesting)
well, at least they PLAYED the game, not so long ago it was pretty common that magazines made fake reviews that were in reality based on just few screenshots so that they could stay on top of the business.
as a sidenote, anyone know a reliable, good review site not afraid to say that "those fucking rocketthrower handed mutant monsters suck big time and the plot is a joke"?
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:2)
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:5, Informative)
1. Penny Arcade - so far, in the few years ive been reading it, I havent once notice them bowing to pressure from publishers to 'overlook' titles that suck. Theyre pretty much some guys who play games, and let people know what they think of them. Sure they dont review, and dont score things, but ive bought a good few titles on the strength of their word-of-mouth, and havent been dissapointed yet. 2. Edge magazine - if a game gets a 9/10, review its outstanding - something that pushes the genre and is near flawless. Most games get a 6 or so - and those are the ones that ARE average, not the crap games (which get a suitable low score). As has been mentioned before, there have only been 4 10/10s in its 10 year history - Zelda64, Mario64, Gran Turismo and Halo. Each one of those were excelent examples of their genres, and introduced new ideas that have since become stock benchmark for all later games to be held against
Yes, its a print magazine, and all that means is you maybe wait a couple of weeks for a real review, not some half written garbage on a late beta. Oh, and its Edge because it is, ok?
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:1)
Graphically, it's average for its time, with some nice bump-mapping effects but plain textures. And it's very repetitive; you will see the same layout of room approximately fifty times. As a shooter, it's rather shallow, with little or no interaction with the environment apart from shooting it.
As a pur
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:2)
The regenerating shield bar, and limiting your weapons - two features that are now becoming standard.
The graphics were quite outstanding for its time, too - nothing then had particularly successfully done bumpmapping, and the enviroments were huge, with very very little popup or fogging, and some very nice high res textures.
The controls (although not a patch on keyboard and mouse) successfully allowed the pretty much PC-only genr
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Two minor features (I mean, if the replenishing shield and/or weapons limit were removed, would it be substantially a different game?) do not a game make, never mind a supposedly genre-shattering game. I'm really trying hard to see what makes this game revolutionary, and I honestly can't see it.
Not entirely true (Score:5, Informative)
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:4, Informative)
This way you can quite easily get a pretty good idea of how a game is reviewed. I don't know how gametab calculates their scores tho.
Often reviewers are given versions that aren't completely finished. One of the reasons for this is that the print-magazines have deadlines very long time ahead of publishing (especially the case for PC games where the time from the game is finished and until it appears in shops are much shorter that for console games)
If a game has serious bugs like that it is disturbing that it made it's way through Sony's QA which is usually rather welldone, but of course I just took the tinfoil out of my hat so maybe the brainwashing orbital lasers made me ignore that it is a game made by Sony and published by Sony.
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:1)
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Far be it from me to try to reduce anyone's cynicism with regard to the game press, but there's actually a reasonable explanation for this. Game previews are generally positive and non-judgemental, with good reason -- they're not looking at a final version. It would be wrong to taint readers' opinions on things that will eventually get fixed.
Reviews are what you want to read for an actual critical evaluation. Remember that when Trespasser shipped, the reviews were terrible.
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:1)
Robson, you make a good point. I stand corrected
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:5, Interesting)
For example: remember all the superlatives heaped on Metal Gear Solid 2? How it was the best stealth-action game ever? Then what happened when people played it? They found out the story was ridiculously convoluted, the main character of the series was sidelined and 90% of the time was spent watching people in the same room talk via radio...
And what about all of the reviews for Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness? Not one of the reviews I read mentioned any problems whatsoever with the PC version, but for some reason the version in the shops had more bugs in it than Starship Troopers!
These days I only visit places like IGN or GameSpot for screenshots and movies of games, you can't trust their opinions to be objective, especially IGN who will turn into vapid fanboys the moment someone agrees to pay them advertising money.
I usually try to make my own mind up about games now. If they look like good original games in the pictures and videos I will try to find a demo and if that's good I will consider buying it.
The other good way of telling if a game is good is by the general word of mouth, once the marketing hype has died down. But that method means waiting for other people to buy the game, meaning you can't be the l337 person who gets all the games on import before everyone else!
Re:reviewers are bitches.. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's true to a certain extent, the Japanese version of a game like Final Fantasy would certainly be impenetrable. But simpler more arcade type games are usually >90% English anyway. For example the Japanese version of Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast doesn't have a single word of Japanese anywhere.
Also sometimes games in Japanese are more fun, I fondly remember that Super Mario World on the Super Famicom had blocks scattered
The missing graphics (Score:5, Informative)
It seemed to happen most frequently when I had been playing for about an hour and had changed areas, causing the game to load a different tileset.
Ahh to be a critic (Score:5, Funny)
Integrity (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the question is, was the bug not mentioned because the reviewer didn't consider it to be important, or forgot about it, etc. (e.g., just crappy reporting)? Or was the reviewer under pressure or edited by his superiors so as not to report bugs in the article, due to the financial pressures (no free copies, etc.) that a large console game company could potentially exert on a small online review site (e.g., complete lack of journalistic integrity)?
Re:Integrity (Score:2)
So, was it...
1. Forgot about/Ignored?
2. Pressure from the Publisher?
3. Cowboy Neil?
4. All of the above?
Hmm, Im going for #4...
Blame Canada! (Score:5, Interesting)
The weakness isn't in the reviewers, or the testers, or even the coders. The complexity of much modern software is such, that the languages are inadaquate to manage the tasks set befor them. Buffer overflows, as attacks, or just unintended events, they are par for the course now. I've only had one game that would crash my old NES, none that would nuke my Atari. But as the consoles enjoyed ever more complicated titles, ever more errors with ever increasing severity have made their way into games, at every level.
It would be easy to see how a reviewer would assume that it's a manifestation of an abberation increasingly common in games and beneath mention. I've had Crazy Taxi crash and wipe out spectacular runs, and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when I just barely compleated a infuriating crazy box. I've had RPG's with event triggers kick me into a spot where I can trigger the necessary event to proceed. Crashes that eat saved games. And let's not forget Phantesy Star Online and the horrors it brought.
People accepted Windows crashing.* They will accept console games crashing if presented with no better alternative. One segment of the population might have just reached the plateau first. Small wonder.
Kick the reviewers in the nuts if you want. Cry shenanigans and let loose the children in grade four. They're but a symptom of a much larger problem. No black helicopters needed.
* Blah blah Linux. BS, I'm using it right now, and there is plenty of "give up and die" or "Whoops!" as prefered modes of failure to go around.
Re:Blame Canada! (Score:1)
Champions of Norrath = last Sony game I ever buy (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't trusted game reviews fully since I got an issue of the "Next Generation" magazine after its acquisition and relaunch, and Ultima IX got 5 out of 5 stars. Ports of old Atari 2600 games with nothing but the graphics updated were getting 3 and 4 stars.
However, I let myself get suckered into buying this game AND a PS2 to play it (since Dark Alliance II was cancelled for Gamecube). There are glitches galore, more than I've seen in most recent PC game releases even.
The tech support forums are a joke and a half. The official Sony reps make a point of only replying to messages with 'solutions' to the glitching problems in them - they will resolutely ignore 20 questions regarding recalls, refunds, QA, lens cleaning, whatever, and promptly respond to any message saying "eject the CD and push it back in and the game might work", saying "Thanks for your help, we've also found this works." I'd rather they not reply at all, that sort of reply just makes me want to strangle them ala Homer Simpson.
Champions is a pretty cool game... too bad it could potentially wreck your PS2, or lock up at any time a spell effect or loading screen appears. There should really be a recall.
Re:Champions of Norrath = last Sony game I ever bu (Score:1)
LOL (Score:1, Funny)
The Everquest programmers suck ass. A cool title (for some people) but quality programming you get not.
Pressure on both sides of the story (Score:4, Insightful)
The game has graphic bugs and freezes there is no one denying that. Supposedly they used some sort of modified DVD9 format which may be part of the problem. I'm not sure if the modded DVD9 format was used for software protection or just to cram more info on the disc. However these bugs are so big that both the studio and the publisher had to have known about them. So you have to point a finger at the studio and the publisher for releasing the game too soon. In this case Snowblind and Sony. Snowblind's last game (Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance) was rock solid on the Ps2. So I'm guessing it wasn't the incompetance of the studio but rather the Sony likely pushed them to make the release date. There were rumors floating around to that effect because supposedly snowblind wanted to optimize the online code to support modem connections, but Sony told them not to bother and make it broadband only. On top of that Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 2 was relased about a week before this one. Sounds like Sony pushing to make sure Champions had a chance to snuff BGDA2.
As far as the reviewers go, well Sony is the biggest dog in the console arena. There may as well been some pressure to give it a good review. I'm sure they probably told the reviewers the version they had may have bugs because it's a beta, etc. etc. Now that the real version is out most reviewers with major sites probably don't have the time or inclination to question Sony. It will only help to ensure that you don't get the next exclusive preview of the next huge game Sony is releasing.
The saddest thing is this game is really great. I played though it once and I still want to play it again. My only real gripe is the freezing which has made me paranoid about saving. Otherwise this game rocks. The graphic glitches are annoying, but they go away in about a second. Sony should have let Snowblind do the job right. Perhaps with Champions 2 they'll let them do their job.
Re:Pressure on both sides of the story (Score:2, Insightful)
The Curmudgeon article sez some reviewers got shipped a 2 DVD set (single layer) as a final review copy. Apparently it was a last minute decision and apparently there was NO QA after this decision was made as the code had already been QAd.
Champions is an awesome game, I feel bad for the guys at Snowblind tha
Pah game reviewers are a joke anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
But a little bit farther back you have a real test of game reviewing. "Hidden & Dangerous" was widely reviewed as a great game. Maybe it was. No mere mortal ever managed to play it.
It had a gigantic number of game killing bugs. So many it would seem impossible that reviewers couldn't have noticed. So yes afterwards game reviewers admitted that yes they had encountered the bugs but had decided not to mention it since the game was so great.
Only by the time the sequel was being previewed did game rags start to really talk about the piece of crap the original was.
I said this before, "game reviews ain't worth the paper they are printed on wich is really bad news for online reviews". Until people start to realize that game reviewing includes product testing game reviews will continue to be little more then some idiot being paid to blub about games he liked or hated.
As for wich reviews are honest? Demos. Tells you 99% if what you need to know.
Most people I know treat game reviews as advertising. No different then an "making of" program on the latest movie. We use other gamers to review games.
Should the game industry care? Well yes, even better then demos is downloading the entire game. Perfect review. You can only sell crap so many times before I start thinking that stealing from lying scumbags isn't all that bad. You don't think I am going to pay for a single game ever from Illusion soft or take 2 again? Let them first patch the product they sold me.
Re:Pah game reviewers are a joke anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, and I've seen this firsthand, reveiwers aren't exactly the strongest willed of people. They tend not to rock the boat. I don't know if this groupthink is from self-selection, from the fact that there is no objective way to judge the value of a reviewer so you must hire by whether or not s/he reviewed games in exactly the same way that you would have, but they all blow with the wind. Companies know this, and they do their best to blow at the reviewers. Companies create the perception of a popular uprising, and reviewers feed it until it actually is a popular uprising. Most reviewers don't realize they are doing this, nor do they realize where the uprising came from.
And yes, Demos are the best indicator of a 95% finished game. Unfortunately, you do have to cut the company the littlest bit of slack, as the demo will be done a month before the game finishes, so it is almost guarenteed to have crashes that won't appear in the final version.
Companies should care, but we don't. We're too busy trying to figure out how to manipulate the reviewers into giving our games a perfect score. Most of us are terrible at it, but what we want is hype for our products rather than objectivity for everyone else's. After all, after pouring your heart and soul into a game for years you're going to think it's the bees knees, even if a more objective viewer doesn't like it. And five points on a review might be the difference between doing the game you want next time or doing a licensed movie port for the GBA.
Don't look to us to fix the objectivity problem, that will only come with subscribers choosing magazines that actually use the full range of their scoring charts, rather than just 70-100%.
Re:Pah game reviewers are a joke anyway (Score:2)
Secondly, initial reviews and previews are often written in the aftermath of nice little release parties and reviewer sneak peaks complete with great food and booth babes. I
Re:Pah game reviewers are a joke anyway (Score:1)
Take Ebert for example. He regularly criticises movies, and sometimes quite harshly, but his reputation is only *better* for it. He is also given free access to movie screenings before they are officially released, along with free press kits and I'm *sure* he is wooed by a great number of hopefull studios for each movie. And then he still tears them to shreds. Same applies with book reviewers.
Game reviewe
Ebert's a special case (Score:2)
More to the point, Ebert's earned the financial independance to be able to make these statements. You don't get to come into the business cold issuing the same reviews that he does -- or rather you do, but possibly at your own professional peril.
I recently heard (last mont
Re:Ebert's a special case (Score:1)
Maybe one day they will, but right now they don't. And until then, credibility isn't an option.
This is a great game but.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is a great game but.. (Score:2)
One addictive game for sure, I love this engine they developed. Like playing Icewind Dale meets Gauntlet, two games that are excellent.
Reviews suck (Score:5, Interesting)
The other place I look to is Penny Arcade. Now, they don't talk about nearly every game that comes out, but when you do choose to talk about a game, they're as honest as can be. They will mention bugs. Just a few weeks ago Tycho said he had to get a no-CD crack just to get the game to start, even with his legit copy. No big reviewer would ever mention that, but isn't it kind of important? Not only are they scathingly honest if need be, but they really understand that there is no game in the world that everybody will love. They understand that some of the games that they enjoy, well, most people think they're terrible. They don't really write about whether a game is good, they write about what's to like about the game, what's not to like, and whether you, the reader are likely to like it in general.
Funny how the people that don't consider themselves journalists are usually the best ones.
You have to wonder sometimes... (Score:1)
I saw there were hundreds of posts on this over at the Sony board, but I would guess that millions of copies were sold. If millions of people had issues, there would be a recall. I wonder if the people having probelms are doing stuff like modding their systems or using Game Sharks.
Being technology people, you have to wonder.
Re:You have to wonder sometimes... (Score:2)
Re:You have to wonder sometimes... (Score:1)
I will have to pick up Champions of Norath once I get bored wi
No smoke without fire, generally (Score:2)
I've seen the loading screen crash once - very early on in fact. When I ejected the disc and put it back in the game recovered perfectly. I've seen the missing tiles problem quite a bit more. The game is almost constantly loading from the DVD and in my
Champions of Norrath...disappointed. (Score:3, Informative)
But alas, it's just a bunch of penny-ante stuff that adds up and makes CoN so annoyingly bad. The biggest offender overall, though, is the drop system. Defeated a monster in the tree-tops in the first fight...he drops a magical dagger with 32-40 damage + lightning damage. At this point, I'm like "whoa." Three acts later, I still haven't seen anything as good as that dagger.
And heck, what about the pathetic bosses? Dodge, hit, dodge, hit. They were built so that a group of people could just gang up and beat on them from all sides. That's it. Even in singleplayer (Seeing as how dialup play, and hence online play I could access, was sadly left out) it was painfully obvious that the boss characters were simply regular enemies with stronger attacks.
Meh.
Everyone hates game reviewers, and yet... (Score:3, Informative)
I think this contrasts greatly with possibly reviewer ommitance between two SOE products: PlanetSide and CoN.
Snowblind has said that when they burned CoN, they weren't seeing the lockups and glitches that consumers are - which means it's entirely possible that reviewers didn't see them too (as many of them don't get the consumer version).
PlanetSide on the other hand, had technical issues up the wazoo on it's get go, and there was only one version to play there. Many of the bugs were acknowledged by the devs as big old Oopsies.
But then again, reviewers probably had another excuse for the version of PS they played.
It was just a beta.
I think the problem is this need for all reviews to be published the very day a game comes out. I think anything printed on that time line should still fall into the realm of preview, whereas what I would like to read is a review of a copy some reviewer got off a shelf, not in a publisher's envelope. Unrealistic - probably...but definately more accurate.
But for the record, I love CoN (almost as much as I kinda hate SOE). My GF, her sister and I played it for hours yesterday - no real problems. But clearly these problems DO exist, and I have to say - they're indicative of a Sony Online Entertainment product.
Re:Everyone hates game reviewers, and yet... (Score:1)
My solution (Score:3, Informative)
Barbie's Shopping Mall Adventure Of Norrath? (Score:1)
My other major gripe in Norrath is a mind-bogglingly stupid (and simple) design issue. Every single little creature you kill (and most of the barrels you smash) drops treasure, 99% of it being
"official" (Score:2)
Official? Uhh...these were just a few fan websites with delusions of grandeur. Just because something appears on the web doesn't suddenly make it "professional".
Forgiving or worthless? (Score:1)
There have been a number of games in the recent past that follow the pattern "Excellent reviews, mediocre or bug-strewn game".
Decently fun game so far... (Score:1)
1) Lockup bug on loading screen: This has happened to me a couple times, and ejecting the CD and putting it back in seems to "jump start" the game into working again.
2) Graphics bug: Occassionally when the maps feature a lot of textures, I'll get the "black screen" on the edges. Seems to fix itself after awhile, or if I exit the game and reload.
3) Sound bug: Background sounds and music int
Trust only yourself (Score:1)
To Make sure that the game is of good quality I always rent first for a few bucks, then if there are no problems and I like the game I consider buying it. If the game can be finished in the rental period then I suppose that would have to be a personal call for replay value, or if still unsure, Rent again and make sure.
If the game you want can't be rented. Leave it, it