ScandalUMD

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories...875070,00.html

It came out weak, just like I figured it would. It was EGM's game of the month, and got fawning previews from Gamespot and IGN. They had half of you convinced this was AAA material.

This proves that the game "journalists" are nothing more than a hype machine, and that they cannot be trusted for reliable information.

seeyouauntie

This is just one reviewer's opinion. Plus, it got a 7.5 which is a pretty decent. Some people think if a game doesn't score a 9 or above it sucks. I'm still going to give this one a chance when it comes out.

darkside

It didn't sound that bad in the review. I will at least rent it. BTW, when did Gamespot become they final word on game quality?

Mattalos

IGN gave it an 8 something ... don't think I'd consider that "Krap".

spainlinx0

You people have to remember to adjust a review rating for deflation. They play MANY more games than we do, so they are usually less forgiving I have noticed. So a game that is 7.5 is usually a pretty damn good game. Worth a rental at least. And frankly I don't remember reading any hype about this game until the review in EGM.

Gromit

This week's Extended Play gave it 4 out of 5.

The sement included Mark of Kri and Bruce Lee. The intro was something like...

"Now we're going to look at two games that are all about fighting. One is based on the master of fighting himself, Bruce Lee. And it sucks. The other is..."

After seeing it on something other than a streamed movie, it looks pretty good to me. One clip shows your character repeatedly bashing a guy into a brick wall. It looks like a fun beat 'em up game.

ScandalUMD

Actually, I rarely see games fall below a 6.8 rating. These guys are usually very forgiving, because they are not independent critics. They depend on the developers to keep giving them exclusive screenshots, previews and videos, so every game is "promising" or "exciting" in preview.

When review time comes around, they walk a tightrope between their cronyism with the developers and credibility with their readers. Basically, they give the best review they can possibly get away with.

I saw IGN gave Kri a good review, but they've long since crossed the line, giving all kinds of crap games good reviews.

Kellehair

IGNPS2 expecially. Someone could make the argument that since this game didn't get a 9+ from IGNPS2 that it's crap.

Josh H

Plus it got Game of the Month in EGM because it was a weak month of games to review (Nintendo didn't get them ED in time to review.)

It got a 9.0, 8.5 and 8.0 in EGM, which is pretty low score for the game of the month.

Mattalos

Yeah the fact that there weren't any Nintendo games must've made you feel sad, right Josh and Kelle?

ScandalUMD

Some companies, especially SCEA, Microsoft, EA, and Konami, and, less often, Square and Nintendo, are capable of creating tremendous hype around games that don't deserve them. They can dictate the "news" to the websites, and if they declare a game to be important, the websites will defer to them.

Witness Wreckless, which Microsoft pushed as a demonstration of the Xbox's power. It came out crap, and IGN had hyped it so much they had to give it a 9.0 anyway.

Witness The Bouncer, which sites at least conceded was a crap game when it came out.

Witness the forgettable ZOE and Silent Hill 2, which Konami sold huge volumes of thanks to magazine and website hype that the games didn't deliver on.

See also, Oni, Project Gotham Racing, Daikatana, Luigi's Mansion, and Eternal Darkness.

And the worst thing is that these sites expect us to pay for content that has degenerated into a collection of advertorials, rather than a valid consumer resource.

Mattalos

I don't remember Square hyping up The Bouncer all that much. Actually can't remember one thing they did to hype it... It was mostly the game sites who had seen nothing but the TGS trailer and continued to hype it up repeatedly. Not even playing one demo, but they hyped it up for it's graphics, etc.

As for with ZOE when you read the previews and "hype" most of it talked about it being great for what it could-be. But when it came out they scored it accordingly (a mediocre game that could've been a lot better).

There are times when game companies have nothing to do with what the "Gaming Press" say or do.

Flay

It's certainly not an AAA game.

It's averaging 79% at Gamerankings: http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/21843.asp

Grimfarrow

Ummm....

Silent Hill 2 is a FANTASTIC game. Gamespot people are idiots for giving it a mere 7+ out of 10.

Heck it has a story which is even better than 90% of Hollywood. Anyone who says it's "forgettable" just plain don't know what they're talking about.

mr.snowmizer

Wow, how does PGR make it into this list?

Just curious... is Mark of Kri as short as I think I've heard (from 4 to 6 hours)?

Kellehair

I didn't say anything about the game. My comment was directed at IGNPS2.

Josh H

Give me a break Mattalos. I own a PS2 and was defending Mark of Kri as Scandal is making it out like it was built up to be a masterpiece when I was only expecting it to be a fairly unique take on the "beat em up" as that was the way most things I read on it made it out to be.

I just mentioned ED because it was the highest reviewed game released in July at most sites, but wasn't EGM's game of the month as they didn't review it yet.

Again this was to express that no one has said the game was great. He mentioned it was EGM's game of the month, I say big deal because it was a weak month for reviews. I judged that by the fact that the scores for Mark of Kri were very low for a game of the month in EGM. Crazy Taxi 3, Aggressive Inline, and a couple of motorcycle rally games were the only other things in EGM that got decent reviews, off the top of my head.

Mattalos

I know, I just like giving you guys a hard time. It brings light into my day.

PS - Nintendo sucks!

J/k

Tamrok

I don't know about you but I always take previews with a grain of salt. The game journalists have never made a secret of the fact that they will always give a game the benefit of the doubt in a preview because they are dealing with an unfinished product. As an example, Halo was widely reported to be horrible at the E3 prior to it's release. However, the developers continued to tweak the game and ended up producing a AAA title. So, you just need to realize that you should never base your purchasing decision on a preview. Wait for the review to get an accurate picture of a games quality.

ScandalUMD

There was an absolutely fawning preview at Gamespot a couple of months ago, which is now locked unless you give them money. They gushed over the art design and the fighting system, and actively downplayed faults that would obviously remain in the final version, including the very linear level design.

IGN lumped similar praise onto the game. Basically, it seemed like SCEA yanked the chains of all these publications, EGM included, to secure favorable coverage of these games.

I never thought Mark of Kri would be good. I thought it would be weak from the first screenshots. My problem is with the game sites tripping over themselves to gain favor with Sony, and, for that matter, Microsoft and Nintendo.

ScandalUMD

PGR was hyped as a Gran Turismo killer. It's a solid racing game. It's polished. It blows "Midnight Club" out of the water. But it does not kill GT. It's true some people don't like simulation racing, but there still is nothing that even approaches being a GT equivalent in the arcade racing genre.

Outlaw

LOL!! That was hilarious. They way Adam said it was so funny, he said it so plainly and calmly like it was the time of day that I had to do a double take, "what....did he just say '...Next is Bruce Lee on the Xbox and it sucks, now on to Neverwinter Nights..." haha! Speaking of which, that game was also pretty hyped up as well during E3 as well. I never read the previews for Mark of Kri, but the video review on EP looked interesting. Still, I usually rent games before buying them though unless I'm absolutely certain I'll really like it. Though I sometimes disagree with so many sites I only read them to get an idea of what the game is, the impressions can be helpful to get an idea...but I'd never base buying decision off it. Sometimes it also seems like they post stuff just because they have it or don't have anything else to put on their sites. Like right now Gamespot just flooded their news section with previews of some NBA and NHL game for every system. But then again I'd never pay money for these sites or magazines.

Josh H

Scandal, read my post again. I said nothing about previews. I was just explaining why it wasn't a big deal that it got Game of the Month in EGM, because the scores it received would not make it Game of the Month most months.

Anyway, you've brought up this point numerous times about previews. Everyone news previews are biased and are rarely if ever negative. Everyonce in a while EGMS previews will mentions something bad about a game, usually in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly comments. Most times those are just for humor, but occasional the Ugly is something like camera angles, control issues, slowdown etc. Generally their previews just tell you what the games about without really praising or bashing it, though there are exceptions both ways.

But anyway, previews are of unfinished games, so they give them the benefit of the doubt and wait until they get a finished review to bash it if it hasn't improved. Plus, if they bash everything they don't like in previews, companies won't send them unfininshed products to review.

It's a no win situation for game magazines and sites. If they practice good journalism and truly give there honest opinion of the games in previews, they won't get games to preview. If they give gushing previews to everything then they piss some people off.

The best thing to do is just skim previews for screens, videos and generally gameplay info, and ignoring the previewers fake opinion of the game and wait for the reviews for those.

Tamrok

Here's a rather thoughful explanation on the whole "preview" controversy from Gamespot editor Greg Kasavin:


I was writing away at the same time as Andrew, apparently. To reinforce what he said, If you're suggesting that we preemptively warn readers prior to a game's release about how it's going to be horrible, then no, you shouldn't ever expect to see that from us. We operate on the assumption that games under development at any given point are going to be given sufficient time to turn out all right. This isn't ignorant--it's only fair. We can't go throwing around accusations about how we expect some games to turn out horrible, based on our limited experiences playing early versions of those games. What if they get fixed up before they ship?

I hope you find that our preview coverage tends to be frank--we don't just hype games before they're done. Not to toot my own horn, but when previewing Final Fantasy XI (by actually playing the retail Japanese version), I don't think I minced words in describing some of what I perceive to be rather serious problems with that game. But for all I know, the publisher might easily address those problems before the game hits these shores.

In answer to another question of yours, yes, companies sometimes do withhold information about products they know to be shoddy. Companies will go on press tour with their bigger games, which generally results in those games getting more coverage. They don't go on press tour with something they know is crap. They often won't even send us retail versions of those games. We review them anyway, though, because it's our job to keep you informed of what you shouldn't be playing as well as what you should be playing.

It's our responsibility as a publication to give you honest and accurate information 100% of the time. And it's also our responsibility to fair and objective, both to you and to game publishers and developers. You shouldn't make purchasing decisions based on our preview coverage, and if you value your gaming money, then you shouldn't spend it without consulting a decent review, either. And you shouldn't expect reviews from us until the game in question is deemed finished by its publisher.

Greg Kasavin / Executive Editor, GameSpot


Seems pretty simple to me. You're just expecting too much from a "preview".

finbogg

As far as reviews go, especially on Gamespot, I feel better off if I balance the reviewer's score with the reader's score. I find that a general polling of the reader's more accurately judges the game than the single opinion of the reviewer, however "expert" it may be.