Liver&Onions

www.joystiq.com

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/28/me...hers-xbox-360/
direct link so we can read comments too

Castle Crashers action.

Spicollidriver1

Nice job Flay.

RichC2

PANCAKES!

Erm.. Yeah... Cool!

Flay

Chocolate Chip Pancakes for the win, sir!

Always glad to see VGT get some linkage.

Liver&Onions

paaaaaaannnncakes!

stop posting at Woot rich.

edstein

I think Flay is going to have to raise his review scores higher if he wants to get more links to VGT. These companies that get referenced alot like IGN don't like to post bad reviews of games. Does IGN ever give a score below 80?

RichC2

Only posted there twice and it's been some time, somebody else must be watching Cabin Fever.

Apparently so:

Infinite Undiscovery RPG 7.1 Aug 27, 2008
Galaga Legions Shooter 7.7 Aug 20, 2008
Too Human [AU] Action Adventure 6.5 Aug 19, 2008
Smash Court Tennis 3 Sports 4.9 Aug 19, 2008
Too Human [UK] Action Adventure 7.5 Aug 19, 2008
Too Human Action Adventure 7.8 Aug 18, 2008
Fable II -- Pub Games Casino 6.4 Aug 12, 2008
Summer Athletics: The Ultimate Challenge Sports 5.2 Aug 11, 2008
Space Chimps Adventure 6.7 Aug 8, 2008
Spectral Force 3 RPG 4.9 Aug 4, 2008

fumanstan

That's silly.

Michael Corvin

Sore Thumbs
by Dan Shoe (formerly of EGM)

Behind the Scenes: Gaming Journalism part 1
Behind the Scenes: Gaming Journalism part 2
Behind the Scenes: Gaming Journalism part 3

pinata242

Cash-lined moneyhat

Nice job, Flay.

edstein

I may have gotten my sites mixed up. I just remember a while back when one site gave good reviews to just about every game because they were getting some kind of kick back.

Liver&Onions

i've lost even more faith in humanity/gamers. The one comment which speaks truth (IMO) got voted into near transparency on the comment blog. How lame is that. Here's what it said

RichC2

Gamespot, but they didn't give good reviews to every game, just the ones that paid for advertising.

(Rumored) There was a huge falling out over it from Kane and Lynch, the site was wallpapered with ads for it and yet the reviewer gave the game a fairly low score, it wasn't gelling well with Eidos who contacted Gamespot which lead to Jeff G. getting canned after about 10 years on staff (he wrote the review).

fumanstan

I read some of the comments and they don't seem that bad to me. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with the review, and the response that you quoted is in reply to this, which I agree with, especially the final "Skip It" rating:

It also sounds that some people were able to get online and others weren't, which would skew the perspective of a few.

Flay

WHERE'S MY MONEYHAT!? Those are some great blog posts.

Jeremy517

It was "skip it until the bugs are fixed", not "skip it altogether". I don't see anything wrong with that

Liver&Onions

Nothing wrong with disagreeing with a review at all, but to say that the game will be awesome when it's patched so it deserved a 5/5 in its current state is asinine.

fumanstan

There is nothing wrong with it, I just disagree with it; like I said in the other thread, no big deal since it's just one guy's opinion of the game. But unless you ONLY play online, I don't see a reason to skip it to wait for the online play to be fixed when you can have some fun running around single player. But that's just me, and I know that's just the way DVD/VGTalk reviews end with the Skip It or Recommended type ratings.

It's odd to me though, that Braid has a half star more replayability

fumanstan

Of course, but I don't see anyone saying that should be the case. I'm certainly not. Nor do I really see that mentality in the comments over at Joystiq, outside of maybe the single delusional fellow saying Flay's review was pieced together and that he didn't play the game or something.

I'm not trying to bash Flay or the review, nor am I trying to throw heaps of praise for Castle Crashers, i'm just bored at work and genuinely enjoyed the game when I was playing and feel there's some consistency issues with the review.

Flay

Braid at least made me feel excited about finding those blasted stars, even though the reward for finding them was more stinkin' questions.

The repetitive feel of battle, post endgame in Castle Crashers, doesn't offer the same appeal for me. In fact, it feels more like a chore.

Michael Corvin

I haven't played CC but based on just reading the review, I'd have to side with Flay. If the game ships with broken modes, the score should reflect it. The score itself is debatable, but the point remains. If they don't want low scores then they shouldn't release the game when it's not ready for primetime. Either that or remove said features and add them later as free DLC.

Chris_D

My points would be (as per the arcade thread) that:

- If the online mode is notably fixed in the future then a note should be attached to the review to indicate that.

- 5-6 hours is long for a game of this genre! And if your someone who can't enjoy repeated replays of the game then the problem is absolutely not with the length of the game. The problem is in fact that the gameplay wasn't engaging or deep enough to keep you coming back. As I said before, all the very best games of this genre (that being the scrolling fighters genre) could be completed in less than 2 hours or 1 hour in some cases.

Like shmups, these aren't meant to be long games. I say that as someone who gets bored of most shmups in 20 minutes. On those occasions, having 20 hours worth of levels (urggh) wouldn't keep me coming back, that's for sure.

fujishig

I actually read the Xbox Mag's review of this game... they apparently reviewed it before the pricing structure even came out, so they mentioned that if it came out at over 1200 points, to adjust the score down a star. In this case (and in most published magazine cases) they couldn't even have reviewed the online part.

I don't see what the big deal is (though I am amused by that one guy who said he'd have bought it for $60 bucks, that's how good it was). It's a review, one guys opinion. I'm sure if VGT had some kind of hardcore beat-em-up player, it would've ranked higher, but I'm not sure we want to trust that guy's review any more than Flay's. And he clearly explained why he rated it the way he did, so that readers can make up their own mind. My only problem with reviews is when:

a) The guy playing the game clearly has no concept of the game genre or mechanics of the game. I'm sure this is Pixy's issue with anyone reviewing a shiren-like game.
b) The review doesn't go into much detail about why the game was given a certain score.

Flay's review was neither.

Chris_D

Still, I'm sure Pixy (seemingly being pretty hardcore into shmups) is equally annoyed when a review complains about his favourite shmup being too short. Typical shmup review comment paraphrased "This game can be completed in 40 minutes if you use continues so therefore it's too short and a poor game". Clearly the reviewer does not understand the genre he's playing in this case.

For the xbox mag, they, and most of the major review sites played it on partner net, which is usually how the multiplayer portion of 360 games is reviewed (I would assume the other consoles all have their equivalent but 360 one is usually the one that comes up in conversation). At least it's a step above reviewing multiplayer in a 1 day session at the game companies office (perhaps more common than you think). Still, maybe these reviews could also stand to be updated with a note on how the launch multiplayer is performing.

fujishig

re: schmups being short

I always thought of these kinds of reviews as being for the largely uninitiated. Hardcore schmup fans will read the review, see that the main problem the reviewer was having was that it was short, and dismiss that comment from the review. A casual schmup player would see that it's not long, which is true, and maybe pass.

Bottom line is that Flay's Castle Crashers review isn't going to dissuade any hardcore beat-em-up fans, who know that the genre is typically pretty short, from buying this. But someone expecting a longer game will now know to think twice, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.