Author Archives: Brit

Eidos Games the Critics’ Scores

by | Bad Corp, Games
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I heard about this story through Penny Arcade’s podcast (minutes 14:00-40:00 of this podcast). I’ve heard about this kind of stuff in the past – where game companies try to delay bad reviews until after release. Obviously, the problem is that gamers want a reliable source to critique a game before they buy it. Game Companies want the best possible score so that more people will buy it. And so, the tug-of-war begins. Anyway, here’s an excerpt of (just the latest) game-score manipulation:

Eidos UK’s PR firm has confirmed that British sites planning on posting Tomb Raider: Underworld reviews with less than an 8.0 score are being asked to hold off posting them until Monday.
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“That’s right. We’re trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos.”

When asked why, the spokesperson said: “Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.”
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British site Eurogamer has already gone live with their 7 out of 10 review, which the representative said had caused “problems”.
Sources: Kotaku, Videogaming247

It’s kind of funny how Eidos just comes out and says that they’re attempting to “manage the scores” (read: make gamers think critic’s opinions are uniformly positive about the game). Didn’t Eidos learn anything from the whole “Kane and Lynch” thing? (In that situation, Jeff Gerstmann posted a 6/10 score for Kane and Lynch – also by Eidos – before it was released, and was fired because of it.) Link: “Gamespot’s Gerstmann Fired, Allegedly Over Kane and Lynch Review”, and Penny Arcade’s comic about it.

Fallout 3

by | Games
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Well, Fallout 3 gets released tomorrow. I’m interested to see what they do with it. I was a little concerned that the transition from overhead-view to first / third-person view might mess up some things. From the articles I’ve seen, they say the game is uneven – good in some parts, poor in others. I expect to wait at least a week and let the reviews pour in before checking it out for myself. It’s too bad there’s no demo for the game. I really like to check out demos before I buy a game. The game developer said that the game world can’t be cut-up into a convenient demo format (although, I have to wonder about that claim – couldn’t they make a little sandbox area? Maybe throw together some game-world pieces into a 5-minute demo?) I’m leaning towards “we didn’t have the time to make a proper demo”.

It’s also too bad they got hit with piracy – causing the game to be leaked almost three weeks before the release date.

Speaking of Fallout, there’s an old abandoned factory not far from my house. Whenever I pass it, I think of the Fallout series. It looks rather post-apocalyptic, and could easily be an inspiration for some quest in the game.
Gates Rubber Company

10 Years Ago: Duke Nukem Forever

by | Games
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I happened to stumble on this the other day while cleaning up some stuff. It’s an article from PC Gamer published exactly 10 years ago this month. In the very last paragraph, he makes reference to Duke Nukem Forever as being “on the way”. Heh. Ten years later and it still hasn’t been released.

Under Construction

by | Uncategorized
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I’m messing around with designing this section of the website. It’s very much in-transition; I’m still adding features, messing with site design, and so on. What do I plan on talking about on this blog? Games (ideas, reviews of other games), Game Development (the business, the tools, etc), Copyright and DRM, games and the media/public, cool images/videos, and random game-related stuff. I have another blog related to my game, Empires of Steel. In the past, I used it as a general purpose blog (including talking about things like game-related violence statistics). In the future, I’m going to try to keep that blog focused on Empires-of-Steel-related stuff.