Does Videogamer accept emargos for games it can't get early? If so that isn't much of an example sadly. And with games going digital that won't work in the future.

@jesus_phish: So they bought the game, played it to completion, and then banged out a review, all within less than a day? That sounds like a recipe for a terrible review.

I honestly don't care if you're right or wrong. You're definitely not helping anything or improving discourse. I know we aren't going to have a balanced discussion about it.

You can totally hate them, but Polygon found a great way to report on this without breaking embargo ^^.

I cancelled my order and preordered Dragon Age instead. I know I should not preorder anything but I'm playing everything anyway...

Remember that anonymous tip on the bombcast about this game? When they said it took them forever to get to 720p 30 and the bump to 900 brought it down to like 9 fps a while ago. They didn't have enough time for this game clearly.

I admittedly have no idea how this works so take anything I say with a grain of salt but depending on the particulars of the NDA, breaking it may have some sort legal implications and might be something where the legal team at CBSi says they can't break it.

This is true. Certain NDAs are reinforced with legal contracts. Patrick implied in one of his tweets that this one is.

If it wasn't he probably would have broken it by now.

I just got a PS4 update even though I turned it on last night and I didn't get one. I also just got a Unity patch so we'll see what happens.

@fear_the_booboo:

It's weird because I haven't had anything close to the framerate issues in the video through that link.

Or the fact that a site like Giantbomb won't carry the kind of leverage a major website might need to, to lead by example. Ubisoft is a really big company, now.

I think shedding light on it is probably the only actual recourse at this point.

Some people are saying that its internet related - people getting better perf disabling their console's internet. The servers might be working better now. As to why its using the internet, that is another question.

@cloudymusic: They got a copy early because they must know someone who works in a game shop and who sold it to them early. The reviews for both games where pretty good. I don't know why you think they did it in less than a day. It's not difficult to get games before release if you know anyone who works in games retail and it willing to give you a copy. It's not like the copies come in the night before the release by armoured transport.

@milkman - I don't know how it works either other than knowing that by not signing an NDA they can say what they like about the game. I know it's not as easy to do things as it is to say them, but if Pat thinks these sorts of NDAs are bull he should be trying to convince whoever approves it from signing it.

@corevi: Kawaii dewa nai...

Yeah, I could see that if they live in a place where you can reliably get games early. I just know that when GB doesn't get sent a copy for review, they pretty much always have to go buy it on release day like anyone else. Trying to beat embargo in that sort of situation would obviously be a bad call.

In the tutorial and so far everything aside from the load times seem fine. No hitches or pop ins. Maybe when it opens up things fall apart?

The only time they've ever bought a copy early for review purposes was Modern Warfare 2 and Brad had to go to New York to get it.

Same thing happened with Doom 3 in LA in the Gamespot days.

@corevi: also doom 3

Well I just got my copy as part of the buy 2 get 1 deal at Target (my main reason was for Master Chief collection and Sunset Overdrive) and there is a gig patch already. Was this the case during launch or is it being pushed now? Just curious.

@corevi: So isn't Patrick contributing to the problem?

Oh my god, I actually laughed out loud at this. Thanks for making me laugh on this shitty day I'm having!

More truth bombs this time courtesy of Alex.

I don't know but I installed it before playing it and it runs smoothly.

As a caveat I'm still in the tutorials though the game starts with explosions.

@sackmanjones: It was a day-one patch, was pushed with the release.

Makes you wonder how they pulled off that E3 demo.

@mosdl: They accept embargo's if the publishers will give them review copies. In both cases they've gone outside the publisher was because the publisher never responded to them or told them they wouldn't get a copy. You're right that it's not much of an example, but my basic point was they didn't sign an NDA and went ahead and reviewed the games free of that restriction.

Also, it's funny that only last week on the podcast Jeff and Brad where saying that companies don't hold review embargos until launch day because they think the game is bad and that Jeff said Gamespot data showed the highest traffic for reviews is on launch day. They both said that in neither of their experience did a launch day embargo mean a bad game. To them, if reviewers didn't get a game at all it was a sign of a publisher/dev not having faith in the game.

Ubisoft is losing so much of my trust on a day-to-day basis it seems like. I was already not excited for this, because I didn't feel like it was that improved from the formula. But now, I really don't want it. Not even as a Black Friday purchase.

I don't see how buying the game at midnight last night would have helped them get around an embargo for noon today.

Apparently it was prerendered. Just like Watch Dogs.

NDA till noon basically puts the game solely at the mercy of regular people playing it, so Im not sure why Ubi thought that would do them too many favors.

How bummed is Jeff, Destiny was a lock for disappointment of the year, now its a 3 hour debate.

Now I'm in the city and while they framerate seems stable the pop-in has become noticeable. Based on what I've played so far everything seems like an over exaggeration since it's basically a slightly worse version of openworld jank. Still should be criticized for the embargo thing and for not having this game at 100% stability but it seems like people are being too harsh.

COnsidering how much most of those guys already didn't like Assassin's Creed I doubt that.

7.8 on IGN

I'm holding off till a sale but I still think this looks very promising. Can't be any worse then Assassin's Creed III: Liberation and I still enjoyed that.

@jesus_phish: If they don't sign the NDA, then they don't get the game. Then they're buying the game today and we have the same problem.

They're in their mid thirties, save for Dave they kind of don't love anything anymore. But disappointment of the year is meant to represent the overall feeling going in measured against reality, not just personal disappointments. Like, Beyond Earth is my personal disappointment for the year and it didn't even do anything terrible, it just didnt click like I hoped it would. But people in general seemed to like the game ok. I think Unity, especially in Europe and especially on the heels of Black Flag, had a lot of goodwill to burn through with the general public.

Glad I sold the AC U code for XB1 when I did. Was planning on playing this on PC but seeing how shit it runs everywhere I think I'll be waiting for Dragon Age instead. Great job, Ubi for a shit year

Also can't believe the lack of shadows, amount of pop-ins, ugly textures in the distance... For every "Wow this looks gorgeous" there's at least 10 "Eww what's that in the back", hoping patches will fix things but eh, thank god for Far Cry and Dragon Age next week.

I've already pointed out another review site who are buying the game themselves before release and getting around the NDA issues that way. If you don't want to play by Ubi's rules, don't. Stop reporting on them and their stuff, stop reviewing their games. The reason Ubi do this is because like Patrick says, they know they can. Ubi know that games sites need to be able to review their games to drive page clicks. As long as reviewers and sites play into this it'll keep happening. So if Patrick wants something to change, lead by example.

Everyone was in love with Destiny before it came out though. Unity seemed like a maybe for everyone.

They could have done that themselves instead of relying on the streamers and youtubers they like to dismiss so much at times. The most important part of the message about this game is to hold out for now because of the bugs and terrible performance. You don't need a full blown review to get that message out.

Embargoes in the information age are anachronistic to begin with. This did them no favors, so let's not act like Ubi is trying to pull a fast one here. They put thousands of manhours into this and it probably just needed a month of optimization but corporate had a release day locked in. The first people on the chopping block for a bad reception are at the bottom, but Im sure those people did a fine job. The dummies who thought a 12 hour embargo would do the game any favors should be fired, cus now people are getting soured on the whole thing going "fuck this, getting my money back from steam waiting a week for Dragon Age". The dummies near the top who thought "we can patch QA in later we put too much marketing in to move the release date" should be fired, cus negative word of mouth is going to negate all that marketing at a certain point, even if they manage to fix it in a couple weeks. I don't want to take a shit on the whole thing and then read 200 people were let go in a month, you know.

This to me feels like a shortsighted top-down blunder. A "the posters are up already, the marketing momentum can carry us through negative feedback while we rush some optimization patches out" type thing. All they had to do was delay this thing, corporate made the gamble that releasing a broken game on time with the heavy marketing push would net them more than releasing a polished game in January. Im guessing it won't pay off and a good chunk of people at the bottom will be made to fall on their swords as an answer to these middling reviews, which from what I read are bemoaning technical things almost exclusively.

@jesus_phish: I definitely don't disagree that publishers have way too much power over what games sites write and when they write it. But it's not that simple and not that easy to just get a game ahead of release with enough time to actually get a review done. Maybe this site you're talking about was able to do it but it's not at all a reliable practice.

I regret buying this..... haven't felt regret for buying a game in ages.

Pre-loading means they could get in front of at least anyone who didn't preorder. You don't need a full review to say that there are performance issues.

The only time I have had performance issues was climbing up a ledge to get up to the Assassin bat signal thing to open up the Assassin crypt. I have had the game crash two times, and got caught in geometry once. Not had any pop-ins or weird things like that, a few "funny" glitches I guess but nothing major besides the crashes. Online worked well with randoms too.

Feels weird to have gear and stats matter in an AC game as well, and the story is definitely a retread of AC2/Brotherhood but in the French Rev, but the French Revolution is rad so it's fine. Overall it feels like a reimagining of AC2 minus Desmond.

And you don't need a professional games writer to say that either. The people who are so tuned in that they would be paying attention to first impressions rolling out at 1AM are already getting that information from users on forums and entertainers like Totalbiscuit. That still doesn't help all the people who preordered. That still doesn't help the people who don't pay attention to games stuff outside of reviews (who are numerous, apparently).

What's worse, every once in a blue-moon a publishers pulls shit like this and people who aren't paying particular attention get fucked? Or everyone gets fucked because now game reviews are pushing themselves to play every game at midnight and beat it as fast as possible and crank out their review as fast as possible to get it published as fast as possible before it becomes completely irrelevant two days later?

@sackmanjones: Have you ever done one of those deals before? I'm wondering if they'll let me exchange unity for dragon age next week it I leave it unopened.

The website GamingBolt is trying hard to convince people that the performance issues don't exist on PS4. But I've seen enough video footage from the PS4 to know that that's absolute bullshit.

Seems inconsistent because for me it has been steady, before and after the day 1 patch. It's been pretty fine for me, clearly not 60 at all but always playable. Also if these people have a PS4 they can make a video pretty easily.

I've never heard of that site before so they are probably trash.

Feeling feisty to spread more hate huh? With all the subtlety of a freight train people just throw a perfectly reasonable conversation into disarray because of compulsions to never miss a chance to spread contempt for your fellow gamer. It would seem to me that performance issues in a game should be a neutral topic after all it effects any and everyone who wants to play the video game. So hungry for the drama that you would go so far to manufacture it in your mind certainly seems disappointing and I hate to link it but the reddit where most of GG congregates has boosted this issue to the front of their boards, not that it should matter because like I said... This effects everyone.