Grognard66

Nice work by Patrick Klepek - the only real journalist in this industry.

Technically, Activision has every right to monitor their emails, work cell phones, etc. and this is actually more common than some of you might realize (my last few employers all told employees upfront that all their emails were being monitored as well as the sites they visited).

Having said that, Kotick is a jerk and is one of the worst things ever to happen to the industry. I've never understood all of the animosity towards EA when Activision is infinitely more slimy and dismissive towards it's customers and employees.

I think some of you are getting confused. KOA: Reckoning was made by Big Huge Games in Maryland, which was purchased by 38 studios; the game was well into development when they got bought and it was adjusted to the KOA universe towards the end of development. KOA:Reckoning was likely profitable on it's own.

However, the financial troubles for 38 studios most likely stem from the fact that it's taking them forever to launch their primary product, the KOA MMO. They've had hundreds of employees in New England working for years without a single product to show for it. Sadly, the MMO model they founded the studio on is dwindling as Free-to-play is the favored model now and this is likely impacting their forecasts, leading to this crises.

Monkey see, Monkey do...

I wonder if Kratos gets really angry in this one.

@Curufinwe said:

@Grognard66 said:

So much rage and drama to little purpose.

Like the the rest of your awful, whiny post.

Like the rest of the children creating this nonsense, you foolishly equate being snarky with actually having a substantive debate about something. The rest of your immature posts only offer further evidence.

So much rage and drama to little purpose. If only this amount of focus and action could be applied to something that actually mattered. Games are art and as such there are always going to be different interpretations and varying degrees of acceptance or enjoyment based on each individuals unique personality and life experiences. These drama queens filing FTC complaints, etc represent the worst of the entitlement culture which has become one of the unfortunate consequences of the internet era. Guess what kids?, sometimes you buy something and end up disappointed - s**t happens, so get over it.

I haven't finished the game yet, but I could care less if the last hour or two completely suck. I've thoroughly enjoyed the 19 hours I've put into the game so far; so in my book, I realized solid value from this purchase and the experience is in-line with my expectations. I remember people being disappointed about the last boss battle in BioShock and the ending movies, but the disappointment didn't spiral out of control to this ridiculous degree. This is a very dangerous precedent being established here. It's ironic that the same people who criticize focus-tested games are effectively doing the same thing now by trying to get the artists to change their original vision to match the expectations of some customers. There's a reason these guys are game developers and you aren't. If you don't like what they did, don't buy their next game. Meanwhile, grow up!

The problem with selling to a huge corporation is that while the current management at Gamespot seems to "get it", they can easily be replaced tomorrow by another group of fools like the one's that fired Jeff last time. If nothing else, I guess the Giant Bomb crew can just start another website if that happens.

@zoozilla said:

@Grognard66 said:

What I find most surprising is that this didn't come up in any of the reviews for the game and that this game had an even higher average rating that Uncharted 2. Shooting is the game mechanic used most often in this series (I had almost 500 enemies shot and the time spent shooting greatly outweighed the platforming, puzzles, etc.) so how could it rate better than the last one when the most basic game mechanic was demonstrably worse than the previous release?

The shooting mechanic was only "demonstrably worse" to those that had been playing Uncharted 2 religiously and were had intimate knowledge of the gunplay's intricacies. Most reviewers (and the focus group testers) didn't have that, so the gunplay seemed fine. It wasn't about the gunplay being "better" or "worse," just more or less like Uncharted 2.

I hadn't played Uncharted 2 in over a year and never played it religiously, but I knew in the first few minutes of Uncharted 3 that something had changed for the worse with the shooting mechanic.

What I find most surprising is that this didn't come up in any of the reviews for the game and that this game had an even higher average rating that Uncharted 2. Shooting is the game mechanic used most often in this series (I had almost 500 enemies shot and the time spent shooting greatly outweighed the platforming, puzzles, etc.) so how could it rate better than the last one when the most basic game mechanic was demonstrably worse than the previous release?

I suspect when we look back on this Holiday Season in about 6-8 months the general consensus will be that the enthusiast press over-rated quite a few games...

Another quality article by Klepek. Why is it that scoring controversies only seem to come from juvenile Playstation supporters this generation (either complaining a PS3 exclusive got too low a score or a 360 game got too high a score or messing with aggregators like Metacritic against 360 exclusives)?

Maybe they feel defensive and embattled because of the struggles Sony has suffered this generation and lack enough self-confidence to live with their purchasing decisions?