kuddles

The uncomfortable truth is this: Reviews have no incentive to change until it's audience does.

PC Gamer once took a stand - stating they wouldn't review a game unless they had a physical copy in their hand, so that they knew they were playing the same version that the average gamer would. It ruined their subscriber numbers as they were left printing reviews months after they were relevant. They reverted back pretty quickly.

Gamespot used to actually do just that (maybe they still, I'm not sure). They would hold the review until they could test the online functionality. It never got them any gratitude. Just a lot of complaining online by users about how useless a review was after a game was already out.

Meanwhile, sites get a lot of traffic if their review is up first. Whether or not the review is complete doesn't even factor.

Same reason why sites continue to post rumours based on the littlest amount of information, no matter how many times they get burned or embarrassed about their poor research. If you post the "news", you get a ton of traffic. If you wait until you can find out more about it, you get none of the traffic. And if it turns out you posted a hoax or something incorrect, nobody will remember or care the next time you do it again.

So the issue is the same as with a lot of things: Too many people like to bitch a lot online about the problems with games journalism, but refuse to change their actions to match their words.

All this whining about Gone Home and Bioshock Infinite making everyone's lists. Meanwhile, I still feel like I'm the victim of the most elaborate troll ever devised, because I found The Last of Us to be the most agressively terrible game I've ever played. It's like someone took the melee/stealth combat of Uncharted and tried to make it even clunkier, and wrapped it around some of the most hilariously overbearing and overwritten dialogue ever devised.

I really wish I could comprehend the gameplay complaints. I really do. I'm playing through Tomb Raider right now and am finding the combat to flip flop between being mind-numbingly tedious and occasionally downright terrible. That's how combat is in most single-player campaigns: boring. Meanwhile, I played Infinite and felt it was a breath of fresh air. There was so much tactical variety to keep me interested. I found myself saying "why can't most games play like this?"

@XNaphryz said:

From what I understand, people are upset about the ending because:

- It gives no sense of closure to anything in the game

- It ignores all of your previous choices and essentially gives you one ending

- It forces characters to break from their personalities in a very contrived manner

- It raises numerous questions and creates serious plot holes

- It does not fit with the themes and ideas from the rest of the game and series

I don't think a lot of people would've minded a depressing ending or whatever, as long as it was presented well and provided closure. They just want a well produced ending, not necessarily a "happy" one.

The entire game is closure. Right before the final ending sequence, there is actually a lot of long, drawn out material where they let you talk to every main character in the game.

The ending fits perfectly with the themes of the game. I don't know why people are arguing otherwise. Everything involved with who created the Reapers was foreshadowed constantly throughout the series.

A good ending to a long series does raise numerous questions. I thought that was interesting. I have yet to see a single plot hole that isn't a person who clearly has no idea what a "plot hole" actually is making false claims.

The people complaining about the ending want a "happy" one, and everything they are arguing otherwise is a convoluted mess trying desperately to explain otherwise.

Funny thing: I didn't like the ending because I felt it was too hamfisted, but apparently it wasn't simplistic enough for some people.

I love all the typical negative whiners insisting that they know how the "business" works when they are talking out of their ass with speculation, which I guess is typical for comments here. If you think they aren't happy about the decision and are trying to save face, why would they bother making a 30 minute video of them being excited and happy and lying through their teeth while eating pancakes in a living room?

Also, it wastheirdecision. Shelby ran the company, but both Dave and Jeff are significant stakeholders in the company. Seriously, do you think Jeff would be allowed to publicly announce the reason behind his firing if they were in a horrible situation with CBS with no leverage?

At least give it a couple months before making such wild accusations.

I'm not even sure this constitutes as a bug.

For the past three days, downloading or streaming HD videos on the Whiskey site has been incredibly slow to the point of being unusable (we're talking around 80kb/s).

I thought maybe there was just a problem with the site, then on a lark I tried downloading something only on the "High" settings, and low and behold the speed is perfectly fine on those, which baffled me. My download speed is also fine at other sites.

I'm on Firefox 6.0, although I tried Internet Explorer and encountered the same issue.

The funny part is that the game uses Steamworks as it's DRM, so even after tampering with it, Gamestop is still essentially promoting a competitor.

@heat said:

because its terrible, nobody wants to listen to a spergy question hesitantly asked

Seriously. Listening to the call-ins on the Happy Hour already makes me want to kill myself.

Yeah, I'ld rather hear a little bit of background noise then hear a Bombcast that always sounds low energy after the first hour because the crew is trying to ignore their discomfort. Seriously, on last's week's episode you could tell the air was getting too stale for them to concentrate properly by the end.

You know what else could account for some of that 3 million? THE REST OF THE WORLD. Why do people constantly forget that NPD only tracks US sales?

@ZeroCast said:

Shouldn't the NDP Group or any other organization be responsible for recording how many copies were sold digitally? I mean, is there anything stopping them or is it that they don't count digital distribution as a legitimate way of buying the game?

Yes, there is something stopping them. Digital distributors aren't willing to provide that information at all. Valve has already come out and said they aren't ever going to release that info to the public.