I hope this is just another example of Jeff's terrible taste in games. I loved Max Payne and Alan Wake and everything I have seen about this game looks great.
A 2/5 score for me means he thinks this is a bad or broken game. I find it hard to believe that MS would let Remedy let this out broken or being a bad game.
I have it downloaded so either way I am in, but Jeff's review is a major outlier, and therefore should be taken with a pinch of salt. Not saying everyone else is bought off and Jeff wasn't, it just seems hard to believe that after all this time this game would only be a 2/5.
Thanks for creating an account to throw another hot take on the pile. "Seems hard to believe that after all this time this game would only be a 2/5" - Did you say that about Duke Nukem Forever? "Not saying everyone else is bought off and Jeff wasn't" - That's good, because talking about game reviewers being "bought off" would make you sound like an idiot.
Your welcome.
No I did not say the same for Duke Nukem Forever as it was a well known fact that game was a train wreck well before launch so only an idiot would compare Quantum Break to DNF.
If you think Game sites/Games Writers are never bought off, then you are naive and you seem to have no knowledge of how and why Giantbomb was set up, or your an idiot.
I'm keenly aware of Jeff's history with Gamespot - When the opportunity came for him to clear the air on what led to his firing, he stated unequivocally that there was no problem with the editorial team doing their job objectively, and that the people who let him go were new and unfamiliar with the process, which led them to panic at the publisher push-back. Which is to say, someone who was more familiar with the games reviewing process would *not* have been intimidated by a publisher bitching and moaning about a score and kept the firewall between editorial and business intact. In other words, no games journalist was "bought off" during Gerstmann-Gate.
But that was almost ten years ago - Fast forwarding today, paying for a good review would be throwing money down the toilet for a few reasons:
1) There are so many voices in the space that there is nothing to be gained by skewing one review. It's not going to shift your Metacritic, and no single website has enough eyeballs anymore to make a scheme like this have possible upside for the publisher
2) If a company sought to influence game reviews through cash, it's not something they would do for only one person - They would need to make several offers in order to get reviewers biting. If I work for a website like, let's say, Kotaku, and I get offered money for a better review from a large publisher, I now have a *huge* story that could be career making. In other words, possible gain to the publisher is hugely outweighed by risk to their brand.
3) This is all assuming that a significant portion of reviewers would be open to being "bought." I don't think that's a very safe assumption, considering the people who do this job could usually find other, more lucrative work, but instead they try their best to have their voices heard in a very crowded space because they love what they do. If they sacrifice their integrity for a check, they're risking their own career and audience.
4) It is more effective, in the marketing sense, to "buy off" Twitch streamers with promotional swag and a free copy of the game. They do not need to have the professional scruples that are required if you want to have a career in journalism. Or just give your story to Game Informer, which has a vested interest in pre-selling games, so you'll get glowing preview and review coverage (which is all in self interest, and does not involve them being "bought off")
But you seem to have this whole thing figured out.
@zaldar: I'm pretty sure that publicly diminishing someone's accomplishments because of their race is a racist thing to do. He's essentially saying "Yeah, this guy can play well, and you guys in the press are going to celebrate that, but do you really want to live in a world where black people become interested in golf?" This isn't a slip of the tongue, it's hateful bullshit.
I hope this is just another example of Jeff's terrible taste in games. I loved Max Payne and Alan Wake and everything I have seen about this game looks great.
A 2/5 score for me means he thinks this is a bad or broken game. I find it hard to believe that MS would let Remedy let this out broken or being a bad game.
I have it downloaded so either way I am in, but Jeff's review is a major outlier, and therefore should be taken with a pinch of salt. Not saying everyone else is bought off and Jeff wasn't, it just seems hard to believe that after all this time this game would only be a 2/5.
Thanks for creating an account to throw another hot take on the pile. "Seems hard to believe that after all this time this game would only be a 2/5" - Did you say that about Duke Nukem Forever? "Not saying everyone else is bought off and Jeff wasn't" - That's good, because talking about game reviewers being "bought off" would make you sound like an idiot.
@devise22: I think we all deserve shit-crap like Undertale/Shovel-Knight that all these guys go ga-ga over. Long live nostalgia and shit-art that makes you forget 20 years of tech has got us to this point.. NOT
If you actually work at Sledgehammer on CoD games, I hope you realize that not everybody has the resources to make the type of game you do, and just because they have a lower production value doesn't mean they're "shit-crap."
And your attempt at comedic snark is nostalgic, unfunny shit-crap from *more* than 20 years ago.
I also am a bit disappointed that a game that takes a few chances gets slammed while "more of the same" games like Street Fighter, Trackmania, Halo, Destiny get glowing reviews.
Without even arguing whether those games are "more of the same", every example you gave has a 3 or 4 star review, so they aren't "glowing" reviews.
First of all, I want to thank you for ignoring my (at least) slightly smug tone. I see other people piled on your comment before my post, and it shows great character to react with an open mind when a group of people dismiss your opinion.
I think the key thing you mentioned there is how critical discussion of XBox makes you feel - The bias is actually yours, not Jeff's or the site's. The specific things you cite, the Xbox 1.5 discussion and the Hololens discussion that's gone on since it's announcement, have been dissected from both angles.
While they think the 1.5 problem may help developers make better games, they're not sure if it's a consumer friendly or market-sensible approach to consoles going forward - They have the same outlook on the Playstation 4.5.
Jeff has stated that he thinks AR is, conceptually, a better experience than VR, so it's not that he's ever been down on the idea of Hololens - He just recognizes that, as a consumer product, it is essentially vaporware right now, if only because the viewing surface on the development models isn't large enough to support a robust gaming experience.
What I'm trying to say is, when a human brain has a set opinion, it finds things that align with this opinion unremarkable, while things that don't align with it to be hard to digest, or memorable.
Anyway, thanks for your response, hope you like QB more than Jeff did!
Still buying but damn Jeff, this review was really harsh. I know GB is really in love with hating on Xbox but the game looks completely competent in what it sets out to do. Feel like the 2/5 is coming from Jeff just hating this ideas in this game. It looks like a really polished product. I'm confused.
Wut? They've addressed this countless times - They want all game console makers to be the best they possibly can be, because competition makes better software and hardware for everyone. They aren't "in love" with hating on Microsoft. They praise their good decisions, call them out on their bad decisions. During the last console generation, people said exactly what you're saying now, but about how they love to hate on the Playstation - People like having their purchases justified, and will lash out if they feel the wisdom of their decision is being implicitly challenged by reviews like this. If you watched the 40 minutes of preview footage, you should be able to clearly see the reasons (as cited in this article) that Jeff gave this review score.
@sinjunb@mems1224: If you'll remember the bombcasts of the time, there's a pretty specific reason that Jeff didn't get into The Last of Us, and it wasn't the game's fault. I don't recall him ever saying he didn't like it, just that he couldn't bring himself to want to play it because of his state of mind.
Danny completely missing the YOU'RE bothered me more than it should have though :D
Glad it's not just me haha
That was Dan's fault for not spelling the whole word out. Danny thought he was saying "u're". That module was a lot more clever than I thought it would be at first.
Danny thought that because it's what Dan said. "U Apostrophe R E" = "U'RE", not "YOU'RE". Also at 12:45, Dan says "There are zero batteries" while looking straight at a battery - The only reason they didn't fail that was because there was no distinction between 0 and 1 batteries. Jeff was right, Dan's the weakest link.
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