Socom Confrontation, LittleBigPlanet, even Fable II to some extent. These games all have things in common. They were reviewed by many gaming sites while core components of the game were not finished.
Anyway, i didnt get this idea myself, I just read an article on Kotaku about it and I wanted to share it with all of you. here is a piece of the article:
"How is it that so many people have reviewed LittleBigPlanet? I’m not asking this because the single player levels are so insanely hard (they are), but because a good third of the game still isn’t really playable.
The servers for online sharing just went live two days ago for a total of about eight hours and after running sporadically with glitches, were taken right back offline be Media Molecule. Currently the servers seem back up, but a bit shakey. So how is it that Metacritic was showing yesterday 34 reviews for the game and a metascore of 95?"
(Here is the rest of the article)
Anyway, I definitely feel kind of strange about this. I know many people want timely reviews to help them decide whether or not to purchase a game, (for whatever reason) but part of me thinks that it migh tnot be possible. ON THE OTHER HAND, I think that websites need to start reviewing these games as they are out of the box on the day they ship. Meaning that if a game is broken, review it as broken, regardless of if it is a highly anticipated game or not.
For example, LittleBigPlanet. The games online functionality is pretty much broken or at best barely working for most people, yet many reviews I've read have said that it is one of the key things that contribute to them giving the game a highscore. I don't see how some reviewers can honestly put that out there, knowing that someone may read the review and immediately go out and buy it, only to have the game not work as advertised (or reviewed). Yet this game has been given the benefit of the doubt. Why?
On the other hand, a game like Socom Confrontation. I have read reviews of this game saying that the online is broken and unplayable, again much like LittleBigPlanet. However, unlike that game, it has NOT been given a pass, and has been getting low scores from reviews. Again I ask, why? Part of me feels like some reviews are being inconsistent, while another part of me feels that favoritism is being put out there (which is scary). The same thing happeend with the original Rock Band, where a good deal of the instruments out of the box didn't work, yet most of the reviews didn't reflect tha tin their scores or text. You can't highly recommend a game that is released broken...
I feel alot of ways about this, but what do you think? Should features of a game be taken as is out of the box, or as will be when (hopefully) fixed later?
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