Obviously this is a current hot topic, and it is just as obvious that some people don't get it. I figured I'd wade in with my thoughts on the matter of PC game reviews.
Firstly, it is my most adamant belief that
you can only review what you get in the box. This means no patches, no mods. As far as digital distribution is concerned, with stuff like Steam and Eternity's Child, you should only be reviewing the initial release, not any subsequent revision.
Obviously this makes things difficult, because in some cases v1.0 (original release) won't always be available. In the case of Eternity's Child, Reverend Anthony and Conrad Zimmerman both
reviewed the initial release, which is what people, myself included, paid money for.
The fact that the game has since been patched does not count.
The initial release that involved an actual purchase was unplayable. This is not hyperbole, this is fact:
the jump button did not work more than half the time.
In a platform game.
This is not a small error. The game was
UNPLAYABLE.
No gameplay = no game = no score worth a damn.
While criticisms of the art may have been a factor (it looks great in stills but animates terribly) and the actual physics in game were atrocious (jumping and movement felt like a flash game or a cheap NES mascot platformer), the core problem (as you no doubt noticed, they repeated themselves enough) was that the game was fundamentally broken.
"It has been patched!" you say.
"Change your mind! And you review score!"
No.
If we start counting patches, when do we stop? Do we stop when the bugs in the initial release have been fixed? Do we stop when the bugs from the first patch have been fixed? Do we stop after the first round of mods that add extra content? Is there a grace period of, say, one year, for modders to add quality to our purchase?
No. None of the above. You can only review what
everyone gets. Not everyone will download the patches and play the same mods. Imagine reviewing Oblivion if you counted patches and additional content, without even touching the mods. The game wouldn't have been reviewed for over a year!
Hold the review, Hamish! Little Johnny hasn't finished his Horse Cock mod yet...
Imagine reviewing Ninja Gaiden on X-Box even. Additional content is available to download, adding new weapons, costumes and missions. Should we go back and alter reviews accordingly, or keep the review only for the content on the game disc? Should we all go back and download all the latest mods and patches for games we long since stopped playing because they might have gotten better since?
Review policy conundrums aside, whether or not you agree with the idea of only reviewing the initial release and not counting patches or mods, there is one very simple thing to note here: By Luc's own admission, there was no QA done. They released a product
without first checking to see if it worked.
That's your 1.0 right there. He has no one to blame but himself.
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In before Heretic comes to suck Luc's cock.
Trust was abused here. Something was put up for sale without it being ready. This is not a "small issue", this is an abuse of the fundamental relationship between creator and consumer, and I would advise anyone to be wary of purchasing something from someone so bitter about the review for an incomplete yet purchasable product.
This is why I prefer Japanese developers because they develop games with an arcade mentality, meaning that they release games like they would an arcade cabinet and once arcade cabinets are out they can't be fixed and so have to be as perfect as possible from the get go (unless they are used for another purpose like balance testing in Street Fighter 4)
The whole release the game, see the bugs, patch and fix that happens in PC games is bullshit. Unfortunately it's spreading to consoles to :-(
Also, newsflash: Dtoid was practically founded on 4chan principles. The stories Ted could tell you would blow your mind. Did you forget "Who the fuck is Jim Sterling?" and "Psh, semantics"? I hardly see how this could be turning into /v/ when it had the lose principles to begin with, just with a lot less suck and good writing.
More ontopic, how can you even release a game after working on it for a year or so and then patch the worst bug within a day? HOW? That's like going into Iraq based on WMD's and then not finding any WMD's... and then acting like it's no biggie.
Oh.
Anyways, I am fine with insulting a game developer if he's being a douche. You know he's a douche, I know he's a douche. What do I say to douches? Fuck off. I don't need them hanging around, being whiny bitches. If there was a legitimate complaint, I would have understood, but when he's clearly in the wrong, I feel like calling him on it because he doesn't understand why he's wrong. At worst, a professional developer would say he felt the review was too low. Instead, he tried to divert attention away, personally insult the reviewers, and blame other people. In addition, he refused the to be open to debating the review, sticking with immature attacks. That is not a person I want to see hanging around, and that makes me feel perfectly justified in telling him to fuck off and grow up.
Well played sir.
While I agree that whatever gets sent out of the door damn well deserves to be reviewed in that state...
-but-
it sounds like a patch was sent out within 24 hours to (I think) fixed the issues people had with EC.
Considering the fast nature of the patch (24 hours), I think it does deserve to be included as a thorough after-note in the review. The purpose of these reviews is supposed to be to give honest opinions of a game that is available to the consumer. The nearly-instant release of a patch is something that consumers would receive after reading the review anyway.
Again,I think their original reviews should definitely stand - but since the patch was available before so many people could even read the review, it should definitely be reviewed equally as thoroughly as well.
Again, I don't know all the facts...
As for Agent Moo's game, from talking to the guy, he has a good handle on his game and knows its strengths and weaknesses, so I don't think he'd handle himself like Mr. Benard, who refuses to admit anything is wrong in the vain hope that unwitting people will still buy his game.
This is free speech at work: I have the right to call someone out if I want to. I only want to do that if they're really sucking. I've seen you do it to trolls and failers in the cblogs too. This is no different.
I honestly don't see where we're going with this. You're not going to convince me that I was wrong to speak my mind, and you seem hung up on making yourself feel morally superior by taking the "high road," maybe earning yourself brownie points with...not sure. You started off in this shitstorm by defending Luc, now you admit he's a douche, but you're afraid to call him on it, or are squabbling over the words we can and can't use. I'm just not sure what you're trying to achieve by drawing this out.
RJG, sorry for me and Heretic taking a dump on your blog.
I absolutely love reading what people think of games a month down the line when the luster of AAA releases fade or the player base increases or one of a thousand other things. I hope we can get that kind of long term coverage on more and more games as time goes on.
What I advocate is nothing short of upheaval so I know it can be difficult to agree with and it may be something only possible in a more perfect world. Your position, despite my own personal objections and idealistic hopes, remains very true and the reviews lose none of their validity. They are and will always remain valid for the time they were written in.
Also, I am tempted to make a blog called Eternity's Child with the body composed entirely of song lyrics in paragraph form just to watch the same people say the same things over and over and over.