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On Champions Of Norrath, Forgiving Game Reviewers?
Thanks to Curmudgeon Gamer for its article discussing technical problems with PS2 title Champions of Norrath: Realms of Everquest, and why official reviews of the game didn't seem to mention those problems. According to the writer, who had been "experiencing frustrating lock-ups and hangs which have caused the loss some of my progress through the game", it turns out that "two of the reviewers did see the game hang and didn't mention it in their reviews." However, he argues: "That's a judgment call, really, and since each saw the problem precisely once I can understand leaving it out of the review", and ends by suggesting that "the real burden rests not on the shoulders of the reviewers but on the creators of the game and, potentially, the console itself."
...of the game industry. when they rely on the industry to get previews of the games, that's what happens. they all try to get the reviews first, even if the game was just headed for production. and they get press reviews so they can't even know which annoying bugs make it to the final release(and oh yeah, game publishers do ship products they're fully aware of being buggy).
well, at least they PLAYED the game, not so long ago it was pretty common that magazines made fake reviews that were in reality based on just few screenshots so that they could stay on top of the business.
as a sidenote, anyone know a reliable, good review site not afraid to say that "those fucking rocketthrower handed mutant monsters suck big time and the plot is a joke"?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I am currently working my way through this game and have experienced the missing graphics bug several times. The bug caused most or all of the background textures to be completely black. The only thing you could see would be things that moved, like your character and the monsters you were fighting. The ground, walls, rocks, etc were completely invisible when I experience this. Although sometimes it would recover on it's own, most of the time I reloaded the game to correct.
It seemed to happen most frequently when I had been playing for about an hour and had changed areas, causing the game to load a different tileset.
..."the real burden rests not on the shoulders of the reviewers but on the creators of the game and, potentially, the console itself."... Look, its not our fault we didn't tell you about the problems we encountered with the game. If anything they should mention that on the packaging. Or, failing that, on the box the PS2 itself came in. If you bought the game because you read our raving reviews, our job is complete. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go to make a deposit before the bank closes...
This has less to do with game reviews and more to do with journalistic integrity. If a reviewer comes across a serious bug in a game - especially a console game for which a patch is unfeasible - one would think that such a bug would get mentioned in the review.
Now the question is, was the bug not mentioned because the reviewer didn't consider it to be important, or forgot about it, etc. (e.g., just crappy reporting)? Or was the reviewer under pressure or edited by his superiors so as not to report bugs in the article, due to the financial pressures (no free copies, etc.) that a large console game company could potentially exert on a small online review site (e.g., complete lack of journalistic integrity)?
In the good old days, a problem encountered by one console gamer would likely be replicated by others. This, however, is not the case anymore. Dual-layer DVDs are known to cause problems on both consoles that facilitate them - X-Box and Playstation 2. Unfortunately, these problems don't affect everybody, so the reviewers could've just assumed that they were the unlucky ones.
I'm really glad this story is on Slashdot, and I'm glad someone had the balls to write a story about it to begin with.
I haven't trusted game reviews fully since I got an issue of the "Next Generation" magazine after its acquisition and relaunch, and Ultima IX got 5 out of 5 stars. Ports of old Atari 2600 games with nothing but the graphics updated were getting 3 and 4 stars.
However, I let myself get suckered into buying this game AND a PS2 to play it (since Dark Alliance II was cancelled for Gamecube). There are glitches galore, more than I've seen in most recent PC game releases even.
The tech support forums are a joke and a half. The official Sony reps make a point of only replying to messages with 'solutions' to the glitching problems in them - they will resolutely ignore 20 questions regarding recalls, refunds, QA, lens cleaning, whatever, and promptly respond to any message saying "eject the CD and push it back in and the game might work", saying "Thanks for your help, we've also found this works." I'd rather they not reply at all, that sort of reply just makes me want to strangle them ala Homer Simpson.
Champions is a pretty cool game... too bad it could potentially wreck your PS2, or lock up at any time a spell effect or loading screen appears. There should really be a recall.
What I find most entertaining is that the Everquest series is still buggy as shit. It was when the first version went 1.0 and continues to this day even in console titles (a bug in a console title is unpatchable).
The Everquest programmers suck ass. A cool title (for some people) but quality programming you get not.
I think it was pressure on both the studio to get the game releases and pressure on the press by the publisher to ignore the bugs in the review.
The game has graphic bugs and freezes there is no one denying that. Supposedly they used some sort of modified DVD9 format which may be part of the problem. I'm not sure if the modded DVD9 format was used for software protection or just to cram more info on the disc. However these bugs are so big that both the studio and the publisher had to have known about them. So you have to point a finger at the studio and the publisher for releasing the game too soon. In this case Snowblind and Sony. Snowblind's last game (Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance) was rock solid on the Ps2. So I'm guessing it wasn't the incompetance of the studio but rather the Sony likely pushed them to make the release date. There were rumors floating around to that effect because supposedly snowblind wanted to optimize the online code to support modem connections, but Sony told them not to bother and make it broadband only. On top of that Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 2 was relased about a week before this one. Sounds like Sony pushing to make sure Champions had a chance to snuff BGDA2.
As far as the reviewers go, well Sony is the biggest dog in the console arena. There may as well been some pressure to give it a good review. I'm sure they probably told the reviewers the version they had may have bugs because it's a beta, etc. etc. Now that the real version is out most reviewers with major sites probably don't have the time or inclination to question Sony. It will only help to ensure that you don't get the next exclusive preview of the next huge game Sony is releasing.
The saddest thing is this game is really great. I played though it once and I still want to play it again. My only real gripe is the freezing which has made me paranoid about saving. Otherwise this game rocks. The graphic glitches are annoying, but they go away in about a second. Sony should have let Snowblind do the job right. Perhaps with Champions 2 they'll let them do their job.
Just kidding. Blame the computer scientists.
The weakness isn't in the reviewers, or the testers, or even the coders. The complexity of much modern software is such, that the languages are inadaquate to manage the tasks set befor them. Buffer overflows, as attacks, or just unintended events, they are par for the course now. I've only had one game that would crash my old NES, none that would nuke my Atari. But as the consoles enjoyed ever more complicated titles, ever more errors with ever increasing severity have made their way into games, at every level.
It would be easy to see how a reviewer would assume that it's a manifestation of an abberation increasingly common in games and beneath mention. I've had Crazy Taxi crash and wipe out spectacular runs, and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when I just barely compleated a infuriating crazy box. I've had RPG's with event triggers kick me into a spot where I can trigger the necessary event to proceed. Crashes that eat saved games. And let's not forget Phantesy Star Online and the horrors it brought.
People accepted Windows crashing.* They will accept console games crashing if presented with no better alternative. One segment of the population might have just reached the plateau first. Small wonder.
Kick the reviewers in the nuts if you want. Cry shenanigans and let loose the children in grade four. They're but a symptom of a much larger problem. No black helicopters needed.
* Blah blah Linux. BS, I'm using it right now, and there is plenty of "give up and die" or "Whoops!" as prefered modes of failure to go around.
But a little bit farther back you have a real test of game reviewing. "Hidden & Dangerous" was widely reviewed as a great game. Maybe it was. No mere mortal ever managed to play it.
It had a gigantic number of game killing bugs. So many it would seem impossible that reviewers couldn't have noticed. So yes afterwards game reviewers admitted that yes they had encountered the bugs but had decided not to mention it since the game was so great.
Only by the time the sequel was being previewed did game rags start to really talk about the piece of crap the original was.
I said this before, "game reviews ain't worth the paper they are printed on wich is really bad news for online reviews". Until people start to realize that game reviewing includes product testing game reviews will continue to be little more then some idiot being paid to blub about games he liked or hated.
As for wich reviews are honest? Demos. Tells you 99% if what you need to know.
Most people I know treat game reviews as advertising. No different then an "making of" program on the latest movie. We use other gamers to review games.
Should the game industry care? Well yes, even better then demos is downloading the entire game. Perfect review. You can only sell crap so many times before I start thinking that stealing from lying scumbags isn't all that bad. You don't think I am going to pay for a single game ever from Illusion soft or take 2 again? Let them first patch the product they sold me.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I also saw the lockups while playing it. The solution is simple. Eject the disc and put it back in and the game will continue to function without a problem. A real problem I found though that isn't talked about enough in reviews is the shoddy casting system. You have two buttons to cast spells with, and you HAVE to use those two buttons (There is no casting directly from the spell book) So if you have 2 defensive spells you want on as well as your two attack spells ( If you play a mage for example) You have to continually rebind the passive spells to Circle or Triangle, cast them, rebind the attack spells, and repeat 30 seconds later when the defensive spell runs out. The game requires you to push SIX times on the controller to cast one defensive spell. I wish they could somehow release a patch to allow casting from the spell book.
There are two places I look to see if a game is good. One is GameRankings. They have lots of really small sites that they list, who I trust far more, and also always have tons of user reviews, which are generally useless but not always.
The other place I look to is Penny Arcade. Now, they don't talk about nearly every game that comes out, but when you do choose to talk about a game, they're as honest as can be. They will mention bugs. Just a few weeks ago Tycho said he had to get a no-CD crack just to get the game to start, even with his legit copy. No big reviewer would ever mention that, but isn't it kind of important? Not only are they scathingly honest if need be, but they really understand that there is no game in the world that everybody will love. They understand that some of the games that they enjoy, well, most people think they're terrible. They don't really write about whether a game is good, they write about what's to like about the game, what's not to like, and whether you, the reader are likely to like it in general.
Funny how the people that don't consider themselves journalists are usually the best ones.
If there is actually a problem. You all know the stupid user syndrome where a particular problem occurs due to their inept use of the system.
I saw there were hundreds of posts on this over at the Sony board, but I would guess that millions of copies were sold. If millions of people had issues, there would be a recall. I wonder if the people having probelms are doing stuff like modding their systems or using Game Sharks.
Being technology people, you have to wonder.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
I would like to say that my copy crashed all the time. I would like to say that the graphics dropped all the time. Heck, I'd like to say that the disc just didn't work. Then I'd have a big reason to hate it.
But alas, it's just a bunch of penny-ante stuff that adds up and makes CoN so annoyingly bad. The biggest offender overall, though, is the drop system. Defeated a monster in the tree-tops in the first fight...he drops a magical dagger with 32-40 damage + lightning damage. At this point, I'm like "whoa." Three acts later, I still haven't seen anything as good as that dagger.
And heck, what about the pathetic bosses? Dodge, hit, dodge, hit. They were built so that a group of people could just gang up and beat on them from all sides. That's it. Even in singleplayer (Seeing as how dialup play, and hence online play I could access, was sadly left out) it was painfully obvious that the boss characters were simply regular enemies with stronger attacks.
Meh.
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
everyone keeps reading them.
I think this contrasts greatly with possibly reviewer ommitance between two SOE products: PlanetSide and CoN.
Snowblind has said that when they burned CoN, they weren't seeing the lockups and glitches that consumers are - which means it's entirely possible that reviewers didn't see them too (as many of them don't get the consumer version).
PlanetSide on the other hand, had technical issues up the wazoo on it's get go, and there was only one version to play there. Many of the bugs were acknowledged by the devs as big old Oopsies.
But then again, reviewers probably had another excuse for the version of PS they played.
It was just a beta.
I think the problem is this need for all reviews to be published the very day a game comes out. I think anything printed on that time line should still fall into the realm of preview, whereas what I would like to read is a review of a copy some reviewer got off a shelf, not in a publisher's envelope. Unrealistic - probably...but definately more accurate.
But for the record, I love CoN (almost as much as I kinda hate SOE). My GF, her sister and I played it for hours yesterday - no real problems. But clearly these problems DO exist, and I have to say - they're indicative of a Sony Online Entertainment product.
Okay, I bought this game. I have 2 PS2s. One is faulty (it won't read ANY media on CD) and one is mostly not (since it's mine, and not my family's, I've kept much better care of it.) Anyway, when I bought the game, it rather consistently locked up in the faulty one, eventually refused to load. In the working one it loaded and ran, with the occasional lockup. I have some lense cloths (of the disposable, alcohol coated variety) that I wiped down the disc thoroughly with, and since then have had no problems on the working or non-working PS2 at all. Admittadly, I had to clean the disc about 4 times, but since then (probably about 4 days after release) I haven't had a single lockup while playing.
I was really looking forward to playing 4-player ChampionsOfNorrath but ended up quite disappointed. I, too, have had the game crash but what was way worse was running into a quest glitch a third of the way through and having to start the entire freakin' game over! That's unforgivable, especially in a console game.
.02,
My other major gripe in Norrath is a mind-bogglingly stupid (and simple) design issue. Every single little creature you kill (and most of the barrels you smash) drops treasure, 99% of it being crap items. How ants and beetles manage to carry around suits of armor and battle-axes, I have no idea. In a 4-player game you end up spending, I kid you not, HALF of the freakin' game in the inventory screen, or the store. Of course, only 2 players at a time can view their inventory or the buy/sell screens, which means the other 2 players are impatiently twiddling their thumbs most of the time. It honestly felt like we'd bought the wrong game and somehow ended up playing "Barbie's Shopping Mall Adventure Of Norrath". Unfortunately it comes close to ruining the game and our fourth player actually quit in disgust and went home on the first night. We're now down to three, which makes the inventory stuff a tiny bit more manageable.
The quests themselves aren't that great, either, and the game desperately needs compass indicators for the quests. You spend quite a bit of time wandering around, trying to figure out where you're supposed to go.
It's a shame, because I can see a pretty decent game underneath except for some really stupid design decisions that would have been trivial to fix.
We had WAY more fun with D&D:Heroes on the XBox, which for some reason received much poorer reviews than CON.
My
Brien Voorhees
official reviews of the game
Official? Uhh...these were just a few fan websites with delusions of grandeur. Just because something appears on the web doesn't suddenly make it "professional".
I've played right through the game once and got almost halfway through a second time before growing bored with it. Offhand I'd guess this is about 20 hours of play. My system (bought in April 2001 and used a great deal) is not modded nor do I own a gameshark.
I've seen the loading screen crash once - very early on in fact. When I ejected the disc and put it back in the game recovered perfectly. I've seen the missing tiles problem quite a bit more. The game is almost constantly loading from the DVD and in my opinion makes heavier demands of the PS2 optical drive than any other game - certainly much more than I would ever dare to do in my own code. As such I am unsurprised that it has disc-related issues.
There will be a great many false-positives and false-negatives about these errors. You're right about stupid user syndrome but for each of those people there is at least one person who will assume their PS2 overheated or there was a power spike or they bumped the table.
The one part of this that I don't really understand is why they used a dual-layer DVD. It's a pain in the ass to make and test a dual-layer game and the disc doesn't appear to hold more data than would fir on a single-layer disc. I was also slightly surprised to see the disc doesn't have the 6 PS logos on its underside.
Graham
There have been a number of games in the recent past that follow the pattern "Excellent reviews, mediocre or bug-strewn game".
My personal solution?
In common with many of the posters, keeping a close eye on Penny Arcade hasn't let me down yet, while Metacritic is clearly a definite bookmark. I now pre-order VERY few games, mainly because I want to see what the general public think of a game before I splash out my hard-earned loot.
Look, sometimes even bad publicity is good publicity. Anything from Ebert is good for a movie; just to hear him lambast something will create ticket sales. The worse the lambasting the better, after a certain point, I have to imagine.
More to the point, Ebert's earned the financial independance to be able to make these statements. You don't get to come into the business cold issuing the same reviews that he does -- or rather you do, but possibly at your own professional peril.
I recently heard (last month or so) something on NPR about a critic who wasn't getting invited to screenings because he wouldn't give fluffy, positive interviews. He likened it to a trade-off (my paraphrase) where you could be counted on to give the required sound-bite/quote needed to slap on the advert in exchange to the early access you needed to write the reviews that you need to, well, heck, feed yourself as a reviewer. I believe the fellow was from NYC.
Grade inflation isn't just in the schools. People need good grades to make the quick buck, which is what corporations are scrambling for, on the whole, today. Movie houses indirectly pay reviewers to say that [positive, fluffy] crap you see blazened across movie promos in your local paper ("American Wedding is as funny as Cats! No, wait..."). People like Ebert are high enough on the totem pole that they have another set of rules.
You should ask your local paper's movie reviewer for a more realistic picture. It'd also be interesting to know what the reviewing business was like when Ebert was starting out, what connections he had, and what his reviews looked like. It could be a new era in grade inflation across the board. Heck, recently an entire section of freshman English at my alma mater got A's. Many other classes, freshman comp and above, had 70-80% A's & B's. That's not a bell curve, that's a lovefest.
Btw, see the new Trump show for a great example of a guy confident enough to have risen above the kissarse stage of business. I realize the show's not reality, but I feel when he's talking over his selection, he's being Trump, not Trump-for-TV. What a shame is that grade inflation works to get you to a certain level (let's call it "Politics and the Peter Principle"), and above that all the things you really wish were important finally take hold.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I've gotten as far as Act II with a Dark Elf Shadowknight, and I've seen a few of the bugs the article refers to:
1) Lockup bug on loading screen: This has happened to me a couple times, and ejecting the CD and putting it back in seems to "jump start" the game into working again.
2) Graphics bug: Occassionally when the maps feature a lot of textures, I'll get the "black screen" on the edges. Seems to fix itself after awhile, or if I exit the game and reload.
3) Sound bug: Background sounds and music intermittently stop and start, cut off in the middle, etc. Yeah, it does. It's annoying, but not game-stopping.
Other than that, I find the game pretty fun. It's a console RPG, little thinking required. The Shadowknight has some cool abilities, like disease DoTs and Lifetap, but most of the strategy devolves to a hit-and-run.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
Really I never trust a review because of how much advertising potential a magazine can loose by bad mouthing a game by a certain publisher.
To Make sure that the game is of good quality I always rent first for a few bucks, then if there are no problems and I like the game I consider buying it. If the game can be finished in the rental period then I suppose that would have to be a personal call for replay value, or if still unsure, Rent again and make sure.
If the game you want can't be rented. Leave it, it certainly isn't worth it if the game publishers don't want to promote it that way. It usually signifies that there is something to hide. It may cost you 10 bucks more but in the long run it will save 100s because of games bought that were crap or were boosted because of magazine hype for advertising money.
- my $.02? - you can't have it...it's all I have!!
I agree with you about Sony, I think they are worse than either Microsoft or Nintendo as far as how they treat their consumers (yes, I know it should be customers, tell that to Sony). In fact, if Bill Gates' nightmare ever does come true and Sony comes to dominate computers and computer related technology, well, let's just say that "the living will envy the dead."
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)