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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."
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...
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.
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.
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.