rudderless wrote:I can understand why events like Driv3rgate might foster a certain amount of distrust, but these are rare, isolated incidents that aren't indicative of common review practice. It's like denouncing film criticism based on the work of Alan '10/10' Frank.
The Driv3rgate one is always brought up, to the point of tedium in fact - & okay it's probably the most blatantly wrong score of all time - but there are so many other reviews over the last 20 years or so that are preposterous, alleged shenanigans or not. And they don't even have to be scores, they're just poorly written crap from people that don't know the subject matter and evidently haven't played the game properly.
When you've read the same "men in pants" joke and homophobic remarks about wrestling games for the 500th time, you realise you're reading a preview or review from someone who evidently has great disdain for the subject matter and the game, so it begs the question what the hell he's doing playing it in the first place. That's not to say nobody covers it properly, as Oliver Hurley, Ben Wilson & Matthew Pellett (all from Future) know what they're doing, & they're actually fans.
NASCAR is another one that features the witty "everyone turns left" gag, or NFL games the tired "fake football" cliché (something that again doesn't happen any longer in OPM as Ben Wilson is a massive American football fan).
And if we move off reviews & onto news, more specifically trade magazine MCV, Ben Parfitt makes so many bloody mistakes it's turning into a running joke. I've noticed it, Mafro's noticed it, Shadow's noticed it, people on NeoGaf have noticed it. He runs a story, completely without factual merit, & that story is changed repeatedly as the original headline was bollocks. Latest one was using Resi 6 to have a pop at UK journalists for their "hive mind" mentality. The reviews were all over the place. He then had the audacity to state the game was good.
Clearly. He'd barely played it!
X360 magazine last month ran a feature entitled
10 Ways Sony Cocked Up The PS3!. 2012 & this is still what passes for intelligent writing? This was gooseberry fool in 1996! When Official Xbox 360 magazine launched in 2005, every month the news section was Sony this & Sony that. Or such scintillating articles like
'Colgate launches 360 toothbrush! Nothing to do with Xbox, but it's got 360 on the brush handle!!' Half a page. The Official license is supposed to be a stamp of quality & authority. Why? Because that's what Official PlayStation, Official Dreamcast and Official PS2 signified. People that constantly criticise the Official licenses do so because the writing and quality fell so drastically through the floor for so long it's almost impossible for the current lot to turn it around.
Speak to the majority of people online and the number 1 myth that is constantly perpetuated is that Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo games get guaranteed high scores in Official Magazines. Do people remember Sony published Spawn getting 4, or the much hyped Rascal 5 in OPM? No - what they remember is The Getaway Black Monday being given an 8 in OPS2, or Official Xbox rating everything 9.5/10. Fast forward to the current OXM, and both Halo 3 & Gears of War were given 9, and boy did Future give the reviews editor at the time gooseberry fool for it too (as he posted on his blog). And they could have just as easily awarded them 10.