Gamereviewers errors

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I'll insert a little caveat here - yes, I was thinking more about the news post than the reviews (the forums I avoid like the plague lately. Far too much drama). I think I came across a bit harsher than I intended - I do visit the codex and read their reviews, and I do enjoy some of their articles. Sometimes I think they overdo the "angry hard-core gamer" shtick on purpose, and occasionally they even admit it (see the 2007 Year in Review for example - there's several instances there of them knowingly going over the top). Don't get me wrong - I agree with many, many of the Codex's opinions on what makes a good RPG. The over-the-top bitterness just gets on my nerves sometimes

@Cal Jones: It's always very interesting to have the opinion of someone who's worked behind the scenes. I do think that some of the things you mentioned (playing the game all the way to the end, not basing a review on beta versions) should be an absolute must for a review. Until today my favourite reviewer is Scorpia (who was with CGW until the mid-90s) because she always stuck to these principles, and she almost never used silly superlatives in her reviews. If a game was a must-buy she would say that, and if it was atrocious she would painstakingly detail exactly why the game was so bad.

 

Yes, I remember Scorpia. PC Gaming World (my last magazine) was the UK sister mag of CGW so we followed similar guidelines. In the US they weren't quite so hung up on being first with reviews, and didn't have cover disks for quite some time, so they were able to be more thorough and authorititive with their reviews. We decided that was also the best for us too - PC Zone and PC Gamer in the UK were too busy battling over exclusives, and being a bit later on the scene it was more difficult for us to compete, so we went the other way with more thorough reviews by genre experts. That worked until, unfortunately, our parent company, Ziff-Davis, was bought by VNU, and VNU didn't want a games mag in its portfolio - even one that was turning a profit. But that's another story.

 

They brought us Deus Ex though!! (to be fair I'm more than a bit of a fanboy for it).

Thanks heaps for sharing that with us Cal, any chance of telling us more about which games companies had a bit of a reputation?

@Montresor - that was a good Penny Arcade!!

 

Ah but Deus Ex was from Ion Storm Austin, which was run by Warren Spector (of early Ultima fame). A sound guy and a good businessman.
Whereas I met the original Dallas crowd - Jon Romero, Todd Porter and Tom Hall. Fun guys to hang out with (I got the drunkest I have ever been in my life with those guys) but the games they turned out weren't the best. Eidos signed them up and treated them like rockstars and so that's how they behaved.

As for companies that had reputations, there were a few, although Virgin Interactive Entertainment (in the UK at least) was probably the one that partied hardest.
Peter Molyneux always threw amazing parties - I remember the Theme Park one where he hired a bunch of bouncy castles. He used to make a special chilli as well.

 

I had the same problems with a PCGamer FF8 review. The guy said stuff along the lines of, "Squall never changes, he's always a big meanie." They probably didn't even finish the first disc. There was a scene with Squall where I *cried*, ffs. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trusting PCGamer.