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- 1UP Plays Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- [TGC 2011] ArcheAge
- Telltale Devs Write Jurassic Park Reviews Without Noting They Made the Game
| 1UP Plays Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Posted: 19 Nov 2011 10:20 PM PST Let’s face facts: regardless of what I say about Mario Kart 7, it’ll end up being one of the best-selling games on its platform, just like the past two installments. Though the presence of an actual challenge in Mario Kart DS didn’t detract from its popularity, Mario Kart Wii marked a new movement for the series, and one that essentially turned Mario Kart into a party game. Not that there’s anything wrong with party games, of course; it’s just that Mario Kart Wii made any display of skill a losing prospect, as it perpetually sabotaged success in an attempt to level the playing field. Some would view this approach as a masterstroke on Nintendo’s part, as it allows a group of people with differing skill sets to complete on equal ground without nasty things like “experience” getting in the way. As expected, Mario Kart 7 takes this same tack, and its regressive nature promises to annoy karting fans looking for the series to hop back on the highway to the danger zone. Before this ends up reading as a total condemnation of Mario Kart 7, it should be noted that the game features a few interesting additions. Instead of choosing from an array of vehicles — which has been the case since Double Dash — MK7 allows the player to individually choose the wheels, chassis, and glider for their kart, with each part affecting its stats in some way. Coins collected during a race can be cashed in for further parts; these coins also boost your kart’s acceleration (only during the race where you grabbed them, of course), and spice up things up a bit by hinting at prime power sliding arcs and possible shortcuts. If you’re looking for other interesting mechanics of twists on this staid series, you might want to look elsewhere; even the promise of land, sea, and air travel is little more than lip service, as indicated by Jeremy’s E3 preview. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 19 Nov 2011 10:20 PM PST
If you looked close enough, there are characters wielding a bow and sword combo, a bow and shield combo or even all 3 weapons at once! What in the world? For the latest interview article with the game’s developer, Mr Jake Song, click here (link). Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Telltale Devs Write Jurassic Park Reviews Without Noting They Made the Game Posted: 19 Nov 2011 10:11 AM PST It is a difficult thing to distance yourself from something you’ve had a hand in creating when trying to be critical. That is especially true when you’re talking about a game you’ve spent months or even years of your life working on day after day. Knowing this, it would be hard to take a review of a game seriously that’s been written by someone who developed it. But what if you read a game review from one of that game’s developers and didn’t even know it? That’s a situation Telltale Games is now dealing with after a pair of its staffers wrote user reviews for Jurassic Park: The Game on Metacritic where they heaped praise upon the game without noting who they were. GameSpot reports that on Wednesday there were no reviews from critics but four user reviews for the game, all giving the game a perfect 10 out of 10 score. This raised suspicions that the reviews were written not by users, but Telltale staff, a situation that was (sadly) due in part to the correct grammar and spelling they used. That was confirmed by researching the names used by the reviewers on Metacritic, which revealed one to be a user interface artist and another a cinematic artist at Telltale. “Jurassic Park is a lovingly crafted game which follows it’s own story-line and characters, branching off from the point where Dennis Nedry drops the can of Barbasol,” reads one of the user reviews in question. “One of the biggest loose ends in Jurassic Park (the movie) is finally wrapped up in a 4 part adventure game. “There is much to love about Jurassic Park: The Game. The writing is top notch, all of the dinosaurs you love from the film (and more) are there in full-force, and it truly delivers that iconic Jurassic Park vibe that we all had when we saw the film for the first time in 1992. Did I mention that the deaths in the game are amazing?? Yeah, there are hundreds of unique ways to see your characters die-by-dino; truly a sight to behold.” Telltale didn’t deny the identities of the two, telling GameSpot, “Telltale Games do not censor or muzzle its employees in what they post on the internet. However, it is being communicated internally that anyone who posts in an industry forum will acknowledge that they are a Telltale employee. In this instance, two people who were proud of the game they worked on, posted positively on Metacritic under recognizable online forum and XBLA account names.” There are a number of problems here. Suggesting that their usernames alone — which make no mention of Telltale — were enough to identify them is unreasonable. As GameSpot notes, gamers can’t be expected to research the background of each person who writes a review, nor should they be expected to be familiar with the usernames or Xbox Live Gamertags of a developer’s entire staff. The reviews themselves should have mentioned what the authors do for a living. Perhaps more important is a fact pointed out by PR guru Aubrey Norris on Twitter: it is against Federal Trade Commission rules (PDF) to review your own product without disclosing the fact that you’re, well, reviewing your own product. The discovery of these user reviews being written by Telltale staff has resulted in a backlash. A number of Metacritic users have written negative reviews and given the game a score of 0 while noting the misleading reviews. The console versions currently have user review score averages of 3.0; the PC version is sitting at 3.7 as of this writing. Early reviews from critics haven’t been especially kind to the game, albeit for much different reasons. 1UP’s review went up yesterday with a score of D+ due to Jurassic Park being “one of the most passive gaming experiences to exist since Night Trap.” Besides the FTC issue, on a practical level how do you feel about people involved with the development of a game submitting reviews without pointing out who they are? Is the practice misleading or does the preponderance of user reviews written by those who have never even played the game make it a non-issue? Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
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