The race for a magazine exclusive

[PeteJ]

How much of this is rubbish and how much is true we'll probably never know, but it is worrying reading regardless...

Exclusive

[SuperBrother]

It must be difficult for the non-official cross platform magazines to make money and retain journalistic integrity with this sort of nonsense going on.

Sony have been using similar tricks with retailers for years.

I wonder how trustworthy Edge reviews are nowadays after their recent debacle with EA?

[g-funk]

I'm pretty sure it will go on, at the end of the day publishers know that mags reviews sell games and of course they are gonna try everything possible to gauruntee a positive review.

It's like movie posters with the "quotes" from reviewers that are mostly paid for by the big movie companies.

[PeteJ]

There is an American magazine called Purge, which I guess is the US version of Edge. It is fairly well written with some interesting features that aren't caught up in the newest game, for example they have a big feature on Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, which is an interesting read.

And then they completely blow it by giving Dead or Alive Online 9/10.

Riiight.

[Brats]

This is why I prefer to get a rounded option from different forums such as these rather than follow most reviews. Althohgh I find that even forums can be biased one way or another, so a wider picture is needed. I also take into account the reviews of magazines I follow (Edge and Games TM).

BTW, why shouldn't DOA Online score a 9/10?

[revisedgenocide]

I think i read an article in Edge or Gamestm about the shocking state of the majority of gaming magazines similar to whats said in the above link. I remember the official xbox mag giving RTCW a 9 when theyd only got their hands on review code at id's HQ. Some of the scores for sony first/second party games in ops2mag are dubious to say the least.

[csuzw]

I'm sure that the reverse also happens. Some games get worse scores than they should either to balance out the high scores that they have given to 'exclusive' games or because the developer/publisher didn't give them any money to give it a good score.

I never buy gaming magazines for anything other than demos and rarely even then anymore.

[nips]

I don't really see why it would be in the magazines interest to balance good and poor scores out... If all the games are good, it raises interest in the indusry, more people buy games, more people buy magazines and they increase circulation.

There's almost no need to buy mags for demos now high speed BB is here... Hell, I download demos on my 28k, so you 1MB people must have a wail-of-a-time.

[PeteJ]

BTW, why shouldn't DOA Online score a 9/10?

Because it isn't released until the summer

[Paul3704]

With every one going on about the appalling behaviour of magazines, and the good quality of Edge. I have to ask, is this the same Edge that gave Starsky & Hutch 8/10?

[Ish]

To be honest these days I treat all the magazines as gaming industry publicity pamphlets and mouth pieces. Any publication that fills half its pages with hype loaded '"its gonna be the best thing ever" previews deserves no more respect. So that would be all of them....

I'll treat them with a bit more respect the day I read an interview with a developer claiming "awsome AI" and the writer's response is a plain and simple: "bollocks, you said that for your last 2 games and that AI had all the intelligence of a **** heap".

I pretty much do the same as Brats - read peoples impressions on forums and reviews from Edge, GamesTM and this site. And wherever possible download a demo.

[PeteJ]

XBW gave the game 9/10, and they have just admitted over at Daily Radar that they didn't review the finished version, ignoring the problems because Atari promised they would be fixed for the retail release. The muppets. People like this shouldn't be allowed to write on magazines, or websites for that matter.

It's all here. Page 8 is the comment that really starts it

Because of the long lead times for magazines and the fact that it was an exclusive review, the code we reviewed from was not final. We were made aware of some bugs in the game and were promised that these would be sorted by the time of release. I cannot comment on whether these were fixed or not but I have an unopened boxed copy of the game on my desk and will endeavour to check it out this evening

[revisedgenocide]

Im tempted to reply to that thread but i suppose it would only become a tedious soul sucking exercise. Driver 3 is an awful travesty of a game some 6 months from completion and crooked reviewers trying to justify a score is just plain wrong.

edit/ Just saw this on UKR. Priceless .

http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/driv3r.jpg

[Ady]

I'll treat them with a bit more respect the day I read an interview with a developer claiming "awsome AI" and the writer's response is a plain and simple: "bollocks, you said that for your last 2 games and that AI had all the intelligence of a **** heap".

In all fairness, Edge has been known to be firm (but fair, of course) on developers who make such grandiose claims on the back of previous failures.

I recall an old issue where one dev guy is giving it all the big talk, and Edge makes him squirm with some very uncomfortable questions.

But yeah, it is annoying overall. You just wish those bitches would just keep quiet and get on with it.

[Concept]

XBW gave the game 9/10, and they have just admitted over at Daily Radar that they didn't review the finished version, ignoring the problems because Atari promised they would be fixed for the retail release. The muppets. People like this shouldn't be allowed to write on magazines, or websites for that matter.

It's all here. Page 8 is the comment that really starts it

Apologies. I've just quoted from sections of that thread myself in the Driver 3 topic before entering General Gaming and seeing you'd linked to it from here.

It's quite outstanding really. And exceptionally depressing.