Official X-Box magazine caught lying in review.

[sirgruffil]

I see that the thread on the Amuze letter to Official Xbox Magazine has been removed from their forum. Earlier today it showed more than 12,000 hits, so I guess this is their idea of damage limitation. Others might call it censorship...

[PeteJ]

The same happend with XB World\ Driv3r - any mention of it now on their forum is an instant ban. It's a joke!

Regarding Tales, I was ready to review it after about 15 hours too, however I wasn't actually planning on writing a review until after the game was finished (50 hours I think). I don't always complete a game before reviewing it, just play until I feel I'm happy with my opinion. I think that's a fair way to review a game, just as long as all the modes are tested.

[MartyG]

I agree, after so many hours into a game you get a very good idea of what it's like - you might not see all the unlockables, but you're not going to tell people about them in the review anyway. I certainly didn't finish Pirates of the Caribbean - after several hours I was ready to cut my hands off.

[sirgruffil]

After days of threads being started and immediately deleted, we have a live one on this topic over on the OXM 'Games' forum:

***Removal of my post at very poor journalism by OXM***

Seems pretty active at the moment, but get it while its hot, its days (hours, minutes) are probably numbered...

[superstarbeejay]

The same happend with XB World\ Driv3r - any mention of it now on their forum is an instant ban. It's a joke!

Regarding Tales, I was ready to review it after about 15 hours too, however I wasn't actually planning on writing a review until after the game was finished (50 hours I think). I don't always complete a game before reviewing it, just play until I feel I'm happy with my opinion. I think that's a fair way to review a game, just as long as all the modes are tested.

Isn't the time you put in all dependant on how you see a review. I feel that 5 hours with a game is plenty to give myself a good understanding of how much I like it. If I was to be giving just a score then fair enough. But to write an informative piece to help others decide if it's for them then that is a different thing.

If I was a journo I think I would make a lot of mistakes with reviews due to lack of playing time. PGR 2, pikmin and halo were all games that I didn't think much of 3 hours in, 10 hours in quite liked and after 15 hours turned into some of my favorite games of all time. It's like all forms of entertainment, music, film, some of it is average to begin with and superb 6 months/years later.

It took me 8 months to realise the beauty of Pikmin. Had I written a review 6 months earlier I would have looked back on that review with shame. So all in all I have sympathy for reviewers and also respect the TM guys as they don't seem to get it wrong often.