This week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse is all about one game in a failing series that raised the franchise from perdition to stand tall once more.
We talk redemption, a whooooole lot of SimCity, QotW and answer some community questions. We also offend our friends in England with our horrific British accents. We blame Lara Croft for this travesty. (Also, we walked away from the mics at some point but kept recording so keep listening after the outro if you want to listen to us watch YouTube.)
Question of the Week
How is babby formed?
OR
How do you think review outlets should handle games like SimCity? Should a game be judged on the services offered when it goes live or should a game be judged on its own? In the case of SimCity, should reviewers take shitty servers into account when handing out scores?
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Review sites should manufacture whatever errors that are on the game into the web page; game doesn’t load. review doesn’t load. Game routinely crashes, review routinely crashes. Game deletes your city, the REVIEW DELETES YOUR CITY!
There’s no Like button but I Like this comment.
it’s tough, but, if reviews are evaluations of creative work, and this affects the creative intent, yes they should take into account.
Simultaneously, if they are simply consumer advice pieces, then they should also take it into account because this will hurt the customer.
That means the score should be low as fuck.
Unfortunately a traditional game review is looked at as a consumer buyers guide. It is often written with the intent to come out before, or on the day of the games release. So it goes without saying if the game is broken, or is missing features, the review should reflect that. If the game is ever fixed and reevaluated then it should be noted at the bottom of the article. I believe a review should only ever be rewritten if it contained factual errors in it.
And as for the little side discussion with on disc DLC I brought up……..I can see the other side of the argument that Grimm brought up. I would imagine most DLC is budgeted out well before the games release. But that does not change the fact that most consumers feel completely ripped off when its used. At least give us the illusion someone is supporting the game post launch.
Not only does the paying customer get cut out from content that was already made before the games release. But the pirate hackers scum get it for free. Often before its made available. Not to mention I am sure the publisher gets to save a few bucks on only having to put up an 8k key and not a gig worth of files for download.
DLC should be a way to support the game after launch. Keep the customer engaged with your work by offering up something new every so often. Battlefield 3, Oblivion, and Mass Effect are all good examples of that.
And a note for Grimm since he seems to be a fighting game guy. In the case of SF X Tekken. It was 12 character plus the gimmick Pac-Man and Megaman that were locked on the disc. To have a third of your cast locked away, not playable for months, in a fighting game is a big deal.
Tekken Tag 2 did something similar with their character DLC. But Namco was smart enough to release them for free and even threw in new stages.
Both probably had all of that content done before hand. The difference being one kept me engaged and playing, and the other turned me off completely.
LOL oops I did not mean to post that as a reply. Sorry. I was going to agree with you 🙂
THANK YOU FOR PUTTING THIS PODCAST ON ZUNE MARKETPLACE! I, along with those two other guys, appreciate it.
Mike Grimm is great, but defending on-disk DLC? Selling a 60 dollar disk just to charge me 10 more for some of what’s on it? Get the fuck outta here. Even Capcom has backed away from it.
The only reason they did is because their fans are fucking whiny idiots who don’t understand business models.
I believe that if a game were to come out with bugs, missing features, was glitchy and is unplayable then it deserves a low score. Even if the game was patched right after you reviewed it that fixed the issues, at the time of your writing it was still broken. In that situation I say give it a asterix footnote. I would definitely give an exception with “review copy” disks, they aren’t a final version.
But if a game has those problems though because of online services not working then it still deserves the low score. if you aren’t willing to accept a score based on online features that are not finished or unstable, maybe just don’t include them,
On the whole I’d say they shouldn’t factor into a score because a review is going to be up far longer than the problem will stand in almost all cases. Critical mistakes like SimCity definitely deserve mentioning as well as coverage on its own but unless its a game issue actively hindering gameplay its something to keep apart from the rating. It makes me think of Fallout: New Vegas. A bug riddled mess and still one of the best games I have played in the past few years.
“Zepaw, one of my new favorite commenters” Well my month is made. Also I love the way you pronounce my name. Most go with Z-Paw.
I’m all for review scores being changed or a re-review being issued if the originally circumstances change enough for the experience to be completely different (GameSpot have done this in the past for example). However I doubt this will happen across the board since Metacritic has a policy of not changing its listed scores since many in the games industry sadly measure their worth as a human being based on aggregate sites.
As for initial reviews, if the product flat out does not work it should be reviewed as such. If reviews are to advise potential buyers, warning them the product is faulty is also valid. Many reviews already list bugs as cons, many of which can and are patched later down the line.
Aha! Yes! The name of the show with the guy that brings fruit back to life to make pie is Pushing Daisies.
The show is a huge over-achiever, actually, despite its bizarre premise, because he brings his childhood sweetheart back to life by mistake in the first episode, but if he touches her again, she’ll be dead forever — it’s a dark, dark, comedy / mystery show. Recommended!
Pushing Daisies is a great show, the sort you love and are afraid to get into because you know it won’t last more than a season or two. And it only lasted a season and a half. It looks great on Blu Ray.
Ahh…how much I miss Pushing Daisies…
It was truly a great show. And yes, it looks sweet on Blu-ray.
The show you are looking for with the supernatural pie-maker is Pushing Daisies. It is not Zooey Deschanel but I made the same mistake. I haven’t seen the show but in all the promo material the actress is channeling a strong Zooey vibe.
It’s a tricky situation, if a game tries to push itself as a service (which is often a bad idea) then that “service” needs to work and should to be reflected in the review, but as soon as the problem is fixed that review becomes irrelevant. If it were up to me I’d review the game on its own merits but slap a missive disclaimer saying “THIS SHIT DOESN’T WORK, WE CANNOT RECOMMEND YOU BUY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!” on anything to do with it. Busting the score down and then changing it later is just arbitrary.
The first Rayman was amazing!
Can I propose a new poll/petition to start calling the winners of each debate the “Master Debaters”?
Haven’t listened yet but to reply to the QotW:
I’m a fan of the newer “review-in-progress” approach to vidjagame reviews.
I’m 31 year-old gamer and i remember when games first started using patches. Reviewers from various publications would review games based on thier content AT LAUNCH and wouldn’t do follow-up reviews or retractions regardless of patches further down the road. I understood the reasoning behind it, and even the “that’ll learn them pubs/devs to release a finished product” line of thought.
But as we can presently see, games still release unfinished, riddled with bugs, and lack online stability on day one, and it still happens very frequently. Although finite reviews may speak to the problems a game had at launch, what about late adopters who read these reviews and avoid the games thinking they are broken?
Lately reviewers have been getting better at delaying reviews for games with a heavy focus on some sort of online component. Gamesradar’s handling of the SimCity review comes to mind. Its fair to the consumer. Reviewers aren’t doing the consumer a service if a game is reviewed ahead of time without testing the online stability with other people i.e. NOT in a review environment. Updating the review periodically, to me, is the best way to inform the cautious consumer who is actually using the review to base their decision to purchase a game.
Besides, people that are buying the game day one will be buy it regardless of reviews.
TL;DR:
Gaming in general has changed, review(er)s need to do the same.
XD
i don’t mind chris not being on the show you guys.
I LUUURRRRV YOU GUUUUUUYS just the way you are. :3
tho… i still think this cast could use a little butterworth in it.
just sayin’
also… what WAS that you guys were watching on YT?
Hey, thanks for the kind words! Happy to hear you’re liking the show. As for what we were watching, it was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2TO5atI4rU
I don’t believe Grimm is cheap since I’m pretty sure he mentioned purchasing the Aether Wing Kayle skin.
Love dis podcast. Gotta say though, I loved Invisible War, worst in the series yes, but still better than 90 percent of the games out there not called Bioshock. The nano mods were awesome, and the art style was very striking at the time. Also Chris being on is cool but you guys are awesome hosts just the same.
BTW, that scream that Mikel let out was pretty awesome.
If companies like EA want to sell “services” instead of games, then they should be reviewed like services. If you called for a taxi, and the driver was late, took a bunch of wrong turns, had a dirty cab, and was rude to you, then you would give that service a bad review. It doesn’t matter if the driver was having a bad day, or the taxi company was very busy that day; they gave you bad service and would be reviewed accordingly. Also, I don’t want Chris on every episode. VA has a very different flavor than TDar did, and I like it. I like it very much.
As a British listener, let me just say those accents were Paaaaaaaaaaaainful. I still love you though.
Grimm nailed the whole on-disc DLC thing. Glad somebody finally put that into words.
Also, I want to ask that at the very end of the podcast and I don’t know if you guys are big anime fans, were you listening to or watching Nichijou (an anime show).
Because that song at the end reminded of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTUGtluiHg
At the end note, I agree that I miss Chris Antista’s comedic flair while hosting but I don’t demand that he should host the show. The only thing I would like to recommend is more sound byte elements for the discussions during the show. I’m not saying play fart, gong, and “don’t c#m” sounds during the show but to just give a little more flavor.
I absolutely love Pushing Daisies (that’s the show Anne was trying to remember). It is NOT just about a piemaker who can bring dead fruit back to freshness and bake pies with it. That would be like saying Firefly is a show about people who talk, which is a small part of it. The Piemaker can bring dead things to life with a single touch, but if he touches them again, they die again(thus he can’t even eat his own pies), and for every thing he brings back for more than (literally) a minute, something else dies in its place. The concept of the show is really unique and the delivery by the cast/writing team was really great. It is on Amazon Prime (not Netflix, maybe Hulu?) and only lasted two seasons. I would definitely recommend it.
Love it! I have to say I would like to see Chris Antista on the show, with control of a soundboard, but regardless I want to get naked for you.
On behalf of the British, I find your mockery of Governor Crumpet tasteless. Spiffing good show though.
In regards to the QOTW, I’m a games journalist and I do factor in the whole package when reviewing games. I write my reviews with the paying customer in mind and it’s important (I think) to emphasize any issues that may prevent a paying customer from being totally satisified with a product. I found SimCity to be an excellent game overall, but I knocked off points because I couldn’t play it half the time.
I had a similar experience with a company I won’t name to where I had siding installed. The installation was late and the servicemen didn’t speak English. They also broke my front porch light. The siding was good, but their service was terrible. I wouldn’t use said company again for that reason, and I think the same attitude and consideration should be applied to video games when reviewing them.
On another note, keep up the great work folks!