NWN2 - Latest on 1 Up 'Review' Being Pulled
 

Our readers might be interested to read the full story on why 1 Up pulled its controversial review of NWN2. Here's an introductory comment:
You'll find the entire interesting article plus reader comments Here.

Thanks Abaaon for the headsup.
More information.

What a sad tale. I wonder if this event has triggered the dawn of 'patched reviews.' I know that 'patched reviews' exist for multiplayer games with persistant gaming worlds… but perhaps it will now extend to single player games and multiplayer games sans-persistant worlds.

On another note, Jeff Green's insights into how an article is born demonstrates fairly well that reviews of RPG games that come out the day of or shortly after the release of the game are probably not going to be the best or most thorogh reviews…

Statements like

and

While this situation most likely represents an extreme situation, after reading reviews of RPGs on the net for years now, I can't help but feel that reviews of RPGs that come out the day of or shortly after the release of a game are shallow and not very thorogh in the least.

It's amazing how creepy this whole thing is. I understand not wanting to print a review that was so poorly worded, but I enjoy reading negative reviews so that they can help me figure out what others find irritating about a particular game. I don't really agree with Matt, in this case, but there are several games that I've found extremely unpleasant that have only received high scores (Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc.). I like to hear the positives and negatives in a review -- in fact, I prefer magazines that have more than one person review a game -- that way I get 3 biased opinions instead of one :)

why not just read multiple reviews from multiple places?

One thing we're hoping to implement here eventually, is the option for others to add their views to one of our reviews, especially the other reviewers on the team!!

I dont know, it just seems like a bit too much drama regarding something that's not really a big deal.

It's funny that half dozen people went through that review and noone said anything?
It's only a half page long, for god sake. What a bunch of fucktards.

Actually, I find the whole practive of having a review up to coincide with the launch of the game wrong. Unless they have received an early copy so they can play a game from start to end, at least (as a good RPG should take a few runs to have been played throughly). Otherwise it is not a review, but practically a preview, to stay on the positive side, or a really obvious advertisement, if we want to be negative.

To play a game like NWN2 properly should involve many hours of play and replay. Each character type plays very differently, so to be fair to the game a reviewer needs to play with various character types. Everythingxen who did most of the D&D reviews at the Dot, regularly played a game 3 or 4 times before producing his review. You don't have sufficient time to do that and have it published at launch!!

Magazines and the largest gaming sites do get access to earlier builds and gold masters. Their reviewers may not have time to play them as thoroughly as Everythingxen, but they do get reviews into the hands of early adopters. Writers for volunteer sites like this one can guarantee that they've played the finished product, because they paid for it, and give you the benefit of their dozens of hours in the game. Anyone can find a review to suit his tastes. But no, day of release reviews are Objectively Wrong, just as Oblivion is empirically Not An RPG. (According to my electron microscope, it contains too high a concentration of arcadium and trace elements of shootemum.)

Sometimes we score an early release too. I got one for Seal of Evil and spent weeks playing it before I wrote my review, but that was most unusual. Most of the time I've bought the game myself at release, or I've been a beta tester which gives you a totally different perspective. I actually don't like to review a game I've beta tested, but occasionally I do. Lazarus would be the best example of that!!

There is a big difference between taking 5 or 6 hours to play F.E.A.R. Extraction point (you only need to play it once to review) and something like NWN2. Trying to really get a feel for it in ~20 - 40 hours is not impossible, but it will certainly taint your perspective.

I could only imaging trying to read through the Dungeon Lords dialogues in that amount of time ;)

Hahaha, was the the 'in game' dialogues, or the ones posted about it on the DC forums!! :biggrin:

The DC forums (with very few exceptions, in deference to folks like chamr) were filled to the brim at release with 'waah … buggy … wanna my money bak … gonna sue you … waah'. I'm not defending the game, the devs or the publishers, but when you can't wait a week to see the 40% reviews roll in, you lose your caveat emptor rights …

As for in-game … Bradley could take the Terminator line "I'll be back" and come up with
"It is upon a heavy heart that the news of your decision to disallow my admittance to thine fair establishment lands, such that would a manatee upon a chickadee roost. Were thee merely to avail thyself of the near-upon button of admittance, the inner workings of my mechanized soul would cry out in a glee unknown but to the sweetest of pixies upon yonder glade. Wherefore thou dost deny such simple entry, does fall upon my shoulders the woeful tidings that backthrough yonder entry I must depart, must alight from hencefore I do desire to breach further. Know thee that my separation wilst be short, for upon gaining my vehicle and engaging the ignition in acts of combustion most foul, my heart, soul and body will henceforth return to this very spot to seek entry to your inner sanctum with the greatness of urgency that presses upon every fiber of my being … "

I see, you're auditioning to be a part of his design team for his next magnum opus game…….right??!! :)

Unfortunately, how exhausted I am from the last one tells me I just don't have the necessary 'M4D SK1LLZ' needed!

I stopped reading the explanation after the fifth paragraph of yammering. I guess I don't really care. When I read the guy's idiotic anti-stats ranting ("IT'S NOT ROLE-PLAYING IT'S TEH RULE PLAYING lol") that told me clear as day that this guy had no business reviewing the game, because he obviously wasn't interested in it, or he has ridiculous expectations for a Dungeons and Dragons game, and he just set out to hate it on purpose.

Good point - I wonder if it has something to do with being a paid review and having the deadlines? I look at it this way - my first stab at my Dungeon Lords review was ~3000 words, and my editor shot it right back and said 'make it a single opinion and cut ~2000 words and we'll talk'. ;)

[Python hat one] Nice one Centurion!

huh… if a reviewer of a D&D game say he doesn't like D&D why let him review the game in the first place? it's just dumb.

HI :)

Luckily, this is the INTERNET !

This means that nothing (if downloaded) ever vanishes. (even official Danish authorities have had their fair share of problems deleting every file from them on the internet - it is not good when confidential and personal flurrys about on the internet).

This also means that the now pulled review will circulate (for years?) on the internet. I don't now if this is good or bad news…..

However, the info regarding the pulling on the review is - of course - an excuse.
However, i would say that it is fairly good excuse. I will also say that it is nice to see a site being responsible, taking responsibility for its (not so great) actions.

I understand that 1up uses the whole 1-10 score of this scale. This is, in fact, imo, fine. However, I will still maintan that a review which views the whole D & D genre
as negative is not a review of the game itself, but a (negative) review of the whole genre.

IMHO; this is not any reviewer's job…

I can see a review like this maybe being more valid if NWN 2 was part of a flood of repeats, kinda like what we see with mediocre point-and-click adventure games and WW2 shooters. But NWN 2 is a unique game, the likes of which haven't been seen for four years. You can't say that it doesn't move the genre forward because the genre has been nonexistent lately!!!! My, how I would love to see just one game a year like this. Maybe we'll see some good expansion packs for a couple of years. That would be really nice.

I've been sitting back and watching alot of this stuff going on around 1up.com's review, the handling of the release of NWN2, and the bitch-fest that the official forums had become and I must admit that I have found the whole thing rather humerous.

For one thing, reviews are completely and totally subjective. Whether they had pulled the review or kept it meant little to nothing to me. I have played through NWN2, am on my 2nd go through (with the d2d version no less O.o) and have my own feelings on the game. After reading through the original review as posted on 1up's site I kinda shrugged the whole thing off. For one thing the reviewer hadn't played the game all the way through. That was completely evident to anyone that had been playing or had played the game. Secondly, using things like planescape torment and baldur's gate to back up his position told me that the reviewer was confusing those monumental crpg's with drivel like titans quest and diablo.

Personally, I think because of those 2 things 1up did the right thing by pulling the review. They should never have posted it in the first place so it lies on their shoulders completely and absolutely. I am a little wary of 1up now because they have decided to keep the reviewer around but, the fault does not lie with him solely. Sure, he should have passed on the assignment seeing as how he either does not enjoy true crpg's or does not have the time/capability of fully playing the game in order to give an honest assessment of the game. But, the process of reviews going to print/posting obviously need to be worked on and the editors all bear a share of the responsibility for having a jaded person review the game and not fully reading the article before it was posted.

U da man!!!
 

No sarcasm intended, seriously.

They should hire you as an editor. :)

You have my vote.

Well I remember when Titan Quest came out, there were a quite a few reviews that the reviewer obviously didn't like the genre of action/rpg. But I didn't see them pulling the review.

I don't like Japanese style RPG's, but I got asked to review Seal of Evil which is based on that genre. I played the game and attempted to review it fairly as a game holding my personal bias to one side. I think from the response it received that I managed to succeed. Therefore, I have no issue with someone reviewing a genre they don't like, provided they take a professional approach, especially when they are being paid to do it!!

Agreed. After reading some of the "reviews" at 1up.com, if someone is thinking of buying games rather than reading opinions, I recommend him visiting other sites. I went there only because I was curious of the unusual score of the pulled "review" only to find there was not enough content to justify it or even a slightest effort to offer the readers information before buying the product. For example, here is NWN2 review at Gamespy (Thanks, Kalia for the heads-up). A simple question: Positive or negative, how much information can you get from it compared with the pulled "review"?

There are many blogs/forums with opinions and they are all right in their ways but, IMO, they are not what I expect from professional reviews. If the unusually low score is not an intentional trick to attract people, I hope they will do some efforts to make the content richer and be more professional journalists, who live on what you write, rather than amateur bloggers or forum members, who simply enjoy writing what they feel/think about their hobbies.

BTW, this is definitely off topic and probably bit picky but Seal of Evil is not Japanese but Chinese. East Asian would suffice if you find it difficult to tell.

I know Sof E is Chinese, but the genre is generally known as Japanese RPG's, which is why I used the term. Perhaps calling them Asian RPG's in future might be the way to go. What do others think?

I think that SoE is *much* closer to the Diablo-clones than it is to the Final Fantasy / Tales of Whatever games that define the jRPG genre.

It also had some really bad translations like this:

I don't mind reviewers not being fans of the series or genre the game belongs to, but at least they should state that in the review, so you don't think it's a hardcore FPS gamer reviewing Half-Life 2.. when in reality it's me who can't stand the genre as a whole, hehe. :)