Factually wrong "game journalism"

[Obiwanshinobi]

This is not about poor writing, or someone else's opinions; I mean stuff like:

Nintendo's Ghost Squad, arguably the best light-gun game made,

and

Then, with the death of the CRT, the light gun vanished. The explanation is complicated but interesting, to do with the heightened speed at which contemporary TVs refresh the pixels on screen, which make it impossible for the sensor in the gun's barrel to catch and register a hit as it bounces off the screen.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016- ... -light-gun

Worst of all, while some of the readers were quick to correct misinformation quoted above in comments, neither the writer, nor editorial staff seem to be in a hurry to fix it (has been the whole four days up there). This isn't how Eurogamer used to be (willing to eat humble pie, at least, as well as hosting technical interviews and analyses - "Digital Foundry" - I'd found great read).

So it is about this kind of lousy job, when you, as a reader, expected way better for a good reason, but alas...

[BIL]

I remember when Gradius V was new and 1UP.com said that Hitoshi Sakimoto had done a surprisingly great job transitioning to STG music, considering his background was in RPG scores like FF Tactics and Vagrant Story. CUNTS (・｀W´・)

To be fair though after commentators said "LOL NOOB" the author corrected the article with an apology that was just the right balance of earnest and tongue-in-cheek so fair play to 'em （＾ω´ ）

[copy-paster]

Cringe at it's best.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Cringe at it's best.

What's "factually wrong" about it? I didn't play PSP version, but the writer seems to be critical of things that ARE there. Reminds me of this one, which is unfavourable to - mostly - FACT of the matter.

[BIL]

Reminds me of this one, which is unfavourable to - mostly - FACT of the matter.

My god, it's a man made entirely of vagina!

I wouldn't say he's objectively wrong on much there though, allowing for some obvious hyperbole. He's just a big crying pussy who should stick to bad interactive movies that tell him how great he is. He was obviously blubbering too hard to learn how to charge-shot bosses effectively! But SS is definitely closer to "memorise or die" rote than something like Metal Slug X. It'd have gained from a bit of flex and chaos IMO, not that this numbnuts would necessarily be able to appreciate it. ;3

Disgracefully shoddy journalism on "Contra III in 1991" indeed, but otherwise it seems mostly subjective and TBH I would dispatch him thus:

Spoiler

[WelshMegalodon]

I'm expecting a lot of overlap with this thread.

Jeff Gerstmann's reviews come to mind:

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/taito-l ... 0-6171737/

With the possible exception of Qix, and, if you're a fan of shooters, Darius Gaiden, most of the games found in this package are little-known, easily forgettable arcade games of varying degrees of quality.

It seems like all of Taito's big marquee hits were already included in the first volume, making this second edition a disc full of curiosities and atrocities from a bygone era.

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/king-of ... 0-2548009/

What's worse, none of the characters possess any interesting special moves or attacks. So even with the unusual number of fighters to choose from, the pickings are pretty slim.

http://arcade-gear.com/Games/King_of_Fi ... ers_94.htm



http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/street- ... 0-2534082/

The graphics and gameplay in the Super games are identical to what you remember. Every frame of original animation appears intact, and there isn't any noticeable slowdown. The sound is decent, but the speech sounds a little tinny - and even the intros are intact.

From the Shoryuken Wiki:

Known differences in the PS1 version:
-if the opponent blocks Dictator's Fierce Psycho Crusher mid-screen, Dic lands right next to the opponent
-Ken, Dhalsim, and Sagat can do reversal supers (which they can not in the arcade version)
-there is a slight delay between "Round 1, Fight!" and when you can actually move (speculation, untested)
-Chun Li falls extremely slowly after her medium upkicks (Short and RH are correct, though)
-Guile regains CPS1 chains
-only two buttons are required for three-button moves (ex: Zangief can do a lariat by hitting only Jab Strong or Strong Fierce or Jab Fierce)
-inputs must be done more quickly (speculation, untested)
-comboing into Ryu's super is exceptionally difficult
-tapping two buttons one right after the other counts as hitting them simultaneously
-when a character has zero life left, it takes two blocked specials to kill him/her
-characters don't seem to get dizzy as easily (speculation, untested)

Though I suppose these aren't so much factually inaccurate as just ignorant. You probably need to go to HG101 for blatantly false claims.

Thanks to JoshF for bringing this hack to our attention.

Based on what I've heard, game journalists also tend to be less sensitive to poor emulation, with audio in Sega compilations being the obvious example.

[orange808]

Game journalism has always sucked. They sure love their myths and sacred cows.

For instance, the "crash" of 1983. Yes, the casual market did collapse.

But, the failure of the "supersystems" didn't kill anything and the NES didn't ride in to "rescue" a completely barren and dead gaming world.

Gamers that were there had bought a Commodore 64. We had Commodores. We were happily playing plenty of fresh releases through 1983 and 1984.

It was a casual console crash. Gamers kept playing and we moved to Commodores.

It's a fucking myth. There was no video game crash. The casuals got bored with their consoles and the hardcore gaming kids got a C64.

I can't find a single mainstream gaming site that presents any of the truth.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I've been going through my old Gamesmaster magazines ('93 to about '98) lately and frequently stuff is completely wrong - plot, number of levels, formats released on, gameplay mechanics. You name it, it's got some random inaccuracy in it.

Conclusion: it's always been like this. Only it's more unreasonable now that anyone has the correct information at their fingertips and the criticism is public via comment pages.

[WelshMegalodon]

Game journalism has always sucked. They sure love their myths and sacred cows.

For instance, the "crash" of 1983. Yes, the casual market did collapse.

But, the failure of the "supersystems" didn't kill anything and the NES didn't ride in to "rescue" a completely barren and dead gaming world.

Gamers that were there had bought a Commodore 64. We had Commodores. We were happily playing plenty of fresh releases through 1983 and 1984.

It was a casual console crash. Gamers kept playing and we moved to Commodores.

It's a fucking myth. There was no video game crash. The casuals got bored with their consoles and the hardcore gaming kids got a C64.

I can't find a single mainstream gaming site that presents any of the truth.

I've seen this claimed (and refuted) many times, but never with hard data pointing toward either argument. Perhaps it's time one of us stepped up...

[neorichieb1971]

It was the Atari crash.

[WelshMegalodon]

This definitely qualifies: Blue Shadows

Plenty more where that came from.

And I've brought up this 1UP article before.

[Axelay]

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2006/10/10/god-hand-review

This still kills me a little inside.

I never used or endorsed IGN, but I remember my brother telling me that IGN reviwed God hand and the guy admitted he only played the first stage .

Pricks.

[BryanM]

You can just omit "game" out of the title and just leave it as "journalism".

Any for-profit outfit is in service of its sponsors. It doesn't exist to serve its consumers, its consumers exist to serve their sponsors.

I don't know why anyone gets annoyed or depressed over this stuff. A pile of dog shit may be gross. But it serves a purpose. It's weird to ask or expect the dog turd to become something else.

C64

What a wild time of rampant piracy that was.

Quantity was high, quality was low, and no Youtube of raw play footage to get an objective analysis of what exactly you'd be getting from that box. Good lord, was that the dark ages.

Goddamn is the internet wonderful.

[null1024]

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2006/10/10/god-hand-review.

Man, I fell for the score back then. I didn't really follow game reviewers, but extreme low scores like that were enough to stop me from looking into a game.

I distinctly remember looking at games in the store and going "God Hand? Didn't that get a 3/10?"

I still haven't really sat down and played God Hand though -- but I fired it up a while back and what little I played of it was satisfying as fuck, how does someone manage to write something like this off as a 3/10?

Reminds me of this one, which is unfavourable to - mostly - FACT of the matter.

Shit, I definitely fell for this one.
Although, you're right -- he hates it because it's a memorizer, and it really is.
dumb shit: he seems to confuse a port of Contra 3 on GBA as being a version of Shattered Soldier, so I wonder if he even made an attempt other than going "I made it five seconds into the stage, and I'm dead because I didn't so much as try to avoid anything"

Fuck, I'm so glad YouTube exists now.
Game gets shit reviews but you were interested? Watch some footage of it on YouTube, see if it looks like the controls are jank or if whoever was reviewing was just a fuck.

[Skykid]

That Shattered Soldier review. My gosh. I never knew Bramwell had goofed that bad before.

[Sumez]

This definitely qualifies: Blue Shadows

Please tell me that whole page is a tongue-in-cheek joke!?
Omz0r they gave Saturn version 2% lower score because the shadows are a different tint of blue! 50-PARAGRAPH-RANT-TIME!!!

And I've brought up this 1UP article before.

I agree that Ninja Gaiden did nothing new in regards to story telling in games, and it wasn't really employing any new super crazy hack tech to make it work, just some scrolling background tiles, so it's not a milestone in that regard. (in the same way, I really don't see why people were (and still are I guess) going crazy about Half-Life in that fashion).
However, Ninja Gaiden DID kickstart a huge tendency lasting well into the 16bit generation of these highly cinematic scenes with large drawings of the characters, letting the story unfold between stages. Tons of NES games did exactly the same thing following the release of that game, which makes it a bit of a first mover. Back then little things like that sold the games, and it's definitely something that stood out contemporarily.

[tacoguy64]

I really don't trust any of the "gaming journalist" on saying anything with any actual substance about the so called games they "review".

[Sumez]

Oh my god, that Shattered Soldier review. I really want to sit down and point out every little thing wrong with it, but that's sort of pointless considering everyone here is already well aware

Or you could try and dance and frolic between laser fire and explosions once again, maintaining a higher hit percentage - but why would you want to

Spoiler

edit: Oh jesus, the comments!

[Skykid]

"However, it was only in the company of one of our other friends, an abject hardcore gamer who claims his Jaguar is superior to the Xbox, that I started to encounter an alternative viewpoint to my own. "This is what defines hardcore," he proclaimed, hands aloft. "The fact that you don't like it doesn't make it any less brilliant!""

Egads, the cringe.

Despite this epic failure of criticism, I have nothing but love for Tom Bramwell. He was a superb, daring editor who shaped Eurogamer into a massive force by taking chances on unknown freelancers. I may never have gotten from small Sussex newspaper to larger publications if it wasn't for Tom's good faith.

We all make mistakes, I'm willing to forgive this one.

[Obiwanshinobi]

You can just omit "game" out of the title and just leave it as "journalism".

Any for-profit outfit is in service of its sponsors. It doesn't exist to serve its consumers, its consumers exist to serve their sponsors.

I don't know why anyone gets annoyed or depressed over this stuff. A pile of dog shit may be gross. But it serves a purpose. It's weird to ask or expect the dog turd to become something else.

I foud analyses such as:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... ff-article (all thre pages of it)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... h-face-off (likewise, three pages)

very serviceable myself, whatever their original purpose was. This is what makes "the heightened speed at which contemporary TVs refresh the pixels on screen" and "Nintendo's Ghost Squad" bullshit on that very site double gash to me, so I needed to vent.

[orange808]

You can just omit "game" out of the title and just leave it as "journalism".

Any for-profit outfit is in service of its sponsors. It doesn't exist to serve its consumers, its consumers exist to serve their sponsors.

I don't know why anyone gets annoyed or depressed over this stuff. A pile of dog shit may be gross. But it serves a purpose. It's weird to ask or expect the dog turd to become something else.

C64

What a wild time of rampant piracy that was.

Quantity was high, quality was low, and no Youtube of raw play footage to get an objective analysis of what exactly you'd be getting from that box. Good lord, was that the dark ages.

Goddamn is the internet wonderful.

We weren't exchanging cracked softwares by hand. Yes, networking is wonderful. It always has been.

Explaining the tele bill to mum and dad isn't wonderful... ...

Dark ages? Hardly. Good times.

[orange808]

Game journalism has always sucked. They sure love their myths and sacred cows.

For instance, the "crash" of 1983. Yes, the casual market did collapse.

But, the failure of the "supersystems" didn't kill anything and the NES didn't ride in to "rescue" a completely barren and dead gaming world.

Gamers that were there had bought a Commodore 64. We had Commodores. We were happily playing plenty of fresh releases through 1983 and 1984.

It was a casual console crash. Gamers kept playing and we moved to Commodores.

It's a fucking myth. There was no video game crash. The casuals got bored with their consoles and the hardcore gaming kids got a C64.

I can't find a single mainstream gaming site that presents any of the truth.

I've seen this claimed (and refuted) many times, but never with hard data pointing toward either argument. Perhaps it's time one of us stepped up...

The best selling individual computer model of all time was really a game console. I gave my parents a song and dance about homework, learning, word processing, and managing our money. All I really wanted was video games. (My parents never did anything useful and I wrote a few papers on it.)

Anyhow, here's the best sales estimates: based on serial numbers. (Tramiel has always been a self promoting liar, so we can't trust his numbers.) http://www.pagetable.com/?p=547

The best estimate of sales shows the C64 pick up steam in 1983, sell strong in 1984, and start to slowly fade in 1985-86. The C64 had a very long tail--and it held on much stronger outside of the states. Regardless, the sales faded as the NES took hold.

Also, software houses like EA, Sierra, and Origin grew and prospered in the depths of the game market correction.

[Volteccer_Jack]

I always get annoyed about SF4 "bringing back" fighting games after a few years where Capcom stopped making fighting games and everyone else continued making/buying/playing fighting games as usual. I assume this means Zelda crashed in 2004 and never recovered, because that was the last time Capcom made a Zelda game. #BringBackZelda #LttPArcadeEdition

[iconoclast]

I wouldn't say SF4 brought fighting games back, but it certainly brought them to the next level from a competitive standpoint. There wouldn't be pro fighting game players if it weren't for SF4.

[Sumez]

SF4 definitely meant a huge resurgence in the genre. I don't think anyone thinks fighting games ever stopped being made or played. But you'd be blind to not see the waves made by Street Fighter 4! That said, it's my impression most of that stuff is still centered mostly around the game itself, while other games in the genre went on as usual.

I assume this means Zelda crashed in 2004 and never recovered, because that was the last time Capcom made a Zelda game.

I can stand behind this

[Skykid]

I assume this means Zelda crashed in 2004 and never recovered, because that was the last time Capcom made a Zelda game.

I can stand behind this

Yeah that sounds about right.

[WelshMegalodon]

Please tell me that whole page is a tongue-in-cheek joke!?
Omz0r they gave Saturn version 2% lower score because the shadows are a different tint of blue! 50-PARAGRAPH-RANT-TIME!!!

There's definitely a tongue-in-cheek attitude to both of those pages, though it doesn't make the articles in question any less ridiculous.

I agree that Ninja Gaiden did nothing new in regards to story telling in games, and it wasn't really employing any new super crazy hack tech to make it work, just some scrolling background tiles, so it's not a milestone in that regard. (in the same way, I really don't see why people were (and still are I guess) going crazy about Half-Life in that fashion).
However, Ninja Gaiden DID kickstart a huge tendency lasting well into the 16bit generation of these highly cinematic scenes with large drawings of the characters, letting the story unfold between stages. Tons of NES games did exactly the same thing following the release of that game, which makes it a bit of a first mover. Back then little things like that sold the games, and it's definitely something that stood out contemporarily.

I'll give Ninja Gaiden credit where it's due, but the writer frames it in such a way as to be extremely misleading. And dismissing those stories that were "mostly constrained to the instruction manual" is hardly fair when there are documents like the "Adventurer's Journal" from Pool of Radiance or the "History of Britannia" from Ultima IV. Even the two pages of lore from Temple of Apshai's manual have more in the way of story than what you see in, say, The Legend of Zelda.

I wouldn't say SF4 brought fighting games back, but it certainly brought them to the next level from a competitive standpoint. There wouldn't be pro fighting game players if it weren't for SF4.

Both Tougeki and EVO predate Street Fighter IV, though.

The best selling individual computer model of all time was really a game console. I gave my parents a song and dance about homework, learning, word processing, and managing our money. All I really wanted was video games. (My parents never did anything useful and I wrote a few papers on it.)

Anyhow, here's the best sales estimates: based on serial numbers. (Tramiel has always been a self promoting liar, so we can't trust his numbers.) http://www.pagetable.com/?p=547

The best estimate of sales shows the C64 pick up steam in 1983, sell strong in 1984, and start to slowly fade in 1985-86. The C64 had a very long tail--and it held on much stronger outside of the states. Regardless, the sales faded as the NES took hold.

Also, software houses like EA, Sierra, and Origin grew and prospered in the depths of the game market correction.

Wow. This really deserves to be spread around. Many thanks.

[qmish]

I wouldn't say SF4 brought fighting games back, but it certainly brought them to the next level from a competitive standpoint. There wouldn't be pro fighting game players if it weren't for SF4.

Overhyped as hell, being praised as messiah by people here and there (mostly in comments on youtube and forums and news-sites, though). Also what do ya mean about pro fighting? SF4 only brought money sponsorship.

[iconoclast]

I mean literally professional fighting game players. Tournament prize money was minuscule before SF4. People used to play solely for merit, now they can make a living if they reach the top level. INO (a top CvS2/3S/VS player who did well at SF5 EVO) is even quitting his job and plans to live off the prize money he wins from tournaments. Something like that couldn't happen before.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Honestly, why do reviews who've never really played shmups or flat-out dislike shmups review them? I am not into sports game, and only the handful of strategy games - I wouldn't be really good at reviewing either of those I'd imagine.

When you complain about infinite continues making an arcade shmup too easy, it's completely missing the point (hint: your score is garbage for a reason).