footle

you've taken the mp3 down?

"Strict" hours don't help anyone. Weeks of 60+ hours (when coding or testing, which is what I know) just lead to more bugs being added during the "tired" phases. It's counter productive.

Can I reparaphrase? (1) There are a number of bottlenecks on your average PC that don't exist on the Xbox. These bottlenecks are the result of legacy thingys like the PCI bus etc. We note here that exactly the same comparison can be made between bottlenecks on the PC and the PS2... (2) I'm perfectly sure that PC programmers would love to be able to optimise their code to ridiculous lengths, but this isn't anywhere near as easy to do as when developing for a single target platform (again, we could replace Xbox with PS2 here). Accordingly the code for the console is likely to be "different" to that running on the PC - there will be fewer "what if this bit of hardware doesn't support this feature" paths, for a start. The whole line of questioning only really kicks off with the assumption that the Xbox is a PC. [ We're not really comparing like with like... the Dreamcast has a Microsoft logo on the front - shall we compare the version of Q3 running on it to one running on the Xbox? ]

Either: (i) Get other friends. (ii) Go on your own. It's really not that scary.

Yes - but then if you don't get the PS2 version right... you're really not going to sell *that* many copies of a low profile game.

BG&E. Framerate problems. "Cute" characters. Released in middle of Xmas Rush on just the one format. Genre hopping, so not astonishingly easy to pigeonhole for marketing. --- Incidentally, though I preferred it to the gameplay of The Wind Waker - I wouldn't count it in the top ten games I played last year.

Yes - but we're idiots.

It sounds great. It won't be. I've sworn off buying console demo disks*. (* Ok - magazines, but the only selling point of OXBM and OPSM2 is the demon disk... )

"The cars are a joy to drive" So he liked the driving bits - which make up 2/3rds of the game - and didn't like the on foot bits - at 1/3rd... 3 out of 5 seems slightly too low a score

Oh. Don't spend time building your character up. That's wasted effort when you can just play online against similarly bad characters from scratch

We're now wandering around corruption on 8bit mags, but... http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=47053&st=60

To be fair, you could find the source by right clicking on it. Well worth reposting here. [ And if Cacky had done it there would be a letter visible stating: "This Game Will Score A 9. The Ed." ]

Now this is a post: Good one. You don't take bribes, I agree. Bribes are in brown envelopes. THIS is called business, and it's all agreed and above board, and rife in the games mag industry. I was in games mags when you were crawling so I know how this works. "So we get the first review, exclusive cover art, and several pages of premium Atari advertising, and all we have to do is fool our readers? What a deal!" Yes and Atari agreed to give you the first review regardless of the score you gave the game too I expect? That’s a lowdown dirty trick and you know it. It’s the best of two bad options isn’t it mate? Admit that you knowingly lied to your loyal readership while chugging Satan’s fat one, or say “We stick by it” when you know that you don’t stick by it at all (you’re actually crying inside aren’t you?). This excuse is usually followed at some point by the “it’s all subjective” line… A few years ago Paragon’s “64 Magazine” uttered the classic “Mission: Impossible – better than Goldeneye!”. The response was much the same then. Everyone went “Eh?”. But instead of admitting that they had an arrangement with Infogrames (well now, isn’t that interesting?) they simply “stood by” one of the insanest statements I’ve ever heard until the mag eventually closed up shop! Even EDGE has apologised on occasion (funnily enough, for not giving GoldenEye a 10), and they lost no credibility in the process. Be a man fer chrissakes. This sentence makes no sense to me. I don’t understand. Did you judge The Order of the Phoenix by that snippet that appeared in the papers? “Dumbledore sat Harry down…” It’s a 9! You cannot review that which is not finished. By definition this is a preview. YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS BY NOW. Shame on you. Oh My God. You are an Dep Editor in a games mag. Are you 12? Have you been doing this job for a week? No. In which case you have come up against this age-old PR trick time and time again over your months or years doing this job have you not? Saying you believed them doesn't justify your stupidity. Of course they said the bugs would be sorted out. THEY ALWAYS DO. And they always lie. Especially Shitari, as well you know. When was the last time they released any game that was any cop? If you discount Transformers and the UT series, there's been nothing in their catalogue, FOR YEARS, that was even worth touching. And they're one of the biggest publishers around? Why? Because of YOU and people like you. Ubisoft (for example) have released more great games in the last six months than Atari / Infogrames have since the company was fomed. And then there's Reflections. Driver was good enough. But Driver 2 was unfinished twaddle! Stuntman was unfinished twaddle! Why did anyone ever believe that Driver 3 would be anything other than unfinished twaddle? Aaaaaaahhhh ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa. You going to tell them off are you? Chide them? Sorry I'm laughing again now. You're their bitch, NOT the other way round. Just stop being an obstinate git and retract it will you? And you have a problem with truth do you? And you'd give a fundamentally broken game with little enjoyment value a 6? Oh my. This. Right Here. This is the problem with games reviewing today. Allows you cheating weasels to slime your way out of anything. This sentence is equivalent to saying "Well, the existence of our mag is pretty f*ck*ng pointless really." Doesn’t it? On one hand you’re going “buy the mag! It will help you make the right choice! We are the vanguard of taste, we know our stuff!” and on the other you’re going, quietly “But you might have to discount everything we say as it’s all just subjective really ain’t it?” It is your job to seperate the good games from the bad ones. This isn't music, this isn't film. Opinion matters less than in other forms of media. I like The Mars Volta - they have produced one of the greatest albums I have ever heard. Maybe you hate them (probably) but like Suede instead – whereas I think they are shite. Music is just taste. Whereas, games can JUST BE CRAP. I pride myself on being able to tell good games from bad ones whether I like them or not. A good reviewer should know the damn difference. You’re in the wrong career. Get a job in politics. Some more nice weaselwork. Good stuff. All you are doing is pointing out that all you mags are as bad as each other. Only EDGE and, perhaps even more so, GamesTM can really be trusted these days. I work for neither by the way. It's fundamentally different mate. If her leg fell off while you were screwing her, and you'd just paid £44.99 for the privilege you'd be pretty annoyed. So stop being a dick. XBM, PSM2, all of you. Your first priority is to your damn readers. If your reviews can be trusted, you will be bought by more people, and get advertising as a result of your reach, rather than your score massaging skills and ability to nosh a certain PR guy off. People in this industry need to grow a damn backbone and start speaking the truth before it dies from under us. Can you imagine Atari’s boardroom right now? Full of rich old gits that don’t know anything about games, counting their money and cheering about how great they are, while the PR guy stands wafting copies of YOUR mags under their noses. No-one thinks they’ve put a foot out of line. They think they’ve made a great game and are probably planning the next (again, rushed) instalment right now. Everyone’s congratulating each other on a job well done – except it’s not, it’s another step towards the games industry crash of the early 80s happening again. Ironically enough, that crash was caused by Atari…

Ooh. Steve Bailey (gismalla) wading in there

Lovely

Pay them more next time.

Cacky - Like it or not, you're not a complete outsider when you visit Japan. Which means you've a different perspective on things. Large portions of the film accurately reflect a complete outsider's view of the culture. Perhaps we ought to start moaning about how British Culture is either HarryPotterfied or EvilSupremeVillianified in Hollywood movies?

I'm rubbish :)

Lonely Planet are operating in a far different market, with one direct competitor. They'd also be stuffed completely and utterly if their market thought they'd sold their soul. Videogames magazines, on the other hand, are in a very busy marketplace. And are treated as a joke by everyone. We expect them to lie.

Late 2005 / 2006 is quite a long way away. It's not as though they're releasing it *now*.

Cacky doesn't make a good point, because he's simply wrong. The whole bloody plot wouldn't work in <Poland>/<Miami>/<Sydney*>. He's also blatantly not spent time considering The Mayor Of Casterbridge - Henchard is one of the least sympathetic characters in the history of literature * Lost In Translation: Sydney. Girl: I'm bored. Bloke wanders up: Let's go surfing. Girl: Ok

I've never been under the illusion that my voice is any good. It's appalling - partly because I can't properly enunciate any of the words But I can score quite highly on easy/medium...

Shout. It confuses it

And people wonder about how magazine scores can appear so disjointed from the accompanying reviews

i'll probably be about - I'm getting quite into playing PGR2 again.