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Prey review thread
- Thread starter Cyberia
- Start date
What is the standard policy for a reviewer who encounters a "game breaking" bug?
I would have thought that they'd be obliged to check around and see how many other people encountered it and then used that info to decide how much to dock the game's score.
A four out of ten might be okay if said bug is happening to a lot of people but if it's 1 in a thousand wouldn't the reviewer be better off delaying the review?
I would have thought that they'd be obliged to check around and see how many other people encountered it and then used that info to decide how much to dock the game's score.
A four out of ten might be okay if said bug is happening to a lot of people but if it's 1 in a thousand wouldn't the reviewer be better off delaying the review?
H.Cornerstone
Member
Problem is he already delayed it due to not getting the game until after release.
They're a company who has to make money, and you do that with clicks. And no one is going to care about their review in another couple of days.
It is what it is. It's his opinion, and he doesn't think you should risk buying the game.
I guess you just cross your fingers that people will be smart enough to see the situation for what it is and treat the review accordingly.
To be honest reviews have little or no influence on my decision to buy a game or not.
H.Cornerstone
Member
Yeah, problem is most people will just look at the score.
Do Quick looks and podcast discussions got as reviews? Because those influence my decisions.
PanicFreak
Member
Wait a second; he lost five hours of progress? The video review made it sound like he was 20 hours in and had to start over.
They aren't reviews I guess but I do feel that they offer more info and are more clear as to the nature of a game, though.
I'm similar, a quicklook or walkthrough is what I rely on if I need to figure whether I'm going to enjoy a game or not.
Karak
Member
If they can cover the game mechanics and how they adjust throughout the entire game and so forth sure. But frontloading is a real thing, and will continue to be for some titles so quicklooks can be a bit weak in that regard. For instance a number of recent quicklooks I have watched have absolutely no idea whats occurring in the game and what was reported many times didn't reflect anything about the gameplay later on or the experience as it fleshed out even a slight amount into the game.
Podcast discussions seem to be a better idea though as most folks who do that have played the entire game and can discuss its maturity throughout the experience, or lack of it
And come to it to discuss the entirety versus 1 hour or 2 hours.More_Badass
Member
Exactly. That's the thing with reviews that quick looks or even just watching 30 minutes/an hour of a stream or Let's Play can't do. Reviews are retrospective, providing a perspective of a game as a whole, rather than just the snippet you get from the other means. The latter might show you how a game plays, but it can't tell you if the game stays as good throughout, if it sticks the landing, if issues appear later or compound over time, and so on
Human Trashcan
Banned
It's real bad when folks can't imagine any type of games writing or criticism that isn't a review with an arbitrary number slapped on the end
4Players.de gave it 90/100 and a Platinum Reward. Pretty high score by their standards. The reviewer is especially in awe about the last third of the game.
http://www.4players.de/4players.php/dispbericht/Allgemein/Test/11048/82476/0/Prey.html
http://www.4players.de/4players.php/dispbericht/Allgemein/Test/11048/82476/0/Prey.html
It's relative though. He lost a bit of progress due to a save bug. The entire game didn't break. (Edit: read the latter parts of his review for more detail - is pretty fucked up, worse than i suggest here, but there's now a patch that fixes it.)
Fully agree that Bethesda's policy is a problem.
Well, the itself policy isn't a problem, but it causes reviewers to rush (their fault) which is definitely a problem, and will exacerbate any issues. I've experienced this myself a few years back when i wrote for a site for a while. But Bethesda should know that would happen.
seems fair if you run across a game breaking bug tbh.
i mean, if i came across the same sort of thing in any game or was forced to start over, no matter how good it was up to that point, it's just thrown itself into the shit pile. the bug shouldn't be there for anyone...end of. it doesn't matter if it's 10 or 10 thousand people experiencing it. there is a risk of it happening there that shouldn't be in something that costs $60.
i personally don't have a habit of recommending games that offer a Russian roulette chance of bugging the fuck out. why would IGN?
If an average user experienced this problem he may drop the game, be disappointed and give it a low score. But for a professional reviewer to give such score without trying playing it on different PCs, contacting the developer or trying to work around this is just ... unprofessional.
What should have happened is the review should have been delayed. Now it looks like the reviewer was just pissed about his lost progress so he just gave low score as punishment to the developer.
GwyndolinCinder
Member
The bug stopped them from proceeding but it was also fixed on the day it went up and the save worked again so no progress was lost?
Seems like just, you know, boot the game and verify "hey it works now" would be great.
This fine and dandy as long as it's CONSISTENT.
Giving a 9.5 to Fallout 4 and then trashing Prey for a rare bug makes the whole affair ridiculous.
At the end of the day it's IGN, should surprise no one.
Or not, but if you gonna trash a game for a technical bug be ready to trash all of them, or be ready to get called out.
Anyway he's playing victim in his twitter now. Reminds me of jim vs zelda, back then I stopped following Jim, in this case there's no action needed on my part because IGN already was a joke outlet before this.
Peroroncino
Member
Seems like a logical next step in such a situation, however I can't say I don't empathize with the reviewer a bit, he ran across something that nulled his entire progress and since reviews are subjective, he was well within his rights to score it as low as he did based on his personal experience.
And even though it WAS fixed pretty quickly, it doesn't change the fact that for a while he felt as if he just wasted 40 hours of work, negative feelings like that tend to leave a bad mark. Besides, after fixing the issue - according to the review, wasn't the game crashing constantly later on? I bet that also affected the score on top of the save glitch.
The whole situation is a bit tricky overall, since many here seem to be approaching this from their own standpoint on what a reviewer should be, objective, subjective, held to a higher standard etc. that's why it's hard to find a common ground here.
Personally, I don't hold reviewers to a higher standard, that's why I don't think due diligence was neccessary here. One guy had a shitty experience? No problem, there's countless other reviews to compare it to and see for myself if it's the norm or an outlier.
The entire 'official' reason for Bethesda's review policy was so gamers and reviewers could experience the same game at the same time, so I hope they still think it was a good idea. Because before, the guy would probably still be under embargo and they'd have some time to resolve this issue hush hush. Would it affect the score? I bet, but the reviewer would have some time to settle down and finish the game without pressure.
Comrade Crunch
Member
He only lost 5 hours of progress though, not all 30.
Yep, this is an important detail.
That said, it kept happening and he was evidently stuck in a 'save corruption' loop. Even a new file sent over by Bethesda started corrupting.
He couldn't play because his saves would just keep corrupting.
I guess he could have done it all in one go without shutting the game off, but that's not an ideal solution.
Peroroncino
Member
Better, but still sucks, I lost 1 hour worth of DA:Inquisition fetch-questing and was pretty pissed about it, after a certain threshold I don't think the exact number really matters, since you lose motivation to play further anyway.
Imp the Dimp
Member
Got a link to that thread? Because that statement is the fucking truth.
Savantcore
Unconfirmed Member
So would people prefer he gave it a 9 with a 'btw, the game straight up broke while I was playing it an I lost 5 hours of progress'.
That'd be a lot worse, in my opinion.
That'd be a lot worse, in my opinion.
Comrade Crunch
Member
Personally, I wish he had just waited a couple hours to publish the review so he could have downloaded the patch that not only got rid of the bug but also fixed the corrupted saves.
I don't care about the score but why would you give a broken game a 4 when he thinks it's very game breaking?
How do you get anything lower than a 4 at that point?
Except he didn't lose any progress. They had a fix out by the time he published his review.
The saves were not corrupted, only refusing to load due to a bug.
That bug obviously should not have been there, and perhaps if Bethesda had handed out review copies a week or two prior to launch it could have been resolved before the review was published, but this just seems like Dan is trying to strong-arm Bethesda into changing their policy on review copies rather than "informing consumers".
He was already in contact with the developers about this, but felt that his need to publish a review as soon as possible was more important than due diligence.
Since this bug was corrected in a matter of days - and is no longer a "beta patch" - all his review does is misinform readers of IGN, and hurt Arkane Austin.
I cannot understand how he arrived at giving the game a 4/10 though.
I agree that reviews scored on a 100-point scale - or perhaps any point-based scale - are largely meaningless, but if you are going to give the game a negative review based on a "game-breaking" bug that you encountered, it should be an instant 0/10.
A 4/10 score is Dan's attempt at lashing out. It says "this is a very bad game" not "this game is broken and thus we could not complete a review".
Ok, then let's do this from now on. Game breaking bug = 0/10. And let's start with Prey because why not, make it the scapegoat, noone seems to give a fuck about Arkane, one of the last studios that tries to make AAA niche games.
Prey and Arkane do not deserve this. Bethesda maybe, but not the devs.
H.Cornerstone
Member
Again, if you just read the score you think it's a bad game. But if you actually read even just the first and last paragraphs he literally says "This is a good game that I can't recommend due to the potential of a game breaking bug."
Also, they are going back and reviewing the Xbone and PS4 versions and will give those separate scores. But I reckon PS4 will get a much lower score due to the input lag problems
A 0 would at least make people read it as they would go "wtf"
I am not saying that I think the game deserves a 0/10 score.
I just finished it, and it's a strong contender for game of the year for me - though I personally disliked the direction things took in the last third of the game.
I am saying that if your outlet decides to give negative review scores to punish games with issues like this, it should be 0/10 or not scored at all.
If it's really a 'great game but I can't recommend it' then it should be 0/10.
A 4/10 score is a recommendation, even if it's a negative one.
Dan knows that a 4/10 score hurts the game more than a 0/10 score does.
He is lashing out at Bethesda's review policy. He's making the statement that 'hey, maybe if you gave us early review copies, things like this wouldn't happen' - at Arkane's expense.
Human Trashcan
Banned
This really isn't a difficult situation. All Dan had to do was sit on the review for a bit until the patch came out to see if it fixed anything. He didn't, he chose to run the review because he's a petty asshole with an axe to grind. If he'd waited A SINGLE DAY he wouldn't have had the justification to run that review. IGN's not gonna fail because a single review ran a day later. He knew what he was doing. He published the review just before the patch came out (which he knew was coming) precisely because he would lose justification to run the review as-is after the patch.
All the navel-gazing about scores is beside the point. The situation the review describes literally doesn't exist anymore. It existed for less than a week in grand total, and even then, it was a very rare occurrence. Yet that review will now stand, probably forever. Fuck Dan Stapleton.
All the navel-gazing about scores is beside the point. The situation the review describes literally doesn't exist anymore. It existed for less than a week in grand total, and even then, it was a very rare occurrence. Yet that review will now stand, probably forever. Fuck Dan Stapleton.
TheVoidDragon
Member
Lowering the score to a 4/10 because of a few hours loss from a bug that seem to be very rare, is supposedly now fixed and didn't even make him lose that much progress seems a bit far to me.
If we assume that his score would have been in line with the other reviewers of an 8 or 9, then that one bug lowered it a whole 4 or 5 points, so his score was determined more by the bug than the game itself it seems . With something like Arkham Knight where is was actually completely unplayable for a vast amount of people and there were no fixes in sight was an understandable time to give it a very low score because of those problems and how significant they are, but in this case he even says the game is good and he did manage to play quite a bit of it and it isn't a widespread problem.
Lowering the score because of it sounds fine but doing it by that much puts more emphasis on that one uncommon problem rather than the actual game.
If we assume that his score would have been in line with the other reviewers of an 8 or 9, then that one bug lowered it a whole 4 or 5 points, so his score was determined more by the bug than the game itself it seems . With something like Arkham Knight where is was actually completely unplayable for a vast amount of people and there were no fixes in sight was an understandable time to give it a very low score because of those problems and how significant they are, but in this case he even says the game is good and he did manage to play quite a bit of it and it isn't a widespread problem.
Lowering the score because of it sounds fine but doing it by that much puts more emphasis on that one uncommon problem rather than the actual game.
Don Draper avatar delivered that with such control. Made this even more impactful.
This is one thing reviewers don't get, they become a statistic on a games score. It will last the game for years, it's basically imprint of the writer, site and of their opinion of the game. I know there are a lot of people who trust IGN for some reason and decide to skip otherwise great games if they aren't scored to a certain degree.
I can't say thats right on those people because it isn't, its pretty closed minded tbh, but as some one who carries a lot of weight to certain group of consumers, informing his audience in the most neutral way is the right way to go about it. Reviewers, including Dan don't get you really aren't writing this for themselves, its too inform others. Not to mention that the patch was out the day he published the review. It's just bad journalism, I'll stand by that forever.
He's fighting a journalist-publisher war and landing all those bombs on the developer camp. It's fucking shameful.
I totally agree that Dan knows perfectly the result of his score, to the dot, that's why him playing victim on twitter it's annoying.
Edit: I'm late, this sums it up:
@big fake: To be honest Prey is probably going to become a cult game at some point once it's cheaper and more people get to play it after the spring release madness. Then I rather have IGN keep their score as it is and look, yet again, like the idiots they are. At that point this will only be another Alien: Isolation fiasco.
"IGN's Executive Editor of Reviews" - Dan
Prey reviewer - Dan
Aha.
So does he ask his reviewers to knock points off for every bug they encounter?
LegitMcfalls
Member
The next time a telltale game gets reviewed at ign and scores above a 4 then we know Dan had a bone to pick with Bethesda.
I concur with this post. This whole situation was handled poorly and unprofessionally. Although I struggle to use the word 'professional' with "games journalism" these days. Situations like this don't help.
Bloodporne
Member
I think it should also be noted that IGN themselves reported on May 9th that the required patch was in the pipeline and had even received a firm release date of 'before the end of the week', ultimately actually releasing by the end of the next day. Even with that knowledge, for some reason they decided to post their review on May 10th, with the patch releasing hours later, and then an article on May 11th stating the following acknowledging it:
"As promised a few days ago, Prey publisher Bethesda and developer Arkane have pushed a patch out that fixes Prey's game-breaking save-game corruption issue."
I don't really have, or had, an opinion on IGN either way and am certainly no fan of Bethesda's bullshit review policy or a massive defender of the actual game (don't even own it yet), but this is ridiculous to me. I can't imagine a review for Prey being posted some days later impacting IGN's traffic in any hurtful fashion, so what's the deal? Did the review have to beat the patch's release date so it wouldn't have to be revised again?
Reading Dan's twitter, I think it's pretty clear that the situation with Bethesda affected his stance on this particular review, and that he intends to make an example out of this to try to get the company to change their policy. There's a million way to bring more nuance and clarity to the situation even now, but he'd rather keep an already irrelevant review forever on his site for the sake of his point.
Can't say I have a lot of sympathy for this attitude.
Can't say I have a lot of sympathy for this attitude.
IGN's Dan Stapleton just updated his review after bug was fixed.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/05/13/prey-review-2
8.0
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/05/13/prey-review-2
8.0
I can't see a clear consensus on the story- on one hand it seems to have the twists and turns of Bioshock and I see users on here praising it, but at the same time some reviews say its a sore spot- for the record I thought Dishonored (both games) was straight garbo in this department, is Prey Much better and among the likes of Bioshock and Deus Ex? Or At least System Shock?
old manatee
Banned
This game's reception reminds me of STALKER when it first came out​. I'm going to enjoy watching Prey's detractors try to desperately scramble their way back onto the right side of history.
CalamityPixel
Member
IGN lmao
Wow I haven't seen a complete 180 in such a while. Dan broke from all this outrage towards him didn't he? I'm glad he realized that mistake and rectified it.
Lol
I don't think they do, but to be fair it's not really on IGN to care about how another site deals with anything.