BloodOmen
I am a FH squatter
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2004
- Messages
- 17,958
poking around pcgamer/few other websites - found a few things that interested me, some of them are 1-2 weeks old so some of you may have read it already.
"Is Metacritic the new Amazon? Despite only coming out three days ago, Jurassic Park has a host of decent user scores on the review aggregator, which set Gamespot’s fake reviews radar a twitchin’. Gamespot did some cursory Googling and found that the reviewer’s names matched up to those of developers Telltale’s employees.
In a statement to Gamespot, Telltale covered their backs by saying: “It is being communicated internally that anyone who posts in an industry forum will acknowledge that they are a Telltale employee. In this instance, two people who were proud of the game they worked on, posted positively on Metacritic under recognizable online forum and XBLA account names.”
Earlier this week, Bastion developers Supergiant Games found their game’s scores on Metacritic had plummeted due to a host of reviews giving the game a negative score, according to Giant Bomb. A Steam thread asked users to submit good reviews to counteract the bad ones, which pushed the score up from 6.5 to 7.1.
Signal Studios – whose Toy Soldiers: Cold War game was also given negative reviews – said that the current system is unfair. “The way to fix Metacritic user reviews is to simply require a written review and verify user accounts,” Signal Studios’ president and creative director Douglas Robert Albright III told Giant Bomb.
Modern Warfare 3 has also inspired some Metacritic shenanigans, with Sledgehammer Games’ Glen Schofield tweeting: “I don’t usually do this but, if u like MW3 go 2 Metacritic.com & help our user score. It’s suspiciously low. Be honest but help if u agree.”
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"Remember the Call of Duty social network, matchmaking and stat-tracking service, Call of Duty Elite? The one that was available on Xbox and PS3 at Modern Warfare 3′s launch? The one that Activision described as a “necessity” for games? It might not make it to PC.
Beachhead Studio head Chacko Sonny implied that we were getting it a few weeks ago, abeit later than the console kids: “We’re as committed as ever to the PC, but the need to ensure a safe PC environment is greater than ever,” he said. “It’s really extensive. We need more time to get there, so Elite on PC will not launch on Day 1. We’re working our butts off to make it happen, but we won’t release it until we know that PC gamers can enjoy Elite as it’s meant to be.”
It seems the situation has changed. As Eurogamer spotted on the official Call of Duty Elite Twitter feed, we might not be getting the service at all. EVER.
“We are working towards a universal Elite experience but we cannot guarantee if or when a version will be available for the PC,” read a tweet posted a few hours ago. The “if” makes me suspicious.
Call of Duty Elite’s console launch has been plagued with technical issues and users have even been given 30 days free use of the service to compensate. We were told that the PC version of Elite wouldn’t require a subscription fee. We were also told that we’d be testing it around now. And that it would eventually get released on PC, hence all the coverage. I don’t know who to believe any more."
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"A report on Siloconera is saying that Techland have coined the “Dead World” trademark, strongly suggesting that a bigger, bloodier sequel to Dead Island is in the works. In spite of the fact that Techland put out the wrong version of the game on release day, Dead Island ended up doing quite well. It filled the deserted open world zombie survival niche quite nicely with some horrendous gore and a big, beautiful island. You can find out what we thought in our Dead Island review.
Techland have since released a number of chunky patches, fixing the many launch bugs, balancing the zombies and adding new weapons. A strong modding community have added some unique twists to the Dead Island formula, and can see the best results of their efforts in our round up of the top ten Dead Island mods.
While it’s unlikely that Techland will expand the zombie apocalypse to encompass the entire globe, you’d expect an even bigger play area with the ‘World’ tag. What would you like to see from a Dead Island sequel?
- - - - -
"Is Metacritic the new Amazon? Despite only coming out three days ago, Jurassic Park has a host of decent user scores on the review aggregator, which set Gamespot’s fake reviews radar a twitchin’. Gamespot did some cursory Googling and found that the reviewer’s names matched up to those of developers Telltale’s employees.
In a statement to Gamespot, Telltale covered their backs by saying: “It is being communicated internally that anyone who posts in an industry forum will acknowledge that they are a Telltale employee. In this instance, two people who were proud of the game they worked on, posted positively on Metacritic under recognizable online forum and XBLA account names.”
Earlier this week, Bastion developers Supergiant Games found their game’s scores on Metacritic had plummeted due to a host of reviews giving the game a negative score, according to Giant Bomb. A Steam thread asked users to submit good reviews to counteract the bad ones, which pushed the score up from 6.5 to 7.1.
Signal Studios – whose Toy Soldiers: Cold War game was also given negative reviews – said that the current system is unfair. “The way to fix Metacritic user reviews is to simply require a written review and verify user accounts,” Signal Studios’ president and creative director Douglas Robert Albright III told Giant Bomb.
Modern Warfare 3 has also inspired some Metacritic shenanigans, with Sledgehammer Games’ Glen Schofield tweeting: “I don’t usually do this but, if u like MW3 go 2 Metacritic.com & help our user score. It’s suspiciously low. Be honest but help if u agree.”
- - - - -
"Remember the Call of Duty social network, matchmaking and stat-tracking service, Call of Duty Elite? The one that was available on Xbox and PS3 at Modern Warfare 3′s launch? The one that Activision described as a “necessity” for games? It might not make it to PC.
Beachhead Studio head Chacko Sonny implied that we were getting it a few weeks ago, abeit later than the console kids: “We’re as committed as ever to the PC, but the need to ensure a safe PC environment is greater than ever,” he said. “It’s really extensive. We need more time to get there, so Elite on PC will not launch on Day 1. We’re working our butts off to make it happen, but we won’t release it until we know that PC gamers can enjoy Elite as it’s meant to be.”
It seems the situation has changed. As Eurogamer spotted on the official Call of Duty Elite Twitter feed, we might not be getting the service at all. EVER.
“We are working towards a universal Elite experience but we cannot guarantee if or when a version will be available for the PC,” read a tweet posted a few hours ago. The “if” makes me suspicious.
Call of Duty Elite’s console launch has been plagued with technical issues and users have even been given 30 days free use of the service to compensate. We were told that the PC version of Elite wouldn’t require a subscription fee. We were also told that we’d be testing it around now. And that it would eventually get released on PC, hence all the coverage. I don’t know who to believe any more."
- - - - -
"A report on Siloconera is saying that Techland have coined the “Dead World” trademark, strongly suggesting that a bigger, bloodier sequel to Dead Island is in the works. In spite of the fact that Techland put out the wrong version of the game on release day, Dead Island ended up doing quite well. It filled the deserted open world zombie survival niche quite nicely with some horrendous gore and a big, beautiful island. You can find out what we thought in our Dead Island review.
Techland have since released a number of chunky patches, fixing the many launch bugs, balancing the zombies and adding new weapons. A strong modding community have added some unique twists to the Dead Island formula, and can see the best results of their efforts in our round up of the top ten Dead Island mods.
While it’s unlikely that Techland will expand the zombie apocalypse to encompass the entire globe, you’d expect an even bigger play area with the ‘World’ tag. What would you like to see from a Dead Island sequel?
- - - - -
