THQ calls Red Faction: Battlegrounds reception a 'disappointment'

I wouldn't call shooting for a score of 7 "going all out."

Typical half-ass cash grabs, atypical response from the greedy exec.

@jsx

Interesting. When the game is mediocre it's a cash grab. But when the game is good (Dead Rising) then it's what?

I think the problem was they got to a point where more polishing would have pushed the release date past that of Armageddon. So the decsion then is do you throw away all of the development time/money invested and cancel the tie-in game?

@Odog4ever Dead Rising's XBLA game was actually a legit Dead Rising game for $5.

RF:Battlegrounds is a remake of RC Pro Am (NES) with an unrelated brand name slapped on it for $10.

Studios and publishers who do this kind of crap should be ashamed. There should be no quarter for these franchise-destroying, money-grubbing, out-of-touch hacks who move from donut shops and department stores into video game executive jobs.

@jasoncourt This actually would have made more sense as a Saints Row 3 tie-in game. Not only is that a series with, uh, cars, but it also does have really fun destruction derby side missions which might have been interesting from an isometric view.

Sorry, THQ. You don't get a 7 this time. The only ones who get get 7s for phoning it in with an established franchise that people love are companies like Nintendo and Square Enix, and you sirs are no Square Enix!

@TraceurRyuk Part III
from my experiences, what reviews are best for is building preconceived notions. review says its great, you go in assuming its great before you even get past the intro scenes. review says its terrible and you will probably bitch about the menu.

unfortunately we need reviews and predetermined expectations because you can't just go buying every game hoping for the best. but its a shame that most people won't even consider giving certain games a chance because of what MetaCritic says.

@TraceurRyuk Part III

Agreed. Adam Sessler did a piece on it and how gamers shouldn't just see a 3/5 for example and dismiss it, but actually read it and see the great parts of it. It's annoying and something that should change.

@The Cole Train

I really like Adam Sesslar. One of the game reviewer's opinions I trust.

Also, like the guy said, it hurts sales. Even if it has like a 7/10 people dismiss it. Take Enslaved: Odyssey To The West for example. Justin's praise got me to buy the game, and it is absolutely great. But it received some "average" reviews and didn't sell all that great. Which to me, is disappointing.

@Lucky48 Agreed, gameplay tells it all, but cant help but add; that is the clever gameplay sells the game just like the E3 shows...

@kojo87

I would happily trade every review ever written in for a chance to actually play the demo myself, and form my own opinions.

This being a downloadable game, one of the better things about being on XBLA, is you automatically get to play a certain amount of the game as a dedicated demo.

THIS IS A FEATURE THAT EVERY GAME SHOULD COME WITH.

Not just downloadable fair, like on XBLA, but EVERY GAME. On a disc, download, or whatever form they want to shoot it to us in.

Games are an interactive media - the written word vis-a-vis, game reviews are not interactive . . . and neither are videogame trailers. None of that stuff can possible ever hope to be an adequate substitute for actually interacting with the game in question.

One of the reasons that I am loving the OnLive streaming videogame service, is that every game, gives you the 30-minutes of free play. That's the best demo money can buy, and it's free. Free for the customers, and free for the developers and publishers, who don't have to spend money and resources making a demo, to have a demo. I think most gamers can make up their own mind in 30 minutes or less if a game is too their liking or not. It is a system, that I personally would trade in every videogame review ever written, to see come into reality. Not to put review writers out of a job, but just to give every game a fair shake with direct with the customer. No middle man between the media and the user to tell the user how, or what to think of feel. Just the user with the game, making up their own mind - every time, for every game.

And all these co-called journalist writing all these reviews, maybe they can do something better with their time, like some real investigative reporting or something, into the ins and outs of the game industry.

EVERYBODY WINS

@Tachyonic Cargo

Some games sell worse if they put out a demo. This applies to really high-profile super-hyped games like Grand Theft Auto: they get so many people willing to buy the game sight unseen that they're more likely to disappoint those customers than attract new ones.

@Tachyonic Cargo You're putting way too much faith in your own ability to make decisions about the whole based on some small part. There are plenty of games that I had great fun with for 5 minutes, only to be entirely disappointed by the full game, and some amazing games that didn't demo well in the least and ended up being favorites when I stuck with them.

Great example: My first experience playing Halo was for about 10 minutes at an EB games kiosk. the last guy had cleared out the encounter in a large open area and walked away. I came up, and there wasn't anything to shoot for miles around. I wandered around a bit, shooting rocks and such, and thought, "This is Halo? This game is crap, what's all the hype about?" and ignore the game for a year or two before I got around to playing it for real.

Better than my own opinion, I'll trust a game reviewer I find I respect and agree with with a very high degree of frequency. It's their job to say, "yes, I completed it an it was completely worth my time and effort". It's stupid to replicate that only to find out they were right all along that some game sucked. The numbered scores are there for me to waste even less of my life on a game that isn't worth my time.

So go ahead, watch those videos of that vertical slice, that first level that the developer put so much time and polish into and ignore those reviews telling you the game is crap, only to find out it falls apart in the second half on your own. I'll spend my money on something I know I'll like because the consensus of people I trust says I will.

@lostmongoose

My issue with that line is: what innovation are they talking about exactly? When I played I didn't get the sense that anything was new or innovative, just a lot of different mechanics and ideas borrowed from other games.

@lostmongoose

Excellent, dude. Way to put things into perspective.

@lostmongoose
i dunno man. if i put a video on YouTube of me taking a shit. nobody would care. if that video was me taking a shit off a ten story building i would probably get a few hits and, if we're being optimistic, end up on Tosh.0 at some point.

@lostmongoose

If in their own minds the game was a "7", why THQ didn't try to polish their "7" game into a "9" or "10" is the real issue here.

I hate the mentality of "it's good enough" instead of "we can make it better". They didn't want to invest more into their own game, so why should we, with our money?

@kojo87

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYW6C44zo24

*Twenty-one million views* ...and counting

...just sayin'.

@OneManFreakShow. LMAO! +1

@US 447 SyFy Channel original movies are awesome. You clearly just don't get the joke.

@OneManFreakShow
Megashark VS Giant Octopus

know who wins? the viewer.

@US 447. Oh snap! And yes, sharktopus is the equivalent of Christ's blood mixed with codeine.

@OneManFreakShow Umm ok, the joke being that the game expects people to pay for it? The SyFy ones im talkin about are like Lake Placid 3

@US 447

I still have my fingers crossed that they are going to make a Manbearpig movie.

4 star film in the making, that's for damn sure

I'm sereal, super duper sereal

@Jajuka81
I agree. I also think the review process has become an industry unto itself, where gamers (and even those in charge within the industry) are taking review scores a little too seriously to the point of overriding their judgement. This has been a problem for years, and it's something seen in pretty much all other entertainment mediums.

Ultimately, it really just comes down to this:

How many times have we, as gamers, would see glowing reviews of games only to be disappointed when we actually experience the game ourselves?

How many times have we played a game that we loved to death, only to come across some review stating the opposite?

Would you really hedge your bets and money on something that is by all accounts based on someone else's opinion rather than your own?

@Jajuka81

It's funny how we are at this point in gaming where if you do play with an internet access you as a player have the ability to at least try the game out. Going beyond the review, play a portion or at least what the game would seem to be about first. Reviews are good if you take them as another persons opinion.

Several games I love this gen has gotten average or less than average reviews but I know as a gamer I love it. We have to remember no one game in the history of gaming was hated by every gamer who played it. What ever game, no matter how crappy it seems to you or the reviewer some one out there likes it. All you gotta do it give a game a chance and see if it floats your boat. If not oh well, some are good some are bad at least you tried it.

@Stevetrop Man of Mystery

I agree with you on that. Most reviews for Two Worlds 2 were "average" at best. But I had a blast with that game! It was one of my favorites in the past 6 months. I also understand that all these reviews were just written by other gamers, even if they some see them in a higher way. But since these professional reviewers have the ability to do real damage to the game (with a poor review), or give a game a real boost in sales (with a good review), I think we need to make sure that this "power" of theirs is handled the correct way. I'm not saying that they should give a false review of a game just to please the developers or publishers. On the contrary, I think they should be brutally honest in their reviews.

It's the review "score" that I take issue with. This score also seems to be what the industry measures their success against... other than sales numbers, of course. :) I just think that these numbers can do more harm than good sometimes, and we as an industry, should try to find a better method of reviewing games.

In my mind, anything below a 6 or 7 out of 10, usually equates to a poor title (in my mind!). This is because many times, reviewers will give a game a score of 5-6, but in the conclusion say that there is no need for you to buy or even play said game. That can be very confusing for the gamer, since on a scale of 0-10, 5 should be average. Instead, a game getting a 5 (or lower) is pretty much a disaster in most reviewers' opinions.

I'm losing my train of thought here, so I'll leave it at that. To sum up: Reviews are great (and necessary!!!), but we either need to remove the review score, or find a way to alter it to make more sense. I'm done now. :)

@Jajuka81

It is sad that in some ways some reviews miss the concept of the game. Now this is the seventh generation in the console market. And a bar is their on graphics. How ver I hate it when a game that while may not have the absolute best graphic quality has an amazing gameplay style and story is lover looked because of that situation.

As gamers we each know what we like and what we don't like. I think sometimes we need a wake up call and not allow reviewers make our choices. We have the ability to rent and play trails of games. Lets not judge books by their covers.

@Jajuka81
No, that's completely missing the point. If a reviewer reviews a game, the review sounds vaguely positive, and then it's a 5 - that's a terrible review, and I don't mean the game is terrible, I mean the review is.

Because the 5 is obviously what s/he thinks of the game overall as an experience - to summarise, 'is this worth playing? nope' - but the text of the review didn't successfully get that across. Bad review.

What's more this is a key argument for keeping scores - because that bad review could have incorrectly encouraged people to buy the game ('Hey, s/he said it's not that bad, I'll give it a try!'). The score at the end is saving that review.

Unless of course you think the 5 is wrong and the review is right - but who's going to do that? Getting across what you think of a game in English text can be challenging (maybe you want to spend longer on the good parts and that affects the overall tone), but picking a score from 5 to 10 is something even a drooling, mouth-breathing video game reviewer can probably manage.

This is different from the 'this game got 7s and a lot of people were put off but if you read the text of the review, there were good bits, and personally I liked it'. That can be a good review. 7 basically means 'the game's okay, if you're into that kind of thing it might be worth playing, otherwise there's probably something better'. If you want to know whether that would apply to you, you'll have to read the text.

Sure it's popular to spout off against review scores - it sounds clever, like you're beating the system, you're the kind of person who can actually read unlike those dimwits who read scores - but they provide a safety margin for clarifying what that one reviewer (who probably can't write that well, or at least has off days) actually thought. And in aggregate they provide a reliable summary of how good a game is... for an average reviewer.

Any particular individual might not be an average reviewer so you need to use some intelligence and, in borderline cases, actually reading the review would probably be a good idea. This isn't a borderline case; it has a 4? Then it's shit. End of.

@xxxsam

Some of what you say, I agree with. If a reviewer says mostly positive things about a game in a review, but then gives the review a low score, that may be a poorly written review. But the ending score is part of the problem. A 5/10 shouldn't be considered a disaster. It should be average... middle of the scale. However, that is not what's really being practiced in reality. With the way most reviewers score their games, they might as well rate them on a scale of 5-10, rather than 1-10, as everything below a 5 is basically lumped together in the same category: junk.

If we need to continue to use a scoring system in the review process, so be it. But at least have it make more sense than the current one in practice.

@The Wicker Man This comment is spot on.

I have a video game queue at least 10 long of AAA phenomenal titles. Occasionally I'll play a mediocre game that is right up my alley (e.g. anything in the Silent Hill series or Call of Cthulhu). Releasing a passable game in a crowded genre is a clear case for low sales.

I am stunned THQ allowed this message to go out - it really calls the "we get good games" image into question. They are starting to look a lot more like M. Night Shyamalan than Stephen Speilburg.

@CrumbBum. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners is fun for fans, but I agree it needed more time in the oven. The big problem (exemplified by THQ) is that they are pushing a line of quality but delivering less then apologizing for it. (Homefront) I like them and hope they get it together though!