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The Strange Case of Hype

Posted by John Constantine



When is a game review more interesting than its subject? When there’s hype.

Free Radical, the first-person shooter developer responsible for the original Perfect Dark, the Timesplitters franchise, and GoldenEye 007, are releasing their latest, Haze, this week and it has seen a flurry of coverage in the gaming press and blogosphere. Not because of the game’s release after nearly a year of delays but because it’s getting slammed in western press outlets. Haze isn’t the first marquee Playstation 3 title to see this sort of attention. Factor 5’s much maligned Lair saw the same tar and feathering when it released last August. Lair was a legitimately broken game suffering from an ill-advised decision to implement a purely motion-control interface. Its lambasting by the media became a story in itself because of Factor 5 Julian Eggebrecht’s bombastic response to the criticism. Haze received fairly positive preview coverage in the press late last year when the game was originally supposed to release, preview coverage looking at what was touted to be a close to finished product in need of final polishing. But in the intervening months, as the game has been repeatedly delayed, an air of negativity has surrounded it in news coverage. Is the reason that Haze is getting poor reviews a news story because it’s confirming everyone’s expectations? Is it any different than the downpour of perfect review scores for Grand Theft Auto 4 became a news worthy story?

The real question: does hype, positive or negative, create news where there may not be any?


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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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