61 Frames Per Second

We should get married on the beach.

Relevant points raised here.

But I don't see the zero punctuation similarity at all. Other than the British accents on a video.

You're wrong. Twice.

First of all the real story is that Ron Workman was fired from Destructoid for being impossible to work with. It was all over their forums.  I also know a few people in the industry and they all say nobody in the gaming industry wants to work with that guy and he lies to people he's a millionare and has fake jobs at gaming companies. He's exactly like the guy on Seinfeld who goes into work each day pretending to work there. Your credible source is a joke.

As for the Halo thing, I though the video was funny.  Its nothing like Zero Punctuation other than them both being British and giving a review. If their editorial team and half the comments agree with the review and the score on Metacritic adds up how is that shoddy journalism?

Destructoid is alright.  You should listen to their Retroforce Go podcast.  Way better than Retronauts.

LOL to the comment above me. By "Fired" do you mean, "I told everyone at E3 and then officially stepped down when it ended?" That is what happened point blank. I left Dtoid and didnt take anything. Idiots like you believe lies. Many industry people knew I was leaving Dtoid and my reason was "I didnt think it needed me anymore to grow" and I think now things are coming out without me being involved that prove the "ethical reasons" even deeper.

Better yet, to the comment above AKA Niero (you arent fooling anyone), you can lie your ass off in the Dtoid forums about me being Fired but how do you explain it to the staff that knew, our friends, and the rest of the industry? Nice use of Ishaans old blog as a link too. Enjoy all the money me and everyone you stepped on helped you make!

Better post this in your blog ron or people wont think its you. silly internet.

Ron left Dtoid before there was any talk of him being "fired."

I can't stand brussel sprouts, but I don't constantly talk about them. In fact, I try not to have them in my life at all ... ya' know, since I hate them.

It would be so odd if I kept buying brussel sprouts at the store and then told everyone in said store how much I hated them for no real reason.

Huh.

You'd think I would just focus my energy on talking about the vegetables that I like. Like, broccoli. I love broccoli!

Funny thing, hating brussel sprouts ...

Cole Stryker,

I can't believe that people are wasting this much time arguing about a game that isn't even OUT yet. So whose to say if this Jim Sterling's video game review is accurate or not!

Rally the d-toid shock troops!  We must defend are honor!  EVreybody knos that Rontard was fierd, he is just a whiner bout it.

I love how everyone needs to use fake names.

Ron Workman is a dickhole liarpants!

Love,

Sgt. Farts

Yeah, Ron left a while before the whole banning thing. A lot of users changed their avatars to his because there was no big going away posts. So there are hundreds of people who can attest to this.

Yay! More unneeded attention for Ron! Woo hoo!

That's the first and last time I'll ever go to that website. Forget the video review (which was terrible). The actual writing was worse than shit you'd read on a fanboy's blog. I hope he didn't get paid for that review.

The comments agree? How many of those tools actually played the game and compare that to how many follow Sterling blindly. It's a fucking joke that he's held not held responsible at all for first off half-assing his work and second, lying about it. If I was his boss, I would spend more time making sure staff gets put in their place instead of loyal contributors.

also, it's not Zero punctuation, it's just old Jim being 'witty' and whatnot.

I only played the demo and I couldn't help but agree with the mini-map comment. Overall the game felt like something they specifically tried to make sub-par if it was on pc, in effect giving them an excuse not to port it. I felt like I was a little kid playing with shiny little sci-fi toys instead of a video game. Well until it started stuttering when I speed-scrolled or whatever it's called. Between the minimap and that flawed feature, a real-time strategy with base building becomes less than "good" as the 7/10 his review gave the game.

Oh and did it occur to you people accusing him of not playing the game that he might have reviewed the game on another piece of hardware? Have we not got the memo 360s can RROD(or that the debug versions don't have achievements or stat tracking?)

@Capt Plnet

Multipe times Sterling was requested by the community in his own post how certain features worked, ex the multiplayer (not specific parts, the whole thing). The first individual worded his question very poorly and apparently had a history for doing the same thing.

Then other people asked in his stead, no bullshit or unnecessary comments. Sterling never replied.

If you're going to stick up for Sterling, how about you do some research. The information is laid out right in front of you, take the initiative to read over it instead of making excuses for someone else.

Also I read the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and I'm going to give that a 9/10. How much credibility does that give me?

This is a bummer to hear.  I read Dtoid pretty regularly and have always enjoyed Sterling's writing in particular.  I wasn't aware of the whole Workman-leaving-Destructoid fracas, but it sounds like there's some bad blood still flowing.

Still, I'm trained to be a journalist first and I can't dispute the facts.  He reviewed a game that he didn't take past its third chapter, nor did he sample its multiplayer.  There's always the "review code played on debug" argument, but that doesn't hold water in this case as it's pretty widely known that Halo Wars *retail* boxes were issued to the press a few weeks ago.  I suppose he could always claim that he played it under a different gamertag or on a friend's console, but it would probably be better at this point if he just came clean and apologized for selling the game short.

This isn't to say that I think a review necessarily REQUIRES that the game in question be "beaten" first.  With some games, it's simply not possible.  I'd be surprised if a single critic actually BEAT Skate 2 before writing up a review.  But this is a story-based RTS built on the Halo universe we're talking about here.  To not take in the full story is folly, and skipping MP only compounds that.  I like reading Jim's stuff and that's not going to change, but it's fair to say that he owes it to the community to come clean and admit that he made a mistake here.

"Chumbawomba?" Seriously?

Nice try, asshole. Everyone knows I use my real name everywhere I write for exactly this reason. Also, I write at Siliconera now, so at least do your research before you try to set somebody up. :/

@Chumbawomba

Retroforce Go is fine, but it is more like a group of high school students talking about games at lunch rather than an informed, well-researched podcast.  It's fun to listen to and they have some really funny discussions, but not really a place for credible retro-gaming information (if that is what you want).  It is what one would expect from Destructoid, so it delivers.

Retronauts benefits from having more accurate retro-gaming coverage.

This is kind of sick of me to say, but you kind of can't hold a blog accountable for anything it publishes. Blogs generally get their information secondhand (but faster); oftentimes you have all these writers, many of whom are semi-anonymous or only vaguely tied to the site's identity on the whole, making editorial and ethical policies (finish the game before you review it, don't accept gifts, etc.) extremely difficult to enforce.

I'm not excusing bad behavior -- obviously all media and publishers must strive to meet these indefinite, tenuous editorial standards -- but with blogs of a certain size, you have to wonder whether they're even capable of enforcing stringent policies for all their writers. No matter how vigilant the EIC, a ton of fuck-ups are going to slip through. It's just a hazard of the occupation.

Anyway, EPIC DRAMZ aside, this is a pretty interesting read. Thanks, Cole.

@jenn

Sterling is staff on Destructoid, Reviews Editor more specifically. Destructoid is his full time job and being such, he recieved the game at least two weeks before the release date.

worth noting: Jim Sterling reposted and redid parts of the review after playing the game through. Just saying. I mean you know. Just saying.

Jim is wrong for writing that review without actually having played more than a few hours.

Workman is guilty of being incredibly hard to work with. This is obviously apparent when he cries like a baby multiple times, and can't resist constantly bashing Dtoid at every waking moment. He's constantly watching for them to slip up; it's childish (wonder why you were forced out).

That said, it doesn't mean all of his thoughts are unmerited. Jim is a bigger douche than Workman. He thinks he's so great, lies, and builds himself up as a "common man", when he's really just an elitist, and will never ever change that thought process.

Niero is quasi lying about Ron to make his site look good. What's wrong with that? It's good business.

Other than Niero trying to defend his baby, everyone else is wrong here. It's a really sad state of affairs. Workman can't move on from Dtoid; he'll always be watching them like a child. Jim will never grow up and accept responsibility for being an asshole. Get ready for countless more "Dtoid sucks" posts by Workman: they are coming.