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Follow Up: Destructoid Reposts Crappy Review

Posted by Cole Stryker

 

Yesterday I lambasted Destructoid's Jim Sterling for a lazy review of Halo Wars. I won't pretend that I'm the one who inspired the change of heart, but Sterling has chosen to play through the game to completion and spend some time on multiplayer. I'm not sure how he managed to do this in one day, and amend the review, but I'll take his word for it. Destructoid has updated the review accordingly. 

The original Halo Wars review was written before I had completed the campaign. This is common in our industry, where reviewers have to make a judgment call as to whether or not they have played enough for review. A number of our readers disagreed with the judgment call made, The Incredible Edible Egg in particular, and as the debate has continued, we have decided to address the issue with a very simple fix. 

The campaign was completed, multiplayer was given a run, and now we're republishing the review. Very little has changed, because completion really didn't add anything to the opinion, but I elaborated on multiplayer so this is a more comprehensive article for you.

Going forward, we'll be aiming to bring a game to near-if-not-full completion, and will let you know if that is not the case. We've always preferred completed games, obviously, but sometimes it's not practical. Please don't expect us to play bad 70-hour RPGs

I'd say this is as close to an apology as readers are likely to receive, and although it's not quite the beg for forgiveness I'd like to see, it's better than nothing. I don't expect reviewers to complete every game, but there are a few key things that I think Sterling missed:

  • It's an AAA title, and readers expect a thorough review
  • If he had played the game for a few hours and realized it was utter dreck, then I'd say he's well within his rights to pan the game and move on to something more deserving of his attention. But it's a positive review, so why not fully justify the score for readers?
  • The review failed to address important features that most people care about in an RTS. I know Destructoid is known for its potty humor in reviews and whatnot, but there's not a whole lot of meat here.

The score remained an unchanged 7.0 after the second look. Which interesting given this:

As far as the two races go, it has to be said that the UNSC has a clear advantage.

 If it's this unbalanced, wouldn't that drastically alter the score of the game? 

Related Links:

The Future of Games Journalism

Whose Side are You On?

Ron Workman Calls Out Destructoid for Sloppy Journalism


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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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