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