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Delaying Reviews for Assassins Creed Unity


ydcl

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So as everyone may be aware, Ubisoft did not allow reviewers to launch their reviews on Assassins Creed Unity until 12 hours after the game was launched on the East Coast USA.

 

This is another thing that really ticket me off from a customer standpoint. The company basically did not want anyone to know about the games glitches, lack of new things, lack of great story, to get in the way of sales.

 

After the reviews actually came out, it showed how flawed the game actually was... So imagine if those reviews were out beforehand... Maybe a few days ahead of the game....

 

I wonder if this is a new tactic from companies when they don't feel the game is truly finished or is going to be a hit? Its ridiculous!!!

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Reviews sites are pressured by sponsorships and corporate influence. Always has been, always will be. That's how they make their money. None of it is "crowd funded". Just look at all the advertisements (the gifts many reviewers get) as well as the shit they pull from you from every click you make. It's all shared with "partners".

 

That's why reviews should be taken with a grain of salt and look for user and independent reviews (if you can find them). I think its going to get worse down the road.

 

Ubisoft is silly.

 

Silly I say.

 

Doesn't matter, the hoards of Assassins Creed flunkies will continue to buy those (overated) games which means Ubisoft will continue to do whatever they want. Parity and all.

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Every time I think the modern games industry can't get any crummier, they manage to prove me wrong. To them, gamers (customers) are just fleshy ATM's whose sole purpose is to fork over their hard-earned dollars. Quality of the games be damned, we have money to make!

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It seems perfectly normal to me. Why would UbiSoft give a crap about allowing me to know if their baby is ugly? The entire point they exist is to make money. They don't even have to pre-release the game for review if they don't want to. Why would they let me view the game early if they think I am going to write a negative review?

 

Just wait to buy your games until they've been released. If you pre-order you are just asking for this kind of thing to continue.

 

Also - I like the Assassin's Creed games, but I've never even attempted the multiplayer. I just wait until they are around $20 and then play them for their single player story. Really what I like is the feeling of historical displacement. I really like visiting those old sites, and I've been hoping for a French Revolution game basically since ACII. However, I won't be playing this one probably until like 2016.

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After the reviews actually came out, it showed how flawed the game actually was... So imagine if those reviews were out beforehand... Maybe a few days ahead of the game....

 

I wonder if this is a new tactic from companies when they don't feel the game is truly finished or is going to be a hit? Its ridiculous!!!

 

It's a tactic by a company that knows full well that the game will bomb if people find out about what it's really like rather than listening entirely to their specialized PR.

 

My advice? Game reviewers should, as a group, refuse to review any game with an embargo that's not before the launch day.

 

I can understand why they could establish a date for when reviews can go out - mostly to avoid those same reviewers from trying to 1-up each other by getting their review out 30 minutes earlier, but when all the EARLY reviewers can then be 1-uped by a random day 1 purchaser twitting "OMFG THIS GAME IS UTTER SHIT. SO MANY BUGS. SO LITTLE CONTENT." it kinda defeats the entire purpose of getting an early review.

 

In addition, if any company attempts to give out an early copy with a post-release NDA attached, they should refuse, then go on their blocks/sites and state that this is why the review for game X will be delayed a week after it's launch. The smart people will instantly realize they should be staying the hell away from it.

 

And finally, since hit AAA-games that aren't horrible broken pieces of shit always have the publisher giving out early copies, if a reviewer notes he's not getting copies like he use to, he could let people know that as well. If it's a super hyped game but nobody's getting early copies for review? That's ALMOST as telling as a NDA for post-release.

 

Do these kinds of things and odds are the market will correct itself.

 

Until then: Buyer Beware. Stop pre-ordering and wait til the game is out and reviews are posted. If most people do that, then the above isn't even going to be necessary. And people will save a lot of money.

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I rarely ever pre-order things. When it comes to console games I've learned that they stop supporting games way too fast.

On PC people mod games, give it new life again.

 

Remember when EA used to allow mods? Until they realized if you still play the game with the mod you might not want to buy the yearly release of half finished games!

Companies now a days want you to play the game for 11 months and then buy the new one.

Do we really need a new WWE, Soccer, NFL game every year? Just give a patch that updates the roster!!!

Battlefield 1942 used to be awesome for mods; I remember playing desert storm mod so much I because it was so well done, it was my first experience with mods I think.

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Also - I like the Assassin's Creed games, but I've never even attempted the multiplayer. I just wait until they are around $20 and then play them for their single player story. Really what I like is the feeling of historical displacement. I really like visiting those old sites, and I've been hoping for a French Revolution game basically since ACII. However, I won't be playing this one probably until like 2016.

 

I dont mind them. I'm just indifferent. I have Black Flag on PS4 and kind of got bored with it like I did with the first game and the third game. The second was great but after that it seemed to go downhill. I never played the Ezio spin-offs so I can't comment on those. I have to admit the graphics and environments are awesome to look at (and simply walk around in)

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I dont mind them. I'm just indifferent. I have Black Flag on PS4 and kind of got bored with it like I did with the first game and the third game. The second was great but after that it seemed to go downhill. I never played the Ezio spin-offs so I can't comment on those. I have to admit the graphics and environments are awesome to look at (and simply walk around in)

 

I'm kind of in the same boat with the series. I picked up the first one close to Day One, just because there was so much hype surrounding it, it was a new IP, etc. I enjoyed it, but the fighting was just so boring.

 

Anyway, with all the other games I've wanted to play, I kind of lost touch with the series until AC II was a Games for Gold freebie on Xbox 360. Played through the entire thing and enjoyed it. So I picked up III on Wii U when it was on sale at Amazon for less than $10 (still haven't gotten to it yet though.

 

But yea, so I play them now, but only when I can get them at basement prices. Not so much for any reason against the games themselves (though this Unity debacle may change that), just because there's been a lot of other games out there piquing my interest much more.

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I'm kind of in the same boat with the series. I picked up the first one close to Day One, just because there was so much hype surrounding it, it was a new IP, etc. I enjoyed it, but the fighting was just so boring.

 

Yup same here and I never really considered it a great "stealth" game (I think they actually added a "crouch" button in Unity).

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The problem with this series for me has been that the action hints at this incredible combat that you can achieve by sneaking up on a group of people and wiping them out in a totally awesome way. However, most of the time when I try to set that up, I end up walking off a wall on someone's head or something on accident and then the whole stealth thing is blown, so I have to spend 10 minutes in a "block fest" or run wildly away to try again. I think most people end up failing over and over again at what the game sets up as what you are supposed to do and people just end up walking away.

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The problem with this series for me has been that the action hints at this incredible combat that you can achieve by sneaking up on a group of people and wiping them out in a totally awesome way. However, most of the time when I try to set that up, I end up walking off a wall on someone's head or something on accident and then the whole stealth thing is blown, so I have to spend 10 minutes in a "block fest" or run wildly away to try again. I think most people end up failing over and over again at what the game sets up as what you are supposed to do and people just end up walking away.

 

Oh yes, I can never pull those off. I always screw up. ...or when that guy your chasing through the streets gets away because you auto-grab a street lamp. Would be funny if the bystanders would crack a joke or two when you screw up like that.

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It's a shame. But reviewers don't always get it right either. 20+ years after the event, I'm still kicking myself for buying Virus on the ST based on the strength of one 98% review in one magazine. Had I waited to read other reviews then I would have discovered that it was a virtually unplayable piece of junk.

 

I rarely pre-order but I'm thinking seriously of pre-ordering Elite: Dangerous. If that turns out to be as good as I hope it will be, I might finally forgive Braben for that piece of shit he thrust upon me all those years ago.

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I rarely pre-order but I'm thinking seriously of pre-ordering Elite: Dangerous. If that turns out to be as good as I hope it will be, I might finally forgive Braben for that piece of shit he thrust upon me all those years ago.

 

Currently Elite: Dangerous is going through a major shitfest now that a month from official launch, Braben has come forward and finally told the original kickstarter backers and preorders to date that the promised offline-mode for the game will not be delivered. Apparently there's a lot of people that wanted that, and from what I gather it's enough of a portion that the kickstarter would have failed without the offline promise. (They added it half way through when the pledges were slowing down and it looked like they weren't going to be making their target.)

 

So if you want to trust that kind of guy, by all means, as despite all the PR talk it's pretty obvious to me they never really had any intention of doing offline to begin with with the way they kept fixing issues by moving important code to the server all throughout the development. From what I gather from posters in the paid beta, there's also little to actually do in the game at present. 400 billion star systems may be planned, but it seems most of them are going to be lifeless or otherwise generic at launch. So... at the very least I would say there's no point in preordering it at the very least.

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I like review embargoes because they make it obvious I shouldn't buy the game.

 

That's great, but unfortunately it depends on someone who's under the embargo to at least tell their audience about the embargo. Go the full nine yards with this instead. If you don't see independent early reviews, just ASSUME there's an embargo and act accordingly. If the resulting game is gimped because you miss some axed out feature that was offered as preorder-only, then it's probably a sign to just pass on the game as well.

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I like review embargoes because they make it obvious I shouldn't buy the game.

 

That's a great idea. I recently started to closely look at who makes/publishes a game, I've been avoiding Ubisoft and EA as much as possible. I would not call it a boycott but avoidance.

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Doesn't matter, the hoards of Assassins Creed flunkies will continue to buy those (overated) games which means Ubisoft will continue to do whatever they want. Parity and all.

That's funny, I remember hearing the same kind of comment about Capcom and the Mega Man series, back in the day... :D

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