Man, im so disapointed in Gamespot.....
6.5 for a game that will last for a 10-15 years...this will be a tabu game, must have for serius gamer, like diablo, starcraft, and wc3...
They rated this on basic like - problems with online playing (that will be ofcourse fixed i belive with next pach), and couse this is pure Multiplayer game for relaxing brains and nerves...
Im so so so disapointed with gamespot
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/demigod/video/6208019/demigod-video-review there u go watch the review and post comments
I use to review games years ago, if FORCED to reveiw DG in it's current condition (regaurdless of who/why/how it happened), I would have given it 6.5 also. But I would have quit rather than release the review "before" the schedule release date of the game itself. I would have checked out the game again the day after it's release date, and THEN put out a final review (also mentioning the pre-release monkey-wrench to readers). I think that's what GS should do in this very unique situation, put out another reveiw in a couple days to give SD some leeway for the pre-release fiasco that was not their fault.
If you can't get online to work for you, try Lan if possible. It worked perfectly for us, and I give the current Lan part of the game a review of 9
How did I get a double post???
As someone said earlier, why are pirate versions able to flood the server at all? Shouldn't access be login based? Or are you saying that all of them trying to hit the server denies it to everyone else??
The review is by no way fair for a number of reasons. Yes it is a very valid point that to release a multiplayer centric title you would expect the game to be in a very workable state from release - HOWEVER - we are also aware that unpredictable things can really impact that. Take a game like WoW - on it's original release it was absolutely _hammered_ with users trying to connect because it was way way way bigger than they anticipated. They had servers in place but they didnt expect the massive levels of traffic that effectively crippled servers - or left others with 1-2 hour queues. Did wow's reviews suffer? No they didn't. The reviewers understood that in order to give an accurate review of this completely multiplayer game, they would need to give it a short amount of time to correct these issues - because once resolved, yes you are reviewing the game as it was intended to be played.
Enter Demigod. A multiplayer centric game. Yes there is a facility for single player skirmish but it was never advertised as being a single-player campaign based game. Detracting points for that is like giving the old tribes franchise titles super terrible reviews because they only had a few single player training missions - them being multiplayer centric titles.
It's obvious Demigod is suffering huge network issues and the developers are working hard to correct this. As they have said they were unforseen and do you honestly think they would have released it if they werent at least fairly comfortable that they would be able to cope? Of course they wouldnt - hence these problems being 'unforseen' to certain degrees. Of course everything is so much clearer in hindsight - that's just human nature.
Anyhow in order for that review to be accurate, it needs to be torn down and given a week or so to properly assess the multiplayer game...multiplayer. I doubt these guys even played it vs humans and instead based any part of the multiplayer review on single player skirmish.
Fair is fair - a reasonable reviewer would look at the facts of the situation and realise - look, we cant give this title an accurate review until they're given a few days to at least try and clean up the messy situation. That's being realistic. Gamespot jumping the gun like that with a what i would call fairly scathing review really is quite poor form on their behalf. Sure it's just one review of many, but many gamers will look at a low score of 6.5 and basically just dismiss the title outright. From the little i have played of the game I at least know that it deserves better treatment than a jump the gun review from Gamespot. I rarely visit Gamespot anymore due to certain controversies surrounding their reviews. I usually prefer to read IGN. But anyway that's a different story.
Actually, I already posted a comment on the gamespot video review requesting that they re-review the game at least a week from now.
Funny that we had the same thought
I can agree on that there may be too much blaming on reviewers. (I'm not saying the Gamestop has a reliable review)
When the game is realeased, it is supposedly completed. You might call some games 'Unpolished' or 'uncomplete' but I would say it is a completed game at the day of release. The patches which follow are no more than fixes to the completed game. If you order a pizza and if the toppings wasn't there but the pizza guy say "the toppings will come later but go eat ahead ", that would be BS. A complete pizza with toppings and all should be delivered from the start and that is how it's done isn't it? Yes, the internet allows us to get updates easily so it's not very serious problem, and a game is a hard thing to define its complete state. So I know there can be arguements but in my view, I have to say release version is the official 'like it or not' complete version so doing a review on the provided review cd will be valid. (say if the cd was not complete version, that's Stardocks fault isn' it)Having problems with MP at the time and counting that in review, well, I say its fair. Reviewers do not track the forum, play the though from the beta to rate games, or rate games on its possibilities.
On the other hand, I think Gamespot or other sites should wait a little, if they are really serious and want their review to be guiding at all. Well, they didn't so you can blame them for their low QS and CS but not really for giving the 6.5 at that point.
Finally, I would give demigod a 6.5/10 for general gamer, 7.5 to 8 for RTS fans, and 9 for DotA lovers.
6.5 seems little low but I would even say its high, my 5/10 is a decent game and I will probably never encounter a game that I can give 10/10 caz I would keep playing that game and will not play another.
It's true, a game should be finished when released - however when you're bringing in thousands of potential online users, there IS an unknown element to it. If it's an offline game you know things like latency and matchmaking just arent an issue. But an online service, while it should have been extensively tested, there is always potential for an unknown element - such as Demigods release.
It's not right to blame Gamespot, but at the same time Gamespot should have more sense than to review when there's clearly unknown elements
Maybe they will make a 're-review' once the patches are out? Saying something like 'Now that the problems are patched we would give it a XXX Score if we reviewed again'. Some mags and sites do that.
I don't know if exactly that is a fair review... Just because they basing it on a problem and not the actual game itself.
I mean, look at some of the reviews they put up for games that literally sucked balls, but they were sequels, series, big names, etc...
Granted right now the game is borderline unplayable in Pantheon... But when you get a game that actually works it's fun as hell.
I mean they rated bug ridden games, that have recently come out extremely high, yet this games bugs besides MP, are very few...
I think alot of reviewing is agenda based and what not... I mean ETW, sucked imo... Game was buggy as high hell.
They didn't rate DoW2 on it's MP... Which if anyone played it realized what a joke the matchmaking was. NOT TO MENTION the crap with the patches because of how many times they have to get cert'd through GFWL... I mean they had 1 patch in 1.5months before the recent one and I'm not sure they have even realized it yet. Or the bullcrap about DLC which in turn we learned they would charge for...
That;s a really good point actually - that reviewing is agenda based. With Gamespot that would almost be 100% accurate imo.
I can say with certainty that there's nothing nefarious about Gamespot's review. Gamespot is an honest game site in my experience.
My objection is that a transient issue was allowed to affect the review. In my opinion, the review should first determine whether an issue is transient or not.
If we're still talking about massive connection issues next week, then I would agree that there's a serious problem just like when a game comes out buggy and takes weeks to fix.
But when we're talking about the very first day of release and the game's problems are server related and not game related (and yes, I understand that the game experience cannot be decoupled) I think prudence is in order.
Yeah, really!!! gamespot, gametrailer and all other sites that review pc games while playing them with xbox controllers. Oh wait, this is the reason why they gave Demigod such a low score, the controller doesn't work in this game.
They complain about the game not having enough maps and not enough heroes. This is the reason I gave up on Dota, way too many heroes and items and balance issues.
They gave GTA IV PC version a 9.0. Gues what, if you want to see problems with a game, buy that one. Stability issues, performance issue, multiplayer part is so stupid and there's no anticheat system in it.
You can take your gamespot reviews on wipe your a$$ with them. End of story.
owa if the connectivity issues were solely poor coding on stardocks behalf i'd be inthe same boat as you
however you gotta realize their NAT servers at launch were made to handle pre order purchasers + a margin for retail buyers
What happened is around 18k retail people logged on and a whopping 120K warez users were competing for the same space
Now this is a developer nightmare is it not? more than 10 times the number predicted, this caused most of the connectivity problems and stardock needs just 24-48 hours to expand its system while providing updates that block warez users and fix some connectivity issues.. which is what it is doing!
It doesnt help gamestop released the game on friday, when its supposed to be released 5 days later. What makes it worse is it wasnt just any friday, but easter. How would you like if your boss called you in for work on easter weekend?
Now all the gamespot reviewer had to do was either post a review without taking into account these connectivity issues or wait a day or two and rate the game in its state when these are ironed out.
Instead he posted a review heavily effected by connectivity issues we are presently having, and whats funny is that, like someone else pointed out, this is the same reviewer that reviewed Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and Mines of Moria and gave them all 8.5! Now i was personally affected by the launch of Warhammer and AOC and it was a lot more terrible than the problems we are having now, trust me. The connectivity issues however did not affect the reviewers score and in that lies the bias.. its inconsistent, unprofessional and if i was to review and reviewers work i'd give the vessel head who wrote DG's review a 2/10
EVERYONE knows Gamestop stopped being an honest review site the moment the fired Jeff Gerstmann. He may be pudgy and hard to look at in his video reviews but he gave us gamers the truth, no bias, no bull (like Campell Brown CNN)
"120K warez users were competing for the same space"
I dont understand this at all, you need a cdkey to play online how are 120k pirates even able to login to tie up stuff? unless they forgot the filter to stop them from trying to login in.
"Are the options really either 12 hours from street date versus 2 weeks?
What about say, 48 hours from release? Would that be too much?"
i can live with 48 hours, but any review done before that is fair IMO since the game does not work as it should.
Frog dont take it to person i am just sick of all the games being shiped anymore unfinish and untested been lied to so many times by devs as well.
Now with that said Demigod is one hell of a fun game was late for work tonight playing a 1h and 30m game lol
Well, if the game try to connect to stardock servers before you can choose what kind of game you want to play (singleplayer or multiplayer), you have a problem.
And it is not like if warez version will be patched to connect to Internet only when needed ...
Well, since the problem since to have 140 k people accessing the game, I don't really know how they could have tested that before shipping the game.
wait and relax. things will change.
Sadly, quite spot on review. They judge the game compared to what has already been released and Demigod is very lacking in some parts.
I had high hopes in the game, but I'm disapointed by the connectivity issues and it's NOT worth 40$ digital purchase, sorry. It's 25$ MAX for the features we have available.
Battleforge has so far been vastly superior, especially now that its economy is running fine and you don't need to use real money to get cards anymore.
I might come back to Demigod when issues are resolved in a few weeks, but until then, it's not worth my time.
Good luck to the fans.
It's called open beta.
Moreover, the problems that existed with hosting custom games existed in beta and were not fixed or addressed, it was just hoped that they wouldn't be an issue on release for some reason.
The game is awesome when it works, but stardock deserves to be penalized for not doing a good job on the networking on release. Even if all these problems will be resolved and the game will be the greatest game ever it doesn't matter. When you took CS 101 and you went to demo your project and it didn't work did your professor give you another week because you promised it would be working then? Results matter, not intentions.
LOL Battleforge was a heap of shit, it was generic RTS number #3,853,928 with a slightly new twist of using a trading cards system.
I think it's a shame Gamespot reviewed Demigod like this, and I find it slightly dodgy, despite what Frogboy says. I have known them to postpone reviews because of release issues in the past, I believe they even did it for SOCOM Confrontation and that has never been fixed.
It's a shame because a review on a big site like that will affect sales a lot. Will Gamespot really be happy about their 6.5 score if all these issues get ironed out? Personally I pay little head to Gamespots reviews, I just try to get information from them. Every time EA releases another C&C clone with new graphics and porn stars in cut scenes it gets at least an 8.0 and I can't play that kind of game more than 5 minutes without being beyond bored.
That all depends on how lucky you got on the boosters for the first 3000 BF points. I got crap cards that don't sell for much
Edit: That I didn't want to use, anyway.
A video game is not a pizza. You don't consume it once. You play it over a period of time, and if it's a good game with a good developer, they improve it over time. Stardock have shown themselves again and again to do an outstanding job of supporitng their games, fixing problems, improving gameplay and adding content.
However, if it's a pizza analogy you like: the Demigod release was more like, you ordered two pizzas for your living room LAN party. You've hosted LAN parties before, and you know how many people you need to feed. This time, though, 100 people show up. Then they start complaining that there's nothing to eat, and that there aren't enough network connections for all of them. Then the local newspaper comes out with a headline that says "Marshial Does Horrible Job Hosting LAN Party", subtitled "Starving players can't connect or play".
We're talking about the same site that fired a senior staff member for giving a poor review to a crappy game because their front page was awash in advertising for said crappy game. People are actually surprised that this review is inconsistant and unfair. Baffling.
Perhaps if Gamespot's front page was skinned with Demigod advertising we'd see a 9.0?
Life is just not fair when it comes to impression, the first is often the last impression. Lucky for Stardock if they get their multiplayer working properly and scaled correctly perhaps they can convince them to do a re-scoring.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
