Yahtzee has finally reviewed a locally developed game in his Zero Punctuation segment at The Escapist website. The game to take the brunt of his distinctively humorous and entertaining yet brutally honest reviewing style is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the Wii, developed by Brisbane based Krome Studios. Yahtzee doesn't hold back in picking apart the problems and flaws in SW:FU, however, he does a great job in avoiding ill-will to any Kromans who might get offended by his review by placing the lion's share of the game's faults onto George Lucas himself. Nice :)
Of course, all game developers should have thick skins already when it comes to game reviews, and I'm sure the Angry-gamer guys will return the courtesy when whatever game Yahtzee is working on at Pandemic is released ;) Well, enough of my babble, I would gather most of you are Zero Punctuation fans already, so if you haven't seen the latest game review, check this one out now!
Flamebait gets old.
Flamebait gets old.
does Yahtzee ever mention he
does Yahtzee ever mention he was turned down for a QA job by Krome?
Confidential
C'mon, that sort of information should be confidential and not used for the purpose of attack on a forum. That's pretty poor show.
I hardly think that has
I hardly think that has anything to do with the comments in his review. Honestly if you were expecting anything else from ZP then you obviously haven't watched many of his previous reviews. He rips every game apart, that's just what he does. Its part of the appeal of his reviews.
Also, having met the guy personally I get the feeling he has more integrity than to attack a company's game based simply on a past experience with the studio.
Disclosure
Still, it would have been reasonable for Yahtzee to disclose the Krome connection, and let people make up their own mind about whether the review was impartial or not. I agree with Souri that it's not appropriate for someone with privileged knowledge to talk about it publicly (unless the QA thing is already public knowledge?), but I also think it's not appropriate for someone to review a game from a company they have any kind of relationship or history with, whether it's being employed, fired or not hired by them. If they do have a connection beyond just playing the game, they should at least disclose it, the way Jason Hill mentions when a publisher pays for his travel expenses to a trade show.
The Age subscribe to a code
The Age subscribe to a code of ethics, so generally you'll find they disclose any association they have with any news story. For example recently there was a big controversy about the beaconsfield disaster musical, the age disclosed they were sponsoring the fringe festival which the musical is under despite the fact they were protraying the musical in a negative light.
More disclosure...
If you want to go down the disclosure route then when are the Angry-Gamer people going to start disclosing the projects they have worked on in the past? Especially the members of the Angry-Gamer team who spend a lot of time promoting the 360 on the site and dismissing the other consoles when they were working on a high profile 360 exclusive for Microsoft?
I've actually grown a little
I've actually grown a little weary of the ZP reviews lately. The Spore one was amusing, but the few before that felt a bit flat and tired. Perhaps I've finally reached my fill of that particular brand of humour.
Nice to see an Australian game on there I guess, even if it does mean it's subjected to the ZP brand of excess flaying.
zp does it again....
i was one of those that bought into the hype and bought the 360 version on release.... it was OK and ultimately a bit of a letdown.
However I did buy the Wii version on the same day for my nephew and all things considered a lot of what ZP state in terms of the input and level design are true.
I guess the proof is that my 12 yr old nephew thought the 360 version was much better and borrowed my game and console and traded the wii version for some EB $.