• 11Mar 08

  My game backlog, TOO MANY!

  So ever since about the time Halo 3 came out I have had at least 3 games in my backlog that I need to play/finish in some way shape or form. Not just multiplayer but single player. Well just because I haven't posted in a while (partly because of this backlog) are are the games that are keeping me from really getting into my newly acquired Burnout Paradise (yeah I know I ripped the demo).

  

  Half Life 2, HL Ep.1, HL 2 Ep. 2 (Orange Box): Well I beat Portal (twice) but I'm still trudging my way through Half Life 2 and haven't even looked at the episodes. Only abuot half way through the game. Luckily the Episodes are apparently kinda short.

  

  Condemned (Yes the first one): Shortly before the Christmas rush (see previous blogs) I made the decision that I needed More games to play and ended up buying Condemned. Good game but needless to say CoD4 pushed it to the back burner. I'm about 2/3 through this one.

  [ THE HALOZ HAXORS!!!

  Halo 3: Yes I beat it, yes I played a bunch of multiplayer but I'm still on my way through Legendary, probably a few more hours give of take a few friends helping.

  No silly WWII pitures to be found...go figure.

  Call of Duty 3: I got this for free when I got CoD4 but I just haven't had the urge to go back to WWII after seeing the glory that is CoD4. This might have to wait until the summer lul.

  

  Beautiful Katamri: I got this thanks to one of the Amazon deals of the day. I LOVED the first one and my wife really wanted it too (also ACHIEVEMENT POINTS!) I don't know I'm not really allowed to play this one till she beats it so it'll probably be a while before I get to this one.

  

  Wii: Yeah I have a Wii but it hasn't been getting a lot of play time as of late, aside from a recent Warioware run. I still haven't even seen Mario Galaxy and I can't imagine trying to take on Smash Bros. at this point.

  Anyway what's in your backlog?

  • Posted Mar 11, 2008 10:30 am PT
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• 22Jan 08

  A reminder to CNET and Gamespot

  Our Philosophy

  What follows are the guidelines we internally use to prepare GameSpot editors for their review assignments. GameSpot editors are expected to know, understand, and abide by the following principles. In turn, we invite you to consider them for yourself to better understand how we approach producing our content.

  We Cater to the Discriminating Game Player
  Our reviews are written with the prospective customer in mind--someone who's naturally interested in playing a new game and has a limited amount of time and money to spend. Our editors approach each review strictly from that perspective. In turn, our reviews are not intended to validate or support the beliefs of hardcore fans, nor are they intended to provide feedback to developers or publishers about how a given game could have been improved. Our reviews are only designed to tell you, the game player, to what extent a game is worth your while.

  We Consider Games On Their Own Merits
  First and foremost, our reviews are an assessment of one particular game at a time. We approach each review assignment without assuming anything about the quality of the game, irrespective of prerelease preview coverage, the history of any previous games in the series, any perceptions about the developer's or publisher's track records, and so forth. That is, every game we review gets a fair shake, and is treated with the same level of care and attention with which we approach every review assignment.

  We Take Time and Originality Into Account
  We judge more critically as time goes by, because our expectations as game players are constantly increasing. When we review a game, we consider it at the exact point in time at which the evaluation is taking place (generally, the week of a game's release) and compare it to what we believe to be the current standards of quality at that time. In general, GameSpot does not favor highly derivative games, which mostly recycle elements from other, previous games. Instead, we appreciate original concepts and ideas that are executed well. This also means that each time an excellent game is released, it becomes incrementally more difficult for another game to be as good in the grand scheme of things.

  We Do Not Inflate Our Scores
  As the quality of gaming experiences naturally improves over time, we do not simply rate new games higher, even if they're technically better. Instead, we adjust our expectations and continually recalibrate our numeric rating scale accordingly. What this means in practice is that a high score awarded today by GameSpot is worth more than if we awarded the same score yesterday. In other words, a game that earns a high score today is probably superior in overall quality to a game that earned the same score on our scale several years ago.

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  Every gaming platform is different, especially in terms of its technical features. However, we believe high-quality gaming experiences are possible on all the gaming platforms that we cover. So we review games against the standards of their respective platforms by implicitly comparing them to other games on that same platform and, to a lesser extent, to other games in that genre. As a result, our ratings of games on different platforms are not intended to be directly compared to one another. However, relative comparisons do apply, so a game that scores poorly is a poor game by any standards, while a game that scores extremely high is an outstanding game by any standards.

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  Each game we review exists in a competitive environment. That is, a game always has direct or indirect competition from other, possibly very similar games, which causes the game in question to be held to a higher standard. In other words, while technical merits are generally particular to a specific gaming platform, we believe that certain collective, universal standards also exist. GameSpot editors are expected to be familiar with current games on all platforms, in order to maintain an acute sense of global standards for gaming at all times.

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  Frequently Asked Questions About GameSpot Reviews

  "When should I expect to see a particular game reviewed on GameSpot?"
  We review most games on or around the day on which they ship to retail channels. However, in some cases, we need extra time. This can be for a variety of different reasons, such as to extensively test multiplayer features under realistic gameplay conditions, or because we were not given access to final review code from a game's publisher and needed to purchase the game at retail to begin our testing. We appreciate your patience in these instances, but our stance on review timeliness is simple: We do not rush reviews. The timeliness of our coverage is extremely important to us, but a review is never rushed at the expense of its accuracy. Our editors are always given extra time on assignments should they require it.

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  We expect next-generation games and game systems to be reasonably better than current-generation games. When we approach coverage of a new system, we expect that system to exceed current technical standards of quality, but also to provide us with compelling gameplay experiences that are at least as exciting as what we could be playing on older systems. In other words, we have high expectations for next-generation systems. As a result, if a game is released for both current and next-generation platforms, and the next-generation version is not markedly better than other versions, you can expect that version to receive a lower rating than others.

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  "How come some of your scores are so much lower than those of other publications I've seen? Are you all just jaded or something?"
  On the contrary, we love games so much that we hold them to a higher standard. All of our editors were once avid consumers who relied on gaming publications to inform them about what to buy next. However, each of us has been burned at one time or another--we've each bought a highly rated game only to find that what we paid for wasn't nearly as good as what we read about. As a result, our commitment to our readers is to provide them with unflinchingly honest and thorough appraisals of games. Sometimes the truth hurts, especially when you've been eagerly awaiting a given game for months or even longer, but we think you'll appreciate our candor in the long run.

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  While it's true that, to some extent, the higher scores in our range speak to a game's ability to appeal to casual or non-fans of a specific genre, your own personal likes and dislikes will always play a major role in how you perceive a game's quality. If we give an RPG a 9.5, but you hate every other RPG you've ever played, you might still want to approach with caution. Similarly, if you're a huge RPG fan that can look past a game's flaws, RPGs that score in the 5 or 6-range might still appeal to you. In either case, we recommend you write a reader review for this game, to add your take on this game to GameSpot's collection of viewpoints.

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  We feel that to provide multiple GameSpot reviews of a given game would be an unnecessary use of our resources, and that it would be confusing to our audience. Because we do our best to assign each review to a highly qualified individual--who, in turn, takes a considerable amount of time to extensively play the game and then write a detailed review that covers the game from all different angles--what we would end up with if we assigned multiple reviewers to a game is a lot of very similar reviews. We do offer our readers a chance to chime in about games they feel strongly about with our player-reviews section. Furthermore, we conveniently provide links to reviews from other publications if you wish to see what other people are saying about a game.

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  "Do you always finish games before reviewing them?"
  The straight answer is no, not necessarily. The main reason is that not all games are capable of being finished, which would make a policy of finishing all games before reviewing them impossible to enforce. For example, sports games and massively multiplayer online role-playing games have no definite conclusion. Likewise, many multiplayer-focused games cannot be finished but must be played extensively before they can be honestly evaluated. Our rule is that we play games extensively before committing to our full reviews. On average, this translates into at least 10 hours' worth of play, though some games demand much more than that, and some require less.

  "Wait, reviews are just opinions. Right?"
  Actually, we don't think so. We make no excuses for our verdicts about games and believe our reviews stand for themselves. While our reviews, of course, do contain an element of subjectivity to them, we see the process of reviewing games as one that primarily involves the reporting of facts. To an extent, we naturally color these facts based on our own experiences of having spent much time playing other games in the past, but we make every effort to look at every game on its own merits, and we describe each game in the most factual terms possible. To this end, in the rare event that one of our reviews contains a factual inaccuracy, we will correct the inaccuracy and will acknowledge it in an editor's note that's appended to the end of the review.

  "How can you possibly assign a numeric rating to a game? Shouldn't your reviews speak for themselves?"
  Along with our review summaries, our ratings provide our audience with an at-a-glance assessment of a game's relative quality. Some people have neither the time nor the inclination to read our full reviews, and we respect that. Also, some people want a shorter assessment, which is why our review summaries tend to contain all the key points of the evaluation. We take great caution in administering our ratings, because we know a rating scale needs to be relatively consistent to be valuable.

  • Posted Jan 22, 2008 8:35 am PT
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• 7Nov 07

  What a Rush (And I don't mean those Canadian Rockers)!!!!

  Without a doubt the past 4 months have been the best in gaming ever. Seriously, think about it:

  

  Under the sea! Bioshock kicked things off in August with a beautiful FPS experience that would make even Davey Jones smile. Most any other year and this would be an easy Game of the Year pick, but no no no, not so easy this year. Heck it might not even be in the top 3 depending on who you ask.

  

  Believe! Well I wasn't a Halo-fanatic before, and I'm not really now but no doubt that Halo 3 was THE gaming event of the year. It's a great game with an outstanding list of options and gameplay for you. It's not the best shooterever but it sure is fun. Oh by the way, I LOVE the movie editing mode (check some of my stuff out if you like).

  

  Cake! Yes the band is awesome, and apperently companion cubes liketo eat it as well. The Orange Box hits smack dab in the middle of the gaming blitz with probably the most diverse yet incredibly all around awesome package. Each game along may have warrented a puchase but all three for $60!?!?!? How did EA let them get away with that? Oh well, their not quite a loss is our HUGE gain.

  

  Duck and COVER! Well the CoD series has always been a good WWII FPS but I think EVERYONE is tired of these by now. I wasn't so much into CoD4 until I played the beta. Well that beta cost me $60 because it was friggin INCREDIBLE! Easily the best online experience I've had since Battlefield 2, heck it was better than that. Not to mention the online system is so deep it doesn't need stupid and rediculous online achievents to get me to play.

  

  If that wasn't enough we still have three more huge games to come out! 3!!!!! Assasin's Creed, Mass Effect and Mario Galaxy. Now fourtionatly for my wallet I think I'm ok with just doing a rental on AC and Mario, and RPGs have never been my thing (even KOTOR types) but still these are three hot games that I'm sure will be on many a Christmas lists.

  To think GTA IV and Super Smash Bros. Brawl were set to come out this fall as well, I think my head would have exploded if that had actually happened. It has been a thrilling end of the year that's for sure.

  

  Appologies to the following games for being pretty awesome but not awesome enough to rank with the aforementioned titles: Guitar Hero III, Rock Band, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and Ratchet and Clank.

  • Posted Nov 7, 2007 7:22 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
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