@speed45823: That's literally my only disappointment so far. The first game looked FANTASTIC for it's time. I imagine this is using the same engine so it doesn't have the impact it did before.
An interesting point, full CG movies (such as most kids movies) are much harder to steal, especially early on since the "movie" itself is purposefully not "put together" as a single file until it's ready to be shipped out and at that point its encrypted. Even if you got hold of the systems, you'd have thousands upon thousands of files (textures, shapes, animations, sounds, etc.)
@xantufrog: Yup completely agree. If this was only sent out to emails that were connected to XBox live for instance, or if the geographic spread was only west coast in the US, if the time to respond was too short and it was sent on a Monday, etc. etc.
I wish more people thought about this sort of stuff. It's actually really, really hard to get it all perfect (read: impossible) so it's always good to list what you tried to correct for and suggestions you have for further studies.
@mathandr: It's not a lousy reason at all. I'll put it on myself for instance. Let's say I have to leave for an appointment and I am trying to get to a save spot in a game. I can see the save spot but then I see a whole bunch of enemies I have to fight through, tons of them before getting there. Now the combat in this hypothetical game is great and on a laid back Saturday I love just sitting down and fighting bad guys but right now I need to just save and leave. I fight the enemies and the whole time I am rushed and not enjoying it. If they killed me and I had to restart I'd be upset where normally I wouldn't be.
Thankfully GS allowed him to put 40 hours in before reviewing, but the strain of knowing the sooner he was finished the more happy his boss's boss would be taints the entire experience. It's quite wrong to blame the reviewer in this scenario.
You are right though, Bethesda can do what they want with their own content. If they want all reviewers to feel rushed and race to be first then they can continue to do that. If they want to initiate a 4 day work week more power to them. I'm not saying Bethesda can't do as they please, just giving my opinion that I think they'd get much better and more accurate reviews with the policy almost every other publisher follows and they themselves used to.
EDIT: Wanted to say I totally agree about reviews weeks later. Mind you most reviews day one had a review copy sent weeks before, but with how launch day stuff can be I enjoy later reviews. It's what first got me started watching Angry Joe.
Sefrix's comments