The most thankless job EVER!

[Imari]

OP basically summarized what most of us are feeling now...

[pjvenkman]

@Playbahnosh

I was a games reviewer once. I did a short stint working for Commodore User magazine and I ran the movie and video game reviews section on a website for students (it was a bit like facebook not not as popular. A very early social network.) back in 2001. I've also been a games developer and worked for Ocean Software and Microprose.

All I can suggest is tell the truth. There have been times that I had to write bad reviews for games in a series I was a fan of. I was even presented with the unenviable task of reviewing a bad game that was designed by a close friend and someone I'd worked with when I was a developer.

I always tried to maintain my integrity and it's one of the reasons I no longer review games (I'm now an astronomer), because there are far too many reviewers who are willing to gloss over a games issues for a little present from the devs/publishers with a number with a few zero's on the end written on it.

I've lost count of how many high scoring modern games I find bugs or bad design choices in that make me wonder "Did the person who reviewed this only have one eye and the attention span of a goldfish? How the hell did he/she miss THAT!?!?!".

Back in my Commodore User days, we were instructed to let the readers know if a game had a serious bug in it. By a serious bug I mean one that would stop the game functioning properly so that the gamer was unable to complete it. And we were told to mark the games according to what we see.

These days bugs are rarely ever mentioned in reviews. It seems to me that if it's got nice graphics and you can blow sh*t up, the reviewers will score it highly. Even if it crashes every 5 minutes.

Tell the truth and let people know what you think.

[Ambushclose]

There is only one X in this new game and that's X-ploited. I have lurked around these forums since 2005 and to see such a community get shafted like this is rather disheartening.

[Ubern]

OP your post is exactly the kind of review I look for in a game magazine....its the absence of such honest and whole reviews that caused me to stop buying them a few years back.

I honestly doubt that your company will let you put that out there because of all the emotion that is in it. But the funny thing is...you would probably be doing your company a favor if they did let you publish it.



P.S. and now I know why all of your posts are so well written lol.

[Thanatos00]

Yea, very well written.
It's so sad, I wish I never tried X:R

[kororas]

....but after one particular reload I couldn't find my freighter. I went to the coordinates it randomly jumped to, 3 sectors away, only to find it burning in space with most of it's systems destroyed. With no messages or event log, I had not idea what happened.

You didn't happen to name your freighter the 'Event Horizon' did you?

[Ubern]

....but after one particular reload I couldn't find my freighter. I went to the coordinates it randomly jumped to, 3 sectors away, only to find it burning in space with most of it's systems destroyed. With no messages or event log, I had not idea what happened.

You didn't happen to name your freighter the 'Event Horizon' did you?

Hah!

[MrDisaster]

Op sums up everything i feel about rebirth.

Not sure if they can fix this one, unless they pull off something like cd projekt red did with witcher 1. Invest a chunk of the earned cash and fully rework character models, voice acting, lip sync etc. But thats not even enough to fix rebirth, core mechanics would have to be reworked aswell..

Note. In case of cd projekt, they didnt even have to do any of this. Character model variation etc. wasn`t a immediate concern, it was merely criticised by some reviews. They just reworked it to do something nice for their fans.

[Dalruin]

@kororas AWESOME!!!


and I agree with op, not sure what we were fed by ego but it sure tastes bad.

[Darkle]

I have been a fan of the series from the start. This was one of my most looked-forward-to games of all time. I seldom pre-order, but the track record (large, free content patches long after release; great support for scripting/modding) persuaded me to do so.

Lack of pre-release review code for such a (historically) huge game is indeed a bad sign.

The only thing I can say positive is that the new game engine seems genuinely good. It is just a shame the devs lost my trust, since a decent X game could one day run on it.

This is not that game.

In your review, recommend X3 AP. That is a good game.

[Troubleshooter11]

Right in the feels...
Unlike most games i looked forward to but were dissapointed by i do not feel anger or frustration. Just sadness the hope Egosoft will pull through and not let the X franchise die a horrible death.

And it is good to see i am not the only one who feels sadness/concern rather than anger. I think Egosoft has/had a very loyal and wonderful fanbase.

[GrafDagobert]

very good post!

+1

[Torokfremen]

I feel robbed, Could I have avoided that? Yes, it won't happen again.
It's my fault, I'll wait now as the game is simply unplayable, maybe in the future the money I spent will have a meaning, when the game will cost 1/3 and player's mods will be released

GG ME

A proper writing OP, It reached us all.

[Playbahnosh]

Thank you, guys!

Honestly, I never thought about publishing this as a review, but now that I read it again, it does sum up my feelings about the game. Sadly, I cannot publish this, even if I wanted to, it would never make it to the site. We have certain standards of professionalism and integrity we have to abide to, and one of the rules is not letting personal feelings into the review. People want to hear about the game, not the reviewer's feels. I understand that, and I had no problems remaining objective in most my reviews during the years, but...this is different. This one hit me right in the feels. The shock and the anger has passed, now I only feel sad.

I'm not angry at Egosoft, after all that took place this weekend, I still think there is more to the story than we can imagine. A good dev team like them don't turn full evil sellout in an instant. They probably had good reasons to do this, my best guess is financial crisis. They took a huge gamble at making a console game and failed, and what Rebirth is, it's a desperate attempt to somehow make back a portion of that 7 year development budget they blew on it, because if they can't, they go bust. Even if this is the case, they were never admit to it. It's okay. They have an image to keep up, they have to say the things they need to, there is no other way. They play their part, I play mine, this is a just a huge game anyway...

[nuclearping]

...

Honestly mate, I usually don't say this in interwebz forums but you have my full sympathy as I can really feel with you.

Wish you all the best with the review.

[TBV]

What?

You have to write a review for a product you don't like?

You claim it's "personal" and you're getting emotional about it?

Jeez, life sucks eh?

[Theta Sigma]

My thoughts exactly OP.

This... thing that they call an X game is just... Indescribably bad.


I look forward to seeing just what you manage to say in your review. Other than the graphics, I personally can't find anything to say that's particularly positive.

[m0pdq]

well said OP
+1
i'm giving up on X:R for now and going back to X3:AP for a bit.
might come back to this in a few months, but i feel that this pos is irrecoverable.
such a shame as i have been looking forward to this for years.

[funky_skunk]

Why not just use what you've just written for the review? If the game is shit and disappointed you then say so. Why does it need to be anything else? Your readers deserve to be told the absolute truth

[sweetsedation]

Why not just use what you've just written for the review? If the game is shit and disappointed you then say so. Why does it need to be anything else? Your readers deserve to be told the absolute truth

=.= reread his post.