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Eidos Wants Negative Tomb Raider Reviews Delayed, Seeking High Metacritic Score

mindcycle

mindcycle

Golden Member
As Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider Underworld heads out to store shelves this week, publisher Eidos has tasked UK PR firm Barrington Harvey with managing the review scores, resulting in journalists being asked to hold off on negative reviews.

The story emerged after games journalist Guy Cocker reported, via Twitter, that Eidos informed him "if you're planning on reviewing Tomb Raider Underworld at less than an 8.0, we need you to hold your review till Monday."

Barrington Harvey confirmed the policy with videogaming247, explaining:

"We're trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos. We're trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that's handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don't put people off buying the game, basically."

It's the second review-related controversy for Eidos in the past year, following rumors that it pressured GameSpot into firing journalist Jeff Gerstmann for a negative review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, which was edited following his departure.
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Here's a link to the full article. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56037
 
I no longer trust reviews.

Besides Yahtzee of course, he's pretty harsh but honestly he's been more right than wrong.

Zero punctuation and Anandtech board POST release of the game.
 
Originally posted by: mindcycle
Originally posted by: CP5670
why are reviewers caving in? do Eidos have dark powers or something?
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They have something better, marketing money.
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Exactly
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it sucks when you've been running a company for years and people come in with huge chunks of your revenue and start pulling it out unless you bend to their will.
 
It doesn't matter. The game is great!!! I'm having lots of fun playing it. I find it better then the last TR. Eidos should have nothing to fear with this game. Those that wrote bad reviews are retards anyway. 😉
 
Variety should not be doing reviews on video games, they should stick to what they do best, Hollywood gossip. I can't believe metacritic actually used Variety as a review source for Mirror's Edge. Metacritic also gave the game an arbitrary score based on the Variety review even though there are no scores of any kind given in the review. I think I'm gonna stick to Zero Punctuation reviews and playing demos.
 
EIDOS has had a history of trying to influence review scores.

I remember EIDOS being controversial over Kane & Lynch because they were threatening (or might have actually gone through with it) to pull advertising with the review source(s).
 
This annoying, but not surprising. Especially with the hyped high profile games, the first reviews are always 90-100's. Two weeks later, the 70-90 scores start appearing. You simply can't trust metacritic averages until there's a large number of reviews.
 
Good grief, it's Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, meaning more bouncing tatas & jumping puzzles.

Who needs a review to know that?
 
Originally posted by: PingSpike
LOL...why doesn't Eidos just print fake review scores on the box and be done with? Every game now gets 100%!
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Sony use to do that with their crappy movies, until they started getting fined and sued. Pesky little fraud laws get in the way of that sort of thing.
 
Originally posted by: Qbah
I heard the game's great. Loved the demo. No idea what the fuss is about, really.
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I hate to say it's great yet as I've not finished it, but I'm having fun with it so far. I'm guessing I'm maybe 2/3rds through it, and unless it takes a really quick turn downward I'd say it's probably the best TR since the first two games. Like someone said above, it's Tomb Raider. You pretty much know what you're getting, the only questions about each individual game really are did they screw up the controls, how are the puzzles, and what's it look like. So far, so good on each thus far.
 
Originally posted by: error8
It doesn't matter. The game is great!!! I'm having lots of fun playing it. I find it better then the last TR. Eidos should have nothing to fear with this game. Those that wrote bad reviews are retards anyway. 😉
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Just curious, how much did you get for that? do they have a rate sheet for kind words? I could join up with that! 😀


But really, I think some of these games get such glowing reviews because the reviewers played them for just an hour or two, and didnot get deeply enough in to them to ferret out some of the problems and drawbacks.

I call it...'The Oblivion Effect'
 
Game reviewers - much like automotive critics - are so dependent on the manufacturers of the products they review that accurate criticism is usually abandoned in favor of courting advertising dollars. It is far more conducive to accurate criticism when a reviewer receives his salary directly from those he reviews for, as per Consumer Reports or the BBC>

What the gaming review system needs is a man (or woman - women are good too) like Jeremy Clarkson - someone who will call anything he doesn't like absolute crap and has no fear of insulting any product, manufacturer, or even nation.

In the meantime, I'll just stick to my old standard of pirating things and buying them if I like them. If the gaming industry and their critics are all sleazeballs, why should I reward them by paying money for a product that isn't any good or crashes every ten minutes?
 
Should we honestly expect anything less from the same company responsible for the Gamespot/Kane & Lynch fiasco?
 
this further cements my position..

i will never buy another EA title again, rest in piece you dirt bags...

produce a goddamn product that is worthwhile and quit trying to cheat the system...

what are you so afraid of ? you know that reviewers dont like the game..so you try to hide it?

so what...if the game is good and the reviewers are wrong, they will lose credibility..

i would think that a company of your size would realize this and not give a crap because of how many games you put out, but apparently you feel that trying to cheat is the way to deal with this

you are an example of why pirates feel justified in their actions, you are disgusting.
 
Originally posted by: LumbergTech
this further cements my position..

i will never buy another EA title again, rest in piece you dirt bags...

produce a goddamn product that is worthwhile and quit trying to cheat the system...

what are you so afraid of ? you know that reviewers dont like the game..so you try to hide it?

so what...if the game is good and the reviewers are wrong, they will lose credibility..

i would think that a company of your size would realize this and not give a crap because of how many games you put out, but apparently you feel that trying to cheat is the way to deal with this

you are an example of why pirates feel justified in their actions, you are disgusting.
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Ummm.... I agree with not buying EA titles, I don't like their DRM ideas ...

But Tomb Raider is an Edios title !! So, perhaps you are mistaken about something ?
 
Unless I missed the part about Eidos being a part of EA now, the above post confuses me.

edit- 2 posts up, I'm slow =)
 
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