Previews are rarely negative for the same reason a movie reviewer doesn't come down hard on a work print or a food critic doesn't open the oven while the meal is baking -- it's not done yet. No developer sets out to make a bad game, and obviously, they want to share what they are most excited about. Most previews are written based on a limited amount of gameplay -- an hour, two hours, something like that. Some games change drastically between preview and review state (one of the Maddens did this -- it looked really bad but tons of polish went into the final few weeks and it was a great version).
Most games are polished in the last four to six weeks. Many times our reviews are written on builds that crash, or are incomplete, or are missing voices and textures -- obviously it's not going to ship to retail with voices missing. It's not even worth mentioning, like the work print missing the special effects or the unbaked souffle. The ingredients are there; they need more time to cook before you can pass judgement.
My other analogy is imagine getting graded for your school year before the final exam. You'd hate that and it wouldn't feel fair; you weren't done the process. Bingo.
Our preview-oriented features lately have been focusing on the process rather than the product. The people making the game exist, even if the game doesn't. So our Tony Hawk: Ride feature in July, for instance, talks about the development team and their goals as much as the incomplete game that we tried out.
BTW, great question and I might print this in a future issue, because I think a lot of people wonder the same thing!
KOXM podcasts |
My Twitter feed
