Personal Attacks Instead of Product Reviews Are Not Alright

For those of you who haven't heard already, there is a man who claims that the idea for the Assassin's Creed games came from his book. He is suing Ubisoft for stealing his ideas and plans to seek both monetary reparations and the blocking of sales of Assassin's Creed 3.

I'm not here to talk about whether or not this man is telling the truth or how much imitation is too much when using a similar idea you heard elsewhere. I want to talk about what some gamers are doing in retaliation. The man's book, Link, is sold on Amazon and a bunch of gamers have taken it upon themselves to negatively review his book just on the grounds of not liking his lawsuit.

This is not the way to go. Reviews are in a very bad place right now, with controversies over too many similar ratings among websites or writers not being unbiased enough to review it. The rise of Metacritic as a tool for determining a game's success amongst publishers has made the power of our game reviews even more potentially damning. We shouldn't be giving this man's bad reviews just because we don't like something he is doing.

No matter the medium (movies, games, books, etc.), a review should be about the quality of the product itself. If potential customers keep seeing reviews treated as nothing but a place to trash the creators of the product and not about the thing they are supposed to be reviewing, who is going to take them seriously any more?

Dark Souls PC and Gamer Entitlement

Dark Souls was a surprising hit for From Software last year. The game that came before it, Demon's Souls, was well-liked but it just did okay in the sales department. Dark Souls was a much more well-received game and it almost seemed like everyone was playing it. I definitely enjoyed it as well - it ended up on my top 10 list for 2011. The one thing that people have been clamoring about for the game was a PC version, for those that didn't own a console but were intrigued.

Well, we are finally getting a PC version (whether they planned it all along or the petitions actually worked is hard to tell) and people are overjoyed. At least, they were until they learned that the game would include Games For Windows Live, the service that PC gamers love to hate. New petitions have shown up begging for the removal of GFWL and a lot of the positive comments about Dark Souls have again turned negative.

I can kind of understand this vitriol for GFWL. At times, I have had massive problems with the service, mostly with updating the client and getting stuck in impossible update loops, but for the most part, it is fairly unobtrusive. Some complaints state that Dark Souls' ever-online functions would be hindered by GFWL and I could certainly see that being the case at points.

However, I cannot get behind this petition. Its intents are in the right place but the anger around the whole thing is not. Gamers managed to convince From Software to put the time and effort into a PC port and they immediately complain when it isn't everything they wanted. GFWL is a horrible piece of crap sometimes but it isn't the end of the world; if the game did end up including it, it would only be a minor inconvenience.

It seems like this year is the year of gamer entitlement (an overused word but for good reason). If something isn't exactly to their liking, they yell and scream and pout until they get their way. Bioware caved with the Mass Effect 3 ending and I'm willing to bet From Software will cave too, unless the deal is already cemented.

On one hand, we are the consumers paying for these products and our say should matter. On the other, the consumer doesn't always understand what went into a decision or how game design actually works.

We are heading down a dark path towards a future where any little thing that fans of a game don't like will be patched or updated because that is what is expected of a developer. This future will be one where the only game developers are the ones that don't even bother to try something new because they don't want to risk being drawn and quartered by the online community.

Gamestop Forced to Notify Customers About Online Passes

Gamestop is the company we all love to hate. They are constantly at odds with one group or another and most gamers tend to ignore them if they can. The prices they give for trade-ins is abysmally low and they turn around and sell them for twice as much to willing consumers ready to spend $5 less. It's shady but completely legal.

One thing that won't be legal for Gamestop anymore is selling games with online passes without warning the consumer first in California. Most of your salespeople in a Gamestop won't tell you that that game you are saving $5 on will actually cost you $5 more when you have to buy an online pass.

I'm glad that someone is finally cracking down on this and I hope it spreads to more states soon. Many gamers are smart enough to not fall for such a trick but there are plenty of not-savvy consumers out there that do - and it needs to stop.

Persona 3: FES Only $10 on Playstation 3's Store

The Persona games have been around for awhile but they only really gained widespread popularity here with Persona 3 and Persona 4. These games have been popular enough to make Atlus a fairly loved company and allowed a game as strange as Catherine to actually sell really well. Remakes of each of them have come to the PSP, with P4 coming to the Vita later this year, and fan fervor over Persona 5 is rather intense.

I remember playing through Persona 4 first (thanks to the Endurance Run of the game found at Giant Bomb) and immediately wanting to track down 3. That was probably 2 years ago now and the only place I could manage to find a copy was on PlayAsia, paying way too much for shipping and having to wait almost three weeks to get it. It has been easier to find at various points in time but can still be pretty tricky to track down.

This is why I was so amazed at Atlus when they announced that Persona 3: FES would be releasing on the Playstation 3 store as a PS2 Classic download. I was even more amazed that the price would be only $10! For a game that amazing (and hard to track down), this is an amazing deal. While I stand by my assertion that Persona 3 Portable is a better game (even without all the running around town, the fact that you can control your whole party is way more crucial to enjoyment in that game), this is still a great way to get into the Persona series for a cheap price.