Eidos Embargoes Early Arkham Asylum Reviews

[Hermiod]

...unless you give it a 9/10.

Several mags have their review code already, but have to sit on their reviews until a hateful embargo expires at the end of the month. But Eidos, ever the helpful fellows that they are, have been offering a way around this embargo. If you dedicate the cover of your mag to Arkham Asylum and guarantee a score of at least 90%, Eidos will allow you to run the review early.

They did this before with the last Tomb Raider game. It's a calculated exercise in getting the Metacritic score for the game on release day as high as possible.

 

[dark angel_707]

also they did then same sort of thing with Kane & Lynch.

Makes you worry about the quality of the Batman game as edios don't want honest reviews, its like the are trying to hide something. I found the last TR game pretty poor and they wanted 8/10 or higher from early reviews

 

[Hermiod]

The sad truth is that the people who have had previews of the game think it's pretty good. It's maybe not a 9/10 game but it still looks like fun.

It's a shame Eidos don't have faith in their own product.

 

[clint g]

Pretty much guarantees I won't be picking up the game, unless there is near universal praise for it

 

[firehawk12]

You mean Square Enix Europe, don't you?

 

[dark angel_707]

apparently there should a be a demo out later this month

 

[The Evil Dead]

As long as the game gets 70% or more on Metacritic, I intend to pick up the game. I'm simply not expecting a perfect game, I just want to kill a weekend or two playing through it without having to deal with awful gameplay or bugs.

 

[Hermiod]

^That's usually Eidos... errrr Square Enix Europe's problem. They make good games but because they're always panicking about quarterly reports they rush them out with bugs and minor playability problems that another month could have solved.

 

[firehawk12]

Hopefully that'll stop once the Square overlords takeover. I'm sure they wouldn't want their names associated with something like the Gerstmann affair.

 

[dark angel_707]

I, for one, welcome our new Square-enix overlords

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

Review embargoes never bode well for any media whether that be movies, books, or games. I was looking forward to this game, but this may be a very poor sign of its quality.

 

[Spiderpope]

Review embargoes never bode well for any media whether that be movies, books, or games. I was looking forward to this game, but this may be a very poor sign of its quality.

It does make you question its quality if the games own publisher doesnt think it can earn its review scores by itself. No doubt Gamespot will be giving it a 9/10.

 

[dragunzng]

I'm late to this but putting an embargo on reviews isn't exactly a new practice. Just about every publisher does or has done this.

 

[firehawk12]

Well, the common courtesy is to just not send the game out early to avoid this problem in the first place.

 

[Hermiod]

I'm late to this but putting an embargo on reviews isn't exactly a new practice. Just about every publisher does or has done this.

Extending the embargo beyond launch day for reviews that might lower their Metacritic score is designed to hurt gaming magazines and websites who are in the business of exclusives.

They have to play ball because otherwise they won't get hands-on previews etc of new games from that company.

 

[Teelie]

Not quite true, but close. They have done it in the past but this time they are claiming otherwise, and they are far from the only ones, almost all of the companies do it. Eidos is just really bad at covering it up.

"With regards an article posted on RamRaider alleging that Eidos has fixed review scores for Batman: Arkham Asylum, we want to state that no discussions have been held about review scores with any magazines. In short there is simply not one shred of truth in this article, except for the title of the game." Jon Brooke, Head of UK Marketing, Eidos.

Kotaku

 

[dark angel_707]

played the demo and quite enjoyed it

 

[Dream]

Why didn't they release this game around the time the Dark Knight came out? It seems to be a year late.

 

[Arrqh]

Why didn't they release this game around the time the Dark Knight came out? It seems to be a year late.

It's not a movie tie-in. One was being developed by Pandemic, but it was canceled.

 

[Aragorn]

Why didn't they release this game around the time the Dark Knight came out? It seems to be a year late.

1) It has nothing to do with the movie.

2) Do you really want another rushed-out movie tie-in game? Unless, of course, you like The Golden Compass, Night at the Museum, Transformers, Iron Man and Enter the Matrix.