IGN has reported the other day that Resident Evil 5′s mercenaries mode is not playable online. Just yesterday, IGN posted their final review, claiming sentiments three times in the actual review such as “No Mercenaries online? Really?”. While I could go on complaining about the lowered score because of it, the real issue is: how did they screw this up?
The online community has gone up and arms lately about it. Reviews have been a hot topic as of late; some reviewers are being called out for not finishing a sufficient portion of the game before finalizing a review. Others, like IGN, push false information before confirmation.
The issue was raised when Japanese gamers, confused, kept stating they were playing Mercenaries online at that moment. All Resident Evil 5 needs is a simple update to play Mercs online. This also apparently shows they’ve never actually tested RE5 online at all. You’d think before trashing this, you’d either check online first for confirmation, or simply email Capcom about it. A lot of people probably see no Mercs online as a dealbreaker. Make no mistake; thoroughly playing games before review is more of a serious issue as of late.
Mercs Online Confirmation:
Link to the review
Additional Confirmation: An interview with Takeuchi on Dengeki a day before IGN posted the review:
“DUO Mode, which allows players to play The Mercenaries through 2 Player Co-Op online, will be distributed at launch.”
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Sounds like a confusing mishap
Yeah, whatever. IGN’s not “biased” and they’re not in the business of spreading false information. One of their guys made a mistake. No biggy.
@ Dan
It’s not that they just made a mistake. If you read the article they complete beat to death the fact that the game has no online co-op in mercenaries, which it looks like there will be on day one. Then they proceed to hack a chunk off of the score because of such.
What good is a game’s journalist if they don’t check their facts? It’s like journalism 101, and it really isn’t too difficult.
This is a REVIEW people. Would you knock a book for a missing chapter? Of course you would, until you realized it was there the whole time and you were a big bucket full of fail.
I was actually reading the ridiculous comments on N4G before I came here so it kind of put me in a mood. people just freak over the smallest things.
@Rick: I read the review. It didn’t seem like they were beating anything to death, but that’s just a matter of opinion, I guess. Maybe the copy they had didn’t have online co-op for mercs mode in it? If that’s the case, then maybe Capcom should have been a little more clear on that aspect of it. Reviewers can only review what’s present in the copy of the game they’re given.
People just seem to think gaming journalists for some of the major (and minor) sites should be like these all knowing gaming gods who not only know everything and anything about the gaming industry, but can also predict the future.
@ Dan
Why shouldn’t we expect them to do that? Mainstream journalists are expected to know about what they’re writing, why make the exception?
Arguments aside, at the very least they should amend the review, and possibly the affected sub-score.
To my understanding game reviewers review the out the box product. No updates or patches are applied.
And your right they did give it a lower score since IGN reviews everything out of 20 and not 10. 9 out of 10 seems pretty good to me but but 9 out of 20 WTF… Oh wait they do rate it out of 10…
I’m not the biggest fan of IGN to be sure, but mistakes like this are really sloppy. If you make a point to note in a review that major features in games aren’t there, when they are, that’s a great example of rushed reviews.
IGN needs to be out there quickly, that’s understandable, but if you are going for quality over quantity you should be spending an extra few days playing or researching these things when millions of people make purchasing decisions based on them.
The review this article links to has been corrected. And not even an ‘update’ marker saying so.