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Kotaku: In Japan, fans question Famitsu-related cameos in Death Stranding
- Thread starter catboy
- Start date
It is the reason Edge Magazine didn't release a review for Death Stranding. The reviewer disliked it so much that he didn't manage to finish it.
So could those people release reviews after the game is out in retail?
I have no idea about the particulars of the embargo deal, but Edge's reviewer has stated that Edge wouldn't release a review any time soon.
how professional...do they only have one reviewer? not a good look at all for such a magazine
Not even that. It's just like 3 or 4 sentences "explaining" what they thought about the game.
They're the laziest, low-effort "reviews" I've ever seen. It's Metacritic user review levels of bad.
If anything, them being unable to finish it because they disliked it so much was a review in itself, just not a scored review.
I mean, reviewers aren't exactly professionally obligated to finish and review Death Stranding.
If anyone is interested about what Famitsu reviewers say, a friend passed me the four reviews in English. He probably used Google translation, so take them as not 100% correctly
It is no longer artistic that the theme of "connecting" is sublimated as entertainment in the story, game system, and production. The work of considering the journey to the destination and the luggage while looking at the map leads to the fun of trekking and touring. A sense of accomplishment when arriving at the destination, and the presence of "someone" who feels the scenery when looking back. I am alone but not lonely. The online elements that make people feel warm are too great! (Amemiya)
A unique world view and story. Ingenious game design with a focus on delivery. The result is a very interesting finish, excitement, enthusiasm, impatience and relief, and excitement, while keeping your heart shaken. It is fun to think about how to proceed through the built-in field, and the structure that the play changes as the functions are expanded, and its adjustment is exquisite. It's nice that you can feel the connection between the story and the online system. (Iwata)
An AAA-class indie work that the masters work on. The online attempt is brilliant in the structure where altruistic behavior is rewarding, as if a utopia has been realized. It seems to be the presentation of one answer to the divided modern society. The experiment and the message are strong, but the entertainment color seems weak and the taste seems to be divided. The base of the game part, such as good response and ease of use of the menu, is not missed. (Namuko)
You can get a sense of travel and awareness that will change the way you see the real world as you move through the beautiful and desolate world using all means such as walking, vehicles, and "ziplines". There are many strange ways to send out a message that stimulates special feelings with active experiences of players, while being fooled by the small material that makes you laugh out of laughter with so much foolishness I want to experience this gamer! (Totsuka)
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To mods, I don't know if this is agains the forum rules but if it is, please take down my post.
It is no longer artistic that the theme of "connecting" is sublimated as entertainment in the story, game system, and production. The work of considering the journey to the destination and the luggage while looking at the map leads to the fun of trekking and touring. A sense of accomplishment when arriving at the destination, and the presence of "someone" who feels the scenery when looking back. I am alone but not lonely. The online elements that make people feel warm are too great! (Amemiya)
A unique world view and story. Ingenious game design with a focus on delivery. The result is a very interesting finish, excitement, enthusiasm, impatience and relief, and excitement, while keeping your heart shaken. It is fun to think about how to proceed through the built-in field, and the structure that the play changes as the functions are expanded, and its adjustment is exquisite. It's nice that you can feel the connection between the story and the online system. (Iwata)
An AAA-class indie work that the masters work on. The online attempt is brilliant in the structure where altruistic behavior is rewarding, as if a utopia has been realized. It seems to be the presentation of one answer to the divided modern society. The experiment and the message are strong, but the entertainment color seems weak and the taste seems to be divided. The base of the game part, such as good response and ease of use of the menu, is not missed. (Namuko)
You can get a sense of travel and awareness that will change the way you see the real world as you move through the beautiful and desolate world using all means such as walking, vehicles, and "ziplines". There are many strange ways to send out a message that stimulates special feelings with active experiences of players, while being fooled by the small material that makes you laugh out of laughter with so much foolishness I want to experience this gamer! (Totsuka)
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To mods, I don't know if this is agains the forum rules but if it is, please take down my post.
Depends on how they received the game, I guess. If you signed the embargo you got the game about a month early with the clear message that you're intended to use this time to finish the game. If you didn't sign you weren't able to get the code.
So, reviewers could still have decided not to sign anything and just wait for the release to pick up the game and then review it. But if you did sign it and just couldn't finish it because you hated it, like Edge, you need to get a bit creative and treat it like a preview without a score.
A game being so bad that someone doesn't want to finish it is a knock on the quality of the game, not the reviewer.
what's unprofessional about not liking a game enough to finish it? should they force their writers to finish the game? considering they review most big games, this one is on DS, not edge.
I haven´t looked at a Famitsu issue since 2013, due to a GTA V cover, so I got my hands on Weekly Famitsu 2019-11-21 (manga raw sites are your friend).
Here is my review Era:
It´s 175 full-color pages for like 5 bucks (the price changes). 3 of them are reserved for reviews but only 2 of them are the reviews. They are at the very start of the issue. The same 4 people "tested" 6 games on those 2 pages. Every review is about as long as 2 full tweets. One of them is Destra and the magazine only cares for the Switch and PS4 in 2019. Red Dead 2 for the PC still got extensive "coverage" later in the mag, as even Japan loves RockStar (and you can always get the PS4 version.) Page 14 to 39 are reserved for Destra and look/read like a preview. The review and those are separate of course. Some of the screenshots take a full page will little info on the page and you get the usual KojiPro backstage celebration.
The magazine is sooo bad that I almost stopped a 3rd though but I flipped to the end. There is all sorts of ecchi stuff in the magazine, with all the anime girls being underage of course. Dat full-page Etrian Odyssey artbook ad... dear lord. I feel dirty now. The magazine lastly ends with 2 separate idol photoshoots. One is a gothic idol. The leading Japanese gaming "magazine" ladies and gentlemen! 2/10 - 80s Nintendo Power is better.
Edit: The full-page The Etrian Odyssey Art museum The Characters of `SQV` and` SQX` cover:
Here is my review Era:
It´s 175 full-color pages for like 5 bucks (the price changes). 3 of them are reserved for reviews but only 2 of them are the reviews. They are at the very start of the issue. The same 4 people "tested" 6 games on those 2 pages. Every review is about as long as 2 full tweets. One of them is Destra and the magazine only cares for the Switch and PS4 in 2019. Red Dead 2 for the PC still got extensive "coverage" later in the mag, as even Japan loves RockStar (and you can always get the PS4 version.) Page 14 to 39 are reserved for Destra and look/read like a preview. The review and those are separate of course. Some of the screenshots take a full page will little info on the page and you get the usual KojiPro backstage celebration.
The magazine is sooo bad that I almost stopped a 3rd though but I flipped to the end. There is all sorts of ecchi stuff in the magazine, with all the anime girls being underage of course. Dat full-page Etrian Odyssey artbook ad... dear lord. I feel dirty now. The magazine lastly ends with 2 separate idol photoshoots. One is a gothic idol. The leading Japanese gaming "magazine" ladies and gentlemen! 2/10 - 80s Nintendo Power is better.
Edit: The full-page The Etrian Odyssey Art museum The Characters of `SQV` and` SQX` cover:
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Lmao. Are people really that oblivious to the effects of media? You don't take it seriously but every publisher worth their salt is gonna make sure that 40/40 or 10/10 or winner of Game awards is gonna be on the cover of their next shipment.
Surely you can agree that this will boost games sales. Therefore it is a conflict of interest; in both cases.
I've noticed that many people are very intense, serious and angry about really small, not very important things when the big issues they should care about are given very little care.
The comparison between Game Boy in 1997 and Death Stranding in 2019 is hilarious to me.
In 1997 the Game Gear was long dead, the Neogeo Poket Color came out in 1998, and the Wonderswan in 1999.
The GB had the literal monopoly. Not like we use to say around here, like a LITERAL MONOPOLY. It was the ONLY handeld console around.
I don't think anyone is saying that the game sucks because of this, don't worry.
these are actually prtty lovely ruminations about the game, thx for the translation
reminds me when bioware added jessica chobot to mass effect 3. I remember people were against it.
I disagree with this. I would prefer my reviewers finish a game before they give their critique. This reads as either the reviewer was unwilling to finish a game before he critiqued it (and probably would not have noted as such if not obligated to beforehand) or, on principle, Edge decided they wouldn't be forced into that type of proposition.
Hell, who knows how many games are completed before they are scored, from this outlet or others. I like this idea from Sony; I've played wholly through bad games (DMC2, FFVII:DoC) before I called them trash. If your job is to review games, as in you are being paid to do so, you should be required to complete it before you score/review it or acknowledge it in writing that you did not do as such.
There was a thread about this and it's impossible for a reviewer to finish every game they are given. They are very often not given the time, and they are not machines. Reviewing games doesn't work like watching movies or reading books in that you can just get through them in an afternoon, games are 40-60 to even 100+ hour experiences depending on the type of game and genre.
Some games are 40-60 hours. Most of those are RPGs which, if I'm the EIC or whomever the boss is, I'm giving you a week to complete.
But most games, for a simple run-through, spans about 15-30. 2-3 eight to ten hour workdays, even less for sports titles.
I say this as an experienced gamer that currently work a physically demanding job: I could could complete two of those a week, easy, while recording my moment to moment impressions for a thorough write-up. I don't believe that's asking too much for a paid position playing games.
Now, if the workload per journalist/writer is (much) more than that, then commonsense regulations need to be communicated between media outlets and some sort of consortium of Videogame publishers and developers.
Tl;dr - I feel, with a reasonable deadline and stable of writers, reviewers should be able to complete their videogame assignments regardless of game quality (barring game-breaking glitches and the like) because they are paid to do so.
If a game is so bad that the [considerably higher for reviewers] "bar for quitting" is reached, that means game is bad, not that the reviewer is lazy. If they don't want to keep playing, even being aware that it's part of their job to play games, that's because the game is bad. They're not paid to finish games, they're paid to render verdicts based on playing them, and if playing them is so painful a proposition that their negative verdict is there and set before the end, that's on the game. If there was some big twist that makes it all better, but it's terrible up to that point, that's the games fault for burying it too deep.
When a movie reviewer walks out a movie because he finds it terrible, no one says that "oh the last 5 minutes pull it all together" - the movie is just rightly called bad. Games are much longer than movies, and reviewers are already inclined to give games higher benefit of the doubt than the average player because, as you say, part of their job entails playing it for purposes of casting judgements. Not finishing it.
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So I quite like the game, but like is there a point where it becomes more than the same delivery type stuff over and over? I honestly like the delivery system, I just don't want to be literally doing it in the same way. Some kinda mechanical progression would be nice. I hear you can help people make buildings, which I can do now but that doesn't seem extremely useful to me.
I'm on Chapter 3 or whatever for what it's worth.
I'm on Chapter 3 or whatever for what it's worth.
So basically a rerun of Kotaku's "This magazine cannot be trusted!" clickbait article in response to Famitsu's Peace Walker review?
Good to see someone is taking recycling seriously these days I guess.
Good to see someone is taking recycling seriously these days I guess.
You're really going to give Kotaku shit because they ran a similar article 8 years ago?
That article wasn't clickbait, and Kotaku was called by both Famitsu and Konami afterwards to tell them they were uninvited to the Peace Walker PR event. It is a conflict of interest that the head of a company like Famitsu is doing advertisements for a video game and also being put into a video game while also reviewing said game and giving it perfect scores.
Tired of this shit - Play the game people. It's actually good. Chapter 3 here - And it's surprisingly addictive. A lot of the stuff sounds worse than it plays; I got the hang of it fairly quickly. I've been trying different stuff with some gadgets I recently recieved.
I'll spoiler-tag an experience I had, to try and convey some of the small details I like about it. No story or mission related spoilers, just a warning to those who want to go in knowing absolutely nothing at all.
I'll spoiler-tag an experience I had, to try and convey some of the small details I like about it. No story or mission related spoilers, just a warning to those who want to go in knowing absolutely nothing at all.
I went into a BT ridden place and had just recieved my Power Skeleton. Made my way up a collapsed building, bypassing some BT's only to realize that the collapsed building didn't lead me across a wall I was trying to circumvent... So I put some faith in my new gear, made a run for it and jumped from the ledge of the collapsed building and over the wall with a gigantic leap thanks to my Power Skeleton. Man... Simple shit like this makes me love this game. Up until now, the game had almost conditioned me not to try things like this... Loved it.
If Famitsu wasn't already known to be just a glorified PR rag for whoever pays them the most it'd probably be more noteworthy is all I was meaning to get at.
This thread has been so helpful for adding folks to my ignore list. Why do people feel the need to bicker endlessly about this game?
I don't have the game yet, but I'm very interested and will no doubt pick it up at some point. That being said, reviewers shouldn't appear in the games that they're reviewing if they want to appear unbiased.
I don't have the game yet, but I'm very interested and will no doubt pick it up at some point. That being said, reviewers shouldn't appear in the games that they're reviewing if they want to appear unbiased.
Oh... do they still actually take Famitsu seriously over there?
I may have made incorrect assumptions here...
Haha that is not a 'literal monopoly' in any way. They did not have exclusive control of a market by abusing market position, just had the winning system. At any time a competitor could enter, there were no legal, manufacturing or distribution barriers for a compelling product to sell (eg if Nintendo controlled all retail stores blocking sale of competitors, THAT would be a monopoly). The Game Gear was only discontinued in 97 (and in fact was re-launched in 99 by Majesco) and the Neo Geo Pocket (not Color) came out in 98.
And game systems are not a necessary commodity, they're a luxury entertainment product.
ok they had a de facto monopoly. Better ?
Btw, the last Game Gear games were published in 1996, and the Majesco relaunch was a North American-only thing. It didn't affected japnese market, where only the Wonderswan cut a slice of Nintendo Market before the PSP.
What I meant is: in 1997 nobody would gain anything by allegedly "bumping" Game Boy games' scores.
And, even if they did, that has nothing to with Death Stranding.
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Reminds me of the Mega64 Todd and Aaron Awards. I wonder what they'll give it!
