Not flaming Ca

[Quickening]

I think the problem is the game industry/game journalism industry corruption. Spore was reviewed and got many 9/10s. That's enough to prove something's wrong.

When people stop trusting these liars, and rely only on word of mouth and forum feedback, then we'll see an improvement in the quality of games. As it is now, reviewers suck up to the games companies because otherwise their magazine/website has advertising pulled. So publishers can just boot a game out onto the shelves and they know if it's so hotly anticipated at E:TW was, it'll still bring in good reviews.

Unfortunately it'll be a while before people learn not to be such blind sheep.

Quoted for truth but I also agree with Gollums assertion that the responcibility should rest with the buyer themselves although lets face it, it's too much to ask people to think for themselves.
It's a sad state of affairs when you can guess the kind of score a game will get in major publications the moment it is announced but trust me, you can. I've been doing it for years. I knew that Empire: Total War would get rave reviews just like you can predict shallow tat like Spore getting rave reviews because the "innovation" of such games is hyped so much that by the time the review comes the reader has already bought it. Black and White was a great example of such a game. I'm not saying it was bad, but by God did the mainstream go mad over this thing in the day and although an enjoyable game it wasn't exactly the work of genius it was claimed to be.

Now as it happens, I love Empire and I've been fortunate enough to not have any problems aside from being unable to install from the second DVD. But on the matter of CA... I just don't know. I don't buy this "evil publisher ruling with an iron fist over the peasant developers who toil away alturistically" thing. The fact of the matter is that we've had this same experience time and again with this series and some people will always blame the publisher. They may well be a factor but I really doubt it's as simple as that. We just don't know.
As for CA being publically pleased having Sega as their publisher, well, they aren't exactly going to come out and say "yeah these guys suck, this will be a testing time"

[MikeV]

It's a sad state of affairs when you can guess the kind of score a game will get in major publications the moment it is announced but trust me, you can. I've been doing it for years.

A bit off-topic, but I've noticed the same things with movies from Hollywood: the more advertising near the release date, the more of a dog they're pushing. Since game companies are consciously imitating Hollywood (why ?!?! ), the inverse correlation you note is probably to be expected.

Nowadays, I don't buy anything Hollywood is selling. Will the same become true of game software?