Can Perks Influence the Review of a Game?

[Rob Williams]

If you knew that the writer of a game review you just read was treated to some good times by the company during the review process, would you trust them? This is a subject that Ars Technica has been infatuated with the past couple of months, especially with regards to how Activision has treated reviewers of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Not surprisingly, that game has received some great ratings - deserved or not, that's for you to decide.

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Read the rest of our post and discuss it here!

 

[Doomsday]

its good to hear u guys wont go down that 'pay and get an A+ review' road!

my dad works at a shipping company and ppl usually send him gifts but he refuses cause he knows down the road, these very ppl will ask for favors and those favors will involve something which is not right!

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

So far, the game is AMAZING. The graphic detail is phenomenal, and the gameplay is really fun. You also don't die instantly after getting shot once on Veteran. haha. Haven't played online yet, but the clan leaders of TKC's (the PC clan I'm with. Hence, my avatar ) only complaint was the lag online. Some clan members didn't experience it, but quite a few did. Other than that and the fact that they're so used to Bad Company 2 that the Black Ops maps seem like cages, they like the game a lot.

Now on-topic. I personally would write an honest review regardless of how the developer treated me during the review period. I would put my two cents in about the treatment, sure, but that wouldn't affect the outcome of my review.

 

[Optix]

I'm just of the belief that if we ever published a piece of content that was influenced, we'd be caught, called out, and burned at the stake. As we should be.

That is the perfect way to end off an article. Accountability is so important regardless of the job.

 

[Rob Williams]

Haven't played online yet, but the clan leaders of TKC's (the PC clan I'm with. Hence, my avatar ) only complaint was the lag online.

I didn't get online until last night (also beat the game last night, still quite challenging on Hardened, haha), and I started to gather what kind of lag people were talking about. I'd often have a 50~60ms ping time, and on occasion, I'd have the entire game client seize up and then let go after a second. It's resulted in a lot of deaths so far, and just isn't fun at all.

I'm just wondering if that's the same kind of lag others are talking about. What I'm experiencing is NOT normal lag, because normal lag is obvious. This actually halts the game for a second and then goes back to normal. I tried to record video of it last night but for some reason none of the outputted videos work.

I am running the game at high-detail with 8xAA, so I'd jump on that being the problem if I didn't have a single issue during my ~9 hours in the single player campaign.

 

[DarkStarr]

No clue but I read some reports of stuttering and similar but only online, I also heard the game is not coded for multicore processors. Also 8x AA isnt really that high, I play most games maxed out at 8x AA 1080p on a 5750 lol runs great except Crysis but what can you do?