Time was, when a game got a bad review, the publisher would keep its head down and wait a year or two before releasing a sequel. These days, however, with those in the games industry becoming more vocal, it seems that a high-profile game can’t escape bad review scores without some ridiculous damage control.
In its bid to cover up for less-than-positive Haze review scores (not least IGN’s shocking 4.5), publisher Ubisoft has discredited the review process and urged customers to try Haze for themselves.
“One thing I can already tell about the reviews is that most of the time they are the opinion of only one person and may not reflect the way you will see the game: you have to make your own judgment,” stated Ubisoft community manager Wuzzy. While a fair point indeed, let’s face it — if Haze got brilliant scores all round, Ubisoft would be the last company to say “Oh that’s just one guy’s opinion.” It strikes me as quite funny that game companies plaster review scores and quotes all over a game’s promo material, but are swift to dismiss reviews as unimportant when they’re negative.
Case in point, they keep bringing up Famitsu‘s positive score, while simultaneously telling us not to bother listening to reviews. Whether Haze is a good game or not isn’t the issue for me; I just wish companies would stop rushing to the defense of games when they get bad scores — suck it up and get to work on the next title, because you’re simply embarrassing yourselves and dismissing reviews won’t add another million sales. Besides, don’t you have Beyond Good & Evil 2 to be green lighting? If you want high review scores, get on that.
