Topic: GamePro's Water Warfare Review

Actually, I find the first two sentences most telling:
1) Nintendo just can’t seem to get a solid foothold on its WiiWare catalog
Apparently, Wolrd of Goo (multiple Game of the Year, according to developers sold better on Wii than on PC during first year), Mega Man 9, Lost Winds, the StrongBad games, NyxQuest, etc don't exist.
2)Week after week it’s the same old thing over and over again
Ah, so this is the umpteenth FPS on WiiWare? Wait, no ,it's actually the second, and first multiplayer-oriented one. So... how can it be the "same old thing over and over again"? Doesn't quite fit with the rest of the text.

After those sentences, I knew what to expect, since the start was apparently a WiiWare-rant he'd prepared long ago and could now finally launch with something resembling a review glued to it.

@KDR
Well I don`t think they plagiarized off of IGN. They probably read IGN`s review after playing the game and were inspired by it and also had the same opinion on it.
I`m not a reviewer but I bet this happens at times.

@Wesbert
If you were to read the first two sentences fluently, you would`ve recognized that he wasn`t referring to the genre but to the game as shovelware as we usually seem to get every Monday.

@ Chrono Cross: Hence my examples in point 1. (As you might have noticed, I was being sarcastic in point 2). None of these games qualify as shovelware, and neither do the Bit.Trip games, the Art.Style games, and, come to think of it, Water Warfare (after all, FPS aren't that overly abundant on the Wii, so I'd hesitate to call them "shovelware"), among others. If he says Nintendo can't get a solid foothold, he imples that there are nothing but shovelware games, and the "week after week" part even more so. And that's a plain falsehood easily recitified by proper study of the service itself.

EDIT: The point I wanted to hint at is: He started off with a tired old cliche/prejudice. So how can one expect the rest of the review to be any better?

That's some pretty close inspiration I'd say. If this isn't plagiarism, what is? He obviously didn't even bother checking the facts himself and he'd have noticed the errors had he ever played the game. It's beyond reasonable doubt that he plagiarized the review and didn't play the game himself, any excuses like "inspiration" or "agreement" (HE DIDN'T AGREE TO THE IGN REVIEW!!!) are just grasping at straws.

Have you tried contacting IGN/GamePro about this matter? Plagiarism is a very serious issue and I'm sure they would deal with it appropriately once notified.

@KDR_11K-I agree,they didn't even tried to review the game. I think Nintendo Life is the only website I can visit for reliable reviews. Every other video game review website has unreliable reviewers.

thats true. all other review sites are blemished by reviewers who are too hooked on graphics, and if its too "kiddy" rather than if its fun

Did you see that they retracted the review? WOW! This is why I NEVER read a review of a game I'm about to review until AFTER I've finished writing it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: We have made the editorial decision to retract the score for this review due to concerns regarding plagarism. We have addressed the issue in another post which you can find on our main page.

I was sent a link to a rather disturbing thread created t in the NeoGAF forums today. The subject line is “GamePro PLAIGARIZES IGN's review of Water Warfare (Wii).” Here is a link if you want to read the discussion. As you can imagine, the editors of GamePro and GamePro Arcade took these charges very seriously and we immediately began to investigate. Both Terry, the editor in chief of GamePro Arcade, and I read over both reviews and contacted the writer in question, Andrew Ramsey to get his side of the story. Unfortunately, Terry is on vacation, so I am taking over for him to respond to this issue.

After speaking to Andrew, I must regretfully report that the charges are true. While Andrew did not intentionally and maliciously try to plagarize IGN UK’s review of Water Warfare for the WiiWare service, he did admit to using it as a reference point and certain segments of the IGN UK review were used. This is a serious breach of journalistic ethics and after conferring with Terry, we have made the decision to relieve Andrew of his position as contributing writer for GamePro Arcade.

haha! we win! i wonder who told them?

Plagiarism is a very serious offense and I'm not sure that some writers realize just how serious it is.

Instant loss of credibility! I'm impressed they even copped to it publicly.
Now I really wish Hudson included that douche bottle weapon in the game, 'cause I'd douse his plagiarizing ass.

In my school, if you are charged with plagiarism you get either suspended or even expelled

The reviewer got what he deserved!

Any journalist should know better. There really is no excuse for plagiarizing some else's work. Not in this day and age. As I said above, I won't even read another review of a game I'm reviewing. I don't even take a chance of getting some thought stuck in my head before I start writing it up.

And this is why the best, most thorough, articulate, independent and trustworthy reviews are right here on NLife. Between the reviewers and the community, this place is all you really need for qualitiy Nintendo game opinions.

@vendetta so true... i used to read gameinformer for all my reviews but soon i realized that they were all biased. if you looked at the "favorite game genres of the staff" you would see that all of them like FPS's and very few liked strategy. not only that, but they are all %100 hardcore gamers.

Amen to the last 2 comments.
EDIT: Make that 3.

Amen to the last 3 comments

EDIT: make that 4

Good to see the reviewer got what he deserved. Though I'm skeptical that we won't see issues like this continue to pop up given that most mainstream review sites refuse to take the Wii seriously.