scully1888

@MadCow74 For what it's worth I did one race with the assists on before realising they were on and turning them off. Still laggy for me.

@LegendOfPit @SquirrelsCanFly I promise you I took everything into account before writing the review, because claiming a game has input lag from start to finish is serious and obviously if I did something wrong then the whole review would be a write-off.

But nope: I powered completely off, powered on again, still input lag. Checked for game updates, and I'm still running the latest version as of this morning (and it still does it). I even uninstalled it and installed it again, and I'm getting the same issue.

As I said in the review, I even quit to the Home menu and loaded Smash Bros (which is obviously far more processor-intensive) to see if it was an issue with my TV settings, but it played sompletely fine with no noticeable lag.

If others aren't getting it then that's strange, but I can only review what's in front of me and that's what I'm getting.

@TheMadPolarBear And that's exactly what this game looks like. Even though the YouTube test someone else linked to reported a solid frame rate of 30fps. Hence me stating that the game has frame pacing issues: it may run at 30fps but all the frames don't arrive at the same time.

@riccyjay Yes, my job literally is to say whether I liked it or not.

You say I should be able to separate "personal preference" from thinks like "clever game design" or "good production values". So who says what those are, then? Surely that's down to personal preference too? There's no chart to look up and see what score I'm supposed to give it. The whole point of a review is always for the reviewer to give their own personal opinion of the game: not a random reader who might like it more/less than they do, not their mum's, not a rough estimate of what they think the Metacritic score will be.

I don't like the game. I felt that the controls were sluggish, the loading times were too long and everything felt juddery and generally unstable. If you want me to pretend I didn't experience that and just list the modes instead then you should be reading the back of the box, not reviews.

@Cosats I'm not sure what you mean by bad reviews being "very, very personal" – I was given the game, I played it, I didn't like it, I wrote that. That's my job: my job isn't to second-guess what people who like it might think and write that instead.

@Rayquaza2510 Frame rate and frame pacing aren't the same thing. That test shows it's outputting at a solid 30 but that only means the screen's updating at that rate: it doesn't mean everything on the screen is.

For example, the timer at the top corner of the screen constantly runs smoothly – something like this could cause an automated system to read it as a solid 30fps. Even when you watch that video though you can see moments where the scenery is stuttering as it scrolls past.

This is why sites like Digital Foundry sometimes discuss frame pacing as well as frame rate. 30fps only tells half the story if only certain parts of the screen are refreshing at that rate.

@bluesdance I don't know what to tell you, but I did a full power down and restart of the system and still had the same laggy controls. Same on both TV and handheld mode.

@DMCumbo Cheers for the heads up: that option completely passed me by somehow. We'll edit the review accordingly.

@Gerald Hi Gerald! I'm afraid it doesn't, nope.

@BAN Not that I want to get into this, but I don't think someone suggesting I should be sued for writing my book is "rational".

It's also inaccurate to suggest my book will be "the exact same book", and I don't appreciate the implication that there's something underhanded going on with regards to the book being mentioned on this site. While this coverage is welcome, I didn't ask for it and there was no deal in place.

I wrote my book with no knowledge of Pat's, and when I found out about it (by which point my book had already been finished and sent off to the publishers) I reached out to him to explain that I was also writing an NES Encyclopedia.

He couldn't have been cooler about it, and we agreed there's more than enough room for two books with a similar subject matter, especially because our books are very different in tone: his consists of subjective opinions written from an American point of view, mine is more of a reference guide (hence Encyclopedia) with a more British style of writing (bad jokes and all).

The plan (if this sells well) is also to turn my book into a series that goes beyond just Nintendo, so hopefully once the bigger picture is seen a couple of years down the line it'll be clear that the NES book is just one part of a larger project.

I can assure you that if I wanted to rip someone off to make easy money off their idea, there are infinitely easier ways to go about it than writing a 180,000 word book.

Long story short, I'm not interested in this turning into a Pat vs Chris internet battle. If you don't want to buy my book that's fine, you aren't being held at gunpoint. I'd rather focus my energy on those who do buy it, and try to give them the best possible book for their money.

@Stargazer In fairness, my review says exactly what you just said, so please don't generalise about 'reviewers'.

@kepsux There are two shoot buttons. One can be held down to power a shot, while the other can be held down for rapid fire.

When you die in Normal mode, you go back to a checkpoint. When you die in Infinite mode, your ship is immediately replaced with a new one and you keep going. Hope that helps!

@pblive It turned into a slideshow at one point, in the 15-20 hours I put into it for the review. I'm not going to hammer it when it's as rare as that.

@Retron Nope, nowhere near it

@Deanster101 Firstly, it's not "dodgy emulation", it's a couple of rare hiccups here and there. Secondly, they weren't anywhere near frequent or intrusive enough to run the game for me, hence an 8. I'm not going to hammer the thing and give it a 4 even though I still had a great time with it.

@Moroboshi876 To be honest, I can't say for certain whether the arcade version had the same issues, but I know enough about retro gaming that I can generally tell when it's something faithfully reproduced (like slowdown or flickering sprites) and when it's an emulation software issue. At the end of the day though, the stuttering's still in there so if it'll bother you then it'll bother you regardless of where it came from.

@paihia You can turn the backgrounds off if you just want a black background.

@Pazuzu666 Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's terrible. Just noticed a little bit of stuttering and some wavy screen scrolling in Ikari Warriors, for example. By and large it's handled brilliantly.

@Captain_Gonru I am serious, but please don't 'quote' me with things I didn't actually say. There are plenty of people who own FIFA 18 on Switch and want to know how different FIFA 19 is, so that's what I chose to focus on. For those who didn't own FIFA 18, I make it clear in the review that it plays similarly, so they're more than welcome to do more research and find out about that too in the FIFA 18 review.

@Captain_Gonru That's because, by and large, it plays exactly like it did last year. Instead of repeating myself and dedicating a chunk of the review to something I'd already said in the FIFA 18 review, I instead focused on the elements of the gameplay that have changed (the new shooting method, goal kicks etc).

@gcunit Sorry to hear that. If you'd rather read something that ignores all the game's shortcomings and only focuses on its positives, I recommend the official EA Sports FIFA 19 website rather than a review.

@Herman187 To be perfectly honest, I was only made aware of this other book a couple of weeks ago, long after mine was submitted to the publisher. As a result, I haven't read it yet, so I can't really comment on what makes mine different or 'better' (even though that's obviously down to personal opinion).

What I can do is tell you what I think makes mine worth getting, bearing in mind I don't know if any of this applies to his too. My book:

A) is written by someone with 30+ years of experience with the NES and 17 years of journalism experience

B) is written from a British point of view, with a dry sense of humour

C) is (sales permitting) going to be the first in a large series of books covering a number of systems

D) is being published by a publisher with experience in global distribution, meaning it will be readily available in physical and online stores around the world

Based on the sample pages of Pat's book available online, it also seems that his book is subjective – there are reviews of each game – whereas mine is more objective and is designed to be a reference book. Like the names suggest, mine is an encyclopedia, his is a review guide.

Also, while I haven't read Pat's book and completely understand why people would make comparisons, I don't see why there can't be two takes on the same subject. I see @NTELLIGENTMAN is saying he should sue me: nobody owns the concept of cataloguing a system's library, so that's frankly silly.

I wish Pat all the best with his book, and accept that those happy with it won't necessarily need to buy mine. There's room for two books in this world.

@impurekind There's no Kickstarter! The book's written, it has a deal with a publisher, it's currently being laid out and will be available in March 2019 in the UK and May-ish 2019 in North America. I don't need backing, I just hope people buy it when it comes out

@Velocirapstar The site name's a joke: when CVG closed down, some random troll emailed me to say he was glad I was losing my job because games journalism is a young person's game and I was a "tired old hack" who kept going on about how old games were better. So I thought "thanks, I'll have that".

NL - Thanks for the write-up guys, much love.

@Rhaoulos Ah, no worries, I thought you were having a go at me 😉

@Rhaoulos Without trying to sound flippant, the Rime review has nothing to do with me. I didn't write it, so I can't comment on the thinking behind its score. Nintendo Life isn't some big hivemind, it's made up of different reviewers with their own styles.

@JayJ Night Trap is in no way comparable to the CD-i Zelda games or Hotel Mario, which are all dreadful. It may blow your mind, but there are indeed people out there – as evidenced by some of the comments above – who enjoy this game and have fond memories of it.

The "so bad it's good" thing is overused in my opinion: yes, it's heavy on the cheese, but I had fun with it back in the day and I had fun with it again when playing the Switch version. I'm not really sure if you expect me to give a game a lower score, even though I liked it, just to satisfy the people who want to continue the over-the-top "one of the worst games ever" narrative.

I'll wait for the rewritten version

@DreamerDC Well, as you can see by the comments above you, not everyone thinks it's a "horrible game in every way possible", so I'm happy with my score. You're completely within your rights to disagree: that's how opinions work.

@DreamerDC As I say in my review, I don't believe the game is "notoriously awful". It's retrospectively gained a reputation and these days can be seen in a handful of "worst game ever" lists, but suggestions that it's objectively terrible are just untrue. I dare say a lot of people talking about how bad the game is haven't actually played it and are just going along with the generally accepted canon of bad games.

Despite its limitations there are some clever ideas in here and the fact that I owned it on the Mega CD back in the day and still find this new version fun to play 25 years later means there are clearly some other people out there who will appreciate it: it can't be just me or this version would never have been made in the first place.

If it didn't have the extras I would've probably given it a 5 because it's so divisive and love-it-or-hate-it, but the attention and care given to its extra features make it also worth a look for people who may not necessarily like the game but still have an interest in its place in gaming history. Hope that helps clarify things.

@maruse It does have gyro aiming, yup.

@Folkloner Oh aye, definitely. I regularly pass 400,000, that one was just the only time I had a camera nearby because I was attempting it for an ONM feature.

Check number 17 in that Twin Galaxies scoreboard

@SLIGEACH_EIRE I'm getting very bored of you insinuating underhandedness every time I write a review for this site. If you don't like the method I use, that's fine, but pack it in with the constant not-so-subtle suggestions that there are dodgy deals going on. It's getting beyond a joke now and I won't have my credibility called into disrepute like that.

I was asked to review the game by Nintendo Life, I wasn't comfortable giving it a score in that state, I wanted to wait and see if it was going to be patched before the physical launch, it was, an updated review with a final score was therefore published.

I don't care if you think "sensible people can see what's going on": those are the facts and if you can't accept that then it's something you're going to have to come to terms with, not me or any of the other Nintendo Life guys.

@Nintendojuenger Out of curiosity, which of those five games have you played? Not that I have to defend myself, but I've been doing this for 11 and a half years and a number of people seem happy with my reviews. If you disagree with my opinions that's completely fine – variety makes the world go round – but please don't suggest you "don't trust" me or that my opinion lacks "credibility". There's a difference between an inability to do one's job and a simple difference of opinion.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE If you check my Twitter you'll see photo proof that I received it at 7am yesterday morning. I spent about 10-15 hours with it and was up to 3am writing the review so we COULD have it first. Sorry man, insinuation isn't working this time: this is the result of hard work and commitment.

@coxy100 Ah, my bad! Nah, the text there scrolls as you sit the cursor over it. It says something like "earn a Two Players reward pack"

@coxy100 I'm confused: that text doesn't feature anywhere in the review?

@SLIGEACH_EIRE That comment went up at 12:02. Two minutes seems like quite a short time to read my 2000 word review and gather a couple of links from other sites. Almost as if you're basing it just on a single number

@victimOfNirvana I'm sorry, but this is getting silly now. I really object to your insinuation that my review is "suspicious at best", because that's calling my professionalism into question.

Could I have focused more on the microtransactions in the game? Sure, that's a fair comment. Being a human being and not an android, sometimes I neglect to note something in a review that could be of importance to some.

However, in my defence, this VC situation in NBA 2K18 is in no way a new one: as someone who knows the series quite well (which is why I was asked to review it), rather than someone keen to just jump on a controversy bandwagon looking for blood, I'm aware that VC has been in the game in this exact 'pay to speed up stat grinding' form since 2K13. In my eyes this isn't a shocking new development, it's been the foundation of the mode for half a decade now. Chances are I didn't mention it because I was looking for new features, and this is in no way a new feature.

Granted, now that it has a new audience of Nintendo fans I could have done a better job in letting newcomers know what the deal is but, again, that's on me. It's not "suspicious at best".

Ultimately, the ironic thing is that by addressing the situation in this way – making insinuations and casting aspersions – you're actually putting more pressure on me about the score than 2K has (which, as I mentioned above, was not at all).

If we were to give the game an 8 now – which is the score I'd give a fully working version of the game – I have no doubt that you'd claim we were bowing to the pressure of 2K. However, if we now give the game a low score because there's still no patch in sight, others could now claim we've done it because we were bowing to the pressure of people like you calling our credibility into question, not because we actually want to.

Both are complete nonsense: I've been discussing our next steps and the timing of the score with Damien away from any of this nonsense. But the difference is that while there's absolutely no evidence of pressure from 2K to give a high score (because there is none), this comments section shows plenty of evidence of pressure from some readers to give a low score.

We (and most notably as the reviewer, I) wouldn't bow to pressure from 2K if it had existed, and we/I won't bow to pressure from readers looking for blood either. With the greatest of respect, when we score the game it'll be our own decision, and accusations that our work is "suspicious at best" really aren't helping speed up that process.

In short, the Da Vinci Code stuff is getting a bit daft now: please let us get on with it and score it accordingly instead of leaping to completely unfounded conclusions that the Illuminati are breathing down our necks.

I think I've addressed your comments far more than a freelancer would be expected to, to be fair, and I'd hope that the points I've made above clarify the situation fairly definitively rather than leading to another "but what about" response.

Chris

@Jeronan With the greatest of respect, I and the NL team are deciding amongst ourselves what to do next and when/how to score it. I can appreciate it's annoying but at the same time – as I've already said above – there are 1800 words in that review that inform the reader about the good and bad elements of the game. The score is coming, but until it does it's not as if my opinion is in limbo: it's been there for nearly a week now, for you to read, and it gives you far more detail than a number does.

@Tibob Absolutely not. I have had no contact from 2K regarding this review. I've never changed a review score under pressure from a publisher in 11 and a half years doing this and I'm not about to change that now.

@Tibob I think it's safe to say if it's not fixed a month from now that's way beyond what's acceptable. I'm only talking a couple of days at most.

Hey folks, I wrote this review. Just want to give a bit of feedback on why the team and I decided we should hold back on a score just now.

This isn't a situation where there are a few graphical glitches or annoying niggles that would mean a patch would improve the game but not completely transform it.

This is a situation where the game is flat out broken to an extent that this clearly wasn't what 2K expected to happen when the game launched.

More importantly, 2K has already been informing customers that it's working on a patch, and Xbox One and PS4 owners have already received one.

As such, there's a clear possibility that in a day or two's time some of these issues will already be fixed.

By not giving the game a score, the intention is not to defend 2K or help them out. Like it or not, we now live in a time where day one patches are commonplace and this is just a particularly bad example: one in which there wasn't even a patch ready for day one.

We also now live in a time where the first score a publication gives is broadcast all over the internet: if I'd given the game a 3 or 4 then that's the score that would be getting reported in forums, discussed in this comments thread and logged on Metacritic.

Even if a patch was to be released the following day and the score was then changed to an 8 (which is what I'd be likely to give it if the issues were fixed), it would still be a 3 or 4 on Metacritic and the news of the score change wouldn't travel anywhere near as far as the news of the initial score.

I appreciate that scores are a great talking point but I strongly recommend you read the 1700 words I've written instead for now. The score will come soon but the words should (hopefully) do a much better job of telling you what I think about the game.

Hope that clarifies things a bit!

Chris

@SLIGEACH_EIRE Mate, please DM me on Twitter if you want me to explain the review process to you. I don't want to flood the comments with this, it's getting a wee bit silly now.

@Franklin In saying my decision to give it a 10 was in no way influenced, that means nobody at NL asked me or pressured me to give it that score. I had already decided it was a 10 before bringing the score up with the staff. I hope that clarifies it.

@Franklin No it doesn't. I'd already decided on the 10 and was giving the team the heads up on case their policy is to discuss any 10s as a group. Some publications like to double check and make sure it's completely right when they're about to give a game their highest accolade, especially when it's not a regular staff member doing it. This isn't an issue though: the lovely folks at NL always trusted my judgment: the 'heads up email' thing is just my own policy. I know some folk are really keen to find a conspiracy here but there isn't one

Anyway, that's all I'll say on it: it's unprofessional to get into debates like this Thanks for the kind words, everyone else: can't wait for you all to get your hands on the game and have more discussion about it.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE Not at all. I think it's common courtesy to inform a publication you're freelancing for that you've decided to give a game their highest accolade. To clarify, I'd already finished the game at this point and was about to write the review.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE With the greatest of respect, I'm not responsible for any other 10s on this site and my score was not influenced by anything other than my own personal opinion of the game. In fact, I emailed the team before submitting my review warning that it was looking like a 10 and asking if that was okay.

The 10 was my decision alone as a freelancer and was in no way influenced by the NL staff, so if by a "cosy relationship" you're implying that I gave this game a 10 to help out Nintendo then that's really far off the mark. I wouldn't have been able to do this job for 11 years without being honest.

It's always been my view that game critics' scores should be compared to their own scores for other games and nothing else. My 10 for Metroid is in no way related to any other Nintendo Life 10s, because I didn't write those. Different reviewers have different tastes.

Hope that helps reassure you a little!

@Pahvi I've never reviewed Devil Daggers. If it's similar to this, I'd give it a similar score