IGN dun goofed again, RE2 review states guy "finished" the game

[MMaRsu]

[Editor's Note: We've realized that we were confused about the way the second perspective is unlocked. After you play through one, the alternate perspective becomes available for the other character through different section of the main menu. We're working on a revised version of this review and will update it shortly. We apologize for the error.]

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/01/22/resident-evil-2-review

Look at all this bullshit that's crossed out 

I have fond memories of playing the original Resident Evil 2 in my dorm room at the University of Kansas back in 1998

Capcom has given me a new experience I’ll remember for a long time: this ground-up remake of Resident Evil 2 is a very fun, very creepy adventure thanks to its completely new and modern graphics, controls, and some smart quality-of-life improvements. It does squander a golden opportunity to make good use of its two playable characters,


I beat the story from Leon’s point of view in eight hours, which felt a little short, but I was excited to fire up Claire’s campaign and see the fateful evening’s events unfold from an entirely new perspective. Unfortunately, that’s not what we get -- at least not when we should. Whomever you play as in the main game mode, Resident Evil 2 will be largely the same when you finish and switch to the other person. Most of the same events happen and Leon and Claire take extremely similar paths, meet the same people, solve the same puzzles, and fight the same bosses. This was a bit of a bummer for me. [Editor's Note: This paragraph is inaccurate and is being revised.]

I enjoyed all of it, but those small differences aren’t quite enough to justify a second playthrough of a very similar campaign.


It turns out that the other perspective I wanted does exist, but it’s confusingly hidden behind each character’s second Game mode. You have to play through as Leon once to unlock the second version as Leon, and the same for Claire. That’s annoying, and it’s completely baffling that Capcom set it up this way instead of just letting us play the alternate perspective on our second playthrough as the second character, but at least you’ll finally get to see some new areas and there is the promise of an alternate ending. This mode isn’t entirely new, though, and there is still a lot of overlap in the puzzle solving. [Editor's Note: This paragraph is inaccurate and is being revised.]

embarrassing

[thisismyusername]

Maybe ign should stick with plagiarizing instead, they seem better at that.

Nippy Kind Langur.

[AdmiralViscen]

Honestly, you’d think that if you had discovered a glaring issue like that you’d message one of your industry peers and ask them about it

[bork]

Updated:

Editor's Note: This review has been updated to correct a factual error regarding the way you unlock the 2nd Game mode, and as a result, the score has been increased from 8.8 to 9.0. We regret the error and really like Resident Evil 2

WOW A 0.2 INCREASE 

The article still says the paths are too similar. 

(In an earlier version of this review I mistakenly played through the first versions of Leon and Claire’s stories back to back, which are even more similar. Having now played Leon’s 2nd Game, I’m still disappointed that there’s only marginally more new things to see and do there.)

I'm gonna need confirmation from someone trustworthy.

[Mr. Gundam]

Whoops. How the hell did that get past the editor?

[eleuin]

I was about to say this isn't even the first time something like this has happened by IGN

Turns out it's from the same exact guy, forgot the game name but it was a bullet hell I think? He only finished it on easy and didn't see all the content

[benjipwns]

looked that up:

an IGN review of PixelJunk SideScroller has caused quite the stir in the gaming community. In short, IGN reviewer Daemon Hatfield posted his review of PixelJunk SideScroller, a game which he scored a 6.5...

 But the score isn't what caused the controversy. The problem started when PJSideScroller developer Dylan Cuthbert called out Hatfield for not playing the game on normal, and as a result, not unlocking the last epic stage. The reason this is important is because Daemon complained that after beating the final boss he was kicked back to the title screen instead of getting a fulfilling ending.

Here's where the problem starts. Rather than admit that he played the game on casual, he lied about it. He assured Cuthbert that he beat it on normal, at which point Cuthbert called him out and said had he beat it on normal he would have seen the entire ending sequence.

So after this public discussion took place on Twitter, Hatfield did the unthinkable. He got caught, panicked, and did the first thing that came to mind – covered up the evidence that he didn't play on normal. He actually removed a part of his review which showed that he played on casual. Below you can see the before and after.

Daemon's review:
Finish the last stage and defeat the final boss and what is your reward? A swift kick back to the title screen with no more than "congratulations."

Dylan's tweet
@DaemZero you didn't play it on normal (as is obvious from your review) - completing it on casual doesn't unlock the last epic stage

Daemon's tweet
@dylancuthbert Rest assured I definitely beat it on normal. Usually a big fan of your games, sorry this one didn't click for me.

Dylan's tweet
@DaemZero if you beat it on normal you would have seen the entire ending sequence

Daemon's review:
Finish the last stage and defeat the final boss and what is your reward? A swift kick back to the title screen with no more than "congratulations."

Dylan's tweet
woah @DaemZero that's really unprofessional..you removed the section from your review showing clearly you rushed through the game in casual

Daemon's blog:
In both casual and normal mode, when you complete all three stages you unlock the "last stage." So I played through this last stage on both difficulties.

Dylan's tweet
@JDFatalist the level unlocks, but it doesn't give you the big finale ending - in casual it does just plonk you back on the title screen

Dylan on NeoGAF
Dylan here - I'd like to point out I never complained about the score (that's all opinion-based anyway and you can't change that), and obviously when I called out the reviewer for only playing casual he quickly re-edited the bits of the article and that really showed a bit of guilt I think. (and made it look like I was complaining about nothing, which was pretty annoying)

When you clear the game on Normal you get the full epic ending - I called it a "stage" in my twittery haste early this morning, but the point I was making is that it was obvious the guy had only played the game in casual mode due to the complaint that the game just puts you back to the title screen.

To begin with, when you complete the game in Casual, it *does* just put you back to the title screen. When you complete it in Normal it gives you the full ending (with voice acting!)
On top of that, when you go back to the title screen it tells you that you have unlocked the new Hard mode (which also gives you a really cool visual unlock).

So I stand by my case, the guy definitely only played through casual which is a "hold your hand" mode, and if that's fine for a review then that's fine with me too, but I think he should specify that in the review so people can understand what they are reading.

We've had this kind of quick rushed review on every single one of our games, and it's always the first review to make the press - from there on the reviews are well-written and detailed. So yes, I am a bit hard on the gaming press and the quality of their editorial... we all need to be to be honest. There are actually good people out there really trying to do a good job in the gaming press with detailed articles and in-depth articles, and even some investigative stuff. This is the press we should encourage; not the rushed reviews to be first to get page views.

[benjipwns]

I bet reviewers won't make this kind of mistake with SPHINX AND THE CURSED MUMMY, COMING SOON ON SWITCH!

[The Sceneman]

pretty sure all games journos cant pay games for shit and all deserve to be face-fucked with a sidewinder missile

[benjipwns]

NEVER FORGET:

[Rufus]

Whoops. How the hell did that get past the editor?

What editor?

[The Sceneman]

Oh! I just remembered the classic comment to post in these threads:

"You cant spell ignorant without IGN!"

[The Sceneman]

NEVER FORGET:

were they seriously actually trying to play the fucking game?! The instructions were on screen ffs! When he finally figures it out - he dashes like 2 seconds too late some fine gaming skills

[Himu]

Why are game journos so bad at games? Weren’t the guys in EGM, et al good at games? It makes no sense to me and never has.

[Himu]

NEVER FORGET:

[paprikastaude]

Acknowledging game reviewers as journalists makes one step closer to idiocracy.

[Svejk]

NEVER FORGET:

were they seriously actually trying to play the fucking game?! The instructions were on screen ffs! When he finally figures it out - he dashes like 2 seconds too late some fine gaming skills

There's no way this can be real...  if so, that person needs to stay away from video games before they seriously hurt themselves.

[Nintex]

In Dean's defense his job is to shill for Microsoft write books about Xbox.
Not play video games.

Looking at Frank O'Connor's posting habits I have doubts he can finish the first level of HALO on easy mode.
Although this is common in the gaming industry. Aonuma has brought it up in interviews that he hasn't been able to beat most of the Zelda games.
Hiroshi Yamauchi was proud he never held a controller despite being the boss of Nintendo.

[benjipwns]

were they seriously actually trying to play the fucking game?! The instructions were on screen ffs! When he finally figures it out - he dashes like 2 seconds too late some fine gaming skills

There's no way this can be real...  if so, that person needs to stay away from video games before they seriously hurt themselves.

It's real, first he got all defensive on twitter:
https://twitter.com/deantak/status/904219261333151744
https://twitter.com/deantak/status/904223320618409984

Then he wrote an article about how it was all a joke.

I intended it to be funny, and I apologize that I so misread the tone. Not just the tone of the video and the story. I mentioned from the first sentence that I suck at Cuphead. As my colleague pointed out, I misread the climate in which it was received. I apologize that so many expected the best from me, and they got horrible gameplay. I apologize to my fellow game journalists, as I just made everybody’s lives tougher again. My own responses to my critics revealed my ignorance on a number of facts. In fact, platform games like Cuphead are not my specialty.

...

I came back with video that I thought was unusable, but my colleagues thought it would be funny, too. I didn’t make a weighty judgment about whether you should buy Cuphead or not. I wrote a slice-in-time preview. It was naively devoid of context that possibly could have headed off that anger. So many people didn’t realize that this wasn’t a serious review. I was messing around at first, and I wasn’t focused and serious until I had warmed up.

BUUUUTTTTTT actually, it's part of a GamerGate Plot!

Another game journalist (and some say “shitlord”) saw my video. He clipped it to the 2.5 minutes of the most damning inept gameplay, and he posted it to his followers. He used me to condemn all game journalists, raising the smoldering issues around Gamergate and its focus on game journalism ethics. His post was political propaganda for the disenfranchised gamers, the sort who went from Gamergate to the alt-right and elected Donald Trump as president.

Before he got to it, my video had maybe 10,000 views. Afterward, the Gamergaters, or hardline reactionaries — or whatever we would like to call them — believed this narrative fit into their views about game journalists just fine. They called for my head. They said I should fuck myself. I should be fired. I had brain damage. I was distinguished mentally-challenged. I should kill myself. A couple of comments were racist.


I despise how this was triggered by a viral post that represented the worst of fake news. This was my own little Black Mirror episode, where I was the target not because I was a victim, but because I had perpetrated a wrong against this mob. It was not unlike the heat that Google endured after firing James Damore, who wrote a controversial diversity memo.

Some critics were quite funny, like one who said I had discovered the Dark Souls of tutorials (Yep, even I know that Dark Souls is a hard game and comparing games to it has become a cliché). I could see how “pulling a Dean Takahashi” would be a joke about incompetence at games. Still, it was a bit hard to laugh, because they were so expert in their cruelty and so gleeful at my expense.

And plus the haters are jealous:

One of them, Mr. Serious, called me out. I responded to him with something thoughtful, and said I wondered why the commenters were so mean. To my surprise, he apologized, and said it was the first such mean comment he had ever left. He said he looked up my bio and was jealous of my job, where I got paid to play games. I thanked him for my apology, as it restored my faith in humans on the internet.

I say I get paid to play games. But that’s a partial truth, and it causes so many assumptions to be made. I am foremost a business and technology writer who focuses on the game industry. I’ve written 14,882 stories in my 9.5 years at VentureBeat. That is 30 stories a week. But I do about a dozen or so game reviews per year. I go to a lot of preview events where I play, but most of my job is writing about game and tech companies. I have 21 years experience covering games, and 26 years covering technology. My own view is that a lot more people should be paid to play games.

My critic, by the way, has posted 196,000 tweets, or 13 times more than the stories I have written at VentureBeat. Between us, I’m not sure who has more time to actually play games. But I don’t have a lot, and I bemoan that fact. In a 15-hour work day, I’m lucky to get an hour of game time. But I don’t hate my job, as some critics have said. I’m not waiting to give my job to someone who is more eager and enthusiastic. I love this job. Not because I am a skillful or prolific gamer. Because I have fun. I live for little moments, like when Mike Morhaime, the CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, thanked me for 25 years of good coverage.

In all of my 45 years or so as a gamer — yep, since the original Pong came out — nobody ever denied that I was a proper and legitimate game fan. Until now. People who watch the Cuphead video assume that I could not possibly be a game fan. I lack the skill. I don’t deserve to be paid to play games. But during all of the time I have written about games, none of my bosses cared about exactly how good I was at playing. They required basic knowledge and competence, but not skill on an esports level.

But really he's out there fighting for the little people:

Gamers need to stop being mean to those who aren’t skillful. They don’t need to put others down to elevate their own subculture. Games have gone viral. They’re more popular than ever, reaching 2 billion people around the world. They have become a $108 billion industry. It’s silly to look down on games.

That industry will grow bigger, and gamers will get better games, if we embrace the new gamers. We don’t need to dumb games down. We can have adjustable difficulty, so that the unskilled and skilled alike can play. We can make tutorials even easier than the one that I failed at so miserably.

No, I’m not blaming the developer for my own shortcomings. I respect the designers, even if I didn’t truly understand at first the games they’ve made. I would just like to make sure that they make their games for people who are new, or noobs, as well as hardcore fans. As Nolan Bushnell, cofounder of Atari, said, games should be easy to learn and hard to master. (Yes, I know Cuphead’s tutorial isn’t that hard to learn).

No, I’m not celebrating mediocrity, like the Antonio Salieri character in Amadeus. I’m arguing that all gamers, casual or hardcore, deserve recognition. We are not all going to be esports stars who rake in millions of dollars. But we’re going to be the masses of unskilled players who make the game companies, including the makers of Cuphead, as rich as they can possibly be.

Also did you know he's respected by journalists unlike you?

My fellow journalists have come to my defense. Minotti mentioned that I broke a story on Blizzard canceling Titan (even if he slightly misremembered it). Kat Bailey of US Gamer pointed out that I wrote that Xbox 360 defects story. Brian Fargo, the CEO of InXile and the personality in gaming that I have covered longer than anyone, said, “I don’t like them picking on our Dean!”

There are people who I haven’t talked to in years who have come to my defense. One fellow said he worked with me years ago. Another asked him if I sucked back then. The fellow replied, “He was always kind to me. …” That kind of thing keeps me going, because I do believe in the karma of kindness. My friend Luke Stapley in China started picking fights with people who were trashing me. Thanks to the friends who have my back.

I appreciate the thought, but I hope we can elevate this conversation beyond a civil war. To me, bringing back a little civility, tolerance, and kindness to gaming and the internet is what we so desperately need.

Unfortunately, the video in isolation on YouTube lacked the full context. It didn't explain that we were posting this as a joke. A shitlord on Twitter also linked to this video and claimed these are the same people doing reviews. People came to the conclusion that this video was somehow part of a review, and the clip and this description did not provide the proper context to correct those assumptions. That is our fault.

None of this excuses the racism, sexism (why is your go-to insult for a bad gamer always a woman?), death threats, calls for suicide, or really even the anger that drove people to demand anything of Dean or us. If this video frustrated you, we get that. That was the point, but it's worth a laugh and not much else.

A group of people want to use this clip -- the only one of the handful he recorded at Gamescom that suggests he lacks competency -- and a Mass Effect review from a decade ago that he had to retract to justify their claims that he should not have his job and needs to be fired. In the process, you have to be intentionally ignorant of the rest of his career. But let's ignore the books he's written about the Xbox and Xbox 360 and the scoops he's had about Blizzard canceling Titan or the reach of the RROD scandal.

The Mass Effect review mentioned is in relation to how he played through like half of the game or more before learning how to equip new skills or something. Then wrote in the review how it made no sense that they give you all these but don't let you use them.