Here Be Dragons... and existential despair.

May 24, 2016 5:14 AM

Last year saw the release of Raven's Cry, an action-adventure pirate game that promised an immersive open world and historical accuracy. What people got was an incredibly buggy game with poor voice acting and glitches aplenty that would eventually earn a 1/10 "Abysmal" review on Gamespot. The creators addressed the concerns by attempting to fix all the bugs and re-releasing it in November of 2015 under the title Vendetta: Curse of Raven's Cry. Alas, it was eventually removed from Steam two months later after it received some very suspicious positive reviews. If you'd like to see what all the fuss is about, video game aficionado and YouTuber Jerma985 has some great examples of gameplay from both the original and the re-release. (Both NSFW audio)
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI (24 comments total)

One of the Gamespot user reviews begins: "A horrible and glitchy mess from the beginning, it should be fed to the ravens and left to rot." and rates it a 10.

I remember hearing about a study of Amazon reviews in which a small but very persistent segment of users are fixated on using scores in the opposite way of everybody else. It's not due to trolling, it's because they believe that scoring works in the opposite way everybody else uses it. First time I've seen this for myself though.
posted by ardgedee at 5:44 AM on May 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

It's not due to trolling, it's because they believe that scoring works in the opposite way everybody else uses it.

This happened to my research group once on a grant proposal review. One of the reviewers clearly (based on comparing their scores to their comments) used the scale backwards and it threw all of our numbers off. We did not get funding from that particular stream as a result.

/derail
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:50 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Is this that Henry Darger game I keep hearing about
posted by beerperson at 5:51 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I’m dying over the YouTube walkthroughs. “Be brave, muthafuckas! Be brave, bitches! We don’t die today, bitches!” “It’s just a sand alligator.” “107 million damage?”

My husband is going through Uncharted 4 right now and I’ve just attained a new level of appreciation for watching that experience unfold.
posted by like_neon at 5:54 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

When your fallback studio is Reality Pump something may be slightly amiss.

I had a recent very minor incident where a rights holder to a steam game (Particle Mace) did a stealth update to the game which added an ad launcher and also totally erased my saved data. And then when people complained they removed the launcher, but also republished the game, meaning that prior reviews were all labeled "pre-release". All done without the knowledge of the original dev, who I chatted with on Twitter. It was super classy!

Also, I was recently in the market for a headset on Amazon and I noticed that the fake or paid-for reviews seem to finally be winning. For some reason every generic headset from a Chinese OEM is full of glowing reviews from self-identified "Gamer Moms". I'm not sure why it's all gamer moms, but I suspect MLM is somehow involved.
posted by selfnoise at 5:55 AM on May 24, 2016

ardgedee: "I remember hearing about a study of Amazon reviews in which a small but very persistent segment of users are fixated on using scores in the opposite way of everybody else. It's not due to trolling, it's because they believe that scoring works in the opposite way everybody else uses it."

I'm having problems with this since moving to Germany, where grades go from 1 to 5 with 5 being the worst.
posted by brokkr at 5:56 AM on May 24, 2016

My wife does reviews through a service called Tomoson. Most of the things we get are heavily discounted or free rather than paid for. I keep telling her she shouldn't be giving glowing reviews to everything but she fears we'll be denied by potential products if she doesn't (which may be true). You can tell the untrustworthy reviews because they're required to disclose that the item was given to them "for an honest review".
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:59 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

So, the thing I find interesting about this is that the game looks pretty great (keep in mind as I say that, that I am not a gamer, so I don't know what other games look like these days). I mean, I look at that game and think 'ooh, pretty'. But then everything else about it is horrible -- the way the camera stutters as characters move, the glitches, the voice acting. Has impressive graphics in a game just become an off-the-shelf thing available to basically anyone at this point? Or did they have teams of graphics people in the budget and then run out of money before the vocals and programming were properly completed?
posted by jacquilynne at 6:01 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

This sort of expensive-looking jank appears to happen a lot with releases from Eastern European countries and I suspect that there is less expensive creative labor driving some of the production values. The flip side is something like The Witcher 3 which is a lot less janky but has absolutely insane production values.
posted by selfnoise at 6:16 AM on May 24, 2016

Why would anyone want to play an historically accurate Pirate simulator?
posted by lownote at 6:30 AM on May 24, 2016

Nutritional deficiency fetish?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:41 AM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Be brave, clueless game publishers!
posted by infinitewindow at 6:47 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

"re-publishing" has become a major internet 3.0 (shitnet) strategy. You will see all kinds of cheap/crap products on Amazon these days that seem to have a zillion manufacturuers/sellers. They use a review pump and dump strategy to create false high review scores and then when the burned customers tank their ranking they simply create another seller and start over with a new batch of 5 star reviews. I just got burned this way on a 10 pack of completely shit reusable three compartment lunch containers with lids that don't seal.

Restaurants are now doing the same so they can dump their online review legacies. Name change and start fresh.
posted by srboisvert at 6:53 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Why would anyone want to play an historically accurate Pirate simulator?

Because the long war in your historically accurate Early Modern Navel Warefare simulator finally came to an end, and even digital laid-off sailors gotta eat somehow?
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:00 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Has impressive graphics in a game just become an off-the-shelf thing available to basically anyone at this point?

It's relatively easy to get good graphics. Just hire a bunch of artists and work them half to death. Besides, those pretty screenshots are gonna sell the game!

Actually designing a game that people want to play, QAing it so it's not a buggy piece of shit, and not releasing it prematurely -- that stuff requires something resembling integrity and leadership.
posted by neckro23 at 7:09 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Watching the first play through had me in stitches. I laughed so hard, I cried. I kind of want to play this myself.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 7:35 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

But then everything else about it is horrible -- the way the camera stutters as characters move, the glitches, the voice acting. Has impressive graphics in a game just become an off-the-shelf thing available to basically anyone at this point?

Ehhhh, I don't know that it's that impressive. My initial thought upon seeing it was that it looks a lot like games from ~2009, like Risen. I have no idea about the dev process, but I wouldn't be surprised if they used a lot of middleware (like there is software that can generate a good looking ocean wave, or a good looking tree without you ever doing anything except figuring out how to hook it into your engine) or a lot of third party 3D assets and textures.
posted by codacorolla at 7:36 AM on May 24, 2016

Honestly the stilted dialog and bizarre voice acting just reminds me of a lot of my favorite Sega games but it could just be the fishing scenes.
posted by SharkParty at 7:42 AM on May 24, 2016

I also thought the graphics look impressive, but I keep expecting everything to look like Ocarina of Time so my bar is pretty low.
posted by Anonymous at 8:00 AM on May 24, 2016

Ehhhh, I don't know that it's that impressive. My initial thought upon seeing it was that it looks a lot like games from ~2009, like Risen.

2009 is well past my cut-off date* for when video game graphics became "good enough" and art direction surpassed technical improvements as the way to make your game look better.

(*Probably Half-Life 2: Lost Coast in 2005)
posted by straight at 8:16 AM on May 24, 2016

Crying. CRYING at those walkthroughs. I completely lost it at the "Be Brave" guy. Holy crap I haven't laughed like this in so long.

Thank you AlonzoMosleyFBI (though my cat is staring concernedly)
posted by AAALASTAIR at 8:33 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I also thought the visuals were surprisingly decent. (Then again, my last console was a PS2 and I still think of Tomb Raider as the pinnacle of game graphics achievement, so take that with a grain of salt.)

The acting and dialogue, however, were about on par with the "master of unlocking" guy from the original Resident Evil, which is to say laughably amateurish. I kind of want to play this game.
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:53 AM on May 24, 2016

"WHAT?" This is a lady pissing into a bush.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 9:08 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh my god. In stitches.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:23 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]