Jim Sterling and the Mystery of the Missing Review Copy

[EternallyBored]

Where is it written a reviewer needs to 100% a game to review it? What, does FFXIII suddenly get amazing half-way through the end credits?! If a game is shit for hours and hours and hours and hours, why bother playing the next 20 hours? It's already not worth getting and it can only get worse.

While it's true that XIII was garbage until the end, the idea of half-assing a review leads to situations like the Mass Effect 3 debacle (reviewers not playing it to the end, yet throwing out 9s and 10s really made them look like a can of piss). Yeah, kinda wanna avoid that. Also if a bad game gets worse you can give it an even lower score! Everybody wins.

They don't need to 100% it, just an average persons playthrough should be the minimum for a scored review. Just look at Yahtzee's video of FF13, he played like 5 hours of it, and it's fine, because it was just a video of him ripping on the game, no scores or such.

Do you have any example of this happening with ME3? The game wasn't exactly long or hard, you can easily rush through it in half or less than a third of the time it takes to beat FF 13, and I remember a lot of those 9 and 10 reviews specifically pointing out that the ending would be controversial or divisive, meaning that they had beaten the game and still gave it a 9 or 10.

While it was commonly a snarky retort that, "how could these reviewers give the game a 9 or 10 if they played it all the way through", but given that almost all the reviews I remember from the time actually explicitly mention the ending, I can't think of any reviewers that didn't play the game the whole way through.

Not to mention, Jim did play the whole game up to the final boss, then, from what he says, he went and watched the ending elsewhere, so the only thing he missed was actually playing the final boss, which makes sense as that boss is an absolute brick wall if you don't level up with the side quests or exploit using poison which most people don't realize you can even do, rushing through the game makes him stupidly difficult, they really wanted you to grind and do sidequests before tackling Orphan.

I doubt it's a case of giving up out of disgust, barring a few optional bosses, the FF 13 final boss will pretty much wreck your shit if you rush to fight him, especially considering every mandatory boss and enemy in the game leading up to him is pretty easy, hell, up until about 30 hours into the game, the bosses and enemies are almost brain dead easy, as in spam A to win in 90% of fights easy, nothing even remotely difficult pops up until about 2/3rds of the way into the game when you get to Pulse, and the only really challenging enemies are all optional. There were a lot of people frustrated with that final boss.

 

[K12]

Just found this old article: http://www.destructoid.com/the-joys-of-being-a-videogame-reviewer-167383.phtml

I'm inclined to believe Jim on this one. The claims he lied about finishing the game seem dubious at best.

I agree too. He says he didn't bother to beat the final boss but for a 50 hour+ game, is it really feasible to assume the last half hour will have a significant impact on your overall impression of a game.

This is Encyclopedia Brown level of detective work. One potential contradiction (which has several really easy alternative answers) doesn't suddenly prove that everything can be dismissed as lies and deceit.

Do people really need to "prove wrong" people who don't like the same thing as them?

 

[Sarge034]

Snip

So, question. How long do you have to sample something before you can make an informed decision? If I gave you a pile of shit, a literal pile of shit, and told you to eat it how long before you could tell me it tasted like shit? Would finishing the shit change your opinion of the shit? Somehow make it taste better? I personally want an honest review, and if his honest review was "I played this shit game for as long as I could and then had to put it down. Here are my thoughts." then so be it.

Personally, from the wording of your OP and the things you've said about FF in general, I'd peg you as not being Jim's biggest fan and rather liking FF. I would ask you to confirm or deny those assertions as not stating these bias beforehand is rather, "deceptive at the very least" and, "is also very questionable".

 

[Fappy]

Do people really need to "prove wrong" people who don't like the same thing as them?

Where have you been for the last twenty years of video game discussions?! XD

People just can't wrap their heads around the concept of opinions.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Let he who actually managed to finish Final Fantasy XIII cast the first stone.

After you've done that, go reflect on your life choices.

I finished it! And got the platinum for it! And the platinum for XIII-2! I, uh, couldn't get Lightening Return's platinum though. Stupid ultimate optional timed boss fight...

On the note of the actual topic, does this matter? I mean, seriously? So he didn't get a review copy from a developer. Is that really a big deal now? As other people have said, he's just a solo person, not a company. SquareEnix deals with big stuff I feel. I mean, I haven't seen Angry Joe with a review copy either. Come to think of it, I haven't even seen a review for this game here on the escapist. If anything, I think that's more curious than Jim not getting one.

 

[DrOswald]

Where is it written a reviewer needs to 100% a game to review it? What, does FFXIII suddenly get amazing half-way through the end credits?! If a game is shit for hours and hours and hours and hours, why bother playing the next 20 hours? It's already not worth getting and it can only get worse.

While it's true that XIII was garbage until the end, the idea of half-assing a review leads to situations like the Mass Effect 3 debacle (reviewers not playing it to the end, yet throwing out 9s and 10s really made them look like a can of piss). Yeah, kinda wanna avoid that. Also if a bad game gets worse you can give it an even lower score! Everybody wins.

They don't need to 100% it, just an average persons playthrough should be the minimum for a scored review. Just look at Yahtzee's video of FF13, he played like 5 hours of it, and it's fine, because it was just a video of him ripping on the game, no scores or such.

I really don't think that is fair. A game that is shit for 25 hours just is not going to redeem itself. You can have an awesome game that is ruined by a shit end, to some extent, but you really can't have an ending so good it redeems 25 hours of shit. And really, playing Final Fantasy for 20 hours and giving up because you can't handle one more cut scene with that whiny shit Hope is a fairly typical experience for people who played FFXIII.

 

[AJvsRonin]

Jim Sterling Lied about playing Final Fantasy XIII, and gave it a bad review too!

Now, obviously, giving a game a bad review would be terrible grounds to disqualify any person from reviewing future games. Especially games like FFXIII. However, the fact of the matter is, Jim outright lied with his playtime for the game, a lie revealed by his PSN achievements, which upon discovery he made private.

Is this just based on his lacking the achievement? Perhaps he just didn't sync them.

Shit if that's all it takes to accuse someone of not beating a game then I've got dozens of missing achievements and trophies for games I beat. Due to account transfers, hardware failure, not synching, or just shutting the game off right when the credits start before getting the thing, I just don't give a shit about useless marks on my profile announcing my progress in a game.

Exactly. According to Steam I've played 2 hours of Skyrim, and 19 minutes of Civ 5... (－‸&#4314

And as for XIII, he out lasted me. I gave up within 4 hours.As soon as I saw the combat system I got bored.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Does it matter? Those who like FF will buy it, old school fans will complain that it's not FF7, and everyone else will ignore it, it'll get 7/10 from most places, and Jim will continue his life.

 

[The Lunatic]

Snip

So, question. How long do you have to sample something before you can make an informed decision? If I gave you a pile of shit, a literal pile of shit, and told you to eat it how long before you could tell me it tasted like shit? Would finishing the shit change your opinion of the shit? Somehow make it taste better? I personally want an honest review, and if his honest review was "I played this shit game for as long as I could and then had to put it down. Here are my thoughts." then so be it.

Personally, from the wording of your OP and the things you've said about FF in general, I'd peg you as not being Jim's biggest fan and rather liking FF. I would ask you to confirm or deny those assertions as not stating these bias beforehand is rather, "deceptive at the very least" and, "is also very questionable".

Depends, am I employed professionally to review piles of shit? Because if that's the case, whilst I must admittedly spend time wondering how my life has gotten to such a state, I would agree, it is my duty, as a paid figure to at least finish the assessment to the fullest order. Or declare that I have not done so.

I don't care if he didn't finish it. I just think if you don't finish a story-driven game. You should declare as such. I've already said this.

As for Jim? Eh. Don't really care either way. Makes some okay points sometimes, can be a bit of a hypocrite. Used to like him more, but, got stale over time.

In regards to FFXIII.

It was fucking awful, and I didn't play beyond the first act. I bought the collector's edition and it was easily the worst purchase I've made in regards to gaming. It came with stickers for god sake. Stickers.

Spoiler: Even my cats were unimpressed by it.

Now, as for your post, I'd peg you as a particularly big fan of Jim's, and would ask you to declare this to be true or false, for you appear to be making a mountain from a molehill over a minor point in the OP about something that happened 5 years ago, and is likely not really relevant to the current situation.

 

[RedDeadFred]

He didn't finish the final boss. I'd say he probably has a pretty solid grasp on his opinion up to that point. Is finishing the last half hour of a game going to unlock "This Game Doesn't Suck Anymore Mode"? No. He also said that the story felt like a rehash of plenty of other Final Fantasy plots so I doubt finishing that was even necessary either. Besides, if he couldn't be bothered to finish, the story couldn't have been all that compelling.

Anyway, the likely answer is that he was simply overlooked. As someone else pointed out, Angry Joe doesn't really get review copies either so when they say they don't give them to individuals, that does hold up. However, one thing that Joe and Jim do have in common is that they are not afraid to call AAA games on their bullshit and give them bad scores. Maybe SE was afraid of that. That's going into conspiracy territory though and I'd say that it's very unlikely.

 

[EternallyBored]

Snip

So, question. How long do you have to sample something before you can make an informed decision? If I gave you a pile of shit, a literal pile of shit, and told you to eat it how long before you could tell me it tasted like shit? Would finishing the shit change your opinion of the shit? Somehow make it taste better? I personally want an honest review, and if his honest review was "I played this shit game for as long as I could and then had to put it down. Here are my thoughts." then so be it.

Personally, from the wording of your OP and the things you've said about FF in general, I'd peg you as not being Jim's biggest fan and rather liking FF. I would ask you to confirm or deny those assertions as not stating these bias beforehand is rather, "deceptive at the very least" and, "is also very questionable".

Depends, am I employed professionally to review piles of shit? Because if that's the case, whilst I must admittedly spend time wondering how my life has gotten to such a state, I would agree, it is my duty, as a paid figure to at least finish the assessment to the fullest order. Or declare that I have not done so.

I don't care if he didn't finish it. I just think if you don't finish a story-driven game. You should declare as such. I've already said this.

As for Jim? Eh. Don't really care either way. Makes some okay points sometimes, can be a bit of a hypocrite. Used to like him more, but, got stale over time.

In regards to FFXIII.

It was fucking awful, and I didn't play beyond the first act. I bought the collector's edition and it was easily the worst purchase I've made in regards to gaming. It came with stickers for god sake. Stickers.

Spoiler: Even my cats were unimpressed by it.

Now, as for your post, I'd peg you as a particularly big fan of Jim's, and would ask you to declare this to be true or false, for you appear to be making a mountain from a molehill over a minor point in the OP about something that happened 5 years ago, and is likely not really relevant to the current situation.

I don't think that's really fair in this case, as Jim claims, he got to the final boss then gave up and just watched the finale cinematic elsewhere, I don't think he should be expected to have to tell people if the only thing he did was look up the last cutscene elsewhere.

Especially in a case like FF 13 where the final boss is frustratingly balanced, which likely left Jim with the option of bashing his head against a difficulty wall or just cutting his loses and looking up the final cinematic. If he had given up halfway through the game and just watched the rest of the cinematics I could understand giving a warning to the readers, but just for the single last boss, no I don't expect the kind of short generalized reviews that Jim writes to warn me of that.

 

[The Lunatic]

I don't think that's really fair in this case, as Jim claims, he got to the final boss then gave up and just watched the finale cinematic elsewhere, I don't think he should be expected to have to tell people if the only thing he did was look up the last cutscene elsewhere.

Especially in a case like FF 13 where the final boss is frustratingly balanced, which likely left Jim with the option of bashing his head against a difficulty wall or just cutting his loses and looking up the final cinematic. If he had given up halfway through the game and just watched the rest of the cinematics I could understand giving a warning to the readers, but just for the single last boss, no I don't expect the kind of short generalized reviews that Jim writes to warn me of that.

Well, this was when he was working at destructiod, as a professional reviewer, with scores that went on Metacritic and all that stuff.

I'm personally of the opinion that if you're being employed to play games, the least you can do is spend the "Last 30 minutes or so" as he puts it, on the game, and finish it.

I mean, it was his job, after all.

Added to that, it's rather easy to simply add in the review "The game got so bad and frustrating that I quit and watched the cut scenes online", and if anything, it actually informs the consumers a lot more than simply pretending your review is based on the completed experience of the game.

I don't think it would have affected the outcome of the review, nor do I think it was a particularly unfair score. But, I don't like the idea of somebody being paid to play a game, not finishing it, and not telling people who consume his content of this.

The whole hiding of the profile afterwards just makes it look even worse.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

As other people have pointed out, he basically did finish the game with the sole exception of the last boss. Even if it were the case that he gave up halfway, isn't a review stating "the game is so godawful that I couldn't finish it" a useful review in and of itself? Especially in this case where a considerable number of people had such an experience?

OT:
The Escapist managed to procure Jim's review copies. Before that, it was Destructoid. As far as Squeenix is concerned, he's an unemployed writer working on a personal blog. While he has a crowd, he doesn't have the shroud of professionalism the outlets gave him. They also likely wonder if giving him a copy would be a wise idea or if he would rate it poorly.

 

[Lunar Templar]

this smells a lot like trying to start shit for the sake of trying to start shit....

 

[Story]

Meh, if he really wants to review it. Well, he can buy one...he can certainly afford it now.
This seems like a non-issue to me.

 

[EternallyBored]

Well, this was when he was working at destructiod, as a professional reviewer, with scores that went on Metacritic and all that stuff.

I'm personally of the opinion that if you're being employed to play games, the least you can do is spend the "Last 30 minutes or so" as he puts it, on the game, and finish it.

well, that's your opinion, personally, I don't think the final cutscene in a 50+ hour game is automatically important enough to need to be included in the review, especially since looking up the cutscene on Youtube would basically be the same thing as beating the game save perhaps a remark on how frustrating the final boss is.


I don't expect a general review to go through and get every alternate ending in order for the reviewer in a game either, or to tell me about the short cutscene or extra mission you may get for collecting all the random doo-dads, short reviews like what Destructoid does are not detailed enough that skipping the final boss hurts the review in any appreciable way as long as he watched the ending itself in another fashion.

Added to that, it's rather easy to simply add in the review "The game got so bad and frustrating that I quit and watched the cut scenes online", and if anything, it actually informs the consumers a lot more than simply pretending your review is based on the completed experience of the game.

It's easy but I don't think it really adds anything relevant, it likely wasn't terrible enough to stand out to Jim in the final assessment, and I don't think he considered the fight or final scene as adding or subtracting enough from the game to warrant a mention. It was a general review, most of Destructoids reviews are short and meant to give an impression

The whole hiding of the profile afterwards just makes it look even worse.

Not really, considering the amount of hate mail he was getting, just from the video you posted and the article actually posting some snippets earlier, I don't blame him at all for hiding it, just like I don't blame TotalBiscuit for turning off his Youtube comments for being too much of a shitshow, if anything I would have been more surprised if he hadn't hidden them.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Eh, to be perfectly honest I doubt that this matters much (if it's true or if it's not). FF is like any other franchise in that it has it's loyal followers and it's equally loyal detractors - or, in other words, those that like the franchise who will cut the new game a break regardless of it's flaws and those that dislike the series who will pick fault with the game regardless of any redeeming qualities. In this sense reviews are more or less completely redundant and only serve to inform newcomers to the series, and even then only in a subjective manner.

[sub][sub]Don't get me wrong, I like Jim, but the whole sphere of game reviews seems pretty pointless to me. Either you do or don't like a game, and your enjoyment (or lack thereof) of a title shouldn't be enhanced or diminished by the opinion of a complete stranger. 'Course this is a bit of a taboo subject on a gaming site but hey.[/sub][/sub]

 

[The Lunatic]

My first thought about this was: Does a reviewer have to be a journalist? Does having journalistic qualifications in anyway help someone review a video game? Legitimate question.

Now, I'm of the belief that this is merely due to the fact that Jim is now independent. With recent news about people trying to scam review copies, only to sell them on ebay, I don't doubt that maybe companies are taking a little closer look at peoples credentials when they ask for a copy, or when they're deciding who to send them to.

Another thing I would like to know: during his time here, were copies sent specifically to him, or were they just send to The Escapist, and he reviewed them once they arrived? This distinction could mean that they (SE) are not blacklisting Jim, but since he's no longer part of TE, he no longer has access to those games.