Post-Beta Pre-Launch Blues Part Two

First,without commenting directly on the recent unpleasantness,I’d like to give some words of encouragement to our friends at Sony and Media Molecule.  I’ve been part of enough suddenly-delayed releases to know what a horrendous pain it can be.  If any of you have time to read this between frantic phone calls and urgent emails,you have our sympathies.

As has been widely reported,some people already have the game in-hand and are enjoying it offline while waiting for the servers to be enabled.  Others seem to be turning a tidy profit on the online auction sites.  Our good friend the Gastronomic Gamer got his hands on a copy,and has offered to take on any questions you may have,so comment away!

Industry heavyweight MetaCritic has received a lesson in how not to handle user reviews.  While the professional reviews pushed LittleBigPlanet’s metascore into the stratosphere,the user reviews look a little fishy.  As of this writing,just under 2000 less-than-stellar reviews for an as-yet-unreleased game (more than,for example,Halo 3 (which released over a year ago)),with not a single user comment.  Since this casts some doubt on the integrity of the results,MetaCritic Games Editor Marc Doyle has commented:

My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes,most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community,and if people want to stuff the ballot box,there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future,this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always,thanks for using the site.

I haven’t had an opportunity to try out Spore yet;but if LittleBigPlanet forces Will Wright to buy a PS3,I just might have to give it a whirl.

Spaff has posted a great set of pics of the LittleBigPlanet space in Covent Garden.  I wonder where all of the decorations will go when they close it down?  I’d be willing to throw some serious money at an online auction (If I had serious money,that is).

I’ll admit that I was surprised to see 1UP holding their LittleBigPlanet review until they’ve seen the final online component of the game.  Good for them,I say;  I’ve seen a few too many reviews based on the Beta for my taste.  Here’s hoping that they see all of the improvements made based on Beta feedback,and add to the long list of perfect scores.

Lastly,I know you’ve all seen it by now,but I just can’t stop watching LittleBigDance.  It always makes me smile,and definitely raises the bar for those of us with music video aspirations.